So now they're experts in religion as well?

There's an editorial on Nature called, “Dealing with design” that deals with the “problem” of students who believe in intelligent design. I know it’s an older article but it contains some of the same things I continue to hear so I believe it’s still relevant.  I've excerpted a couple of points from the piece. Quotes are in blue and are italicized.

Scientists tend to tune out when they hear the words 'intelligent design.

That's rather telling, don't you think? The first instinct of scientists when they hear the words “intelligent design” is usually to just tune them out. Shouldn't they want to explore the idea? Shouldn't they want to test the theories? Where is their scientific curiosity? No, they just tune out.

... [M]any of the students taught in introductory biology classes hold religious beliefs that conflict, at least on the face of things, with Darwin's framework. Professors rarely address the conflicts between faith and science in lectures, and students are drawn to intelligent design as a way of reconciling their beliefs with their interest in science. In doing so, they are helping it to gain a small, but firm, foothold on campuses around the country.

If I'm reading this correctly, Nature is attributing the rise of intelligent design on college campuses to the lack of biology professors addressing the (alleged) conflicts between faith and science. Maybe they're right, but I still haven't seen a problem. I merely detect a sense of alarm among biology professors that intelligent design is gaining traction.

This is bad news for researchers. Unlike 'creation science', which uses the Bible as its guide, intelligent design tries to use scientific methods to find evidence of God in nature.

Still again, I don't see a problem. Yet Nature says this is “bad news” for researchers. As a matter of fact, their alarm only seems to be that proponents of intelligent design “[try] to use scientific methods to find evidence of God in nature.” What's so alarming about that? I distinctly remember being asked about umpteen million times for evidence for my theory or for God. When there are people actually using scientific methods to find evidence for design, the evolutionists go into a tizzy.

This approach makes it less theologically heavy-handed than its predecessor, [young earth creationism]  but it also poses a threat to the very core of scientific reason. Most contemporary researchers believe that it is better to keep science and theology firmly separated.

Oh, I see now. It's because they never really wanted to find evidence for God. They don't want to see evidence for design. They only want to “keep science and theology firmly separated.” We see again the fundamental tenet of science that everything must have a natural explanation.  Could someone please give me a “scientific reason” why it should be the goal of science to separate itself from religion? Anyone? I didn't think so. It's a philosophical premise – not a scientific one.

Well, I can see their concern but what are they going to do about it? One idea might be to challenge the scientific theories of intelligent design in rigorous scientific debate. No. They don't like that idea. Look what Nature says in the next paragraph:

Such events tend to be well attended, but don't change many minds. Furthermore, ill-prepared scientific lectures can sometimes lack the superficial impact of design advocates' carefully crafted talking points.

I've seen many evolution/creation debates and the scientists are usually thoroughly trashed by the creationists. Exit polls after these debates usually show that if anyone's mind was changed, it tends to be toward creation. Evolutionists have been embarrassed in these types of debates so many times they always discourage other scientists away from future debates.

So what advice does Nature give to frustrated professors?

Scientists would do better to offer some constructive thoughts of their own. For religious scientists, this may involve taking the time to talk to students about how they personally reconcile their beliefs with their research. Secular researchers should talk to others in order to understand how faiths have come to terms with science. All scientists whose classes are faced with such concerns should familiarize themselves with some basic arguments as to why evolution, cosmology and geology are not competing with religion. When they walk into the lecture hall, they should be prepared to talk about what science can and cannot do, and how it fits in with different religious beliefs.

There it is. Read it for yourself. They're not just "experts" in science; now they want to be experts in Christianity! The solution suggested by Nature is that professors prepare themselves to explain how science fits in with different religious beliefs. What do you think that means? Do you think that means professors should compromise on certain scientific theories to make them more palatable to a conservative Christian? You know it doesn't. It means they are practicing arguments that might convince students to compromise on their religious beliefs and make them conform better with the scientific theory.

Make no mistake, to evolutionists, “reconciling science and religion” always means compromising on the religion!

The imprecise theory of evolution

I came across an article on Live Science titled, Reptiles evolved earlier than we thought, newly discovered claw-mark fossils suggest.  Here’s a quote from the article:

Based on the fossil record, amniotes were thought to have evolved around 320 million years ago. However, this new discovery of clawed amniote footprints in Australia from 350 million years ago throws these estimations hugely off…  “I'm stunned,” study co-author Per Ahlberg, a professor of paleontology at Uppsala University, said in a statement.  “A single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when modern tetrapods evolved.”

