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Evolution a Sacred Cow
Beware of Teaching the Controversy
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Evolution a Sacred Cow |
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Creation Digest Interviews Rod LeVake Rod LeVake teaches science at Minnesota's Faribault High, a public school. Initially, he taught Biology. Although he never taught Creation, nor highlighted evolutionism’s flaws, after one year he was reassigned to teach Introduction to Physical Science to freshmen - a subject that doesn’t deal with the evolution issue. Creation Digest invited his comments to pointed questions. His candid response offers fascinating reading - Editor. 1. What has been your training and experience as a teaching professional in the Minnesota public school system? I received my undergraduate degree at St. John's University with a double major in Social Science and Natural Science. After a few years in the work force, I decided to go back to school to pursue a degree in education. I earned a Masters in Arts in Teaching (M.A.T.) in life science from Mankato State University and accepted a teaching job at Faribault Junior High in science and math. After 13 years, I moved to the high school to teach Biology. I taught Biology for one year before being reassigned to teach Introduction to Physical Science to freshmen. This class does not deal with evolution. There was no loss of pay or benefits with this change of assignment. 2. Were you ever an evolutionist before becoming a high school science teacher? I was trained in evolutionary science as all other science majors were. I chose to ignore the subject, not because I disagreed with it necessarily, but because I found other topics in science more fascinating. Topics dealing with how complex life is, really caught my attention. Discussions involving the ancestors of a creature and the like were forgotten in my amazement with the details of life. 3. What evidence or event in your life inspired your decision to be a creationist? I became a born-again Christian, along with my wife, after I graduated from college but before I accepted the teaching position in Faribault. As a child, I was raised in a church-going family, but hadn’t made any personal commitment of my own. For several years, I was not forced to deal with the contradiction between my faith and the evolutionary training I had received. Instead, I went about learning how to be a good father, husband and teacher. Gradually, God confronted me with a Ken Ham lecture here or a creation-based Bible passage there. Finally, for my own peace of mind, I had to decide exactly where I stood on the controversy between evolution and creation. Did I believe that God created the complexity, diversity, and beauty of life I saw around me? Or did life arise by pure chance without God? Not a particularly avid reader, God placed in me a desire to find the answer by reading as many books on the subject as possible. 4. Did you teach creationism to public school students in the classroom or did you suggest specific problems with evolutionary theory? Neither. Allow me to explain. First of all, I must say I have never felt led to teach aspects of creation science to my public school students. I did not, and still do not, feel that imposing my beliefs about origins on my students was in their collective best interest. If I were to teach creation science correctly, after all, I would need to use a Bible, which is something I was not hired to do. A student’s education about God and His creation are best handled by his or her family along with their place of worship. Instead, in Biology class, I concentrated on highlighting the extraordinary complexity of life to my students. These amazing stories about mysterious creatures turned out to be favorites in class. Once my peers discovered I had serious reservations about macroevolution (molecules evolving into man), however, I was reassigned to 9th grade science. Because of my personal convictions, I was not able to stand in front of my students and teach them about evolution without also pointing out the theory’s many flaws and inconsistencies. As I found out, the school administration wanted evolution taught without mentioning the concerns I had. As a result of this reassignment, I brought suit against the school with help from the American Center for Law and Justice. The ironic thing about this whole situation was that I was reassigned, not for what I had actually said in class, but for what I thought about evolution. 5. Why are some people confused about the issue of evolution? Believe it or not, the science community itself is responsible for causing the public's confusion. Those committed to evolution use a technique called "bait and switch" to confuse and convince the public. More specifically, they illustrate one type of evolution (the bait) and then convince them that a second type of evolution logically follows. They do this without informing them of the differences between the two types (the switch). A conversation might go something like this: "You can see that living things change over time, can't you? For example, the offspring of flowers or the offspring of dogs sometimes have different traits than their parents. This is evolution." "Yes, I've seen that." "That's how simple one-celled creatures, like paramecium, have changed over time into creatures like flowers and dogs in the first place. That’s evolution too." The first type of evolution mentioned is called microevolution. Microevolution occurs when one kind of creature passes on various traits to their offspring. There is abundant evidence for this type of evolution. The key idea to understanding microevolution is both the parent and the offspring are still the same kind of creature. The second type of evolution illustrated above is called macroevolution. Macroevolution is when one kind of creature changes into a completely different kind of creature. No evidence exists for this type of evolution. To avoid confusion, both parties must know of which type of evolution the conversation is about. There is also a third major type of evolution. It is called biochemical evolution, and this type is based on the premise that life originated from non-living molecules. Again, there is no real evidence for this type of evolution. 