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Creation teaching makes a differenceby David A. DeWitt, Ph.D., instructor at Liberty University, Lynchburg, Virginia, USA and occasional guest lecturer Evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr was described by the late Stephen Jay Gould as ‘The world’s greatest living evolutionary biologist and a writer of extraordinary insight and clarity.’1 Mayr, who recently turned 100 years old, reflected on 80 years of studying evolutionary biology in an article in Science.2
Apparently, Mayr grew up in an environment where evolution was the ruling paradigm and no one ever bothered to question its validity. Evolution was taken for granted, a popular natural history journal accepted evolution as a fact, and no teachers in high school, college or graduate school ever raised questions about evolution. It is no wonder that such an environment would produce staunch evolutionists. Unfortunately, the widespread acceptance of Darwinism in Germany during the early twentieth century had other disastrous consequences. (The link between the acceptance of Darwinism and the Nazi holocaust has been discussed previously in Darwinism and the Nazi race Holocaust.) In Proverbs 18:17 ‘The first to present his case seems right till another comes forward and questions him.’ Students who are only ever exposed to evolutionary theory may assume that it is correct and might not even know how to question it. Fortunately, today there are resources available on the internet, Creation Magazine, and numerous books supporting creation. Materials that question evolution are even more widely available than they were just twenty years ago. And it is making a difference. Steve Deckard and I have been conducting research on the creation worldviews of Christian college students and the changes that result following a course on creation.3-6 This ongoing study at Liberty University assesses demographic data and the creation worldview of students taking CRST 290, a required course on the creation/evolution controversy. Among the results we have obtained:
Interestingly, while virtually all of the incoming students believe in a Creator, too many of them have conflicting beliefs especially in regards to the age of the earth and six day creation. As this is a particular focus of the course, we see significant shifts toward stronger belief in young earth creation at the end of the class. Such research, along with personal testimonies and anecdotes, demonstrates that creationist teaching and materials do have a significant impact on the beliefs of people. Perhaps if someone had helped Ernst Mayr to question evolution in school, he might have been described as ‘the greatest living creationist biologist’. References:
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