You can read the whole article for itself but here's the gist of it. Evolutionists believe they know when reptiles evolved. However, two amateur palaeontologists found a fossilized track left by a lizard supposedly walking around 30 million years earlier than they had believed.

I read articles like this all the time.  Some new fossil is found that changes everything evolutionists thought they already knew about their theory.  It’s rather hilarious because it points out the flimsy foundation on which they’ve built their models.  How can anything in science be so imprecise and still be considered a "well tested" theory? There are so many things I could say about this article that I’m not sure where to start.  Here are just a few thoughts.

DAWKINS’ “WRONG DATE ORDER” TEST

Richard Dawkins, a rabid atheist and evolutionary apologist, once spoke a terrible lie saying, “Evolution could so easily be disproved if just a single fossil turned up in the wrong date order. Evolution has passed this test with flying colours.”  Dawkins tells this lie to make it sound like evolution is a very robust theory that is tested every time a new fossil is found.  Evolutionists make this claim all the time.  Biologist, J. B. S. Haldane famously quipped that if we ever found “fossil rabbits in the Precambrian,” that would disprove evolution.  

Yet in spite of all their hubris, these quotes and every quote like them are all bluff.  Radically out of order dates assigned to fossils will never disprove their theory.  Rather, they merely “correct” their theory.  Just google the term “evolved earlier than thought” or “fossil rewrites evolution” and see how many hits you find.  Go ahead, I dare you!  They say a fossil in the “wrong date order” will disprove evolution but we find examples by the dozen and nothing changes.  Well, Mr. Dawkins, here’s a fossil in the wrong date order.  Are you going to denounce your theory?  I didn’t think so.  

They’re all liars!

NYE ON EDUCATION

There’s an oft repeated claim that, if kids are taught creation, they won’t be able to understand science.  Bill Nye has made this very point. In his own words, he claimed the following (source):

[T]here are more people in the world — another billion people all trying to use the world’s resources. And the threat and consequences of climate change are more serious than ever, so we need as many people engaged in how we’re going to deal with that as possible. And we have an increasingly technologically sophisticated society. We are able to feed these 7.2 billion people because of our extraordinary agricultural technology. If we have a society that’s increasingly dependent on these technologies, with a smaller and smaller fraction of that society who actually understands how any of it works, that is a formula for disaster.... My biggest concern about creationist kids is that they’re compelled to suppress their common sense, to suppress their critical thinking skills at a time in human history when we need them more than ever.... There are just things about evolution that we should all be aware of, the way we’re aware of where electricity comes from.

Life improving technologies - made by real scientists - are made every day without a single thought being given to evolution.  Nye thinks we need to understand evolution just like we understand electricity.  Really, Nye? You want us to think we can understand evolution the way we understand electricity? Finds like this highlight exactly how unsure “scientists” really are about evolution.  Remember the quote from the Live Science article, “[This] single track-bearing slab, which one person can lift, calls into question everything we thought we knew about when modern tetrapods evolved.”  If we had this same lack of precision in how we understand electricity, we'd still be reading by candlelight.  Yet they still insist that kids are taught evolution as though it somehow will help them understand “science.”  

I’ve seen videos where kids can't answer basic questions about science or politics or geography or history. If evolutionists were truly worried about preparing kids for the future, they would be alarmed that young people don’t know how many dimes make a dollar!  But no, they think we need to devote more energy and resources to teaching them evolution! I truly believe they are more interested in indoctrinating kids rather than educating them.

EVOLUTION IS NOT IMPORTANT ANYWAY

In 1977, construction on the Citigroup Center in New York was completed.  Because of a building restriction, the 59-story building was built on 4 stilts, positioned in the middle of each side of the building, rather than at the 4 corners.  In the following year, a young, architectural student was asking the building’s structural engineer, William LeMessurier, a question about wind shear for the building when LeMessurier realized a terrible error had been made in the planning.  The stresses put on the building due to wind were much higher than the design had anticipated and the building would almost certainly collapse eventually.

