I just formed an account to poke fun of Dr. Dach's well worn creationist arguments, but I suppose I should explain why fighting creationism is imperative while I'm here.

            Modern creationists like to pretend that they are downtrodden victims who are being pushed out by the courts and the Darwinian establishment.  But what many conveniently forget is that evolution was pushed out of the public school system through intimidation by creationists through the help of the legal system for a good chunk of the 20^th century.  After Scopes lost the  “Monkey Trial,” laws similar to the Butler Act (which banned the teaching of evolution in Tennessee) started appearing in southern states.  In addition, creationists started campaigning local school boards, successfully getting many to ban the teaching of evolution.  Back then, they didn’t even attempt the veneer of science.  Evolution was false because the bible is true, and that was the end of that.

        Evolution didn’t really return to schools until 1958, thirty years later, when Eisenhower signed the National Defense Education Act.  It was passed in reaction to the launch of Sputnik and it in part helped revamp scientific education in the country, including updating biology textbooks with the latest understanding of evolution, to help the U.S. stay competitive with the USSR.  I suppose we should all consider it fortunate that the only thing mainstream America fears more than atheists is communist atheists.

            Of course, this prompted creationists, who had been simmering in the background, to start organizing and publishing nonsense science and natural history, like "The Genesis Flood" in 1961. Fortunately, courts have mostly seen through the nonsense of “creation science” and its most recent incarnation “intelligent design,” and to my knowledge they have yet to win a major court case since then.  Despite this, they have maintained pressure on science education on a more local level for approximately the last fifty years, and the damage they have done to overall scientific understanding is incalculable.

            Creationism is evil not merely because it is wrong and is trying to push pseudo science into public schools.  It is also evil because of how it is affecting young minds.   Every thinking person should shudder when they consider how many religious children had their spirit of scientific inquiry squashed when they were told that biologists are all beholden to some sort of anti God agenda. I often think of how many scientific geniuses we have lost because they were told that you can’t have both an accurate belief in how in how the world actually works and salvation. 

            We should be thankful, for example, that the religious conversion of Francis Collins (who had a great interview with Salon) happened relatively late in life, after he already started pursuing an education in science.  If he was very religious when he was much younger, his religious peers might have unduly influenced him into believing that evolution was some sort of evil anti Christian conspiracy (as some creationist organizations insinuate), and we may have never had the privilege of having his brilliant mind lead the team that cracked the human genome.

            Creationists might try to argue that you can believe in “intelligent design” and still be interested in pursing an education in biology or genetics, but this is clearly nonsense. A major part of their argument is that the majority of genetics, biology, and paleontology professors are liars, covering up and ignoring obvious evidence of divine design, all to push an agenda.  What rational person would willingly subject themselves to lectures by liars just to get a degree?  Is there anybody who would seriously spend a decade to earn a PhD in astrology, for example, just to prove that it is wrong? "Intelligent design" is conducting an intellectual holocaust, depriving us of scores of scientific minds because they happen to have been born in a religious family or environment. Untold numbers of bright Christians are avoiding the sciences in universities because they have been told that there is something in there that is antithetical to their faith.

            Anti evolution creationism can all basically be traced back to Charles Hodge’s 1874 “What is Darwinism?”  In it, the Calvinist pastor argued that that evolution is atheistic, evil, and that some things, such as the human eye, are too complex to have evolved. And for over a century, creationists have deviated little from these basic arguments.  Another great example of just how old creationist arguments are can be found in William Jennings Bryan’s 1922 “In His Image,” in which Bryan argues that it was the teaching of evolution that caused the German people to commit war atrocities during WWI, a precursor to creationists' attempts to tie Darwin to Hitler. (This is a connection, incidentally, that has been denounced by the Anti Defamation League.)

            It is in no way hyperbolic to point out that creationism has been a thorn in the side of scientific progress in America, especially when you observe that the next great wave in science will come from biotechnology.  Genetic engineering, stem cells, and similar fields and studies will help cure diseases and improve the quality of life for the next generation. 

            If you want stay up at night, think of all of the people in the country who are suffering from heart disease, diabetes, and cancer.  Then think of the millions of young children who have been told over the course of the last hundred years: No, you can’t believe in Christ and the scientific consensus.  No, you can’t believe in a soul and evolution.  No, you can’t accept basic biology and go to heaven. I can’t help but think that there were more than a few prodigies in those Christian homes and communities whose scientific potential was totally eliminated by misguided anti science sentiments.  And I can’t help but wonder what advancements those lost scientific minds would have discovered, and how many people’s lives would have been saved by them.

            Fighting creationism isn’t a mere ideological fight.  This extends way beyond some sort of sterile academic debate.  The battle between creationists and science is a battle for the scientific minds of the future.  The more influence that creationists gain, the more scientific minds that we lose, and the more it will hurt humanity as a whole.  

            I know that creationists probably think this to be pure histrionics, but I, along with everyone else has a dog in this fight. I’m in my 20s now, but I’m going to be an old man someday, and someday my bones are going to start to creak, my mind will start to decline, and my bowels won’t function quite as voluntarily as they do now.  But in between then and now, I want the greatest number of brilliant scientific minds possible working on those respective fields.  The more that “intelligent design” continues its intellectual holocaust, pushing young, bright people away from pursuing scientific fields, the fewer there will be.  Frankly, if I’m drooling in cup while sitting in a puddle in my own feces in sixty years, I’m going to point my gnarled, crooked finger squarely at the Discovery Institute.