CNN wasn't there...Creationism - Religion or science?

CNN wasn’t there…

and neither was David Coppedge.  I heard of David Coppedge on National Public Radio this morning (March 12, 2012) and I was amazed and amused at the same time.

A little background: David Coppedge is a scientist/engineer who was working on the Cassini mission to Saturn at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in California.  The JPL is operated by Caltech and is well known for the operation of many of the United States explorations into space.  Recently JPL reported that the Voyager 1 spacecraft, launched in 1977, has reached the edge of our sun’s heliosphere – the region influenced by the sun’s magnetic field.  They do not know when – a few months or years – Voyager 1 will cross the boundary and enter interstellar space.

In April 2010, David Coppedge was dismissed by JPL as a part of budget cutting caused by a reduction in the California State budget.  David Coppedge has sued JPL claiming that he was dismissed because of his religious views – which he shared freely with his co-workers to the point where they complained of harassment.

What are Coppedge’s religious beliefs?  He is a creationist, claiming that because of the complexity of all that we know, there must be one intelligent creator.  Creationists turn to the Bible to prove their “science” citing the opening chapter of the Book of Genesis as their “proof.”  The creationists begin their argument with these words from Genesis:

In the beginning when God created the heavens and the earth,.

However, there is the second creation story from Genesis that begins:

These are the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were created.

In the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, when no plant of the field was yet in the earth and no herb of the field had yet sprung up--for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was no one to till the ground; but a stream would rise from the earth, and water the whole face of the ground--then the LORD God formed man from the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and the man became a living being.

And then there is the creation story from the Book of John:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

In 2000 when I ran for the Kansas State Board of Education, because the creationists – or intelligent design theorists – were working hard to have creation theory taught in high school science classes along with evolution theory.  They argued that creationism is as much a science as evolution theory is with equal, if not more credibility than evolution theory.  I received 39,000 votes, but lost because of my political affiliation –Democratic Party.

In the year 2000, creationists such as David Coppedge, argued that creationism was science.  A dozen years later, David Coppedge and his lawyers are arguing that he was dismissed from JPL because of his religious beliefs – creationism.

It is time that this charade be ended.  Evolution theory is science, not religion.  Creationism is religion, not science.  In reality, no one can say, for sure, how everything we know came into being. CNN wasn’t there with cameras and reporters.

A challenging book to read that explores reality is David Eagleman’s Sum: Forty Tales of the Afterlife.

--Dr. Ron Patton, H.R.