Sharing With You Our Focus For 2005

Regarding the above, to equip yourself in creation science and to use your talents, we would encourage you to teach the creation message in your church to adults and youth. If you are a public school teacher, be willing to work to balance the doctrines regarding origins in the schools. As parents, support a teacher's right to do this. Two years ago, the Cobb County Board of Education in Georgia, at the request of parents and teachers, passed a measure to allow teachers to balance the evolution message with teaching on intelligent design. This occurred even in the face of the usual American Civil Liberties Union efforts to block it. In the spring of 2004, the Ohio State School Board was able to pass a similar measure. TASC can help you to develop the knowledge and courage to act in the face of such groups that try to suppress your freedom of speech.

Our youth are especially in need of reinforcement of the Biblical creation message. TASC can help them learn scientific evidences that support God as our Creator. Studying creation science materials can reinforce their faith and fend against the naturalistic evolutionary theory taught largely as fact in our public schools. The December, 2004, issue of Answers Update from the Answers in Genesis organization pointed out that statistics in the U.S. reveal that among young people who go to church, somewhere between 70% and 90% abandon the church after they graduate from high school. Will we continue to be a nation under God if this continues? Now is the time for people of faith to become active in proclaiming their faith in God as our Creator, rather than being unequally yoked and indoctrinated to the impossible, infinitesimal random chance espoused by the naturalistic evolutionary theory.

Our country was founded by people of faith in God. Why should our citizens give up this heritage? Would it be from the mass confusion about expressing our rights (especially freedom of speech) with resulting timidity, from political correctness, from our own loss of faith as a nation, or from refusal to actively stand up for our faith? Please think on these things in 2005 and come out and participate in the work of TASC.

In our board meeting and our first monthly meeting of 2005, the words of Galatians 6:9 set the stage for our annual planning. "Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up." At TASC, we believe that continuing to inform fellow Christians and citizens in general of the scientific evidences that support God as our Creator will help to keep our nation under God and continue His blessings of freedom on us.

Basically, our goal for 2005 is to increase support and volunteers for our mission and activities. (See TASC's stated mission in the header of our newsletter.) We want to increase attendance at our meetings by providing informative and interesting presentations on creation science that will equip attendees to stand up for their faith in the Genesis account of creation and to help others to establish their faith in God as Creator. We need to do this because, increasingly, we live in a secular world whose influences attempt to cause us to dismiss faith in God and the Biblical account of creation.

We will endeavor to do the same as stated above with the monthly newsletter. We view the newsletter as an evangelistic vehicle to inform people of creation science and to establish and also to strengthen their faith in God. We have received feedback from readers that we are achieving this with the newsletter, as some are too far away to attend our meetings. Let us hear from you about our newsletter. If you have conversations with people about origins and use our newsletter articles, and people show an interest, offer to sign them up to receive the newsletter. Send their mailing or email address to Fred Johnson, our editor, at FLJohnson [at] portbridge.com. The newsletter is free although contributions to cover the cost of printing and distributing the newsletter are encouraged.

Regarding where we are or have been at TASC, let us take a look at our origin. TASC was established around 1980 by a group of Christian scientists and lay people who saw the need to stand up for the literal Genesis account of creation in an increasingly secular world that would dismiss God as our Creator. In its twenty-five years, TASC has done an abundance of good by reinforcing the truths of the Bible through informing citizens of the   scientific evidences that support God as Creator and exposing the lack of objective, scientific evidences for naturalistic evolution. We are blessed to still have two board members that were a part of the original formation of TASC around 1980. One is Isaac Manly, MD, former chief of surgery at Rex Hospital in Raleigh. The other is Gerald Van Dyke, PhD, professor of botany at North Carolina State University. They have meant a lot to TASC. We extend a tremendous amount of gratitude to them for their many years of service and their impact on achieving TASC's mission.

Regarding where we want to go in 2005, we endeavor to increase participation in activities that we already sponsor. Increased participation helps us to achieve and improve on those ongoing efforts as well as to expand to new efforts. In all our efforts it is important to stay focused on the foundations of creation science. Since our talks and newsletter articles will continue to concentrate on these foundations, a listing of some of them deserves emphasis here and include: 

