Carver Sanitized of Religion

A short biography of George Washington Carver posted by a science news site omitted what was most important to the Father of Agricultural Chemistry: his faith.

Mary Bagley wrote an article on Live Science about George Washington Carver which is factually satisfactory as far as it goes, but says nothing about his faith.  Carver, a devout Christian, said, “Without my Savior, I am nothing.”

As a scientist, Carver took inspiration from the beauty of creation all around him.  He once said, “I love to think of nature as an unlimited broadcasting station, through which God speaks to us every hour, if we will only tune in.”  His most famous work with peanuts began with him asking the question, “Mr. Creator, why did you make the peanut?” – showing that he assumed there was a purpose to everything.  His faith was so important to him, he would begin each day with prayer, asking, “Lord, what do you want me to do today?”  – then he would do it: his Maker’s will, to the best he understood it.  So evident was his faith to those who knew him, they put on his gravestone, “To a scientist humbly seeking the guidance of God and a liberator to men of the white race as well as the black.”  (For more, see our online biography of Carver.)

None of this was apparently interesting or important to Ms Bagley, who omitted any reference to religion, faith, Christ, or God.  Even in her section on “Carver’s Legacy” and in her selection of Carver quotes there is no mention of the one thing that mattered most to this giant of 20th century science.

This is a sacrilege.  Would someone write a biography of Billy Graham and fail to mention he was a preacher?  It illustrates the tendency of scientific writers and reporters to sanitize everything in science of any hint of religion except to mock it or portray it as something people used to believe before science became the official religion. Lie Seance [typos intended] is notorious for trying to evolutionize everything, including religion, while giving gushy press to every sexual deviation fallen man has dreamt up.

Yet without the Judeo-Christian worldview, there would be no scientific foundation, as many philosophers and historians have pointed out.  One cannot do science without the conviction that the world is orderly, and that we humans have access to truth, morality and freedom to investigate it.  Those things cannot have a mindless origin.  Love of God was the most important thing to many other scientists, as our biographies document.  Some Christians don’t pay enough attention to science, but the reverse is just as foolhardy.  Wernher von Braun said, “It is as difficult for me to understand a scientist who does not acknowledge the presence of a superior rationality behind the existence of the universe as it is to comprehend a theologian who would deny the advances of science.”  Don’t let revisionists get away with this sin of omission.