In real sciences, like engineering, being wrong could have terrible consequences.  Fortunately, evolutionary biology isn’t really a science.  So what happened when these tracks were discovered?  I’ll tell you: a bunch of biologists probably started running around, redrawing their cherished, nested hierarchy. In the meantime, the rest of science continued its work improving people's lives. The average person didn’t even notice. Evolution is just that unimportant.

Jerry Bergman, Ph.D., tackled the myth that nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution. He noted that a survey of college textbooks showed that most rarely discuss evolution. The anatomy and physiology text books examined didn't mention evolution at all. Of the colleges surveyed in Ohio and Michigan, biology majors were required to only take one class in evolution.

From a Bergman article, we read this:

National Academy of Science Member and renown carbene chemist, Professor emeritus Dr. Philip Skell of Pennsylvania State University (see Lewis, 1992), did a survey of his colleagues that were “engaged in non-historical biology research, related to their ongoing research projects.” He found that the “Darwinist researchers” he interviewed, in answer to the question, “Would you have done the work any differently if you believed Darwin's theory was wrong?” that “for the large number” of persons he questioned, “differing only in the amount of hemming and hawing” was “in my work it would have made no difference.”

Evolution is the trivial pursuit branch of science.  If you were to google, “how evolution helps research,” you'll find plenty of articles by people trying to convince you that understanding evolution is critical to scientific research. Here's another exercise to try: see if you can find any invention, scientific advancement, or life improving technology whose discovery hinged upon evolution being true.  Maybe you can find one, but it is dwarfed by the explosion of improvements in medicine, computers, and technology that had nothing to do with understanding evolution.  If you ask me, I think it's a shame that we waste resources studying the theory.

What I know about Ptolemy I learned in school

For years there has been a controversy around teaching special creation in schools.  There are some people who believe creation should be taught along with evolution in public schools.  Another school of thought is that at least criticism of evolution should be allowed (sometimes called, “teaching the controversy”).  

Currently, to even suggest there may be problems in the theory is viewed as the equivalent of teaching special creation.  Some years back, the Cobb County Board of Education placed a sticker in public school science books that read, “This textbook contains material on evolution. Evolution is a theory, not a fact, regarding the origin of living things. This material should be approached with an open mind, studied carefully, and critically considered.”  Note that the stickers didn't mention creation or even religion. Instead, they said that evolution should be examined carefully, critically, and with an open mind. Critical thinking should be a staple in educating our kids and questioning everything is supposed to be a fundamental principle of science – except when it comes to evolution. No one is allowed to question evolution! In the matter of Cobb County, the case ended up in court where a judge ordered the stickers be removed.

I have a different idea, one which I’ve discussed before (here).  Consider this: can anyone name a single invention or technological advance in the last century that hinged upon an understanding of evolution? Maybe somebody could name one but that is dwarfed by the virtual explosion of technology we've seen in the last 100 years that didn't depend on evolution at all!  If evolution is so ancillary to science, if there is no study linking understanding evolution to improved test scores, if evolution is something that kids learn in school but never use again, then why is there this grim determination that students still must learn evolution? We're facing an education crisis where kids lack proficiency in critical skills like reading, math, and history. Why are we wasting time and resources teaching them a theory that is so useless yet still so controversial? Why force public schools into court to defend a sticker in a text book or to remove a teacher who mentions creation? It's obvious that this is less about education and more about indoctrination. Let's just stop the controversies altogether. I'm not saying, “give equal time to creation.” I'm not saying, “teach the difficulties.” I'm saying stop teaching evolution!

According to a recent Gallup Poll, 37% of the US adults believe God created humans in their present form about 10,000 years ago (young earth creationism).  Another 34% believe God created humans over millions of years (theistic evolution/old age creationism).  Only 24% believe in evolution without any sort of divine intervention.  

Having said all that, let me raise another point that might shed more light on the subject of teaching creation in public schools.  Claudius Ptolemy was a Greek philosopher, astronomer, and mathematician that lived in the 2nd century. He was extremely influential and created a geocentric model of the universe that endured for centuries. This is the belief that the earth is at the center of the solar system and the sun, moon, planets, and stars orbit the earth. This model was named for him – the Ptolemaic model. It was not until the time of Galileo that scientific consensus finally turned away from his earth-centered model of the universe and replaced it with a heliocentric model. How do I know this? I learned about Ptolemy in school.

