Our Books of the Year story assumes that teaching about creation or evolution is important—but is it? After all, we are entering a campaign season in which the debate will focus on healthcare, government spending, and other hot issues. We don’t have time to discuss theories, do we?

We should make time for one big reason: If Darwin was right the Bible is wrong, and we are foolish to follow it. But evolutionary thought that ignores God also has other effects of which we may be unaware. (Ask a fish about water and he’s likely to reply, “What’s water?”—if he’s sufficiently evolved to be a talking fish.) The theological objections to macroevolution are literally crucial because they tell us whether the Cross was necessary, but some secondary issues are also worth pondering.

Politics. Woodrow Wilson started federal government expansion in 1912 by opposing the “Newtonian” view that the government should have an unchanging constitutional foundation, somewhat like “the law of gravitation.” He argued that government should be “accountable to Darwin, not to Newton. It is modified by its environment, necessitated by its tasks, shaped to its functions by the sheer pressure of life. . . . Living political constitutions must be Darwinian in structure and in practice.” Wilson was the president who started the modern pattern of disregarding the Constitution, and in the 2012 election we will either start a second century of governmental expansion or yell, “Stop!”

Economics. Evolutionary thinking influenced not only Social Darwinists but socialists like H.G. Wells who thought it was time to advance beyond competitive enterprise. (Karl Marx in Das Kapital called Darwin’s theory “epoch making” and told Friedrich Engels that On the Origin of Species “contains the basis in natural history for our view.”) Many books and articles have linked Darwin’s thought to Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-Tung, and Hitler: Darwin is obviously not responsible for the atrocities committed in his name, but evolutionary theory plus his musings about superior and inferior races provided a logical justification for anti-Semites and racists.

Sex. The mid-20th century’s most influential academic was probably Alfred Kinsey, whose high-school classmates half-jokingly called him the “Second Darwin.” Kinsey’s 1948 and 1953 books on sexuality contended that adultery is normal and homosexual experiences not uncommon, for “the mammalian backgrounds of human behavior [made it] difficult to explain why each and every individual is not involved in every type of sexual history.”

(Later, researchers found that Kinsey’s stats were cooked, but in the meantime the American Law Institute’s Model Penal Code, published in 1955, had a major effect in eliminating or reducing penalties for sex crimes: “Virtually a Kinsey document,” one biographer called the Code. More recently, John West’s Darwin Day in America cites textbook claims that casual sex is an evolutionary adaptation that gives “obvious reproductive advantages”—and we should not raise our standards because “we cannot escape our animal origins.”)

Abortion. Evolution proponents contributed mightily to its legalization, and in a way more direct than the general teaching that human life has no intrinsic value. Robert Williams, president of the Association of American Physicians, said in 1969 that “the fetus has not been shown to be nearer to the human being than is the unborn ape.” He talked of “the recapitulation of phylogeny by ontogeny”—the mistaken theory that an unborn child’s development mimics purported evolutionary progress. The most influential pro-abortion legal expert during the 1960s, Cyril Means, argued that babies are sub-human—and the Supreme Court’s 1973 Roe v. Wade decision played off his mean-hearted briefs.

Infanticide. I debated Princeton’s Peter Singer in 2004 and had several conversations with him about his defense of infanticide. That year he said, “All we are doing is catching up with Darwin. He showed in the 19th century that we are simply animals. Humans had imagined we were a separate part of Creation, that there was some magical line between Us and Them. Darwin’s theory undermined the foundations of that entire Western way of thinking about the place of our species in the universe.”

We could run through many more areas. Daniel Dennett in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea hit it right: Darwin created a “universal acid” that eats through any “meaning coming from on high.”

==============================

>>Books of the Year: Two new books are important responses to the rapidly growing promotion of theistic- or, more properly, deistic-evolution (World Magazine, 110702)

Marvin Olasky

WORLD has chosen a Daniel of the Year since 1998 and a Book of the Year since 2008. Since the variety of candidates is enormous, sometimes we look at where the battle is hottest and pick someone who stands firm in Christian witness when it would be easier to duck. For example, in 2007 we chose Wanda Cohn, director of a Florida pregnancy care center, both for her own work and as a representative of the thousands who offer counsel to abortion-prone young women. Several times we’ve chosen Christians who persevere against Islamic aggression.

It’s also hard to choose a Book of the Year, so here as well we tend to see what’s under assault. In 2008 and 2009 the “new atheism” of Christopher Hitchens and Richard Dawkins was picking up speed, so we chose Tim Keller’s The Reason for God; in 2009, the ESV Study Bible. Last year, following passage of “Obamacare,” the drive to expand Washington’s power had still not suffered a major setback, so Arthur Brooks’ The Battle, which described federal governmental expansion and proposed ways to stop it, was our Book of the Year.

This year we’re looking at neither the depths of Scripture, nor the surface of politics and economics, but the middle ground: ideas about the nature of man and the world. Think about the three main intellectual influencers of the 20th century: Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, and Charles Darwin. Two of the three—Freud and Marx—have lost most of their influence. The exception is Darwin. Two years ago his millions of fans celebrated the bicentennial of his birth, which was also the 150th anniversary of his famous book On the Origins of Species.

Today, the overwhelming majority of American kids receive a Darwinian or neo-Darwinian education. They learn at schools and then colleges that they are just matter, the result of occasional mutations and survival of the fittest. Christians over the decades have debated whether the earth’s history should be measured in thousands or billions of years, but—until recently—almost all stuck by the biblical account of God creating every kind of plant and animal in six days (perhaps longer than 24 hours). Almost all believed that God created Adam from dust, and Eve from Adam.

For decades an attempt to make Darwinism acceptable to Christians, “theistic evolution” (TE), lurked in the background but made almost no inroads among Bible believers. A December 1997 article in the Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society—”Theistic Evolution: Deism Revisited”—began by observing that TE “has not proven to be the mediating position once hoped for.” Taylor University professor Michael A. Harbin noted that Bible scholars criticized TE for being unbiblical and “more deistic than theistic.”

TE did not make much readily visible progress over the next six years. In 2008 TE proponent and blogger Steve Martin (not the comedian) rhetorically asked how many TE books at a popular reading level were published in North America prior to 2003? His answer: “None. A big fat zero. Zilch.” Then came the deluge. Martin listed 10 popular books published between 2004 and 2008 by authors like Darrel Falk, Owen Gingerich, Karl Giberson, and—most notably—Francis Collins.

The Language of God, by genome pioneer Collins, became a bestseller. Collins himself became director of the National Institutes of Health. As Martin put it, “very few evangelicals have the time, energy, and focus to 1) thoroughly investigate the evidence from biology, geology, genetics, paleontology, anthropology and related scientific disciplines and 2) navigate the maze of Ancient Near East cultural history, ancient Hebrew linguistics, Christian Theology, Biblical Studies, and Old Testament exegesis.” The natural tendency is to rely on the testimony of a winsome, credible scientist like Collins.

That’s particularly the case when said scientist’s school of thought is well-funded, while those from different perspectives search for crumbs. Since 2008 Collins’ BioLogos Foundation—which, according to its website, “celebrates the integration of science and Christian faith”—has been TE’s leading promoter. Its well-designed BioLogos Forum, funded by the John Templeton Foundation, has been the leading TE website for TE speculation.

Templeton has made multimillion-dollar grants to BioLogos and a host of other TE proponents: Those who read pro-evolution essays often see the tagline, “supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation.” Money has helped to fuel TE’s recent advance, but so has backing from many members of the American Scientific Affiliation, an organization of professing Christians, and from some biology departments within historically Christian colleges.

TE proponents say its popularity in those precincts is because their theory is true. Opponents note that it is extraordinarily hard and painful for scientists who are Christian to stand up against the conventional wisdom. “Publish or perish” is still the rule at many academic institutions, and Christians who oppose TE increasingly have to search for publishing venues. In February, InterVarsity Press put out the first of a planned series of TE books with Francis Collins as co-author.

The problem, though, is that many theistic evolutionists should rightly be called deistic evolutionists, since they believe that God created the first life-form and then left the rest to standard Darwinian processes. Theoretically a theistic evolutionist could also believe in God’s creation of each of the trillions and quadrillions of mutations that led to today’s world, but that would also be rewriting the Bible—and we’re still left with the issue of Adam and Eve’s direct creation. In any event, mathematician Bill Dembski sums up well the standard TE position: “Theistic evolution takes the Darwinian picture of the biological world and baptizes it.”

And so we come to our co-Books of the Year—one American, one British, because the push for Darwin is strong on both sides of the Atlantic. (Britain’s Bible Society distributed copies of the TE tome Rescuing Darwin to 20,000 church leaders, and the Anglican Church published an official apology to Darwin for challenging his theory 150 years ago.)

Should Christians Embrace Evolution? (published first in England, republished in the United States by P&R in May, and edited by British medical geneticist Norman Nevin) contains excellent theological essays—but given the influence of Francis Collins, the more influential essays may be those that undermine the contention that genome mapping shows irrefutably that man and great apes had common ancestors.

In one of the essays, scientist Geoff Barnard notes, “the wide variety of chromosomal variations that clearly exist between the human and chimpanzee, dictate against the thesis that these species have common ancestry.” In another, Nevin and Phil Hills show that “the fused chromosome is unique to the human and is not found in the great apes . . . the numerous chromosomal variations between the human and chimpanzee suggest that these species do not have common ancestry.”

Barnard takes on what theistic evolutionists like to claim as evidence of evolution, “junk DNA.” He notes, “It is becoming increasingly apparent that non-protein coding DNA, including the pseudogenes, may perform important biological roles.” Nevin emphasizes from the fossil record what theistic evolutionists tend to skip by, the Cambrian explosion: That’s when “many animal forms and body plans (representing new phyla, subphyla and classes) arose in a brief geological period. The evidence points to the appearance of many new animal forms and body plans . . . with no fossil evidence that they branched off from common ancestors.”

The irony in the current TE surge, as former Westminster Chapel pastor R.T. Kendall points out, is that “science is always changing. A scientific dictionary nowadays is out of date in ten years, and yet theologians keep running after modern science.” Our other co-Book of the Year, God and Evolution (Discovery Institute Press), also notes that Collins’ assertions several years ago concerning “junk DNA” have already been shown to be erroneous: This “junk” regulates the timing of DNA replication, tags sites that need their genetic material rearranged, guides RNA splicing and editing, helps chromosomes fold properly, and regulates embryo development.

Collins, since he is the leader of those who recycle concepts of God as divine watchmaker rather than creator, receives ample criticism from God and Evolution editor Jay Richards. When Collins complains of those who portray “the Almighty as a clumsy Creator, having to intervene at regular intervals to fix the inadequacies of His own initial plan,” Richards wonders why it would be beneath God’s dignity to be involved in the world: “Perhaps He desires a world that is more like a violin than a self-winding watch, an instrument he can play. . . . Maybe He wants a world that exhibits a certain predictable regularity, but is by no means closed to His direct influence. . . . Maybe God is like a hobbyist, who enjoys having a ‘work in progress.’”

Molecular biologist Jonathan Wells similarly turns on its head the frequent TE claim that growing scientific knowledge squeezes more and more the position of those who rely on God to explain mysteries. Wells writes, “Instead of supporting Darwinian evolution, the new DNA evidence actually undercuts it. Indeed, the more we learn about our genome, the less tenable Darwin’s theory becomes. Collins is clinging to a ‘Darwin of the gaps’ position that becomes more precarious with each new discovery.”