1. Belief in the truth of the Genesis account of creation with support from creation science. Genesis is not just an allegory or story line to give us an idea about creation; it is inspired from God and is God's divine revelation to mankind. It not only tells us of the creation and origin of life but is the foundation of moral law, marriage, and the family.
2. Creation week of seven literal ordinary days. This includes the creation of kinds with programmed variety that was not randomly evolved by naturalistic evolution.  It includes the special creation of mankind in the image of God, not evolved from ape-like ancestors over millions of years.
3. The Fall. The disobedience and sin of Adam and Eve resulted in the corruption of a very good creation and the beginning of struggle and death. Theistic evolution conflicts with God speaking creation into existence and implies that struggle and death have been used by God over millions of years before any sin and penalty of sin existed. Theistic evolution invalidates the doctrine of sin, the need for redemption, and the reconciliation of mankind to God.
4. The world-wide flood and the catastrophic destruction of the earth. (Note the power of water destruction evidenced in recent Asian Tsunami and California flood- imagine effects of worldwide flood.)
5. Fossils. The fossil record supports created kinds and still says "no" to naturalistic evolution.
6. Geological column. Much of geology can be explained by the layering effects of a world-wide flood described in Genesis.
7. Noah's Ark. Feasibility studies by scientists support it.
8. One true race of people all related to Adam and Eve and Noah's family after the flood. The biblical record and more scientific evidence from genetics, DNA, human genome support this.
9. Dinosaurs. Created on the sixth day of creation along with other land animals and man, dinosaurs lived thousands of years ago, not millions of years ago—a powerful deceit to children.
10. Intelligent design. Irreducible complexity defies random chance and gradual evolvement that dismisses interdependency of functional parts
11. Young earth. Radioisotopic dating is based on big assumptions with a large margin of error. We have new understanding through the RATE study that supports a young earth. An abundance of other scientific data support a young earth.

The above foundations/topics are some of the more notable ones that creation science and TASC will continue to address in 2005 to help people to come to a better, more accurate, scientific interpretation and understanding. Why? In the secular world, these foundations/topics are addressed differently with questionable evidences and much conjecture and are approached in the name of science as "so-called" factual naturalistic evolution, not theory, and end up deceiving many of our children and adults into dismissing God, our Creator.

To gain continuing insight into the teaching of evolution, I have recently reviewed the general biology textbooks used by our state schools. They continue to teach evolution as fact and still include information that has been proven false. An example is Ernst Haechel's drawings of embryos of various animals from fish to birds to mammals to man to say that we humans undergo (recapitulate) these evolutionary stages as a developing fetus in the womb. (This false theory implied as fact is known as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny.")  This information was in my college textbook years ago as I was majoring in biology and almost caused me to lose my faith in God as Creator because it was taught and implied as fact. It was not until I started to attend TASC meetings eight years ago that this and some of the foundations above were cleared up in my mind. You can imagine what Haechel's misrepresentations (still in our children's biology textbooks because it is such powerful support for evolution) and this type of teaching has on one's opinions of abortion. If you are taught to believe that you go through evolution in the womb, then maybe you can come to believe you are not fully human until late in the embryonic development. Come out to our February, March, and April TASC meetings for presentations to help you clear up the misinformation on this and other icons (foundations) of evolution and theistic evolution.

Another blockade to the balance of origins information that continues to be used in our public schools is misrepresentation of our constitution regarding separation of church and state. TASC has provided some balance to this. Two years ago TASC supported an effort by Cobb County Board of Education in Georgia to allow a balance of teaching of origins in their schools. The ACLU was there opposing the teachings of origins but lost that battle. Georgia now can place stickers in their biology texts stating that evolution is a theory. I also heard recently that efforts are underway to stop this. We must realize that we cannot give up in this fight. These efforts to destroy our will to stand up for our rights will continue. We must continue to stand firm for our freedoms or they will be taken away.

Our January meeting concluded by listing what we in TASC can do individually or as a group to stand up for our faith and to inform our citizens of the scientific evidences that support God as our Creator and refute naturalistic evolution. Some of these were the following.

• Tell adults and children about TASC.
• Be active in TASC.
• Equip yourself in creation science.
• Stand up for creation at every opportunity at home, school, and church.
• Teach youth in your church.
• Place a bulletin board available through TASC in your church.
• Tell others of the creation seminar at Providence Baptist Church, September 16, 17.
• Tell others about the Creation Mega Conference in Lynchburg,Virginia, July 17-22. (www.CreationMegaConference.com)
• Build your own creation science library.
• Sign up to receive the TASC newsletter and use it evangelistically by signing up others interested.
• Seek guest TASC newsletter article contributors.
• Announce TASC meetings in your church bulletins.
• Tell others about the TASC web site.
• Support more creation seminars.
• Conduct fossil hunting expeditions.
• Provide information booths at public events.
• Sponsor the Mobile Creation Museum.
• Respond to evolution programming on public radio and TV.

To be successful in the above, we need volunteers. For example, you could give an hour or two to man a our book table at a special event. Please sign up as a volunteer by contacting me personally at 919-469-5104 or MarkVStephens [at] yahoo.com. If you would like for us to speak at your church or civic group, please call Phil Johnson at 919-553-3273 to schedule one of our speakers. Let us hear from you in general by contacting us at TASCinfo [at] earthlink.net or by contacting me personally.

I conclude by thanking all of you for your moral support, and a special "thanks" goes to those of you who provided the needed financial support in 2004. In 2005, TASC is committed to continue strong efforts to reach out to our local community and to our nation and world as opportunity permits. In 2005, please help us by coming out to our meetings, reading and sharing our newsletter with others, and providing financial support as you are able.

We hope you are better informed about TASC by reading this article to learn of its mission, its outreach, and our focus on foundations of creation science. We hope you will personally benefit by your participation in our organization. Please pray for TASC to be able to continue to serve effectively. May God bless you in 2005 through your strong faith in Him.