Scientists use picture books to overcome the tendency of children to believe in intelligent design.
A Boston University psychologist, Deborah Kelemen, has discovered it is possible to suppress a child’s natural instinct to see design in nature. She has done it through Darwinian storytelling.
According to an article in the Wall Street Journal, scientists know that kids intuitively recognize the concept of intelligent design in life, even without religious instruction. By elementary-school age, children begin to explain the complexity they see in nature in terms of a God-like designer. This is true even for kids brought up as atheists. So, to “correct” this tendency, the children must be caught at an early age and trained to see things through Darwinian eyes.
Dr. Kelemen and her colleagues experimented on children, ages 5 to 8, by giving them a picture book which taught natural selection. In the book, fictional animals called pilosas liked to feast on insects. Some of the pilosas had thick trunks and some had thin ones. A sudden climate change occurred that drove the insects into the ground, into narrow tunnels. Only the pilosas with thin trunks could now reach and eat the insects, and consequently those with thick trunks died out, leaving the next generation of pilosas with only thin trunks.
In a discussion following the story-telling, the researchers found that the children, while initially explaining traits in animals in terms of intelligent design, were now beginning to understand evolution by natural selection. This new understanding was still seen in the children three months later. The secret, they believe, is to teach children the “right theory” before the “wrong one” is too firmly in place.
These evolutionists recognize the importance of reaching children when they are young, not a new concept by any means. The Russian socialist, Vladmir Lenin, was reported to have commented, “Give me four years to teach the children and the seed I have sown will never be uprooted.” Knowingly or unknowingly, he was merely paraphrasing what the Bible teaches. “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it” (Proverbs 22:6).
That children are by nature believers in a Creator and Divine Designer is also not a new idea. This blog has in the past reported on research seeming to show that children are born to be believers and a belief in creationism may be in our genes. So, creationists concerned about the souls of children have an advantage in that we can build on these inherent beliefs in children. We also have God and biblical truth of our side. We dare not let the skeptics win by default.
Creation science can be useful in pointing out problems with secular science when it may be threatening our faith in the Bible and the Savior about Whom the Bible testifies. As was pointed out in Monday’s post, natural selection is not evolution. In the fictional story of the pilosas, no new creature or trait had evolved. In the famous example of natural selection, that of the peppered moths in England, no new animal or trait had evolved. Clearly, natural selection occurs, but it is not evolution.
The Evolution News website which was used as the reference for today’s post is an Intelligent Design (uppercase initial letters) website. Like young Earth creationist scientists, Intelligent Design scientists do a good job of pointing out the lack of reasonableness in believing this complex universe and world and its living creatures could have gotten here by means of purposeless random processes. Unfortunately, perhaps in an attempt to appear to be more scientific, they do not try to identify the Intelligent Designer. Creationists do know and proclaim the Creator God of Genesis as the Intelligent Designer, and we are eager to also proclaim Him as the God Who sent Jesus Christ to Earth to die in our place for our sins, thereby becoming our Savior. We need to tell not only children this but also their elders. “Start children off on the way they should go, and even when they are old they will not turn from it.”
Reference: David Klinghoffer, “Story Time: Psychologists Show How to ‘Suppress’ Children's Intuition of Design in Nature,” Evolution News
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QUESTION OF THE DAY
What is an easy, inexpensive way to get relief from poison oak or poison ivy?
Use a blow-dryer to blow warm air on the itchy area for about five minutes. The heat and pressure stimulate cells of the immune system to release all their itch-causing histamine, thereby giving you an hour’s relief from the itching.
Source: Army Rothenberg, ND -- quoted in Bottom Line Personal (8/15/13)
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