Should Christians Embrace Evolution? and God and Evolution are both worth reading, but are they the very best books published since last June? Hard to be definitive on that, but they are both at the center of the biggest current battle both among Christians and between Christian and anti-Christian thought. As University of Chicago atheist Jerry Coyne declares, “to make evolution palatable to Americans, you must show that it is not only consistent with religion, but also no threat to it.” Theistic evolutionists are the pointed end of Darwinians’ wedge strategy: By making evolution “theistic” Darwinians hope to divide Christian against Christian.

Collins’ winsomeness and Templeton money have escalated recent TE success among evangelicals, but so has concern about evangelism. A recent BioLogos essay by Vineyard Church of Ann Arbor pastor Ken Wilson—”supported by a grant from the John Templeton Foundation”—noted the red/blue division in American politics and argued that “people of blue sensibilities are not coming to our churches in droves.” The reason, according to Wilson, is that a blue believer in evolution and global warming will not come for fear of being criticized.

Wilson pleaded with his readers, “I am not asking what you think about these matters of science. Because in this case what you think is less relevant to your ability to be effective in the mission field than how you feel.” That’s a passionate point, but a plaque over the kitchen sink in a house I’ve visited declares, “You have a choice: To live in your knowings or to live in your feelings.” Evangelicals who know what the Bible says may feel like ignoring the first two chapters of Genesis in the interests of evangelism, but if we are “successful” in growing churches by that method, to which God are converts coming?

Retired University of California law professor Phillip Johnson speaks of “the church of Darwin” and notes that most Americans are still dissenters. Despite decades of public-school control, Darwinians have won little of their captive audience to their opinion. Gallup polls show that only one in seven Americans agrees that “human beings have developed over millions of years from less advanced forms of life, but God had no part in the process.”

Slightly over 50% of those polled, though, have agreed with this statement: “God created human beings in their present form exactly the way the Bible describes it.” Darwinists have been unable to beat that belief with the vision of biologist Bruce Alberts, former president of the National Academy of Sciences: “Humans are more like worms than we ever imagined.” Few love the summary of University of California biology professor Charles Zuker: “In essence, we are nothing but a big fly.”

Theistic evolution is Darwinists’ hope for a breakthrough, but it’s an attempt to synthesize the antithetical. And one question more: A generation ago Francis Schaeffer logically wrote (Genesis in Space and Time) that with evolution “man has lost his unique identity. . . . A Christian does not have this problem. He knows who he is. If anything is a gift from God, this is it—knowing who you are.” Will this generation of Christians relinquish God’s gift?

A man or a myth?

Our two books of the year have many fine chapters, but the most important one in Should Christians Embrace Evolution? is probably chapter 3, “Adam and Eve,” written by Michael Reeves, theological head of Britain’s Universities and Colleges Christian Fellowship.

That’s because most theistic evolutionists have no room in their Darwinist theory for the special creation of Adam and Eve. They say either that Adam and Eve had “souls” inserted into their bodies while they were part of a herd of hominids, or that—as a BioLogos website article theorized—they “were not individual historical characters, but represented a larger population of first humans who bore the image of God.”

And yet, as Reeves shows, “far from being a peripheral matter for fussy literalists, it is biblically and theologically necessary for Christians to believe in Adam as first, a historical person who second, fathered the entire human race.” One reason such belief is essential stems from the New Testament affirmations of the early chapters of Genesis, and their centrality to our understanding of Christ’s sacrifice:

In Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6, Jesus refers to the creation of Adam and Eve as if they were real historical events.

In chapter 3 of his Gospel, Luke’s genealogy assigns a father to everyone except Adam, whom Luke calls “the son of God.”

In Acts 17:26, speaking before a very tough crowd, the Athenian Areopagus, Paul says, “From one man He made all the nations.”

In Romans 5:12-21 Paul refers to the sin of “the one man, Adam” and the sinlessness of the one man, Christ. Paul cites Adam in the same way he refers to Christ. (Pundits ridiculed Dan Quayle during the 1992 campaign when they said he spoke of the television character Murphy Brown as if she were a real person.)

In 1 Corinthians 11:8-9 Paul refers to Eve’s special creation: “For man did not come from woman, but woman from man.” In 1 Timothy 2:13 he does the same: “For Adam was formed first, then Eve.”

In 1 Corinthians 15:22 Paul similarly treats Adam as an actual person and parallels him to Jesus: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

Reeves notes that the apostle Paul’s “logic would fall apart if he was comparing a historical man (Christ) to a mythical or symbolic one (Adam). If Adam and his sin were mere symbols, then there would be no need for a historical atonement; a mythical atonement would be necessary to undo a mythical fall. With a mythical Adam, then, Christ might as well be—in fact, would do better to be—a symbol of divine forgiveness and new life.”

The battle is between biblical Christianity and theological liberalism, which views Adam as mythical and Jesus as symbolic. For that reason Reeves, leaving himself open to condemnation from those who would fudge the issues, points out that debates about Adam and Eve are “inescapably foundational in that they really represent a debate between the Christian gospel and an entirely different approach to God and salvation.”

==============================

>>Ben Stein Vs. Sputtering Atheists (townhall.com, 080418)

By Brent Bozell III

I confess that when the producers of Ben Stein’s new documentary “Expelled” called, offering me a private screening, I was less than excited.

It is a reality of PC liberalism: There is only one credible side to an issue, and any dissent is not only rejected, it is scorned. Global warming. Gay “rights.” Abortion “rights.” On these and so many other issues there is enlightenment, and then there is the Idiotic Other Side. PC liberalism’s power centers are the news media, the entertainment industry and academia, and all are in the clutches of an unmistakable hypocrisy: Theirs is an ideology that preaches the freedom of thought and expression at every opportunity, yet practices absolute intolerance toward dissension.

Evolution is another one of those one-sided debates. We know the concept of Intelligent Design is stifled in academic circles. An entire documentary to state the obvious? You can see my reluctance to view it.

I went into the screening bored. I came out of it stunned.

Ben Stein’s extraordinary presentation documents how the worlds of science and academia not only crush debate on the origins of life, but also crush the careers of professors who dare to question the Darwinian hypothesis of evolution and natural selection.

Stein asks a simple question: What if the universe began with an intelligent designer, a designer named God? He assembles a stable of academics — experts all — who dared to question Darwinist assumptions and found themselves “expelled” from intellectual discourse as a result. They include evolutionary biologist Richard Sternberg (sandbagged at the Smithsonian), biology professor Caroline Crocker (drummed out of George Mason University), and astrophysicist Guillermo Gonzalez (blackballed at Iowa State University).

That’s disturbing enough, but what Stein does next is truly shocking. He allows the principal advocates of Darwinism to speak their minds. These are experts with national reputations, regular welcomed guests on network television and the like. But the public knows them only by their careful seven-second soundbites. Stein engages them in conversation. They speak their minds. They become sputtering ranters, openly championing their sheer hatred of religion.

PC liberalism has showered accolades on atheist author Richard Dawkins’ best-selling book “The God Delusion.” But when Stein suggests to Dawkins that he’s been critical of the Old Testament God, Dawkins protests — not that Stein is wrong, but that he’s being too mild. He then reads from this jaw-dropping paragraph of his book:

“The God of the Old Testament is arguably the most unpleasant character in all fiction: jealous and proud of it; a petty, unjust, unforgiving control freak; a vindictive, bloodthirsty ethnic cleanser; a misogynistic, homophobic, racist, infanticidal, genocidal, filicidal, pestilential, megalomaniacal, sadomasochistic, capriciously malevolent bully.”

Dawkins has a website. Its slogan is “A clear-thinking oasis.”

It’s understood that God had nothing to do with the origins of life on Earth. What, then, is the alternate explanation? Stein asks these experts, and their very serious answers are priceless. One theorizes that life began somehow on the backs of crystals. Another states electric sparks from a lightning storm created organic matter (out of nothing). Another declares that life was brought to Earth by aliens. Anything but God.

The most controversial part of the film follows Stein to the Dachau concentration camp, underlining how Darwin’s theories of natural selection led to the eugenics movement, embraced by Adolf Hitler. If there is no God, but only a planetary lab waiting for scientists to perfect the human race, where can Darwinism lead? Stein insists that he isn’t accusing today’s Darwinists of Nazism. He points out, however, that Hitler’s mad science was inspired by Darwinism.

Now that the film is complete, the evolutionist prophets featured in the film are on the warpath inveighing against it, and the alleged idiots who would lower themselves to watching it. Richard Dawkins laments how the film will solicit “cheap laughs that could only be raised in an audience of scientific ignoramuses.” Minnesota professor and blogger P.Z. Myers predicts the movie is “going to appeal strongly to the religious, the paranoid, the conspiracy theorists, and the ignorant —— which means they’re going to draw in about 90% of the American market.” Myers and Dawkins now both complain they were “duped” into appearing in the movie (for pay).

Everyone should take the opportunity to see “Expelled” — if nothing else, as a bracing antidote to the atheism-friendly culture of PC liberalism. But it’s far more than that. It’s a spotlight on the arrogance of this movement and its leaders, a spotlight on the choking intolerance of academia, and a spotlight on the ignorance of so many who say so much, yet know so very little.

==============================

>>‘Expelled’ Set to Release Amid Wave of Attacks (Christian Post, 080418)

As the pro-intelligent design documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” launches full throttle into over 1,000 theaters this Friday, its producers are no doubt feeling a strong sense of anticipation and anxiety.

The film, which explores the existence of what it claims is an elitist scientific establishment dedicated to Darwinism and the silencing of all its critics, has generated fierce reactions and attacks from the moment of its conception, according to producers.

In a series of incidents last month, producers grappled with what they described as both an intentional bootleg distribution campaign designed to wash away the film’s value, and the “crashing” of a pre-screening by two vocal atheist scientists.

And after the most recent wave of attacks – an accusation of copyright infringement and a series of elaborate attacks on the internet – producers have cried of an intentional campaign to discredit and destroy the film.

Despite the attacks, however, Executive Producer Walt Ruloff said that he would not be deterred by what he described as groups of zealot-like scientists unwilling to allow for civil debates on Darwinism.

“We certainly will not allow a small group of self-appointed gatekeepers to infringe our rights of free speech and our obligation to expose them for what they are - namely, intellectual thugs unwilling to accept any dissent from Darwinian orthodoxy,” he said, according to a statement.

Logan Craft, chairman and executive producer of the film, also gave an upbeat commentary, adding that the production team would not be silenced.

“Opponents of our film are attempting to interfere with its important message,” he said.

“As the movie documents, similar tactics are being used across the country against many of the researchers, scientists, and professors who want to engage in free debate within science but have inadequate resources to challenge the Establishment. However, we do have the platform to confront the ‘thought police,’ and we will work tirelessly to open the doors of free speech and inquiry,” he added.

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” starring actor and former presidential speech writer Ben Stein, is an in-depth investigation of teachers, professors, and researchers who are mocked and threatened with expulsion by an elitist scientific establishment that punishes the scientific proponents of intelligent design because they reject some of the claims of Darwin’s theory of evolution.

==============================

>>Why Darwinism is So Dangerous: Ben Stein, host of a new film on Intelligent Design vs. Darwinism, gives an answer (Christian Post, 080123)

For Ben Stein, host of an upcoming documentary on the dominance of Darwinism in academia, Darwinism is not just problematic but dangerous even.

In a media teleconference for the film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed” on Tuesday, Stein pointed out that Darwinian teaching on natural selection and random mutation “led in a straight line to the holocaust and Nazism.”

Darwin said that there were certain species that were superior to other species and all were competing for scarce supplies of food or resources, Stein pointed out. But if there was a limited supply of basic resources, Darwinism taught that “you owe it to the superior race to kill the inferior race,” he told reporters.