With this in mind, a question came to me that, if the Ptolemaic model is still being discussed in public classrooms (as something people once believed), what is really the harm of discussing the possibility that God played a role in human origins? If the publishers of the textbooks believe there is value in including a debunked, geocentric cosmology in their texts, then why can’t there be any discussion at all about design in cosmology?

I’m asking in earnest: what is the difference? The Ptolemaic model has been discarded centuries ago yet it is still included in science books. The only reason it’s given any press is because it was such a popular model and it endured for 1,000 years. Well, creation is still believed by approximately ⅔ of the US population and it has endured far longer than Ptolemy. Doesn’t it deserve at least as much attention as Ptolemy?

There is one obvious difference between teaching about Ptolemy and teaching about creation: it’s not likely that anyone will ever take an earth-centered model of the universe seriously. However, in one study, it was learned that when students are taught about creation AND evolution, they tend to choose creation. From the article:

“University students whose high school biology class covered creationism – in some cases alongside evolution – were more likely to accept creationist views upon entering college, the study found. Those whose high school biology teachers taught evolution but not creationism were more likely to accept evolution in college.”

Isn't that interesting? When students are presented with both views in high school, they tend to believe in creation. When students are presented with only evolution in high school, they tend to believe in evolution.

I see what's going on: teach kids evolution - don't let them hear anything to the contrary - and they're more likely to believe evolution. There's a word for this phenomenon - it's called "brainwashing."

This is hypocrisy at its worst.  It’s OK to talk about Ptolemy – it’s not OK to talk about God.

Most evolutionists really don’t believe in evidence!

I’ve heard it 1,000 times.  I know you’ve heard it too.  There are those evolutionists who insist they won’t believe anything until they see the evidence!  Am I right?  It’s like a mantra to them, “Show me the evidence. Show me the evidence.”  But I’m going to let you in on a little secret: most of the people who say this have never seen any evidence for evolution!

Let me explain.  The fact of the matter is that most people aren’t scientists.  They’ve never conducted research, they’ve never worked in a lab, they’ve never been at a fossil dig site, nor have they ever written a “peer-reviewed,” scientific paper.  To be honest, I doubt most evolutionists have even read a peer-reviewed, technical paper.  Thus I say, they’ve not seen any evidence for their theory.

But I’m going to go further than that.  Even among practicing scientists, there are only a handful of people in the world who have actually laid eyes on the fossil of an alleged human ancestor.  Most of those fossils are sequestered, leaving only plaster copies made from other plaster copies available for examination.  What’s more, most sciences have nothing to do with evolution - chemistry, physics, astronomy, meteorology engineering, mathematics, etc., seldom ever do any research on evolution.  So a tiny, tiny fraction of people have actually done any research in the theory believed by millions of people - yet the millions claim they don’t believe anything unless they see the evidence for themselves.   //RKBentley rolls his eyes//

The question becomes, “Why do people who claim to need evidence, believe in a theory for which they’ve never seen any evidence?”  I have said in the past that many believe by faith.  Yet, even though I’ve said that many times, maybe I’m not being precise enough.  

There is no evidence for evolution.  Let’s just get that out of the way first.  “Evidence” for evolution is like evidence for the tooth fairy; it may seem to explain what we observe but it still isn’t true.  How can there be evidence for something that’s not even true?  So evolutionists don’t believe the evidence for evolution.  Instead, they believe what they’ve been told about evolution.  They’ve read it in textbooks, heard it from teachers, and listened to arguments made by secular apologists and they’ve decided to believe them instead of believing in a Creator.

Now, I know what some critics are going to say.  The textbooks were written by scientists! OK.  So what?  We could talk about what the scientists have said about the evidence but, in the meanwhile, the teachers are teaching what has been written in the textbooks by scientists they’ve never met and the online atheists who defend evolution are simply parroting the claims made by scientists while they themselves haven’t seen the evidence either.

Believing in evolution is a faith statement.  Lay people are putting their faith in unidentified scientists who claim to have seen the evidence for evolution.  You could say they’ve fallen for the argument from authority fallacy; that is, someone they believe is an expert has said the evidence supports evolution, and people who have never seen this evidence have chosen to believe the scientists.  

