Articles

The Evolution of the Insectman

By Karl Priest September 16, 2009

The evolution of my attitude concerns two categories. One is my gradual change, over time, from wanting a fair presentation of scientific facts to demanding that evolutionism be exterminated from public schools. The other is the adaptation of my insect presentation. Although the processes were developing at the same time, this article will discuss each category separately.

First, the curriculum and instruction of science in public schools. The details of those events are covered in detail in my testimony. I naively thought that public school officials would readily embrace a fair policy that guided teachers who wished to teach scientific facts that were critical of evolution. Not only were the officials not willing to do a simple honest thing like that, but they aligned themselves with atheists and liberal religionists to maintain their dogmatic position of censorship. As the “battles” unfolded I found, from firsthand experience, that evolutionists are dogmatic, extremist, and narrow-minded far beyond their malicious accusations of creationists. My position shifted from flexibility to a firm stance of reality: Evolution exists nowhere in the universe so therefore the anti-science inverted fantasy (a term coined by Dr. Joseph Mastropaolo) should not “exist” in tax-funded public (actually government) schools.

Next, the development of my insect presentation. During my first year as a teacher I wanted to do something in science that would interest the children as opposed to the boring book restricted science that I had experienced as a student. Somehow, I obtained 4-H booklets on entomology. As a child I had vivid memories of observations of ants, a praying mantis, and other insects that were a part of a boy’s life. The entomology unit proved to be extremely popular with the students and enabled me to begin my own collection which I added to along with my son for a period of about 12 years.

Eventually, mainly due to becoming strictly a math teacher, I stopped adding to my collection. In His time, God used a friend to motivate me to pull out my collection and use it in the creation ministry. Early in the history of the Kanawha Creation Group one of the members (Bobby O’Connor) started a ministry using a scale model of Noah’s Ark. He had a “gig” at a summer Vacation Bible School and felt like he needed to fill up some of the time. He invited me. I went with my collection (which had been attacked by living insects and required quite a bit of maintenance) and the children loved the demonstration.

I began to find pictures of insects and have them transferred into overhead transparencies. Then I added music. As the months passed the presentation was built into a flowing program and changed into a Power Point presentation.

God guided the process. Everything was designed with the intelligence that God gave me.

Likewise, the only thing that changed with my attitude toward evolutionism was my attitude. My attitude did not change into some complexly different abstract concept.

So, the title of this essay is solidly tongue-in-cheek. The Insectman did not evolve in any way whatsoever.