Darwinian evolutionary theory fueled Nazi idealism that felt gypsies, Eastern Europeans and others were competing with them for scarce basic resources, explained Stein.

“As a Jew, I am horrified that people thought Jews were so inferior they didn’t deserve to live,” he commented.

But the link between Darwinism and the holocaust is just one of many reasons why the former speech writer for President Nixon and President Ford decided to join Premise Media in the making of the documentary, which hits theaters April 2008.

Stein said he finds it problematic that Darwinism, which he feels leaves a lot of questions unanswered, is being touted in the academic and scientific circles as the only rational explanation on how life began.

Where did life come from? How did cells get so complex?

If the origins of life all did happen by random mutation, he questioned, where does the laws that make the universe possible to function – the law of gravity, the law of thermodaynamics, laws of motion – all come from?

“Who created these laws that keeps the planets in motion?” asked Stein. “These are fundamental questions” where Darwinism lacks explanations.

The film follows Stein as he interviews disciples of Darwinian Evolution, including The God Delusion author Richard Dawkins and proponents of Intelligent Design – the teaching that the creation of life and the universe are results of an intelligent “designer.”

At first glance, the documentary may appear to attack Darwinism and champion Intelligent Design.

But the film doesn’t try to validate one idea over another, explained Walt Ruloff, the film’s executive producer and CEO of Premise Media.

“Science is supported by empirical work that can be verified by empirical data. We are not against that,” he told reporters.

“What we are asking for is freedom of speech ... for people who do research to have freedom to ask the questions they need to ask and go where they need to go.

The current system doesn’t allow open dialogue, according to the makers of “Expelled.” The film highlights a number of educators and scientists who are being ridiculed, denied tenure and even fired in some cases for the fact that they believe there is evidence of “design” in nature or challenging the Darwinian orthodoxy.

Ruloff hopes that the film will prompt congressional language to protect the free speech of people who dissent from Darwinism.

Furthermore, he sees the documentary as creating a culture where things like the metaphysical can be openly discussed.

“85% of people believe in a form of a deity – why can’t we talk about that?” asked Ruloff.

“We don’t think that we have all the the answers, or anyone has all the answers,” added Stein. “We just want free speech.”

==============================

>>Intelligent Design—A “Plot” to Kill Evolution? (Christian News, 041022)

Intelligent Design is in the news again, this time in the form of a cover story in the October 2004 issue of Wired magazine. The magazine’s cover announces “The Plot to Kill Evolution: Inside the Crusade to Bring Creationism 2.0 to America’s Classrooms.”

Put simply, Intelligent Design is a scientific theory that affirms a level of specificity and complexity in the universe that cannot be explained by any blind natural process, but can be explained only by intelligence behind the design.

The Intelligent Design movement is a relatively new development in the scientific world, though the roots of ID thought go deeply into the history of Western civilization. The leading proponents of Intelligent Design are well-credentialed scientists who are both articulate and persuasive in arguing that evolution is a theory in crisis. Scientists and other leaders of the ID movement have punctured the arrogance and ideological inflexibility of the modern evolutionary establishment, and the evolutionists don’t like it one bit.

The cover story in Wired magazine is the latest evidence of ID success. Written by Evan Ratliff, the article proves that the panic attack experienced by evolutionists is only deepening in intensity.

As the article begins, Ratliff takes the reader into an auditorium in downtown Columbus, Ohio, where the state’s Board of Education is considering “the question of how to teach the theory of evolution in public schools.” As the school board met two years ago, four experts engaged in a debate before the assembled school board members, considering “whether an antievolution theory known as Intelligent Design should be allowed into the classroom.”

Ratliff is apparently shocked and outraged that the debate even took place. “This is an issue, of course, that was supposed to have been settled long ago,” he explains, “but 140 years after Darwin published On the Origin of Species, 75 years after John Scopes taught natural selection to a biology class in Tennessee, and 15 years after the US Supreme Court ruled against a Louisiana law mandating equal time for creationism, the question of how to teach the theory of evolution was being reopened here in Ohio.”

Eventually, the Ohio State Board of Education decided to allow “optional” lessons on Intelligent Design as a supplement to the schools’ biology curriculum. The ID proponents were successful in persuading the school board that teaching students the theory of evolution in a way that raised none of the significant questions posed by other scientists was neither good education nor good public policy.

This, evolutionary theorists insist, is nothing less than mindlessness and a return to religious fundamentalism. In the Wired article, Ratliff portrays a conspiracy led by scholars and scientists associated with Seattle’s Discovery Institute. According to Ratliff, ID advocates operate with a strategy to “create the impression that this very complicated issue could be seen from two entirely rational yet opposing views.” As he quotes Discovery Institute scholar Stephen Meyer, “When two groups of experts disagree about a controversial subject that intersects with the public-school science curriculum, the students should be permitted to learn about both perspectives.” Meyer and his colleagues call this teaching method the “teach the controversy” approach.

But the evolutionists do not want the controversy taught. To the contrary, they have strapped themselves into an ideological straitjacket and have constructed the theory of evolution so that it is a comprehensive worldview impenetrable by outside criticism.

Ratliff goes on to explain that the Intelligent Design movement can be traced back to two seminal books: Darwin’s Black Box by Lehigh University biochemist Michael Behe and The Design Inference by William Dembski, a philosopher and mathematician currently at Baylor University, and recently appointed the Director of the Center for Theology and Science at Boyce College and Southern Seminary. According to Ratliff, Dembski’s work “proposed that any biological system exhibiting ‘information’ that is both ‘complex’ (highly improbable) and ‘specified’ (serving a particular function) cannot be a product of chance or natural law.” In other words, Dembski argued that the facts of specific and highly organized complexity in a biological system could not be explained by mere chance or the operation of purely natural forces. Dembski points to the specific and highly complex information that is demonstrated, for example, in the genetic structure of the human cell.

But if purely natural forces and chance cannot explain the presence of such complex information, what can? Ratliff describes the ID response in this way: “The only remaining option is an Intelligent Designer—whether God or an alien life force.” Dembski’s contribution, along with Behe’s theory of “irreducible complexity,” throws the evolutionary mainstream and its ideologues into apoplexy.

But even armed with effective scientific arguments, the Intelligent Design movement needed something else in order to project itself into the public square—and that something else was an articulate public advocate. That advocate emerged in Phillip Johnson, a now-retired law professor at the University of California at Berkeley. Johnson, a former clerk to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, brought impeccable academic credentials, boundless energy, and winsome courtroom effectiveness to his mission of exposing the pretensions and weaknesses of evolutionary theory.

In a series of best-selling books, Johnson directed his intellectual guns at “scientific materialism,” the affirmation that the material world must be entirely self-explanatory. Using the argument of Intelligent Design as a “wedge,” Johnson, along with scientific colleagues in the movement, took their case to the public.

The evolutionists have responded with dismissal, condescension, outright opposition, and worse. Michael Ruse, a philosopher of science at Florida State University, simply dismisses Intelligent Design by labeling it theology in disguise. “Ultimately, they have an evangelical Christian message that they want to push,” he says. “Intelligent Design is the hook.” Of course, this ignores the fact that, in dismissing Intelligent Design with this unscientific argument, Ruse and his fellow evolutionists discount anyone positing any level of design in the universe, for whatever reason.

Lawrence Krauss of Case Western Reserve University, a defender of evolution, warns his fellow evolutionists that they had better not underestimate the threat represented by Intelligent Design. “Where the scientific community has been at fault,” he says, “is in assuming that these people are harmless, like flat-earthers. They don’t realize that they are well-organized, and that they have a political agenda.”

For years, the evolutionists have been virtually alone in playing their own political game, intimidating school boards and political officials into giving them a virtual free rein over the academic process and hegemony in the teaching of subjects like biology.

Evan Ratliff portrays Intelligent Design as a serious threat to the evolutionary establishment. By referring to the ID movement as “Creation Science 2.0,” he signals the tech-savvy readers of Wired magazine that the Intelligent Design movement is something they should oppose and observe with growing concern.

Nevertheless, Wired also ran a side article by George Gilder, identified by the magazine as “the technogeek guru of bandwidth utopia.” Gilder is also a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, and one of the major figures behind the movement. As Gilder argues, “The Darwinist materialist paradigm . . . is about to face the same revolution that Newtonian physics faced 100 years ago. Just as physicists discovered that the atom was not a massy particle, as Newton believed, but a baffling quantum arena accessible only through mathematics, so too are biologists coming to understand that the cell is not a simple lump of protoplasm, as Charles Darwin believed.”

According to Gilder, “Intelligent Design at least asks the right questions. In a world of science that still falls short of a rigorous theory of human consciousness or of the big bang, Intelligent Design theory begins by recognizing that everywhere in nature, information is hierarchical and precedes its embodiment.” Students who are merely fed the dominant evolutionary model are, Gilder asserts, “imbibing the consolations of a faith-driven 19th-century materialist myth.”

While Wired magazine sounds its alarm, a similarly panicked approach is evident in The Washington Monthly’s October 2004 issue. Chris Mooney, a senior correspondent for The American Prospect, argues that the Intelligent Design movement is an effort by “the religious right” to “combat mainstream science.”

Mooney minces no words, using vitriolic language in an attempt to dismiss the movement out of hand. He suggests that “Christian conservatives have . . . adopted the veneer of scientific and technical expertise instead of merely asserting their heartfelt beliefs.” As he portrays the conflict, uninformed, uneducated, and Bible-thumping fundamentalists stand opposed to the enlightened, educated, and entirely sophisticated scientific establishment. Mooney lumps together the proponents of abstinence-based sex education, scientists who believe that abortion is linked to an increased risk of breast cancer, and advocates for Intelligent Design. The naturalistic scientists are always identified positively. Mooney refers to “the respected International Society for Stem Cell Research” and “our nation’s distinguished scientific community.”

This is evidence of weak argument and irresponsible journalism. This degree of editorializing has no place in what is presented as serious journalism, and Mooney’s real secular agenda is clear when he drops his guard.

Christian conservatives, he argues, “have gone a long way towards creating their own scientific counter-establishment.” He further claims that “the religious right’s ‘science’ represents just the most recent manifestation of the gradual conservative Christian political awakening that has so dramatically shaped our politics over the past several decades.”

Mooney’s attempt to dismiss the Intelligent Design movement as nothing more than an appendage of the “religious right” demonstrates once again the irritation of the evolutionary mainstream. In desperation, they want to have it both ways. Mooney dismisses Intelligent Design as science because he claims that ID proponents believe in a divine Designer, “a claim naturalistic science can neither confirm nor refute.” Yet, just a few paragraphs later, he quotes Brown University biologist Kenneth Miller as saying, “The scientific community has not embraced the explanation of design because it is quite clear, on the basis of the evidence, that it is wrong.” Miller flatly dismisses the idea of design in the cosmos—the very claim Mooney had just asserted science could “neither confirm nor refute.”

The house of evolution is falling. Its various theorists are increasingly at war with each other over the basic question of how evolution is supposed to work, and its materialistic and naturalistic foundation is becoming increasingly clear. The evolutionists tenaciously hold to their theory on the basis of faith and as an axiom of their worldview. The publication of these two articles in influential magazines indicates that proponents of evolution see the Intelligent Design movement as a real threat. They are right.

__________________________________

R. Albert Mohler, Jr. is president of The Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky.

==============================

>>Darwin’s Dangerous Idea—No Middle Ground (Mohler, 060103)

Daniel C. Dennett is one of the world’s most influential evolutionary scientists, and unlike many of his colleagues, Dennett doesn’t run away from Darwinism’s logical conclusions. Instead, he describes Darwin’s theory of evolution as a “universal acid” that completely reshapes reality, destroying those truths previously held to be enduring and unchanging.