But who are these experts?  Who writes the textbooks that teach evolution?  What are their qualifications?  I could google the names and backgrounds of the textbook authors but how many people who claim to only believe evidence already know their names?  If you ask any evolutionist who wrote the textbook he learned from in high school, I wonder how many would know.  If you ask the average biology teacher who wrote the textbook, I wonder if he could tell you.  

Most evolutionists really don’t believe in evidence.  They’ve never seen any evidence for evolution.  They only believe what other people have told them about the evidence.  Yet, even that is a blind faith because they don’t even know the people who have studied the evidence.  They may be very zealous about their belief in evolution, but, at the end of the day, they literally have nothing to show for it!

What Does Noah Have in Common with Barney?

Do you remember Barney the Purple Dinosaur?  My daughter loved watching Barney while she was growing up.  I mean, she really loved it. She would dance, sing the songs, and be mesmerized the entire ½ hour the show was on. My wife and I didn't mind so much because Barney was a decent show. It taught lessons like sharing, playing nice together, picking up after yourself, and other things kids need to learn. I guess a lot of parents felt the same way because Barney, at least at that time, was enormously popular.

So what does any of this have to do with Noah? I'll tell you. Have you ever been in a kids' Sunday school class where they told Bible stories about Noah, or Daniel, or David? They sometimes color pages with little cartoons of Bible characters. They sing songs and play Bible themed games. They hear life lessons about being nice to other people, obeying your parents, and worshiping God. These are all things that Christians parents should want their kids to learn. It's a lot like watching Barney.

My daughter is 31 now and doesn't watch Barney anymore.

I think Churches sometimes do a disservice to kids by talking about the Bible the same way they talk about a fairy tale. They might not say it's a fairy tale, but they teach it with the same trappings and trimmings as kids see on Barney. It has the music, the games, and it always seems to end with “a moral to the story.” In their little minds, I'm not really sure how kids can be expected to distinguish between Bible stories taught in this manner and other fairy tales like Barney, Mother Goose, or Aesop's Fables.

When these same kids start school, what might happen? Ask yourself this question: If I wanted to learn about science or dinosaurs or the universe, where might I look? Really. Think about it for a second. Name some places where you might learn about science. Next ask, If I wanted to learn about morality or religion where might I look? The answers seem obvious. Like it or not, if people want to learn about science or “facts,” the first places they think to look are schools or text books and if people want to learn about religion, only then would they look to the Bible or the Church. People tend to only think of the Bible as a book about religion. If they want to learn about the “real world,” then you have to go to school or turn to science.

We are telling kids that schools are important and will teach them things they need to know about the world. We believe it ourselves. So when these kids go to school and hear that dinosaurs lived millions of years ago, there really was no Flood, and men used to be apes, I think they're apt to believe it. Worse yet, these things directly contradict the “stories” they heard in Sunday school. On Sunday, they sing songs like, “♪Oh God said to Noah, 'There's gonna be a floody floody....'♪” Then they go to school on Monday and hear that there really was no Flood. Which do you think they'll believe? The nursery rhyme or the “facts” they learned in school?

Simply telling children that we don't believe in evolution isn't enough. Imagine a group of kids going to a museum and seeing the fossils of dinosaurs, seeing stone tools used by “ape-men,” and reading that these things lived hundreds of thousands or even millions of years ago. To them, these are “facts.” This is “evidence.” When a confused child asks his Sunday school teacher if dinosaurs really lived millions of years ago, the well-meaning teacher might answer, “Oh, we don't believe that.” Then the child might ask, “No? Then what do we believe?” and the teacher answers, “We believe that, '♪God said to Noah there's gonna be a floody floody....'♪” You can see how that's not convincing.

Christ called us first to preach the gospel. He then commanded us to make disciples. Preaching the word is only half the job; we also must be teachers. When we teach the Bible to children, I think we should approach the task in much the same way that kids learn in school. We don't just talk about a man named Noah. Instead, we explain that he was a person who lived in history. When they find a fossil (probably of a shell), it's evidence that this place was once under water – just like the account of Noah tells us. Instead of showing cartoons of Noah's Ark with Noah standing on the deck of the Ark in a raincoat surrounded by a menagerie poking out of every window, we need to show them scale drawings of what the Ark might have looked like. When they ask us about fossils of dinosaurs or Neanderthals, we need to show them how these things are explained by the Bible.

