Nothing seems to define the contrasts in Christian thinking with that of the unbelieving world like the teaching of evolution in school.  But we should not assume that born-again Christians are the only ones who believe the universe is God’s creation, or that human beings are the direct and special creation of God.

The news media loves a good fight, and so newspapers, magazines, TV journalists and others will weigh in on Florida’s conflict and other recent stories.  But the facts remain straight forward: no one knows how human beings got here.  Whatever anyone thinks or believes, it is all based on faith.

Non-Christians (and quite a few who claim Christian faith) are often impressed with the so-called weight of evidence that evolutionists like to talk about.  Various fields of science often point to the fossil records currently available and try to reconstruct some kind of evolutionary line of ascent from microbe to human.  I suppose if one buys into the idea, anyway, then the thin arguments might not sound so bad.

But thinking people in every age have had no problem accepting God as the Creator of all things, including each species of living thing.  And some modern thinkers will even argue that the evidences for human evolution on planet earth are so scarce that, if we are not God’s creation, then we must have come here from some other planet.  The gaps in the so-called fossil records are simply too huge to be filled in with pseudo-scientific classroom babbling.

It is true that all life on Earth has many things in common, including DNA structure.  But if we all share a common Creator then it is logical that we would have all this, and more, in common.  Why recreate the wheel every time you design a new cart?

The bothersome thing, to me, is that we never learn from past mistakes.  State laws should not require that certain sanctioned ideas be taught when it comes to the unknown.  Yes, every child deserves a good education.  So let’s give every child the basic facts available, when it comes to science, and not try to cram our favored theories down their throats.

How did planets form?  Well, the ideas keep changing as we learn more about the solar system, the universe and even our own planet.  The fact that a physicist (or group of physicists) is popular does not make him God.  The same is true of any researcher or scholar in branch of science.  People are people, and all people make plenty of mistakes and false assumptions.  No matter how good and smart a person is, no human being knows everything about any field of study.

The real purpose of science, after all, is to learn and discover: to understand more.  The whole idea behind having students take science in school is so that we can share and hopefully improve our understanding with succeeding generations.  We need to be clear, then, when we teach our ideas to young children, to separate facts from popular (and passing) ideas that cannot yet be proven at all.  Why not challenge young scholars to join the work?  Why give them the false assumption that we already know how everything got to be as it is today (or that we even know how and what everything really is)?

In the mean time, government busy-bodies will continue to find ways to prove the value of their existence by meddling where there is no need.  State and Federal agencies will continue to ignore common sense by declaring human being “not human,” as in the case of unborn babies, and by insisting that children be told that we evolved from tadpoles and monkey-like creatures.

Jim