“Whenever Darwinism is the topic, the temperature rises, because more is at stake than just the empirical facts about how life on Earth evolved, or the correct logic of the theory that accounts for those facts,” Dennett asserts.

In a recent interview with Germany’s Der Spiegel, Dennett dismissed the concept of Intelligent Design, arguing that all intelligent persons simply must accept Darwin’s theory at face value. Nevertheless, Dennett does understand the logic of Intelligent Design. As he sees it, many persons reject evolution because it “goes right to the heart of the most troubling discovery in science of the last few hundred years.” This is “the idea that it takes a big fancy smart thing to make a lesser thing. I call that the trickle-down theory of creation. You’ll never see a spear making a spear maker. You’ll never see a horseshoe making a blacksmith. You’ll never see a pot making a potter. It’s always the other way around and this is so obvious that it just seems to stand to reason.”

Nevertheless, Dennett believes this reasoning to be profoundly wrong. Interestingly, he suggests that the idea of Intelligent Design, at least in its fundamental form, may be even older than the human species. He offers the suggestion that what he identifies as earlier species of hominids might have created objects and then “had a sense of being more wonderful than their artifacts.” Then, Dennett simply suggests that Homo sapiens, capable of creating a seemingly endless array of objects, would assume that they, too, were the products of an intelligent creator.

Amazingly, Dennett, along with his colleague Richard Dawkins, uses the reality of complexity and apparent design to argue against a designer. In one sense, Dennett simply turns the idea of design on its head, arguing that greater design means, in effect, less proof of a designer. As Dennett claims, “not only can you get design from un-designed things, you can even get the evolution of designers from that un-design. You end up with authors and poets and artists and engineers and other designers of things, other creators—very recent fruits of the tree of life. And it challenges people’s sense that life has meaning.” Well, of course it does.

Dennett does believe that human beings are unique as a species. This special status is essentially a function of linguistics. Dennett, who serves as University Professor and Austin B. Fletcher Professor of Philosophy at Tufts University, as well as Director of the Center for Cognitive Studies at the university, has devoted himself to the understanding of human consciousness and linguisticality.

The ability to use language, Dennett explains, means that human beings can learn, not only from their own experience, but from others, both living and dead. Thus, “human culture itself becomes a profound evolutionary force. That is what gives us an epistemological horizon which is far, far greater than that of any other species. We are the only species that knows who we are, that knows that we have evolved. Our songs, art, books and religious beliefs are all ultimately a product of evolutionary algorithms. Some find that thrilling, others depressing.”

Dennett’s ideas are worth a close look. After all, he boldly accepts what so many other evolutionary scientists deny—that Darwin’s theory means the impossibility of any belief in God. While evolutionists such as the late Stephen J. Gould argued that evolution and religion could be considered as “non-overlapping magisterium,” thus allowing each to operate in separate spheres, Dennett explicitly rejects this argument. He directs specific criticism at evolutionist Michael Ruse, accusing him of “just trying to put the implications of Darwin’s insights into soft focus and to reassure people that there is not as much conflict between the perspective of evolutionary biology and their traditional ways of thinking.”

When it comes to the human soul, Dennett insists that it must be no more than human consciousness operating as a part of our physical bodies. Dennett’s physicalism means that he rejects any concept of the soul as independent of the chemical operations of the brain. As he told Der Spiegel, “The brain is no more wonder tissue than the lungs or the liver. It’s just a tissue.”

Committed to a radical form of naturalistic materialism, Dennett understands belief in God to be nothing more than an artifact of the evolutionary process. The death of God, Dennett explains, “is a very clear consequence” of Darwinism.

On this point, we should at least be thankful that Dennett is more intellectually honest than many of his evolutionary colleagues. He allows that belief in God may be culturally acceptable, but only insofar as this God has nothing to do with our origins or our lives—past, present, or future.

“One has to understand that God’s role has been diminished over the eons,” Dennett instructs. “First, we had God . . . making Adam and making every creature with his hands, plucking the rib from Adam and making Eve from that rib. Then we trade that God in for the God who sets evolution in motion. And then you say you don’t even need that God—the lawgiver—because if we take these ideas from cosmology seriously then there are other places and other laws and life evolves where it can. So now we no longer have God the lawfinder or God the lawgiver, but just God the master of ceremonies. When God is the master of ceremonies and doesn’t actually play any role anymore in the universe, he’s sort of diminished and no longer intervenes in any way.” Put simply, “the job description for God shrinks.”

In his 1995 book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, Dennett began by reciting a Sunday School song he had learned as a child. The song, “Tell Me Why,” asks why the stars shine, why the ivy twines, and why the sky’s so blue. As the song assures, these things are so because God made them so. “This straightforward, sentimental declaration still brings a lump to my throat—so sweet, so innocent, so reassuring a vision of life!” Dennett remembers. Nevertheless, he doesn’t believe that it is true. “The sweet, simple vision of the song, taken literally, is one that most of us have outgrown, however fondly we may recall it. The kindly God who lovingly fashioned each and every one of us (all creatures great and small) and sprinkled the sky with shining stars for our delight—that God is, like Santa Claus, a myth of childhood, not anything a sane, undeluded adult could literally believe in. That God must either be turned into a symbol for something less concrete or abandoned altogether.”

The only concept of God that can survive the emergence of Darwinism is God as an intellectual concept who simply offers a mythopoetic means of appreciating grandeur and beauty.

Theism, the belief in a personal and self-existent God, must go the way of the Dodo bird, he argues. “A faith, like a species, must evolve or go extinct when the environment changes. It is not a gentle process in either case . . . . We preach freedom of religion, but only so far.” He continues: “It is nice to have grizzly bears and wolves living in the wild. They are no longer a menace; we can peacefully coexist, with a little wisdom. The same policy can be discerned in our political tolerance, in religious freedom. You are free to preserve or create any religious creed you wish, so long as it does not become a public menace.”

Well, we have been warned. Dennett clearly understands traditional Christianity to be just the kind of public menace he fears. Nevertheless, he is absolutely certain that he and his cherished theory of evolution will win—and fairly soon. Darwin’s theory of evolution will, he confidently asserts, come to occupy a “secure and untroubled place in the minds—and hearts—of every educated person on the globe.”

Dennett’s excitement about Darwinism goes back to his childhood, when he and his friends would speculate about the existence and effect of a substance they called the “universal acid.” “Universal acid is a liquid so corrosive that it will eat through anything! The problem is: what do you keep it in? It dissolves glass bottles and stainless-steel canisters as readily as paper bags. What would happen if you somehow came upon or created a dollop of universal acid? Would the whole planet eventually be destroyed? What would it leave in its wake? After everything had been transformed by its encounter with universal acid, what would the world look like?”

As an adult, Dennett now seizes upon Darwinism as the very universal acid that had fascinated his imagination as a boy. This universal acid is not a liquid substance, but an intellectual idea.

“Little did I realize that in a few years I would encounter an idea—Darwin’s idea—bearing an unmistakable likeness to universal acid: it eats through just about every traditional concept, and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view, with most of the old landmarks still recognizable, but transformed in fundamental ways.”

Transformed indeed. Dennett understands that every important idea and pattern of thought is instantly transformed if Darwinism is accepted as true. The evolutionary worldview of Darwinism, based in purely materialistic and naturalistic explanations of all phenomena, leaves no room for transcendent meaning, human dignity, morality, or hope. Human beings, along with the rest of the cosmos, are simply the accidental byproducts of vast cosmic forces.

Daniel C. Dennett understands all this, but exults in Darwin’s “dangerous idea.” Indeed, he suggests that he would award Darwin “the gold medal for the best idea anybody ever had.” Remember Dennett the next time you hear the argument that evolution and Christianity are compatible. The basic incompatibility of Darwin’s theory is the one facet of Dennett’s thought we can truly appreciate. Now, if only his evolutionary colleagues would be equally candid.

==============================

**No Adam, No Eve, No Gospel (Christianity Today, 110606)

The historical Adam debate won’t be resolved tomorrow, so stay engaged.

A Christianity Today editorial

Science as we know it grew from pagan, occult, and biblical roots.

Christianity Today likes to emphasize the biblical sources. The story of creation, told in Genesis and elaborated in the New Testament, pictures a rational intelligence creating an orderly and predictable cosmos.

Without that predictability in the natural world, neither Newton nor Einstein would have been possible. There are times, however, when a careful reading of the natural world seems to conflict with our reading of Scripture.

Sometimes, Christian ways of thinking must adjust. Two famous names—Copernicus and Galileo—tell that tale. Other times, Christian thinkers adopt some of what scientific research suggests, but hold firm on key aspects of biblical knowledge. The name B. B. Warfield tells that tale: The Princeton theology professor (d. 1921) taught in the wake of the Darwinian revolution. He and fellow evangelical leaders saw good reasons to believe that humanity’s physical form was descended from other animals. However, two key biblical teachings kept these theologians from eating the whole Darwinian apple.

First, in Darwinian thought, pure randomness was the engine of evolution. But randomness denies the divine Reason (the Logos in the language of John’s Gospel) behind the creative process. Christians must root for intelligence over chance.

Second, Darwinian evolution challenged the belief that human beings were created in the image of God. This doctrine was a hedge against racist theories that would be used to subjugate, exploit, and eradicate undesirable people. Warfield rightly saw the dangers in Darwin, while trying to learn from the biological science of his time.

Now we come to another great moment of tension between Christian readings of Scripture and science. This issue’s cover story, “The Search for the Historical Adam,” reports the claims of recent genetic research that the human race did not emerge from pre-human animals as a single pair, as an “Adam” and an “Eve.” The complexity of the human genome, we are told, requires an original population of around 10,000.

Christians have already drawn the line: there must be an original pair of humans endowed with souls—that is, the spiritual capacity to relate to God in the special way Genesis describes. In 1996, John Paul II stressed Pius XII’s dictum that “if the origin of the human body comes through living matter which existed previously, the spiritual soul is created directly by God.” And institutional statements of faith, such as Wheaton College’s, set limits by affirming that original couple’s existence: “… God directly created Adam and Eve, the historical parents of the entire human race … in his own image, distinct from all other living creatures, and in a state of original righteousness.”

What is at stake?

First, the entire story of what is wrong with the world hinges on the disobedient exercise of the will by the first humans. The problem with the human race is not its dearth of insight but its misshapen will.

Second, the entire story of salvation hinges on the obedience of the Second Adam. The apostle Paul, the earliest Christian writer to interpret Jesus’ work, called Adam “a type of the one who was to come” (Rom. 5:14, ESV), and wrote that “[j]ust as we have borne the image of the man of dust [Adam], we shall also bear the image of the man of heaven [Jesus]” (1 Cor. 15:49, ESV). He elaborated an “Adam Christology” that described a fallen humanity, headed by Adam, and a new, redeemed humanity with Christ as its head.

This understanding, that Christ’s obedience undoes Adam’s disobedience, is not some late development, but is integrated with the earliest interpretations of what God did and is doing in Christ. This conceptual framework is almost impossible without a first human couple.

Hebrew thought offers one clue to resolving this tension: the corporate nature of humanity. Scripture often calls groups of people by the name of their historical head. Israel is an obvious example. So are Canaan and Cush.

At times, Scripture also holds groups of people morally responsible for the actions of some of their members.

Thus, some have suggested—as does John Collins in Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? (Crossway, 2011)—that if both biblical and scientific clues suggest a larger population contemporary with Adam and Eve (Whom did Cain marry? Whom did God protect him from?), we can still conceive of Adam and Eve as leaders of that original population. That suggestion has the virtue of embracing both a prehistoric couple and a prehistoric population.

