The Georgia state school superintendent has proposed the elimination of the word "evolution" from the science curriculum in the state's middle and high school standards and replacing it with the phrase "biological changes over time." This bit of word juggling illustrates a growing controversy over the teaching of the religion of evolution in public schools.

In 1999, the Kansas state board of education attracted national media attention when it voted to eliminate the requirement that evolution be taught as fact. Later, other members were elected to the board who reversed the decision.

In 2001, Dr. Kent Hovind, publisher of the Creation Science Evangelism video series, testified before a legislative committee in Arkansas in favor of a bill to outlaw lies in the state curriculum. Teaching evolution as fact was the target of the legislation. Unfortunately, the bill did not make it into law, but it further illustrated the controversy.

Last November, testimony by creationists before members of the Texas State Board of Education persuaded them to require publishers to change some of the lies in the textbooks before purchasing them. Other states will follow by purchasing the same books for their schools.

Philip Johnson, author of Darwin on Trial, writes in the August 16, 1999 Wall Street Journal that "science" has two distinct definitions in our culture. One is true science, the method of careful experimentation to verify factual observations. The other definition is tied to the philosophy of materialism or scientific naturalism. That philosophy believes that nature is all there is, or all that we can know, leaving out any possibility of a Creator God. Johnson writes, "Students are not supposed to approach this philosophy with open-minded skepticism, but to believe it on faith."

In his video, Lies In The Textbooks, Dr. Hovind points out two main lies that students are being taught about evolution. One is the myth that mutations can make a new, improved creature and the other is that natural selection helps it survive and take over the population.

Mutations do happen but they are always either fatal, harmful or neutral. No mutation has ever been observed that improved on the original. They are accidents to the original design that make it less perfect than the original. A five-legged calf cannot run any faster, for example.

Natural selection does happen, but it only improves the original design, not cause a jump to another design. In a race, the five-legged calf will lose to a normal four-legged calf, all else being equal. But between two normal calves, one may be the stronger and get to the food trough sooner, but his superiority only makes him a better calf, never a horse.

Thinking people are increasingly alarmed by these lies in the classroom. They are recognizing that evolution is not true science, but a religion that eliminates God from the minds of the students.

When students come to believe that evolution is true, they are ready to believe the bigger lie that the biblical account of creation is just a myth. If the Bible is wrong about creation, then it may be wrong about heaven and hell.

We need to continue to expose the lies in the classroom. Jack Chick's new children's tract, Apes, Lies and Ms Henn, is designed to raise this vital question in the minds of students when they are fed evolution as fact. After the young reader is alerted to the lies of evolution, Li'l Susy explains the biblical view of creation and the good news that Christ died so that we could go to heaven.

If widely used, this tract will inoculate youngsters against these lies.