There has been a lot of news lately about Bill Nye the Science Guy and his comments regarding evolution and creation- specifically regarding how parents should educate their children.

Bill Nye makes some very alarming and disturbing claims regarding science, evolution and creation. He begins by claiming that the, “Denial of evolution is unique to the United States”. By this he means that the United States, arguably the most technically advanced society in the world, has more people (presumably percentage-wise and population-wise) who don’t believe in evolution. His implication is that there’s something wrong with this “denialism”- that it’s an admission of weakness and an embarrassment to the United States.

Firstly, the denial of evolution (if that’s the terminology one wants to use), is a good thing. I’m proud to be called an evolution denier- even though the intent is meant to be derogatory. I don’t believe in evolution, and there are many millions and billions of people (including scientists) in the U.S. and around the world who don’t believe in evolution. The term evolution denier, as with other denial epithets, (i.e., “climate change” denier or “global warming” denier), is meant to shame the opposition into conformity. But for those who don’t believe in such nonsense and are open to honest dialogue and debate, such terms should be held with a badge of honor, not ridicule, as intended. It would be more accurate if evolutionists, such as Nye, would paint an accurate portrayal, rather than attempting to stigmatize their opponents. After all, we could accuse evolutionists like Nye as being God deniers, and use it as a tool to shame them into conforming to the rest of the world. So if Nye were interested in an honest portrayal, he’d describe his opponents simply as creationists, a term that more accurately describes what we believe- that the universe, animals and humans were created by God, not evolved from inanimate material.

Next, creationism isn’t unique to the United States, as Nye claims. In addition to Christianity, Islam and Judaism compose three major religions with believers all around the world that present a creation doctrine, as opposed to an evolutionary doctrine. I would suspect that Nye’s claim is a self-serving, unsupportable statistic based on ignorance and political expediency. Creationist organizations, in fact, exist all around the world. Ken Ham, one of the founders of Answers in Genesis, is a missionary to the United States from Australia, and AiG has many offices and speakers around the world with books printed in many different languages.

Thirdly, even if his claim were true, that should be a good reason for the rest of the world to follow our lead. If the United States, the most advanced civilization in the world, believes in creation over evolution, then the rest of the world would be well served to do likewise, and they should be questioning why they ever believed in evolution.

Lastly, a poll conducted by Ipsos for Reuters News in twenty-four countries indicated that 41% identified themselves as “evolutionists”, 28% as “creationists,” and 31% indicating that they “simply don’t know what to believe.” That’s 59% of respondents around the world who either aren’t convinced of evolution or deny evolution! The U.S. was actually 18^th out of 24 countries in accepting evolution at 28%, with Sweden being first with 68%. The U.S. ranked 6^th in denying evolution (creationism) at 40%, while Saudi Arabia (75%), Turkey (60%) and Indonesia (57%) had the highest percentage of evolution deniers.

Clearly Nye is wrong about the facts. The evidence indicates that the denial of evolution is NOT unique to the United States.

Nye goes on to explain that the reason the U.S. is so advanced is because this is where most of the innovation still happens, and this explains why people still move to the U.S. They come because of our “intellectual capital and the general understanding of science”. He laments that, “When you have a portion of the population that doesn’t believe in that, it holds everybody back.”

This is a silly argument. How is the United States holding back the rest of the world? He himself stated that we’re the most technically advanced civilization in the world, we have the intellectual capital, and people move here because of our general understanding of science, yet we’re holding the rest of the world back because there are portions of the U.S. population that don’t believe in evolution? His beliefs are self-contradictory. If the U.S. were holding back the rest of the world, then we shouldn’t be at or near the top as he claims. It can be argued that our success as a nation is built on Christianity and a belief in God.