At this juncture, we counsel patience. We don’t need another fundamentalist reaction against science. We need instead a positive interdisciplinary engagement that recognizes the good will of all involved and that creative thinking takes time. In the long run, it may be the humility of our scholars as much as their technical expertise that will bring us to deeper knowledge of the truth.

==============================

**Francis Collins: Atheist Richard Dawkins Admits Universe’s Fine-Tuning Difficult to Explain (Christian Post, 110621)

Outspoken evangelical geneticist Francis Collins revealed that combative atheist Richard Dawkins admitted to him during a conversation that the most troubling argument for nonbelievers to counter is the fine-tuning of the universe.

“If they (constants in the universe) were set at a value that was just a tiny bit different, one part in a billion, the whole thing wouldn’t work anymore,” said Collins, the director of the National Institutes of Health, during the 31st Annual Christian Scholars’ Conference at Pepperdine University in Malibu, Calif.

These constants regarding the behavior of matter and energy – such as strong and weak nuclear forces, gravity, and the speed of light – have to be precisely right during the Big Bang for life as we know it to exist.

“To get our universe, with all of its potential for complexities or any kind of potential for any kind of life form, everything has to be precisely defined on this knife edge of improbability,” said the world renowned scientist.

“That forces a conclusion. If you are an atheist, either it is just a lucky break and the odds are so remote, or you have to go to this multiverse hypothesis, which says that there must be almost an infinite number of parallel universes that have different values of those constants,” explained Collins to Christian scholars of various disciplines in the audience. “And of course we are here and so we must have won the lottery, we must be in the one where everything worked.”

There are some serious scientists in the world, however, such as English theoretical physicist and cosmologist Stephen Hawking, who believe in the multiverse hypothesis.

But it is “because the alternative is that you have to see the hands of a creator who set the parameters to be just so because the creator was interested in something a little more complicated than random particles,” Collins said.

The NIH director, who came to speak for himself and not as a government official, delivered a thoughtful yet provocative hour-and-a-half lecture last Thursday titled, “Reflections on the Current Tensions Between Science and Faith.” This year, the Christian Scholars’ Conference theme was: “The Path of Discovery: Science, Theology, and the Academy.”

More than 300 scholars from 90 different universities participated in the three-day conference, June 16-18, where they were challenged to discuss and engage with one another on the topic of faith and science. The scholars interacted through 91 paper, panel or performance sessions.

During the keynote presentation, speaker Francis Collins deliberated out loud about a question that the Big Bang theory cannot answer. Although the Big Bang theory explains how the universe started, it can’t explain what happened before that.

Collins said there are unending questions of “what happened before that” with scientific theories, but the only way to satisfactorily answer what happened at the very beginning is if something not limited by time is involved.

“A creator who is not limited by time, doesn’t need to have such a beginning,” Collins stated. “The question doesn’t make any sense if you have a creator outside of time.”

Creation and Evolution

Unlike most evangelicals, Collins said he never struggled between his acceptance of evolution and his Christian faith. When he looks at evolution, he thinks it is part of God’s elegant way of creation.

But 45% of Americans believe that the Earth is less than 10,000 years old. The Young Earth Creationism theory is “very incompatible” with what scientists have learned from physics, chemistry, cosmology, biology, and geology, emphasized Collins, who believes the Earth is over 13 billion years old.

He noted that even though billions of years sound long to humans, if God is outside of time then it might not seem long to God.

Collins also pointed out that when Darwin’s evolution theory was first introduced, there was not unanimous protest from the Church. Many Christians saw that as an explanation to how God created the world.

“God is the author of it all and we just learn something more about the how,” said Collins. “God is an awesome mathematician and physicist … God’s plan included the mechanism of evolution to achieve that, to create this marvelous diversity of living things on our planet.”

His view of evolution being a part of God’s creation plan is called theistic evolution, or another term is biologos. Bio is the Greek word for “life,” while Logos means “word.” So biologos would mean God speaking life into being.

Adam and Eve

Even more controversial than theistic evolution is Collins’ belief that Adam and Eve were not the only people on Earth. Looking at today’s genetic variations, there must have been an ancestral gene pool larger than that of just Adam (Eve, based on a literal reading of Genesis, came from Adam’s ribs and therefore would have the same DNA as Adam), somewhere in the range of 10,000 people.

“I can’t see how you get there by going through a bottleneck of a single individual,” contended Collins about present-day genetic variations. “You have to carry along variation and variation requires a population. This could not happen if you have just one person as the ancestor of all of humanity.”

The geneticist noted that scientists have been able to obtain the DNA of several Neanderthals and they are 99% identical to the human genome, said Collins. Moreover, where there is a region with sequence variation in the genome of Neanderthals, many times geneticists will find the same variation in humans today.

So this is convincing evidence that Neanderthals and human have a relationship and that our founding population was thousands of individuals and not one person, Adam.

“So I think you can preserve the idea of a literal, historical couple (Adam and Eve) as long as you don’t try to say they were the only humans and we are all descended from just them,” contended Collins. “That second part science won’t support.”

The former director of the Human Genome Project said based on genetic research, it is impossible to support the belief that people today all came from only Adam.

Another benefit of accepting that there were thousands of people besides Adam and Eve is being able to answer questions from the Bible like: Where did Cain find his wife? Who was Cain afraid would kill him? How was Cain going to build a city with just his family?

“People in the world are hearing you can’t have both. It has got to be one or the other,” said Collins about choosing between science and creation. “The essential thing is we’re about the truth. A faith that basically asks people to disbelieve facts is not about the truth. If there are aspects about our Christian faith that has gone down that road, it is up to all of us to try to pull that back.

“Look at the facts, look at the truth, and in the process, admire all the more and worship all the more God the creator. But in the nonessential things, let’s not get too worked up about those options about Adam and Eve as long as they’re consistent with the facts.”

For Collins, a key principle he uses to harmonize science and his Christian faith is based on a famous statement by former New York Sen. Patrick Moynihan: “You are entitled to your own opinion, you are not entitled to your own facts.”

“I think we are also rather engaged with that view that when it comes to these issues of science and faith, we are wide open to options and opinions about how it all fits together as long as we recognize there are certain facts that do have to be dealt with,” said Collins. “Facts about the Bible and facts about science.”

Pepperdine University’s annual Christian Scholars’ Conference seeks to bring scholars together from higher education institutions from all academic disciplines to nurture an intellectual and Christian community through scholarly dialogue and collaboration.

==============================

**The Search for the Historical Adam (Christianity Today, 110603)

The center of the evolution debate has shifted from asking whether we came from earlier animals to whether we could have come from one man and one woman.

Richard N. Ostling

Secularist brows furrowed in 2009 when President Obama chose prominent atheist-turned-Christian Francis S. Collins to be the director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH). Under the Los Angeles Times headline “Fit to Head the NIH?,” Skeptic magazine’s Michael Shermer fretted that Collins’s beliefs might somehow corrupt America’s biggest biomedical research agency. In a New York Times piece, atheist Sam Harris was similarly “uncomfortable,” fearing in particular that a Collins administration might “seriously undercut” fields like neuroscience. Jerry Coyne, a University of Chicago expert on evolution, carped that the nominee’s “scary,” “bizarre,” “inane,” and “snake oil” ideas “pollute his science with his faith.”

Nonetheless, Collins won unanimous U.S. Senate confirmation, thanks to sterling achievements in biomedical research and leadership of NIH’s human genome research. Under Collins, this historic effort in 2003 finished mapping the complete sequence of several billion DNA subunits (“bases”) and all of the genes that determine human heredity.

Collins, one of the most eminent scientists ever to identify as an evangelical Christian, staunchly defends Darwinian evolution even as he insists on God as the Creator. And he now stands at the epicenter of a dispute that increasingly agitates fellow believers. At issue: the traditional tenet (as summarized in Wheaton College’s mandatory credo) that “God directly created Adam and Eve, the historical parents of the entire human race.”

Collins’s 2006 bestseller, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief—which so vexed those secularist critics—reported scientific indications that anatomically modern humans emerged from primate ancestors perhaps 100,000 years ago—long before the apparent Genesis time frame—and originated with a population that numbered something like 10,000, not two individuals. Instead of the traditional belief in the specially created man and woman of Eden who were biologically different from all other creatures, Collins mused, might Genesis be presenting “a poetic and powerful allegory” about God endowing humanity with a spiritual and moral nature? “Both options are intellectually tenable,” he concluded.

In a recent pro-evolution book from InterVarsity Press, The Language of Science and Faith, Collins and co-author Karl W. Giberson escalate matters, announcing that “unfortunately” the concepts of Adam and Eve as the literal first couple and the ancestors of all humans simply “do not fit the evidence.”

The Adam account in Genesis has long been subjected to scientific challenges, but “there was a lot of wiggle room in the past. The human genome sequencing took that wiggle room away” during the past decade, said Randall Isaac, executive director of the American Scientific Affiliation (asa), which has been discussing Adam issues for decades. The organization’s 1,600 members, Collins among them, affirm the Bible’s “divine inspiration, trustworthiness, and authority” on “faith and conduct,” though not on scientific concepts.

The unnerving new genetic science was assessed with considerable detail in last September’s issue of the ASA journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. The articles were elaborated versions of papers delivered at the ASA’s 2009 annual meeting at Baylor University, the organization’s first major discussion of the Adam question that included religion scholars as well as scientists.

Two of the Perspectives writers, biblical exegete Daniel C. Harlow and theologian John R. Schneider, teach at Calvin College. As a result of their writings, a personnel panel has been investigating whether they violated the doctrinal standards that the college’s sponsoring Christian Reformed Church requires of faculty. (The investigation follows procedures that were established when Calvin astrophysicist Howard J. Van Till stirred an earlier ruckus over creation—though not Adam and Eve—with his 1986 tome The Fourth Day.) Harlow and Schneider could face discipline from the board of trustees, and revived denominational debate about evolution seems inevitable. Meanwhile, Calvin scheduled 18 lectures on human origins this past academic year.

Giberson, a physics professor at Eastern Nazarene College, downplays the potentially vanishing Adam and Eve as “a secondary or peripheral disagreement that shouldn’t cause us to hurl accusations of infidelity at one another.” He thinks “this will percolate along as an issue and more of the evangelical church will become fine with it, despite Main Street objections. I don’t see this issue splitting the church in some major way.”

However, Michael Cromartie, the evangelicalism expert at Washington’s Ethics and Public Policy Center, sees high stakes, calling the new thinking an “urgent” and “potentially paradigm-shifting” development with “huge theological implications …. How this gets settled is extremely important.”

What May Be at Stake

Foundational confessions of faith from the Protestant Reformation assume a historical Adam, and official Roman Catholicism defined this teaching at the 1546 Council of Trent, in the 1950 encyclical Humani Generis of Pope Pius XII (who cautiously allowed leeway for humanity’s bodily evolution), and in the 1992 Catechism of the Catholic Church. The broader public is intrigued, more so than by many other biblical topics; a 2005 Gallup Poll found that 40% of Americans think the various competing concepts of human origins matter “a great deal.”

So, is the Adam and Eve question destined to become a groundbreaking science-and-Scripture dispute, a 21st-century equivalent of the once disturbing proof that the Earth orbits the sun? The potential is certainly there: the emerging science could be seen to challenge not only what Genesis records about the creation of humanity but the species’s unique status as bearing the “image of God,” Christian doctrine on original sin and the Fall, the genealogy of Jesus in the Gospel of Luke, and, perhaps most significantly, Paul’s teaching that links the historical Adam with redemption through Christ (Rom. 5:12-19; 1 Cor. 15:20-23, 42-49; and his speech in Acts 17).

