[Last updated by Duane: 9 March 2010]

According to a recent SMH article, the South Australian Non-Government Schools Registration Board decided to ban the teaching of creationism as part of the science curriculum.

Under policies published in December, the board said it required “teaching of science as an empirical discipline, focusing on inquiry, hypothesis, investigation, experimentation, observation and evidential analysis.”

The SMH article provides an opportunity to discuss a wide range of issues relating to creationism and science. However I only want to make one simple point about the misconceived relationship between the two.

To put it simply (as the SA board have done), the empirical discipline, focusing on inquiry, hypothesis, investigation, experimentation, observation and evidential analysis – watch this – is an integral part of creationism. It’s not anti-science or non-science, but values the scientific method as a way to understand the world in which we live. The two are very much homogenous, in the same way that materialists might view the relationship between evolution and science.

Science is the study of the natural world, which Christians would say is the study of the world God created. While materialists don’t accept a Christian worldview, we all still live in the same world and so we all have access to exactly the same evidence.

In studying this evidence however, materialists must draw conclusions shaped by materialist presuppositions. Appeals to design (implying a designer) are not allowed. The fallacy of this objection is that it presumes that the design argument is an appeal to ignorance. However the inference of design is based on an analogy of what we do know scientifically, not what we don’t. So Christians are not limited by a materialistic paradigm. This doesn’t mean that creationists invoke God-of-the-gaps solutions to problems that the materialist’s paradigm cannot currently resolve. But it means that they approach the evidence with the view that God created and that God’s word provides clues about the world which can inform our presuppositions for understanding the evidence. A practical example of this is the work of PhD physicists Dr. Russell Humphreys and Dr. John Hartnett, who have both proposed models for the universe to rival popular big bang cosmology.

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The truth of the phrase “a picture tells a thousand words” holds much persuasive power. The media has long used a variety of images to convey the truth and reality of situations far removed from the every day viewer; we use images to provoke, to emotionally stir and to captivate people’s attention. We are, by and large, a visually stimulated people. The success of the movie industry and of TV programming is testament to that. Yet can we intentionally use graphically disturbing pictures to promote a cause or to bring awareness of an issue to the uninitiated? Can we use images to sway our opponents on the abortion issue? If they’re used appropriately, then the answer is an emphatic, “yes”.

The use of pictures does have its place; the use of factual pictures entomb the truths of an event for future generations. One man who understood this in totality was General Eisenhower who, on visiting the Nazi concentration camp at Ohrdruf on April 12th, 1945, ordered that every citizen of the nearby town of Gotha visit the camp; that media personnel make full documentation; and that military cameras be sure to capture the horrific scene, immortalizing in photographs the barbarity and cruelty.

Said Eisenhower, “I made the visit deliberately, in order to be in a position to give first-hand evidence of these things if ever, in the future, there develops a tendency to charge these allegations merely to ‘propaganda.’”^[1] Eisenhower envisaged that the documentation was necessary because, at point in the future, he believed there would be people who would deny that such astrocities ever took place, perhaps thinking them some elaborate conspiracy to stir the hearts and cloud the minds of a gullible people. Yet there are groups who deny the holocaust; I’m sure Eisenhower would not be surprised.

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Student refuses assignment on Devil

Granted, this is typically Mathew’s arena but I could not pass it up, being unsure that it was even on his radar out there in Australia. Every day there are countless stories of interest regarding society and culture with respect to Christian living, which I hear in my corner of the world on FamilyNet Radio (Sirius XM). Today I heard that in Hope Mills, North Carolina, there was a female student who was coerced with a failing grade on an assignment if she refused to complete it. However, she said the assignment violated her Christian beliefs.

Even though Tieanna Trough is an honour student and usually positive about school work, the report said, when she received an assignment to write a paper on making a deal with the Devil, she refused. “I believe you don’t write about how to sell your soul to the Devil,” she said.

According to CBN Newswatch, the assignment

was part of a creative writing class at Gray’s Creek High School meant to get students thinking. Students had been studying a short-story called The Devil and Tom Walker, about a miser who sold his soul to the Devil to get rich. The students were told to write an essay on how they would sell their souls to the Devil, or what trade they would make with the Devil.

When Trough refused to write the essay, she said her teacher offered her a lousy deal: either do it, or get a zero. Trough’s parents said their daughter’s rights were violated. They complained to school officials after Trough was given another assignment that still conflicted with their daughter’s beliefs.

“We can’t allow God into the classrooms, but yet we’re going to allow the Devil in the classroom? That’s the way I felt,” her mother said.

The book and its short-stories are standard curriculum material, the school principal John Gibbs said. “I don’t think it’s anything wrong. I mean, parents are going to do what they think is correct and, y’know, I respect that. We can sit down and talk about what we think is right.”