Next he states that, “Evolution is the fundamental idea in all of life science, in all of biology,” and that this is “Analogous to trying to do geology without believing in tectonic plates- you’re just not going to get the right answer. Your whole world is just gonna be a mystery, instead of an exciting place.” This also is not a true statement. Biology- and nearly every other branch of science- can operate without any belief or reference to evolution. Isaac Newton, Francis Bacon, Galileo Galilei, Johann Kepler, Robert Boyle, Carolus Linneaus, Georges Cuvier, Michael Faraday and Louis Pasteur are all creationist scientists who performed their work without any adherence to evolution. In fact Francis Bacon is considered to be the one primarily responsible for the scientific method. If there were any truth to Nye’s claims, none of these scientists would have been able to accomplish what they did, and certainly modern day creationists wouldn’t be able to accomplish anything. However, since modern creationist scientists are alive and well, such evolutionary claims have been soundly rejected. The creationist doctors and scientists I know do their jobs quite well and aren’t inhibited by their denial of evolution.

I like a quote I read from blogger Gary DeMar when he asked, “Please tell me how a dispute over the age of the Earth or whether humans and dinosaurs lived at the same time is going to affect a heart surgeon?” DeMar also referenced the Apollo moon landing: “Did the scientists who sent the Apollo spacecrafts to the Moon and back have to believe in evolution to do math and physics? Tell that to the three crew members of Apollo 8. On December 24, 1968, in what was the most watched television broadcast at the time, the crew in turn read from Genesis 1 as they orbited the Moon. Did their belief in God make them unable to do their scientific jobs?”

Bill Nye has several flaws in his evolution and geology analogy. The evolutionary past cannot be observed in the same sense that plate tectonics can be in the present. Plate tectonics is the main current theory regarding the development of the earth, and there are other competing theories, so there are in fact geologists who do geology without believing in plate tectonics. But my main point is that while we can observe the effects of the plates in the earth, we cannot observe an ape-like creature evolving into a modern human (assumed by evolution). Bill Nye and other evolutionists must build their beliefs upon assumptions that can never be proven.

Now I do like Nye’s next quote from his old professor, Carl Sagan, who said, “When you’re in love you want to tell the world.” Nye believes in evolution, and he’s in love with it, so he wants to tell the rest of the world the “good news” of his gospel message. Of course I reject evolution and believe in Jesus Christ and the “good news” he proclaimed in the Bible. I’m in love with God’s word and I want to tell the whole world too! God’s word is true and can be trusted in all areas in which it speaks.

Nye goes on to complain about something else that annoys him: “Once in a while I get people that… claim they don’t believe in evolution.” And, “Your world just becomes fantastically complicated when you don’t believe in evolution… here are these ancient dinosaur bones or fossils, here’s radioactivity, here are distant stars that are just like our star, but at a different point in their life cycle the idea of deep time of this billions of years explains so much of the world around us. If you try to ignore that your worldview just becomes crazy, untenable, self inconsistent.”

This is amusing because I find the creationist account to be uncomplicated; it explains so much of the world around us and is quite consistent and tenable. I could certainly counter the evolutionary claim and state that the world for the evolutionist becomes fantastically complicated when you don’t believe in creation or God, and that your worldview becomes crazy, untenable and self-inconsistent. And I would be able to back up these assertions better than Nye could substantiate his claims.

It’s fairly obvious that Nye doesn’t understand the basic concepts creationism, and that’s why he makes such far-fetched claims. He doesn’t understand that creationists have a better explanation for dinosaur fossils, that radioactive dating is unreliable, that creationists have addressed the starlight problem here, and that secular scientists have their own starlight problems and have to resort to hypothetical entities to prop up the Big Bang theory. Creationism is on the rebound and is making headway, and Nye doesn’t like it.

The last attack from Nye comes when he says, “I say to grownups, if you want to deny evolution and live in your world that’s completely inconsistent with everything we observe in the universe, that’s fine, but don’t make your kids do it because we need them. We need scientifically literate voters and tax payers for the future. We need people that can, we need engineers that can build stuff, solve problems.”

Here Nye reveals part of his agenda- he wants evolutionists and the government to control education and indoctrinate students into accepting evolution so that they have a stronghold on this voting block. He’s clearly not interested in the consistency of creationist observations with the universe.

My voice may not be as loud as Bill Nye’s, but I’m happy to do my part countering his agenda and desire to indoctrinate students. I hope the U.S. continues to question and deny evolution, while believing the creation account revealed by God in Genesis. Students need to know that man was created in the image of a loving God, that they have a purpose, and that we have a Savior who died on the cross for our sins.