For those who aren't aware, Bill Nye (yes, that Bill Nye, the Science Guy) was recently in a video where he said that teaching creationism and not teaching evolution is not good for children. Of course, the Creationist higher ups had to make some kind of rebuttal. Ken Ham, president/CEO of Answers in Genesis and the Creation Museum, was one of the most public responders. He first attacks Bill Nye as a Humanist, saying that he has an agenda. Which is 100% true. He wants the children of the nation to be taught how to think critically, and wants to give all people equal human rights. Ham continues to say that Nye is confusing "historical science" with "observational science." He says that "historical" science cannot be proven by laboratory experiments, like "observational" science. He classifies evolution and natural selection as "historical" science, he says that it has never been proven in a lab setting. Which is false. I personally have seen natural selection and evolution in a lab setting. Sure, we haven't been able to demonstrate it at the scale that led to speciation, but that takes too many generations to accomplish in our lifetime. We have seen small scale natural selection in labs, however.
Ham then goes on to suggest that people who teach evolution only are actually indoctrinating their children. He says that they aren't teaching how to think, but what to think. Which is completely ironic. There is a difference between teaching a concept that is supported by more than a century of scientific research and a concept that is supported by a book translated from Hebrew to Latin to English, written by people who were generations removed from the actual events. If we are going to teach evolution and creationism as equals, why don't we teach all forms of creation? Because, of course, it would show how Christian creation is just one of an infinite number of increasingly improbable ideas for how we got here. Why don't we teach all religions to children? Is it because then children would see how the story of Jesus is really the story of Mithras? Or because all of the Christian holidays are really just Pagan holidays that were stolen in order to convince Pagans to convert (as if they would have chose death instead)? Until you teach the "controversy" when it comes to religion, life science teachers should not have to teach the "controversy" between evolution and creation.
