Mr. Martin (left), Kyle Anderson (middle)

On Monday, September 9,  reporter Kyle Anderson from WCMH Channel 4 interviewed Mr. Martin, founder of the Young Earth Creation Club.  The interview primarily addressed some of the controversies surrounding the public feedback on Ohio's draft Science Standards. 

WCMH archives some of their news reports on their web site.  If this interview is archived, we'll put a link to it from this page.

Critique of the Report

• Overall the report was fair and balanced in terms of both sides being able to present their side.
  
  
• State Board of Education (SBE) member Joe Roman was quoted in the report as saying "this isn't an election". If I am interpreting his comments correctly, he seemed to be suggesting that public opinion isn't that relevant because this is about science not polls.  If that is what he meant, I must respectfully disagree.  Many thousands of scientists consider evolution to be a fairy tale and their ranks are growing.  Several scientists including those who hold Ph.D.'s have appeared in person to testify before the SBE, or have written comments to the board urging them to end their censorship.  Their arguments are based on scientific, not religious grounds.  So any claim that public opinion should be disregarded for this reason is entirely bogus.  Additionally, taxpayers are footing the bill for public education.  We also elected the governor and some of the SBE members.  We absolutely should have a say-so in what is being taught, especially when there are such high mountains of evidence to refute the theory of evolution.  It is also common knowledge that a great number of Ohioans consider evolution to be atheism in disguise, and they don't want it force-fed to their children, especially in private Christian schools (these standards as currently written will impact private chartered schools as well).
  
  
• It focused exclusively on Intelligent Design (ID), but did not mention "Teach the Controversy (TTC)".  That could be because many of the comments from the public that the report addressed were focused on ID. However, several months ago we shifted our focus away from an Intelligent Design only approach to Teach the Controversy (which includes, but is not limited to ID arguments/evidence).  For more information about this shift, see http://www.creationists.org/media.html#1.  We would prefer that all future media reports focus instead on TTC instead of ID to more accurately reflect our position.
  
  
• The main focus of the report was whether or not the State Board of Education (SBE) had an up-to-date breakdown on public comments on the draft science standards.  Back in June there was about a 50/50 split on "evolution only as fact" versus ending the censorship of scientific evidence. But back then, as today, we dispute the "evolution only" counts.  This was not mentioned in the report, probably due to a lack of time. The report did correctly state that the latest numbers are far more lopsided in favor of ending the censorship. For more information on why we disputed this count back then, and in the most recent counts as of the end of August, see this link: http://Creationists.org/taft.html.
  
  
• The focus of this report was useful information to the public and was probably a good first step in a series of reports on this topic.  There are other issues that I believe are even more important for the media to focus on in the weeks and months to come.  Some include:
  

1. Several of our opponents continue to grossly distort our position in what appears to be deliberate attempts to scare the public into thinking we want to pound everyone's children on the head with our Bibles in science class. This lie was used with great effect in Kansas and I suspect that's why we see it continually being repeated here in Ohio as well. We are rarely if ever given the opportunity by the media to respond to it. For our responses to this, see these four links: 1) We are not trying to sneak religion into the science curriculum,  2) This is science vs. science debate, not science versus religion, 3) Religion is already in the science curriculum in the form of atheism, and 4) Give equal attention to the religious biases of atheist and agnostic evolutionists.
   
   
2. The media needs to push Governor Taft into publicly taking a stand on this issue.  We have heard from reliable sources that he is working against the citizens (and students) of Ohio on this issue by quietly pressuring his appointees to the SBE to omit both ID and TTC from the science standards.  He may get away with this if the media doesn't do some tough investigative journalism and get to the truth.
   
   
3. The standards maybe unconstitutional because they force private state chartered Christian schools to teach evolution as fact, even if evolution is against the religious beliefs of that school.