The rethinking on Adam is an outgrowth of mainstream evolutionary thought that has long been the object of evangelical hostility (though the hostility has always been hotter at the grassroots than among professional scientists). One option, which consistently enjoys support from at least 40% of the general public in Gallup surveys, is “young earth” creationism. As writers with Answers in Genesis, in commenting on recent developments, insisted, “God created the mature, fully functioning creation in six literal days about 6,000 years ago.” If substantiated, this would of course demolish Darwinism because such a brief chronology offers no time for evolutionary processes to occur. Questions about that sort of time frame have provoked renewed defense of young earth creationism in Southern Baptist Convention circles. But even the late James Montgomery Boice, founding chair of the International Council on Biblical Inerrancy, which insisted on a historical Adam, thought various scientific findings make it “hard to believe” in a recent creation.

A second competitor, the “old earth” version of creationism, is far more prevalent among evangelical intellectuals. It basically rejects evolution but affirms science’s longstanding and lopsided support for the planet’s vastly ancient age.

A third alternative is the newer “intelligent design” approach, which deems the Darwinian “natural selection” model of evolutionary theory to be improbable and posits that some designing force lies behind nature, but does not explicitly define this as the God of Judaism and Christianity.

Collins and his colleagues dismiss those three views in favor of “theistic evolution,” which affirms that the biblical God was the creator of all earthly organisms, humanity included, and used as his method the standard evolutionary scenario of gradual natural selection among genetic mutations across eons. A non-random Internet survey of teachers at evangelical seminaries in 2009 showed that 46% accept that concept. Giberson estimates that “the overwhelming number in biology departments at Christian colleges would be fine with this,” though a 2005 survey found that only 27% identified as evolutionary creationists. In a mail survey of ASA scientists last year, 66% of respondents affirmed that “Homo sapiens evolved through natural processes from ancestral forms in common with primates,” while 90% agreed that the Earth is some 4.6 billion years old.

In late 2007, Collins launched the San Diego-based BioLogos Foundation to promote theistic evolution, especially among evangelicals. He sought not only to embrace what he considers to be the best evidence, but also to bolster Christian credibility among people who are knowledgeable about mainstream scientific thinking. This initiative has won endorsements from both scientists and such evangelical figures as authors Os Guinness and Philip Yancey, Books & Culture editor John Wilson, and retiring Gordon College President R. Judson Carlberg. (Collins, who resigned as BioLogos president upon his NIH appointment and was succeeded by Point Loma Nazarene University biologist Darrel Falk, is declining interviews about his new book. Giberson, his co-author, is vice president of BioLogos.)

The Genetic Argument Made Simple

Dennis R. Venema, the BioLogos senior fellow for science and the biology chairman at Trinity Western University, is among the BioLogos writers who are not only advocating theistic evolution but also rethinking Adam. He has presented the relevant genetic research in Perspectives and in postings on the BioLogos website that provoked lively feedback. The argument is necessarily technical, studded with genetic charts and terms like telomeres, alleles, homology, syntenic locations, single nucleotide polymorphisms, and linkage disequilibrium. But the basic claims are understandable by non-experts.

The first claim concerns the old man-from-monkeys fuss as refined by new research on the genetic makeup of other animals, especially chimpanzees. Venema writes that the chimp genome (total genetic heredity encoded in DNA), which was fully mapped by 2005, displays “near identity” with the human genome as detailed by Collins’s team, with a 95 to 99% match depending on what factors are included. The detailed analysis involves sequences of genes and the makeup of individual genes. But especially important are the locations of “pseudogenes” that are apparently no longer active. The cumulative evidence, Venema concludes, shows that “humans are not biologically independent, de novo creations, but share common ancestry” with prior primate species. (Many biologists estimate that the biological branches separated from that common ancestor some 5 or 6 million years ago.)

Venema has engaged in vigorous online debate about this with biochemist Fazale Rana, the vice president for research with Reasons to Believe, a ministry that champions old earth creationism. Rana questions the 95 and 99% figures, but asserts that in any case common sense tells us “these types of genetic comparisons are meaningless” because they do not explain the “fundamental biological and behavioral differences” between chimps and humans. Rana also says close genetic similarity does not require shared ancestry.

The second—and perhaps more troublesome—issue treated by Venema involves “population genomics.” Over the past decade, researchers have attempted to use the genetic diversity within modern humans to estimate primordial population sizes. According to a consensus drawn from three independent avenues of research, he states, the history of human ancestry involved a population “bottleneck” around 150,000 years ago—and from this tiny group of hominids came everyone living today. But the size of the group was far larger than a lonely couple: it consisted of several thousand individuals at minimum, say the geneticists. Had humanity begun with only two individuals, without millions of years for development, says an ASA paper, it would have required God’s miraculous intervention to increase the genetic diversity to what is observable today. A BioLogos paper by Venema and Falk declares it more flatly: The human population, they say, “was definitely never as small as two …. Our species diverged as a population. The data are absolutely clear on that.”

But caution is in order, argues Covenant Theological Seminary Old Testament scholar C. John Collins (no relation to Francis), another Perspectives author. He spells out a conservative response in the timely new Crossway title Did Adam and Eve Really Exist? On the bottleneck headcounts, he cites 2006 research from Canada, France, and Japan that indicates ambiguity about the rate of changes in genetic diversity that have been used thus far to calculate primordial population sizes. Genetic theorizing is rapidly—shall we say—evolving.

And, like Rana, John Collins remarks that “when you start talking about what it means to be human, much more than molecular biology is involved.” Whatever the genetic match, humanity’s communication and tool-making are obviously incomparably different from chimpanzee achievements; neither do primates worship or create masterworks of art and music. Darwin himself recognized this mysterious gap, which is described poetically in Psalm 8.

BioLogos not only promotes the current scientific consensus on human origins, but ways in which Scripture can be reinterpreted to accord with evolutionary theory. Its staff biblical expert is Peter Enns, whose interpretation of the Old Testament led to suspension and eventual departure from Westminster Theological Seminary in 2008 (though the Adam-and-Eve question was not at issue in that case). To Enns, a literal Adam as a special creation without evolutionary forebears is “at odds with everything else we know about the past from the natural sciences and cultural remains.” As he reads the early chapters of Genesis, he says, “The Bible itself invites a symbolic reading by using cosmic battle imagery and by drawing parallels between Adam and Israel.”

The New Testament passages are different, he allows. Enns has little doubt that Paul indeed thought Adam was “a real person.” But Enns suggests that the apostle was reflecting beliefs about human origins that were common among the ancients. After scanning various interpretations of Genesis, Enns joins those who see the Genesis passages on Adam as “a story of Israelite origins,” not the origin of all humanity, in which case there is no essential conflict with evolutionary theory.

Another BioLogos writer, Denis Lamoureux of the University of Alberta, the author of Evolutionary Creation (2008), thinks that “Adam never existed, and this fact has no impact whatsoever on the foundational beliefs of Christianity.” In his view, “the Holy Spirit descended to the level of the biblical author of Genesis 1 and used his incidental ancient science regarding biological origins” to reveal “infallible messages of faith about the human spiritual condition.” As with Enns, he sees Paul’s epistles as reflecting the common biological understandings of that era. (Articles on the BioLogos website typically include a disclaimer that the views are the writers’ and not necessarily the foundation’s, but they are generally consistent on evolution and Adam.)

In yet another BioLogos article, Tremper Longman III of Westmont College admits, “I have not resolved this issue in my own mind except to say that there is nothing that insists on a literal understanding of Adam in a passage [Gen. 1-3] so filled with obvious figurative description.” He is similarly open-minded on the question of Paul’s epistles because “it is possible, even natural, to make an analogy between a literary figure and a historical one.” After BioLogos promoted Longman’s views in a video last year, Reformed Theological Seminary ended Longman’s role as an adjunct faculty member.

That dismissal was overshadowed at the seminary by a related dustup over noted Old Testament scholar Bruce Waltke. The administration abruptly accepted his offer of resignation due to a BioLogos video in which Waltke remarked that “if the data is overwhelming in favor of evolution, to deny that reality will make us a cult.” Waltke began teaching at Knox Theological Seminary this year.

Though that dispute concerned theistic evolution, not the historical Adam, Waltke is open to the new thinking. In an interview, the former president of the Evangelical Theological Society affirmed the “inerrancy of the Bible, but not of interpretations.” He sees Adam and Eve as historical individuals. But if genetics produces the conclusion that “Scripture has a collectivity represented as an individual, that doesn’t bother me,” he said. “We have to go with the scientific evidence. I don’t think we can ignore it. I have full confidence in Scripture, but it does not represent what science represents.” Waltke insists, however, that if a collective interpretation of Adam is established eventually, then fidelity to the Bible still requires “an origination point” with “a historical reality of man rebelling against God.”

The Bible without an Original Pair

The embattled professors at Calvin mull more adventuresome theological possibilities, although their Perspectives articles were generally couched as what-if-this-pans-out speculations. For instance, Schneider, who sees conservative Protestantism as being on “the brink of crisis” on this topic, wrote that the evidence “seems to discredit” the Fall from original righteousness as a historical event. Vices we associate with consequences of the Fall and original sin, such as self-serving behavior, exist in lower primates and would have been passed on via evolution to humans. Thus Eden “cannot be a literal description of how things really were in the primal human past.”

Harlow proposed that understandings of the Fall may need to be “reformulated” and the church must be willing to “decouple original sin from the notion that all humans descended from a single pair.” In his view, the early chapters of Genesis should probably be regarded as “imaginative portrayals of an actual epoch.” Whether or not Adam was historical, he asserted, is “not central to biblical theology.” Paul and Luke may have thought Adam was a literal man because they had no reason not to, he explained. But “we have many reasons” to interpret Adam as a literary figure.

Before the genetics eruptions, the scholarship that undermined literal readings of the Genesis Adam was based largely on archaeological remains and fossils. Specialists projected that proto-humans appeared as early as 200,000 years ago, based on evidence of primitive stone tools. The Upper Paleolithic era (which began around 40,000 years ago) was a notable advance culturally, with more sophisticated tools and weaponry, higher population densities, and art. To John Stott and others, Genesis chapter 4 appears to root Adam’s son Cain in that time frame—referencing the introduction of settled agriculture, music, and the forging of bronze and iron. However, Stott added, the ancient evidence is “anatomical rather than behavioral,” so it’s hard to say just when hominids became biblical humans. Hard textual evidence for humanity’s hallmark of complex language communication was necessarily lacking until writing was invented a mere several thousand years ago.

Those who say humanity arose from a sizable population often claim this understanding accords with Genesis itself: It tells of Cain’s marriage (Did he wed his own sister? Where did she come from?), his fearfulness over “whoever finds me” when he left Eden for Nod, and the reference to his building of a “city.” On that, John Collins suggests that Genesis is purposely using anachronisms, describing prehistoric times in terms that readers in a much later epoch would be familiar with. In his view, that does not detract from historicity.

The Adam issue is hardly new. In 1940, C. S. Lewis wrote in The Problem of Pain that “for long centuries, God perfected the animal form which was to become the vehicle of humanity and the image of himself.” Lewis thought that in the process God eventually caused the new divine consciousness to descend upon this organism, but “we do not know how many of these creatures God made, nor how long they continued in the Paradisal state.”

