High Schools, colleges, and universities typically teach only one theory of origins, that being evolution, and the students are not presented with a creationist or even an Intelligent Design viewpoint. In fact, they are often given the idea that no true scientist today is a creationist.

When the National Academy of Sciences in America published an educational tool in 1998 entitled Teaching about Evolution and the Nature of Science, they posed this question, “Don’t many scientists reject evolution?” The answer was, “No; the scientific consensus around evolution is overwhelming.”

Richard Dawkins, a brash atheist and anti-creationist, says in his book The Greatest Show in Earth:

“Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. ... Evolution is a fact, and [my] book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it.”

According to Dawkins, if you reject evolution, you are unintelligent and your sanity should be questioned, and he proclaims that no reputable scientist disputes it.

I have been reading about the Dead Sea Scrolls for years, but my interest was piqued to a higher degree recently after visiting two sites associated with them: the caves and the museum at Qumran, and the Shrine of the Book in Jerusalem where the first seven scrolls are housed.

The scrolls were discovered between 1947 and 1956 in 11 caves near the northwest shore of the Dead Sea, 13 miles southeast of Jerusalem. The first cave contained two Isaiah scrolls, including the nearly intact Great Isaiah Scroll.

The scrolls contain the remains of about 900 different writings, mostly written between 200 B.C. and 68 A.D. The vast majority of the scrolls are in fragments. The Dead Sea Scrolls have been called “the world’s greatest jigsaw puzzle.” Most of the scrolls were written on parchment (sheep or goat skins), while a minority were written on papyrus and clay, and two were written on copper (Geza Vermes, The Story of the Scrolls, 2010).