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On March 19, the Tennessee legislature introduced a bill designed to counteract blind faith. The bill, approved by a 24-8 vote, does not actually involve religion. It affects how evolution is presented in the classroom.
The bill says that “… neither the Tennessee Board of Education nor local education officials will prohibit public school teachers from helping students understand, analyze, critique and review in an objective manner the scientific strengths and scientific weaknesses of existing scientific theories.” This bill seeks to allow students to do what science has always done. It asserts that theories have a right to be scrutinized and that weaknesses in those theories cannot be overlooked in science classes.
However, despite no mention of religion in the bill, its critics abound. They say that the bill would “unfairly target evolution” and even allow for creationism to be taught in public schools.
Tennessee is famous for another evolutionary debate: the Scopes trial of 1925. That trial convicted John Scopes of teaching evolution to his students. (It was then illegal in Tennessee to teach anything that denied that our origin was God). In 1967, the restriction on teaching evolution in schools was revoked. We have accepted that theory—and ignored many of the questions that surround it.
The truth is, the bill’s critics aren’t as afraid of religious teaching as they are of subjecting evolution to the scientific method itself: observation, experimentation, study and debate. They are afraid it will be exposed as less than fact. Such “scientists” are afraid students might learn that the theory of evolution is a theory and not an unquestionable fact.
Here’s a perspective from a critic of religion and God. He desperately tried to prove a theory on the origin of life that could explain creation without a Creator.
“A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question,” he once said. Maybe the critics should listen to Charles Darwin and allow students to honestly examine evolution.
True Education covered a similar subject in its 2009 Evolution Week. The special concluded: “You must decide to examine all the evidence–not just that you are biased toward …. Then you must decide for certain where life came from.” TE admonished the reader to do what public schools are not doing: “Discover–and cling to–the truth.”
Don’t take it blindly on faith that evolution must be wrong. Prove that for yourself. Strive to understand the theory and honestly compare it to the facts. You need to know for yourself whether life is a chance happening, a roll of dice, or whether its beauty and complexity indicate a Creator who planned and designed it. The articles on True Education can help your study. You can take it even further, and understand in detail and without doubt whether evolution or God’s existence is true.