A 1967 InterVarsity Press commentary on Genesis by British evangelical Derek Kidner proposed a “tentative” concept that could fit with geneticists’ theory of human origination with a larger population. He thought it conceivable that “pre-Adamites” and “Adamites” from the same genetic stock existed simultaneously but with “no natural bridge from animal to man.” After God conferred his image upon Adam, he did the same with the others who then existed, “to bring them into the same realm of being.” In Kidner’s view, Adam’s “headship of humanity extended, if that was the case, outwards to his contemporaries as well as onwards to his offspring, and his disobedience disinherited both alike.”

An ASA paper likewise observes that some Christians who understand Adam and Eve as symbols or allegories suppose that Genesis describes what happened to a particular grouping of humans during the “bottleneck” period, so that “maybe God transformed everyone in this group into the first biblical humans.” The ASA notes another variant in which humanity’s creation and fall happened within different groups over time, as God added moral responsibilities and spiritual revelations.

In his book-length conservative rejoinder to the new interpretations, John Collins warns against “pure literalism” in reading Genesis, arguing that the book “intends to use imaginative description to tell us of actual events.” This is essentially what J. I. Packer contended in his 1958 classic, ‘Fundamentalism’ and the Word of God. But Collins comments that if Adam and Eve lacked “an actual existence we nullify so many things in the Bible it results in a different story.” To him, the pivotal point is that “however God produced the bodies of the first human beings, it wasn’t a purely natural process.” If genetics eventually forces reconsideration, Collins remarks, he could perhaps reconceive of Adam and Eve as “the king and queen of a larger population” and thereby preserve Genesis’ historicity.

If Paul is Wrong on History

Last November, BioLogos held a workshop at New York City’s Harvard Club where church leaders and Christians in science deliberated on evolution, creation, and Adam. The meeting issued an accord that endorsed theistic evolution and affirmed “without reservation both the authority of the Bible and the integrity of science” as two paths of divine revelation. The paper declared that “several options” can achieve a synthesis between Scripture and science, “including some which involve a historical couple, Adam and Eve.” Participants in the discussions that produced the statement included Francis Collins, Cromartie, Enns, Falk, Giberson, Guinness, Isaac, and Yancey.

Another participant, much-respected local pastor Tim Keller, offered a workshop paper laying out in irenic but firm terms a conservative stance on Paul’s view of the first humans. “[Paul] most definitely wanted to teach us that Adam and Eve were real historical figures. When you refuse to take a biblical author literally when he clearly wants you to do so, you have moved away from the traditional understanding of the biblical authority,” Keller wrote. “If Adam doesn’t exist, Paul’s whole argument—that both sin and grace work ‘covenantally’—falls apart. You can’t say that ‘Paul was a man of his time’ but we can accept his basic teaching about Adam. If you don’t believe what he believes about Adam, you are denying the core of Paul’s teaching.”

Back when genetics played little part in Adam disputes, physicist John A. Bloom, director of Biola University’s science and religion program, wrote that if there was merely a population of pre-Adamic hominids that “collectively evolved into modern man, then the theological foundation for the nuclear family, sin and death appears to be eroded. The credibility of the Bible when it speaks on these issues seems to be damaged: If it does not correctly explain the origin of a problem, why should one trust its solutions?”

South Carolina pastor Richard Phillips, a blogger with the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals and chair of the Philadelphia Conference on Reformed Theology, sees serious doctrinal danger if the historical Adam disappears. “Can the Bible’s theology be true if the historical events on which the theology is based are false?” he asks. If science trumps Scripture, what does this mean for the virgin birth of Jesus, or his miracles, or his resurrection? “The hermeneutics behind theistic evolution are a Trojan horse that, once inside our gates, must cause the entire fortress of Christian belief to fall.”

What next with Adam and Eve? “It seems urgent that the best people stop trading emails and get together for a real meeting in the same room,” Cromartie said. He wants leading evangelical thinkers in science and Scripture to jointly work out an accord, because otherwise this problem “could produce a huge split right through the heart of conservative, orthodox, historic Christianity.”

==============================

**Books of the Year: Two new books are important responses to the rapidly growing promotion of theistic- or, more properly, deistic-evolution (World Magazine, 110702)

Marvin Olasky

A man or a myth?

In Matthew 19:4-6 and Mark 10:6, Jesus refers to the creation of Adam and Eve as if they were real historical events.

In chapter 3 of his Gospel, Luke’s genealogy assigns a father to everyone except Adam, whom Luke calls “the son of God.”

In Acts 17:26, speaking before a very tough crowd, the Athenian Areopagus, Paul says, “From one man He made all the nations.”

In 1 Corinthians 15:22 Paul similarly treats Adam as an actual person and parallels him to Jesus: “As in Adam all die, so in Christ all will be made alive.”

==============================

**Darwin matters: The influence of evolutionary thinking reaches far beyond biology (World Magazine, 110702)

Marvin Olasky

We could run through many more areas. Daniel Dennett in Darwin’s Dangerous Idea hit it right: Darwin created a “universal acid” that eats through any “meaning coming from on high.”

==============================

**Creation vs. Evolution – The New Shape of the Debate (Christian Post, 110202)

By R. Albert Mohler, Jr.

The debate over Darwinism rages on, with almost every week bringing a new salvo in the Great Controversy. The reason for this is simple and straightforward – naturalistic evolution is the great intellectual rival to Christianity in the Western world. It is the creation myth of the secular elites and their intellectual weapon of choice in public debate.

In some sense, this has been true ever since Darwin. When Charles Darwin developed and published his theory of natural selection, the most obvious question to appear to informed minds was this: Can the theory of evolution be reconciled with the Christian faith?

The emergence of evolution as a theory of origins and the existence of life forms presented a clear challenge to the account of creation offered within the Bible, especially in the opening chapters of Genesis. At face value, these accounts seem irreconcilable.

There were a good many intrepid and honest souls in the nineteenth century who understood the reality that, if evolution is true, the Bible must be radically reinterpreted. Others went further and, like the New Atheists in our time, seized upon evolution as an intellectual weapon to be used against Christianity.

There were others who attempted to mediate between evolution and Christianity. In the most common form of the argument, they asserted that the Bible tells the story of the who and the why of creation, but not the how. The how was left to empirical science and its theory of evolution.

In more recent years, this argument has been made from the evolutionary side of the argument by the late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University, who proposed that the worlds of science and religious faith were completely separate, constituting “non-overlapping magisteria.” In effect, he argued that religion and science cannot conflict, since they do not address the same questions.

The problem with this argument is obvious: Darwinism and Genesis do clearly overlap. The Bible does not merely speak of the who and the why. It also makes explicit claims concerning the how. Likewise, even a cursory review of the evolutionary literature indicates that evolutionary scientists routinely make assertions concerning the who and why questions. It is just not intellectually honest to argue that evolutionary theory deals only with the mechanisms of the existence of the Cosmos and that the Bible deals only with the meaning of creation.

Another approach had been taken by some Christian theologians in the nineteenth century. In their own way, even some among the honored and orthodox “Princeton Theologians” attempted to argue that there was no necessary conflict between Genesis and Darwin. They were so convinced of the power of empirical science and of the authority of Scripture that they were absolutely sure that the progress of science would eventually prove the truthfulness of the Bible.

What these theologians did not recognize was the naturalistic bent of modern science. The framers of modern evolutionary theory did not move toward an acknowledgment of divine causality. To the contrary, Darwin’s central defenders today oppose even the idea known as “Intelligent Design.” Their worldview is that of a sterile box filled only with naturalistic precepts.

From the beginning of this conflict, there have been those who have attempted some form of accommodation with Darwinism. In its most common form, this amounts to some version of “theistic evolution” – the idea that the evolutionary process is guided by God in order to accomplish his divine purposes.

Given the stakes in this public controversy, the attractiveness of theistic evolution becomes clear. The creation of a middle ground between Christianity and evolution would resolve a great cultural and intellectual conflict. Yet, in the process of attempting to negotiate this new middle ground, it is the Bible and the entirety of Christian theology that gives way, not evolutionary theory. Theistic evolution is a biblical and theological disaster.

The mainstream doctrine of evolution held by the scientific establishment and tenaciously defended by its advocates does not even allow for the possibility of a divinely implanted meaning in the Cosmos, much less for any divine guidance of the evolutionary process. There has been an unrelenting push of evolutionary theory deeper and deeper into purely naturalistic assumptions and an ever-increasing hostility to Christian truth claims.

On the other side of the equation, the injury to Christian convictions is incalculable. At the very least, the acceptance of evolutionary theory requires that the first two chapters of Genesis be read merely as a literary rendering that offers no historical data. But, of course, the injury does not end there.

If evolution is true, then the entire narrative of the Bible has to be revised and reinterpreted. The evolutionary account is not only incompatible with any historical affirmation of Genesis, but it is also incompatible with the claim that all humanity is descended from Adam and the claim that in Adam all humanity fell into sin and guilt. The Bible’s account of the Fall and its consequences is utterly incompatible with evolutionary theory. The third chapter of Genesis is as problematic for evolutionary theory as the first two.

The naturalistic evolutionists are now pressing their case in moral as well as intellectual terms. Increasingly, they are arguing that a refusal to accept evolution represents a thought crime of sorts. They are using all the tools and arguments at their disposal to discredit any denial of evolution and to marginalize voices who question the dogma of Darwinism. They are working hard to establish unquestioned belief in evolution as the only right-minded and publicly acceptable position. They have already succeeded among the intellectual elites. Their main project now is the projection of this victory throughout popular culture.

Among the theistic evolutionists, the issues are becoming clearer almost every day that passes. Proponents of theistic evolution are now engaged in the public rejection of biblical inerrancy – with some calling the affirmation of the Bible’s inerrancy as an intellectual disaster and “intellectual cul-de-sac.” Others now openly assert that we must forfeit belief in an historical Adam, an historical Fall, and a universal Flood.

Thus, the vise of evolutionary theory is now revealing the fault lines of the current debate. There can be no question but that the authority of the Bible and the truthfulness of the Gospel are now clearly at stake. The New Testament clearly establishes the Gospel of Jesus Christ upon the foundation of the Bible’s account of creation. If there was no historical Adam and no historical Fall, the Gospel is no longer understood in biblical terms.

This is the new shape of the debate over evolution. We now face the undeniable truth that the most basic and fundamental questions of biblical authority and gospel integrity are at stake. Are you ready for this debate?

==============================

**Study: High School Teachers Influence Students' Evolution, Creationist Views (Christian Post, 090502)

What college students learned from their biology teachers in high school influences whether they accept evolution or creationist views, according to a recent study by professors at the University of Minnesota.

University students whose high school biology class covered creationism - in some cases alongside evolution - were more likely to accept creationist views upon entering college, the study found. Those whose high school biology teachers taught evolution but not creationism were more likely to accept evolution in college.

The study, "Rejecting Darwin: The Occurrence & Impact of Creationism in High School Biology Classrooms," is published in the May issue of BioScience, the journal of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (AIBS).

Co-authors Randy Moore and Sehoya Cotner, professors at the University's College of Biological Science, surveyed 1,000 students enrolled in introductory biology classes at the University of Minnesota to examine whether biology majors were more likely than non-majors to encounter evolution and/or creationist views in their high school biology classes. They also wanted to find out how the inclusion of evolution and/or creationism in those classes affect students' views on the subject when they enter college.

Respondents were asked state their opinions on several statements dealing with evolution and creationism, including whether humans are the product of evolutionary processes that have occurred over millions of years and whether the theory of evolution cannot be correct since it disagrees with the Biblical account of creation. The statements were borrowed from an instrument called the "Measure of the Acceptance of the Theory of Evolution."

Results showed that regardless of their major, University students shared similar views on evolution and creationism.