Making lessons interesting and understandable to kids is fine. But above all else, we need to be sure that they understand that the “stories'' from the Bible are real events that happened in history. David, Daniel, and Noah were real people just like their moms and dads are real. We need to explain that Barney is just a character like Sponge Bob.

Kids grow up and they stop believing in Barney.  We don't want them to grow up and stop believing the Bible.  Noah is really nothing like Barney.

Creationism isn't the problem

There’s an oft repeated claim that, if kids are taught creation, they won’t be able to understand science.  Bill Nye has made this very point. In his own words, he claimed the following (source):

[T]here are more people in the world — another billion people all trying to use the world’s resources. And the threat and consequences of climate change are more serious than ever, so we need as many people engaged in how we’re going to deal with that as possible. And we have an increasingly technologically sophisticated society. We are able to feed these 7.2 billion people because of our extraordinary agricultural technology. If we have a society that’s increasingly dependent on these technologies, with a smaller and smaller fraction of that society who actually understands how any of it works, that is a formula for disaster.... My biggest concern about creationist kids is that they’re compelled to suppress their common sense, to suppress their critical thinking skills at a time in human history when we need them more than ever.... There are just things about evolution that we should all be aware of, the way we’re aware of where electricity comes from.

Nye certainly paints a bleak picture. We live in a world, supposedly becoming overcrowded, where billions of people have to compete for limited resources. We need new technologies. We need alternative sources of fuel – cleaner burning fuel. We need new medicines. We need science! But if kids are being taught creation, they won't be able to contribute anything to science. We're losing our best resource – the potential of the next generation – at a time “when we need them more than ever!” 

Huh?

There are several things wrong with statements like this. First, it's a tangle of logical fallacies. Let's see... it's non sequitur in the sense that there's no link between believing creation and understanding technology. What, I can't use a computer because I'm a creationist? There is nothing that connects understanding science to understanding evolution.  Can anyone name even one invention in the last century that hinged upon evolution being true?  Life improving technologies - made by real scientists - are made every day without a single thought being given to evolution.  Nye thinks we need to understand evolution just like we understand electricity.  Why?  Electricity is fundamental to our everyday existence.  Evolution is the trivial pursuit branch of science!  

The claim that students can’t understand science unless they believe evolution is also an example of a No True Scotsman argument.  Think about it.  It invents a qualifier for understanding science – that is, “everyone who truly understands science believes evolution.” Major fields of science were founded by people who believed in creation.  I could provide quotes from people like Newton, Mendel, or Kepler that show they believed in a Divine Creator but that’s not necessary because I’m not saying that creation is true because people like Newton believed in a Creator. I'm saying that their belief in a Creator did not affect their ability to make contributions to science or invent life improving technologies.

Finally, it's an appeal to consequences.  Nye would have us believe that students who believe creation can’t understand science.  Even assuming that were correct, how would that prove that evolution is true or that creation is false?  It would do neither.  It’s simply a gimmick that asserts, “bad things will happen if you believe this so don’t believe it!”  It’s not evidence for anything - it’s simply a fear tactic.  That’s why we call it a fallacy.

But besides its weak philosophical footing,  I don't believe Nye, or anyone else, can even establish a causal link between believing creation and lower academic performance.  If somebody knows of some scientific survey showing this, I would love to see it because, to this day, I've seen nothing – not one thing – that evolutionists can point to that supports their assertion. It's a tired scare tactic used by evolutionists to claim that kids can't understand science if they believe creation yet they have nothing beyond their flapping gums to support this claim. In fact, a case could be made for the opposite; kids who are home-schooled or who attend private, Christian schools – places where creation is more likely to be taught – generally perform better on standardized tests than kids in public schools where creation is not taught.creation) tend to outperform public school students (where only evolution is taught). 

Look, if Nye really wants to better prepare kids to contribute to society, evolution would be very low on the list of where education needs improvement. According to Wikipedia, 54% of adults in the United States have prose literacy below the 6th-grade level.  Here’s a video you might find interesting.

I've seen dozens of videos just like this one – videos where kids can't answer basic questions about science or politics or geography or history. If evolutionists were truly worried about preparing kids for the future, they would be alarmed that these young people don’t know how many dimes make a dollar!  But no, they think we need to devote more energy and resources to teaching them evolution! I truly believe they are more interested in indoctrinating kids rather than educating them.