In today’s western media articles calling out examples of disinformation and misinformation are abundant. The Internet defines disinformation as “false information which is intended to mislead, especially propaganda issued by a government organization to a rival power or the media.” Disinformation is also called falsehoods, fabrications, deceptions, fake news, fiction, barefaced lies, and various other similar descriptions. The definition commonality is that disinformation is false information deliberately spread to deceive a large number of people.
Misinformation, on the other hand, is false information propagated in a non-deliberate way. You could say promoters of misinformation are just ignorant of the truth or have been misled so as to unintentionally promote false information to a large group of people.
What if we apply these conceptual definitions to false information being disseminated to the masses regarding origins? Hundreds of other creationists and I have written thousands of articles pointing out that evolution is not science but rather is philosophy. It is not a fact. It foundationally is a paradigm created by men to reject the concept of a Creator God. If one accepts that secularism is foundationally based on the naturalistic philosophy of deep time and evolution then that means that our public school children have been fed in the past, and are now being fed, untrue information about their origin. This untrue information is circulated not only through our schools and universities, but also by mass media and various governmental agencies. Are these agencies and organizations providing disinformation or misinformation? I think it is a combination of the two.
What we know is that children in public schools and the culture as a whole are being taught that the big bang, abiogenesis, and natural selection are the true explanations for their existence. No opportunity for critical thinking is allowed. This is clearly indoctrination.
As I think back about my public school education, I remember that deep time and evolution were not really brought up until I was in high school. The existence of the Creator God was assumed by my teachers in the primary grades even if religion was not stressed. I think that my high school science teachers basically just taught what they were taught to teach. The authority figures in their education departments at their colleges taught millions of years of evolution. The textbooks they used taught the same ideas and I don’t think the teachers knew any better. That means that they were providing me with misinformation. My fellow students and I memorized what we were told so that we could move on to the next level of education. We did not know any better than our high school teachers. I think that this was primarily misinformation not disinformation.
When I moved on to the university, the lower-level science courses were similar to those in high school in this regard. Once I transferred from science to engineering, evolutionary philosophy disappeared from the instruction. There was no time for the philosophy any more since engineering students needed to learn how to properly engineer so we would not kill people with our future inventions and designs.
The real culprits of disinformation were, and are, the accomplished scientists who are writing the papers and textbooks upon which the rest of the science education community is basing their teaching. Over 90% of this group say they are atheists or agnostics, and they publically reject the idea of a personal God.* I find it interesting that these scientists by and large do not see evidence for evolution in their own fields of endeavor but assume it is prevalent in other fields. My research has also discovered that many of these intellectuals deep down understand that there really is no true evidence for deep time and evolution. The evidence for design is overwhelming but they have convinced themselves that they cannot say anything without being thrown out of their professions. These people are knowingly providing disinformation, and they have no good excuse for doing this (Romans 1:20).
A special example of this concept of intellectual disinformation was provided by Charles Darwin himself. Darwin made himself physically sick because he believed his efforts for development of natural selection were foundationally an attempt to murder God. Here is what Jerry Bergman wrote about this:
“The theory Darwin developed, which ended up displacing God in the minds of many, was evolution by natural selection. However, Darwin himself had doubts about its ability to account for all of creation, and this had a critical effect on his health. The ‘murder-caused-guilt’ hypothesis can account for many of Darwin’s frequent debilitating health problems which were mostly psychological, and possibly due to Darwin’s conflicts about his goals for (or at least the out workings of) evolution.”**
So according to this way of thinking Darwin knew he was providing disinformation and it made him sick. I wonder how many other people in all fields of science are suffering health problems for the same reasons as Darwin.
The tragedy of all this disinformation and misinformation about origins and the Creator God is that it affects every aspect of the culture. It has resulted in the sick society that we see all around us today.
For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood by what has been made, so that people are without excuse. (Romans 1:20 NIV.)
J.D. Mitchell
*Bergman, Jerry, “Was Darwin’s end goal to ‘murder’ God?” Journal of Creation 36(3)2022, p. 62.
**Ibid, p. 60.
