Voices
Creationism may be pseudoscience, but its grip on the American public is hard for a science
educator like Nye to ignore.
This debate is more than academic for me. I grew up steeped
in creationism. I was homeschooled with creationist curriculum, my family took us to creationist conferences, and I was
deeply proud that I knew the
real story about evolution and
the age of the earth. I was taught
there was absolutely no way
the universe could be explained
without creationism. Evolution
was a fairy tale based on faith;
creation was good science. I was
taught that Christianity wasn’t
consistent without creationism...
that all “Bible-believing Christians” rejected evolution and
long ages in favor of a six-day
creation and a global flood.
My proudest teenage achievement was mowing lawns to earn
$1,000 so I could help build the
Creation Museum. My donation
earned me lifetime free admission, a polo shirt, and my name
engraved in the lobby. I wrote
back and forth with many prominent creationists and hotly debated origins with anyone who
dared argue in favor of evolu-
DAVID
MACMILLAN
tion. On two occasions I even
wrote featured articles for the
Answers In Genesis website... a
high honor for Teenage Me.
I’m writing all this because
I don’t know many people who
were as far into the creation science movement as I was and
came out of it. After graduating
high school, I went on to college
and got my Bachelor’s degree in
physics; I now work in energy
My proudest
teenage achievement
was mowing lawns
to earn $1,000 so
I could help build
the Creation Museum.”
regulation. Despite four years of
physics, it still took me a long
time before I actually came to
understand evolution, geology,
and cosmology. Now, I’m always
learning, always finding out new
information, always excited.
Because so much of what I’d
been taught was flatly false, I
had to re-learn practically everything about biology, geology,
and the history of science. I’m
amazed by the amount of evi-
HUFFINGTON
02.02.14