6. What do you see as the most telling scientific argument that exposes flaws in evolutionary theory? There are many to choose from, but I think there are three central arguments that would stir up questions an evolutionist would find difficult, if not impossible, to answer. The first one is concerned with biochemical evolution and the second and third with macroevolution. Life itself is so complex that it defies any evolutionary explanation that solely relies on chance mutations, lots of time and the laws of chemistry. A single living cell is so complex it would be impossible to originate merely as a result of these three reasons working together. It would take a year long biochemistry course to go into all the details, but perhaps a simple analogy I read about would prove helpful. The living cell has been likened to a miniature city, complete with capabilities in transportation, manufacturing, repair, protection from within and without, information retrieval and coordination of tasks, to mention a few. Mobility and duplication can be added to the list, but then our city analogy breaks down. Once we realize that a single living cell is very complex, we are confronted with a question. How could life arise in the first place? If you rule out a Divine Creator, as some scientists do, there is no answer to that question. The inability to explain the complexity of life using evolution is a major defeat for biochemical evolution. Secondly, you would think that if macroevolution were true, you would find abundant evidence in the fossil record. The fossil record, quite frankly, is an embarrassment to evolutionary scientists. Since Darwin's time, millions of fossils have been found representing about 250,000 different species of living plants and animals. If macroevolution were true, you would find that in the very oldest rock layers (Cambrian) and in layers since, lay numerous fossil connections between similar creatures. There have been no such connections found. In fact, right from the beginning, fossils are amazingly unconnected with other fossil types. If macroevolution were true, you would expect to find great physical change in ascending rock layers for one type of creature. In other words, simple creatures would gradually change into more complex creatures as you continued up the layers of rock. There also would be a large number of transitional fossils. However, the opposite is true. No transitional fossils have been found. Fossils that have living relatives today are almost exactly alike. The science term for this is stasis. In other words, a fossilized clam looks like a living clam, a fossilized fish looks like a living fish, and so on. If macroevolution were true, you would expect to find simpler creatures in the lower layers of rocks and as you went up in the rock layers, the creatures would become more complex. This is not the case. Not surprisingly, it is just the opposite. All creatures found in the deeper layers are fully formed and have no forerunners below them. This was such a surprise that science named this observation the "Cambrian Explosion." Creatures "exploded" onto the scene with no apparent primitive forms. Interestingly enough, there are no fossils discovered that could be classified as "mistakes" in evolution either. You would expect to find some creatures that were so poorly evolved (mistakes) that they were unable to survive. There are none found. The final argument that draws evolutionary theory into question, deals with information. Specifically, from where does the additional information come that enables a simple creature to become a more complex one? Science currently believes that DNA, a complete set of which is carried in every cell, carries the information needed by each creature to carry on with life. Chance mutations in this genetic material over time is not enough to explain where the increased amount of information comes from. More complex creatures require more information. It is understandable how chance mutations can lead to a loss or change of information, but it does not explain the source of this increase of information. There is no answer for this question outside of accepting the fact there is some sort of intelligent design behind life itself. 7. What books helped you to better understand the complexities of life and to gain an appreciation for this controversy between evolution and design? There are several books that have influenced me greatly. Here is a list of most of them.
8. Any final remarks you would like to make? A friend once pointed out an interesting story from Anne Graham Lotz's book entitled God's Story, that I believe puts things into perspective. "Sir Isaac Newton once had a miniature model of the solar system in his office. The sun was positioned in the center of the model with various planets displayed in orbit around it. One day, a fellow scientist walked into his study, and when he saw it exclaimed, 'My! What an exquisite thing this is! Who made it?' Sir Isaac Newton replied, 'Nobody.' The scientist looked amazed as he said skeptically, 'You must think I am a fool. Of course somebody made it, and he is a genius.' Sir Isaac Newton got up, walked around his desk, and put his hand on the shoulder of his friend as he said earnestly, 'This thing is but a puny imitation of a much grander system whose laws you and I know. I am not able to convince you that this mere toy is without a designer and maker, yet you profess to believe that the great original from which the design is taken has come into being without either designer or maker. Now tell me, by what sort of reasoning do you reach such incongruous conclusions?'" |
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