Why Does It Matter? 385“We’re going to arm you with Christian Patriot missiles,” Ham, 54, recently told
1,200 adults gathered at Calvary Temple in northern New Jersey. It was Friday night,
the kickoff of a weekend conference sponsored by Ham’s global ministry, Answers
in Genesis.
To a burst of applause, Ham exhorted: “Get out and change the world!”
Over the past two decades, “creation evangelism” has become a booming indus-
try. Several hundred independent speakers promote biblical creation at churches,
colleges, private schools, Rotary clubs. They lead tours to the Grand Canyon or muse-
ums to study the world through a creationist lens.
They churn out home-schooling material. A geology text devotes a chapter to
Noah’s flood; an astronomy book quotes Genesis on the origins of the universe; a sci-
ence unit for second-graders features daily “evolution stumpers” that teach children
to argue against the theory that is a cornerstone of modern science.But the creationist political pressure, propaganda, and lies are not restricted to public
schools. In many smaller colleges (especially community colleges and those that focus pri-
marily on teaching and do not have a strong research emphasis), the professors are just as
intimidated by creationist bullies who are eager to disrupt class and trash the professor‘s
reputation on the course evaluation forms. Yet this is in a college setting, where the faculty
is supposed to have intellectual freedom and the protection of tenure, and the system is not
run by highly politicized local school boards. It should not be so—but it is.
The saddest commentary of all is how creationists have repeatedly used lawsuits and
political pressure to intimidate and threaten museums into advocating their particular
religious viewpoint (in violation of the Constitution). Failing that, they try to remove any
mention of evolution, geology, or astronomy. The Smithsonian Institution, as the largest fed-
erally funded science museum in the United States, has been repeatedly attacked in this
way. Creationists have pressured sympathetic right-wing politicians to investigate and bully
this esteemed institution into removing their displays on paleontology and evolution. Fortu-
nately, they have been rebuffed so far, but they keep trying. Even sadder, a story in the British
newspaper the Telegraph (dated December 8, 2006) reported that evangelicals in Kenya are
trying to force the National Museums of Kenya, repository of most of the important hom-
inin fossils discussed in chapter 15, to remove their displays because they don’t want to be
exposed to the fact that we evolved in Africa. As the outraged Richard Leakey, the museum’s
director and famous paleoanthropologist, put it, “The collection it holds is one of Kenya’s
very few global claims to fame and it must be forthright in defending its right to be at the
forefront of this branch of science.”
It is one thing when creationists try to intimidate public schools and prevent their
children from hearing stuff they don’t want to believe. But museums? If they don’t want
to be exposed to science, they don’t have to visit museums! They have no right to force
a museum to remove displays that contradict their religious beliefs. Given the political
instability in Africa, it is a frightening thought that such a fanatic religious group might
take power, or riot in the streets, and attempt to break into the museum and destroy this
fantastic and irreplaceable evidence of our own evolution whose very existence they don’t
want to acknowledge.
The attempt by Kenyan evangelicals to suppress the evidence of human evolution is
reminiscent of one of the last scenes in the classic 1968 movie (and Pierre Boulle novel) Planet