He doesn’t think it’s anything wrong? What if, in the context of English literature, the students were asked to write something about their soul with respect to God? Would the principal think something was wrong in that scenario? If engaging the creative minds of the students with respect to the Devil is okay, could God sneak into the classroom through the same backdoor entrance? Or is that the point at which we would discover a zealous display of Special Pleading?

And if a student refuses an assignment on the grounds that it violates her religious beliefs and the teacher responds by threatening to fail her on the assignment, does the principal really think there’s nothing wrong there? Really?

“Baby killer’s day out from prison to go shopping”

“Baby killer let out to visit mall”

Just two of the many headlines from several pages of The Daily Telegraph’s (DT) diatribe on Friday 26th June 2009 rallying against the supervised shopping trip of one Phillip King, who was imprisoned after he “killed his own baby son in a fit of rage when he punched and kicked Kylie Flick’s stomach after she refused to have an abortion”, the DT reports.

“He didn’t steal a car, he stole a life”, was one expression used by Kylie Flick to express her anguish over the memory of the birth of her stillborn son, whom she Christened Jonathan.

The DT also point out that Ms Flick’s son “never drew breath” – a seemingly redundant piece of information – and that King’s “horrific 2002 crime led to a new law with a maximum 25-year jail term for people for people who kill a foetus…”

This attack by the media you might say is fair game. He did take the life of a defenseless human being after all, and injured several others both physically and emotionally in the process. So why shouldn’t the media have their pound of flesh? Well it’s the inconsistent way that they go about it that irks me. Here are some more of the headlines and comments from the same articles.

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While the French government unveiled its plan to ban the burqa worn by some Muslim women, the reign in Maine leaves much to explain by proposing to allow transgendered people to use the bathroom of their choice. The contrast between the two stories is quite clear: the French move to protect its public while the Mainers move aside to endanger theirs.

Two burqa-wearers walk into a post office …

The stance taken by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, declaring last year that the burqa was not welcome in France, is one taken in the interests of security and as an act against the debasing of women. The burqa (actually, it is techinically the naqib – a head-to-toe covering that leaves no exposed skin bar slits for the eyes) is seen as something that is incongruent with French society. Yet the ban is not intended to marginalize Muslims or to oppress them in any fashion: the ban would see any form (Muslim or otherwise) of veil or other covering of the face in public become illegal, except at specific festivals and cultural events.

France has approximately six million Muslims within its borders, of which less than 2000 Muslim women wear the burqa. That’s a mere 0.03% of the French Muslim population. Ought there really be such a fuss?

Well, to some extent, the French government have recently been given just cause to make such a fuss: a post office was robbed by two burglars just last week. And the burglars were disguised in – yep, you guessed it – burqas.

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One thing that hasn’t been abstaining from the news in the past fortnight is culture’s attitude towards sex. There are two counts in particular that caught my interest: one was State-side, aroused by curious questions from Oprah Winfrey on her namesake’s show; the other was a reactive orgasm from Australia’s media and some members of it’s Federal Government (including the Deputy Prime Minister, no less) towards remarks made by the Opposition Leader.

Both instances concerned the topic of sexual abstinence and, while both were delivered a world apart, both were raised in praise of abstinence. In the US, it was Bristol Palin’s (daughter of 2008 US vice-presidential candidate, Sarah Palin) commitment to abstain from sex until marriage; in Australia, it was Liberal Party leader Tony Abbott’s parental exhortation for his three daughters to remain virginal until marriage.

In either case, neither of the comments made were received with any measure of intellect. Just an incredulity and a penchant for political power play.

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Click here to read Dr. Albert Mohler’s explanation for why he chose to sign the Manhattan Declaration. In my estimation, it was a powerful testimony of the necessity, passion, and courage of this document which addresses three central issues that threaten the very stability of contemporary society. The thoughts which Dr. Mohler closed his article with were especially strong, which I have included here in the hopes that it compels you to read the full article.

Finally, I signed The Manhattan Declaration because I want to put my name on its final pledge—that we will not bend the knee to Caesar. We will not participate in any subversion of life. We will not be forced to accept any other relationship as equal in status or rights to heterosexual marriage. We will not refrain from proclaiming the truth—and we will order our churches and institutions and ministries by Christian conviction.

There will be Christian leaders, pastors, seminaries, colleges, universities, denominations, churches, and organizations that will abandon the faith on these issues. They will bend the knee to Caesar. Far too many already have. The signatories to The Manhattan Declaration pledge that we will not be among them.

I want my name on that list. I surrendered no conviction or confessional integrity to sign that statement. No one asked me to compromise in any manner. I was encouraged that we could stand together to make clear that to come for one of us on these issues is to come for all. At the end of the day, I did not want my name missing from that list when folks look to see just who was willing to be listed.