By: Dr. Jerry Bergman
Montpelier, Ohio
When I am out of town speaking on the creation message, I invariably encounter grandparents or parents who relate horror stories about their grandchild’s college experience.
My recent trip to Denver to speak was no exception. During the question-and-answer period, a woman related that she had home-schooled her two daughters, both of whom went away to college to become science teachers. After graduation, they married.
On Christmas 2024 the two families and their three children came for a visit. The grandmother suggested that she take her grandchildren to the Christmas church service at her local church.
Her one daughter adamantly stated she would not allow them to go to a church that taught lies, adding that in college she learned the truth about where life came from, and it was not God.
Her professors evidently taught her that humans, and all life, evolved from DNA mutations which were selected by our creator, Natural Selection.
I mentioned to her that it was now rather late to do much about her daughter’s attitude. She should have dealt with this issue during the 12 years she homeschooled her daughters.
She explained that her college degree was not in science but education, and she assumed the Bible account of creation was accurate.
This is what she was taught at church. Her pastor was unable to defend the creation worldview because all they were taught in seminary was the Bible.
Another example was related by a co-worker who graduated from Texas Christian University. His geology professor covered the evolution of the universe, the Solar System, and that life evolved from molecules using the energy of lightning. From this first life, all life evolved by mutations and natural selection.
When my friend asked his professor what role God had in creation, if any, the professor answered, “You will have to ask your religion professors. My class is a science class, not religion. Science has shown that all life evolved by the process of mutation and natural selection.”
The main solution to the exodus of our grandchildren from Christianity, and often theism as well, is for churches to stop ignoring the important area of apologetics.
If a pastor does not have a good background in this area, at least five creation ministries exist that could be invited to do a seminar to fill in this important hole.
Evolution is also taught as fact in university philosophy departments. When I was in Grand Rapids, Michigan, speaking, one mother related that her son was headed to seminary and was required to take a prerequisite philosophy.
After the class was over, he told his mom, “I no longer want to study for the ministry,” and refused to discuss the subject further. My assumption was that the atheistic indoctrination shattered his faith.
When I taught at Bowling Green State University, some of my students claimed that all the philosophy professors were atheists. A theist friend, a University of Michigan philosophy, mentioned that most of his colleagues were atheists or agnostic.
Thus, I surmised that her son no longer had a firm belief in God and did not want to relate this to his mother. I completed ‘Introduction to Philosophy’ at The University of Wisconsin-Madison and it was very fair to theism, covering the arguments for God, so I have to be careful to generalize.
One Positive Story
Professor of Cell and Molecular Biology at San Francisco University, Dean Kenyon authored the leading textbook in his field, Biochemical Predestination, published by McGraw-Hill.
The theory proposed that life was biochemically predestined such as by the properties of attraction that exist between the amino acids in proteins.
One day, a few students came to see Professor Kenyon in his office. They mentioned several problems with Professor Kenyon’s theory.
Rather than flunk them, or dismiss their concerns, Kenyon realized the students had raised some real problems with his abiogenesis theory.
The students then gave Kenyon a book by A.E. Wilder-Smith, a German scientist who had earned three Ph.D.’s in science. Kenyon spent the following summer reading and analyzing Wilder-Smith’s arguments.
He became convinced that materialistic explanations for the origin of the cell were insufficient. Consequently, he included evidence for design in his human biology course.
The science department was so infuriated by Kenyon’s heresy that, in 1992, San Francisco State University removed him from teaching science classes, reassigning him to teach labs normally taught by students.
Kenyon brought his case to the university’s academic freedom committee, which investigated. After two years, the faculty senate voted in his favor.
They reasoned that if professors were permitted to teach material in favor of evolution, to be objective it is appropriate to also teach information against evolution. This was a university, and therefore students should be encouraged to debate ideas to help them learn how to think, not what to think.
Consequently, in 1994 Kenyon was again allowed to teach biology students. A few years later he retired as Professor Emeritus of Biology at San Francisco State University. He is currently in his late 80’s and still active.
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Dr. Jerry Bergman has taught biology, genetics, chemistry, biochemistry, anthropology, geology, and microbiology for over 40 years at several colleges and universities including Bowling Green State University, Medical College of Ohio where he was a research associate in experimental pathology, and The University of Toledo. He is a graduate of the Medical College of Ohio, Wayne State University in Detroit, the University of Toledo, and Bowling Green State University. He has over 1,800 publications in 12 languages and 60 books and monographs. His books and textbooks that include chapters that he authored are in over 1,500 college libraries in 27 countries. All 60 of Bergman’s books are on Amazon, Barnes and Noble and other bookstores.
