CHARLESTON, W.Va. -- Humanity reaps enormous benefit from science. Consider health gains: The average lifespan was just 48 years in 1900, and now has nearly doubled. Consider technology: The Internet links billions of people in a common forum.

Especially, consider profound strides in knowledge: Factual information keeps exploding. Science is honest, because claims are challenged and tested endlessly, weeding out mistaken or bogus assertions. If new evidence contradicts former theories, the old is scrapped. Only tried-and-true information survives.

One of the most tried-and-true fields is evolution. Thousands -- perhaps millions -- of factual findings verify it. Cosmology affirms that the universe is more than 13 billion years old, and that star systems go through lifecycles spawning second-generation and third-generation stars. Archaeology affirms that life on planet Earth began as microbes, then grew for billions of years into more complex forms.

For decades, America's Smithsonian museum in Washington has presented awesome displays of fossils and exhibits showing long-range biological change, such as dog-size creatures evolving into modern horses -- and the human brain capacity quadrupling as primitive primates evolved. Millions of schoolchildren view this treasury of scientific knowledge. This year, the Smithsonian added a $21 million Hall of Human Origins (funded mostly by Republican bankroller David Koch).

Evolution is the bedrock of modern biology. Nearly all scientists accept it as fact. Most mainline churches embrace it, calling it God's billion-year method of creation.

But an event in Charleston Saturday contended that science is false. The Answers in Genesis conference at Municipal Auditorium -- with the theme "I Am Not Ashamed: Standing on Biblical Authority" -- asserted that the universe is merely thousands of years old, not 13 billion. Answers in Genesis declares that all existence was created in six literal days, and that Earth was formed before the sun, moon, solar system and galaxies, as Genesis records.

Ever since the historic Scopes Monkey Trial in Tennessee in 1925, creationists have tried unsuccessfully to ban evolution from public school biology classes. Instead, they want teaching of divine creation or a variant, Intelligent Design. So far, all their attempts have been scuttled by courts.

Many sincere West Virginia believers attended Saturday's program in Municipal Auditorium. As free Americans, they're entitled to hold any theological views they wish. But if they seek to alter school science courses, they must be rebuffed. Honesty requires that only genuine scientific evidence be taught to students.