“Don’t let the sign fool you. This guy’s only a little older than Billy Graham.”
The front page of last Wednesday’s Washington Post brings us an enlightening (if predictably condescending) article about a group of Liberty University students going on a field trip to the Smithsonian, under the guidance of their biology professors.
The catch, of course, is that the Smithsonian trip was designed as opposition research — Liberty teaches young-earth creationism, and neither the professors nor the students believe in Darwinian evolution, carbon dating for fossils, or an earth whose age measures in the billions of years.
The full article is available here (free registration required), and here’s a snippet:
Like the Liberty students, avowed creationists across the country are making a practice of challenging the conventional wisdom at zoos (questioning the evolutionary explanation of giraffe necks), the Grand Canyon (dating the rock layers in thousands, not millions, of years), and cave parks (describing the formations as evidence of rapid drainage after the Great Flood).
In the upcoming issue of Answers, a leading magazine of the young-Earth movement, the list of “creation vacations” includes the Lowell Observatory in Arizona, the New England Aquarium in Boston and London’s Natural History Museum.
“Why should we be afraid to test our worldview against reality?” asked Bill Jack, a Christian leadership instructor who leads groups across the country for a company called Biblically Correct Tours. “If Christianity is true, it better be true in the natural history museums and in the zoos.”
I write a lot about Liberty’s Creation Studies department in my book (shipping now from Amazon!), so I won’t spend time picking the article apart. But I have to object to one line in particular, Dr. David Dewitt’s claim that he doesn’t “hold anything back” from his Creation Studies students. I took Creation Studies during my semester at Liberty, and while I did learn a lot about the young-earth creationist worldview (including, in some cases, why we evolutionists should take it more seriously), I don’t remember hearing a balanced presentation of evolutionary biology.
Here, I’m pasting a partial list of the questions I was asked to answer on the first midterm for that class, “CRST 290/History of Life.” You decide if Liberty’s scientists are holding anything back:
1. True or False: Noah’s Ark was large enough to carry various kinds of dinosaurs.
2. True or False: Science is the only way to truly know truth about the world.
3. True or False: Margaret Sanger [the founder of Planned Parenthood] was a promoter of eugenics [selective breeding, a practice commonly associated with the Nazi Party].
4. True or False: Evolution can be proven using the scientific method.
Correct answers (according to Liberty) after the jump!
1. True
2. False
3. True
4. False
