I’ve lately enjoyed browsing a cool website called Strange Maps. It’s a collection of all kinds of maps — from the silly, to the serious, to the downright weird.
In April they ran this interesting map:
Where (and How) Evolution Is Taught In the US
The map is followed by a very long and emotional string of rants, remarks, rebuttals, insults, and statements regarding the various merits of evolution, intelligent design, creationism, and so forth. The comments are a little bit interesting to read, but they pretty much follow the usual formula.
The one thing about this map that most intrigued me is how many states the map maker designated as failing to meet pro-evolution educational standards. It was more than I would have expected.
What would be even more interesting to me would be a map superimposed on this one, showing the success of graduates from each of the respective states, in the various biology-related fields. This is because I believe that not only is creationism correct and evolution wrong, but also that those in biology-related fields who see the world from a creationist worldview have an edge in their fields. They know that living things are getting worse, not better; that, apart from disease and degeneration, natural foods are perfectly designed for consumption and nutrition, and not just coincidentally so; that life cannot be created in the lab (non-derivatively); and that the natural world is a complex, interrelated order, one whose checks and balances stem from divine purpose and not from random factors. All of these views align more naturally with divine creation (and subsequent sin and the Fall) than with a philosophy of naturalistic, materialistic evolutionary ascendancy.
The counter-view of the pro-evolution pundits, that creationists have a disadvantage in the scientific world, is sheer nonsense. This is particularly true in regards to anything that can be observed and reproduced. Creationists are just as capable of understanding and predicting outcomes of such things as bacterial mutation or the radioactive decay in rocks. It is true, naturally, that creationists have very different views of the conjectural or philosophical aspects of “science” (why we are here, how we got here, whether observable nature tells the full story of nature, etc.), but it is undeniably true that these aspects of science are just as irrelevant to a scientist’s success in the lab as they are untestable in the lab. In conclusion, it is crystal clear that the current battle in the American educational system between Darwinism and its own brand of heretics, is not about professionalism or intellectual power, but about philosophy and religious belief.