Around two-thirds of respondents said high school biology class included evolution and not creationism while only 1 to 2 percent has classes that covered creationism and not evolution. About 6 to 13 percent said their teachers did not cover either evolution or creationism. But 29 percent of majors and 21 percent of non-majors said their high school biology class covered both evolution and creationism.

The study found that the material covered during the students' high school biology class affected their views on evolution and creationism.

For example, 72 to 78 percent of students exposed to evolution only agreed that it is scientifically valid while 57 to 59 percent of students who were exposed to creationism agreed that evolution can be validated.

"I've long known that many biology teachers teach creationism, but was surprised to learn they have such a strong impact," says Moore, professor of biology and lead author of the study.

For nearly 30 years, Moore has taught biology based on evolution as the subject's unifying theme. However, he strongly opposes the teaching of creationism in science classes, saying it goes against science and the law.

"It's unfortunate that so many teachers think their religious beliefs are science," says Moore. "Teachers who don't teach evolution deny students the understanding of one of the greatest principles in history."

Moore was a founding member of the Minnesota Citizens for Science Education, a grassroots organization that defends the teaching of evolution in local schools. Last Fall, he was named the winner of the National Association of Biology Teachers' 2008 Evolution Education Award, which was co-sponsored by AIBS.

Moore and Cotner, an associate professor of biology, have discussed their research on a radio talk show led by Minnesota Atheists.

According to a news release on the study, the authors are interested in working with high school biology teachers - and particularly with college students who plan to teach biology - to improve their understanding and teaching of evolution.

The study comes a month after the Texas Board of Education adopted new standards that require science teachers to encourage students to "critique" and examine "all sides" of scientific theories. The new science curriculum standards will take effect with the 2010-2011 school year.

==============================

**Missing Link Still Missing, Say ‘Ida’ Skeptics (Christian Post, 090521)

A 47-million-year-old fossil is being touted as “groundbreaking discovery” that “fills in a critical gap in human and primate evolution.”

“The fossil’s remarkable state of preservation allows an unprecedented glimpse into early human evolution,” say producers of “The Link,” a documentary set to premiere next Monday that details the discovery and significance of the fossil.

“[I]t represents the moment before anthropoid primates – the group that would later evolve into humans, apes and monkeys – began to split from lemurs and other prosimian primates,” they add.

But many experts say the discovery of the 47 million-year-old cat-sized creature found in Germany is far from the breakthrough that it’s believed to be.

Though they’ve praised the discovery for the level of detail it provided – as it is about 95 percent complete, including even fingertips with nails, gut contents, and hair – experts say the creature is not close to the ancestral line of monkeys, let alone people.

And that goes double for Young Earth Creationists, who believe God created everything as it appears today and did so over the span of six 24-hour days.

They say claims that a “missing link” has been found or a “critical gap” in evolution has been filled only prove one thing – that there still are missing links and critical gaps up to that point and thereafter as such discoveries have skeptics even among the scientific community.

“Evolutionists only open up about the lack of fossil missing links once a new one is found,” notes Answers in Genesis, a self-described apologetics ministry that believes in Young Earth Creationism.

“[T]he best ‘missing links’ evolutionists can come up with are strikingly similar to organisms we see today, usually with the exception of minor, controversial, and inferred anatomical differences,” the ministry wrote Tuesday on its website.

“If evolution were true, there would be real transitional forms,” it argued.

The ministry described much of the excitement over the fossil, dubbed “Ida,” as simply the result of a well-coordinated public relations effort to promote the upcoming documentary, “The Link,” and a new book of the same name.

The documentary will air on the History Channel in the United States as “The Link” on May 25 and on BBC One in the United Kingdom as “Uncovering Our Earliest Ancestor: The Link” on May 26.

Formally identified as “Darwinius masillae,” in honor of Charles Darwin, the fossil was discovered more than two decades ago in Messel Pit, Germany, and didn’t surface until Jorn Hurum from the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum uncovered it through a chance encounter with a fossil dealer in Hambur.

“Ida” is the most complete primate fossil that has ever been found and will be on display in the “Extreme Mammals” exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.

==============================

**Evolution and Christianity Impossible to Reconcile, Says Evangelical Theologian (Christian Post, 090215)

A widely respected evangelical Christian theologian said that while some Christians try to reconcile evolution with their faith, Christianity and Darwinian evolution are incompatible.

“If you understand Christianity or even Theism – the belief of a sovereign creator God – and evolutionary theory in its dominant form , I find it impossible to reconcile the two,” Dr. R. Albert Mohler Jr., president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, said on his radio program Thursday, the 200th birthday anniversary of Charles Darwin.

While the Bible doesn’t explain all the mechanisms God used to create the world, it gives believers many non-negotiables about what that creation is, who is behind it, and for what purpose it was created, said Mohler on “The Albert Mohler Program”.

The seminary head went on to explain how the “originating mechanism of creation” is where theism runs right into collision with where modern evolutionary theory is.

Whereas the Biblical account of creation accepts the role of a Creator, the theory of evolution “suggests that natural selection is indeed the mechanism and that it is entirely natural and in no case supernatural,” said the theologian.

“There is no way for God to intervene in the process and for it to remain natural,” he asserted.

Adding to the debate amid bicentenary celebrations of Darwin’s birth, the Vatican also weighed in on the topic of evolution but claimed that the theory of the late evolutionary biologist is compatible with Christianity.

Archbishop Gianfranco Ravasi, head of the Pontifical Council for Culture, said last week that the idea of evolution could be traced to St. Augustine and St. Thomas Aquinas, according to the Telegraph in London. Both theologians had observed that big fish eat smaller fish and that forms of life had been transformed slowly over time.

The Catholic Church accepts theistic evolution, which asserts that evolution occurred but was a process created and planned by God.

Although Mohler said he rejected evolution as a way to explain the origin of all things, he acknowledged that there are changes in animals that take place over time.

“No Conservative Christian should deny there is a process of change that is evident within the animal kingdom. And there is even a process of natural selection that appears at least to be natural,” he said, adding all one has to do is look at a herd of cattle to find evidence of adaptation and a competition of genes.

However, he firmly rejected theistic evolution.

“God was not merely fashioning the creation of what was already pre-existent, nor was He merely working with a process in order to guide it in some generalized way, nor was He waiting to see how it would turn out,” said Mohler.

“As Genesis indicates, He created the world in order that the world might be the theater of His glory for the demonstration of the Gospel of Christ and He created human beings as the only beings made in His image, as His covenant partner,” the Protestant theologian explained.

A Gallup poll released on Feb. 11 found that 200 years after Darwin most Americans still don’t believe in evolution, with only 4 out of 10 Americans saying they accepted the theory.

“I believe the reason why they cannot believe in evolution is because when they look in the mirror they cannot see an accident,” remarked Mohler.

Next month, the Vatican will include discussion of intelligent design in a conference marking the 150th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s “On the Origin of Species,” according to an announcement Tuesday.

Intelligent design suggests that life is too complex to have developed through evolution alone, and that a higher power has had a hand in changes among species over time.

==============================

**’Who’s Who’ list challenging Darwin grows: 100 more of the world’s top scientists express skepticism of theory (WorldNetDaily, 070211)

The list truly is a “Who’s Who” of prominent scientists in the world today, and now another 100 ranking leaders have added their signatures to a challenge to Darwin’s theory of evolution.

It’s for those who have reached the epitome of their fields, but still are questioning the validity of the Darwinian philosophy and want to put their concerns in writing.

The names include top scientists as MIT, UCLA, Ohio State, University of Washington, University of Pennsylvania, University of Georgia, Harvard, the College of Judea and Samaria, Johns Hopkins, Texas A&M, Duke, University of Peruglia in Italy, the British Museum and others.

“Darwinism is a trivial idea that has been elevated to the status of the scientific theory that governs modern biology,” said Michael Egnor, a professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook, and an award-winning brain surgeon who was picked as one of New York’s top doctors by “New York Magazine.”

The list includes representatives from the studies of chemistry, biology, dendrology, genetics, molecular biology, organic synthesis, quantum chemistry, bacteriology, astrophysics, mathematics, geriatrics, entomology, economics, biochemistry, physics, electrochemistry, nuclear engineering and is available at www.dissentfromdarwin.org. It’s maintained by the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture.

The list represents the most educated people in the world from all branches of science with one thing on common – agreement with the following statement: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.”

“We know intuitively that Darwinism can accomplish some things but not others,” said Egnor, who has signed the statement. “The question is what is that boundary? Does the information content in living things exceed that boundary? Darwinists have never faced those questions. They’ve never asked scientifically, can random mutation and natural selection generate the information content in living things.”

John West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture, said more scientists than ever before are “standing up and saying that it is time to rethink Darwin’s theory of evolution in light of new scientific evidence that shows the theory is inadequate.”

“Darwinists are busy making up holidays to turn Charles Darwin into a saint, even as the evidence supporting his theory crumbles and more and more scientific challenges to it emerge,” West said.

The list of signatories also includes member scientists from National Academies of Science in Russia, Czech Republic, Hungary, India (Hindustan), Nigeria, Poland and the U.S.

Many of the signers are professors or researchers at major universities and international research institutions such as Cambridge University, Moscow State University, Chitose Institute of Science & Technology in Japan, Ben-Gurion University in Israel.

The organization assembling the list said “the public has been assured that all known evidence supports Darwinism and that virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true. Public TV programs, educational policy statements, and science textbooks have asserted that Darwin’s theory of evolution fully explains the complexity of living things.”

However, the documentation actually reveals that in recent decades, “new scientific evidence from many scientific disciplines such as cosmology, physics, biology, ‘artificial intelligence’ research, and others have caused scientists to begin questioning Darwinism’s central tenet of natural selection and studying the evidence supporting it in greater detail.”

“The scientists on this list dispute the first claim and stand as living testimony in contradiction to the second,” the website says. The list was launched in 2001.

The list is for scientists who have a Ph.D in engineering, mathematics, computer science, biology, chemistry or one of the other natural sciences who agree with the statement on Darwin, officials said.

There’s a separate location called www.DoctorsDoubtingDarwin.com for medical doctors who have similar concerns.

Members of the Discovery Institute submit articles and analyses for dialogue through seminars, conferences and debates, and they produce reports, articles, books, congressional testimony and films to spread the Institute’s ideas.

“The point of view Discovery brings to its work includes a belief in God-given reason and the permanency of human nature; the principles of representative democracy and public service expounded by the American Founders; free market economics domestically and internationally; the social requirement to balance personal liberty with responsibility; the spirit of voluntarism crucial to civil society; the continuing validity of American international leadership; and the potential of science and technology to promote an improved future for individuals, families and communities,” the group said.

==============================

** ‘Darwin’s Deadly Legacy’ Gives Shocking Look at Social Impact (Christian Post, 060825)

Christian experts will be unraveling the truth about Darwinism in a television special airing this weekend. “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy” will give a shocking look at the historical impact of the theory that has been in school books for generations.

“We’re reaping the consequences, right now in this culture, of generations that have been taken through a public education system and taught a Darwinian view, taught that you can explain life by natural processes; and therefore, ultimately, your morality is whatever you want to make it to be. That’s really Darwin’s legacy,” said Ken Ham, president and CEO of Answers in Genesis, in the documentary.

Amid an ongoing controversy over teaching the theory of intelligent design in the classroom alongside evolution, bestselling authors have given “mounting” evidence against the theory that has shaped people’s perceptions and beliefs about life’s origin.

Ann Coulter, author of New York Time bestseller Godless, said Darwinism is popular “because it allows atheists not to have to explain why we’re here.”

“We keep hearing that there are gaps in the theory [of evolution]. The whole theory is a gap,” she said.

One of the shocking connections the documentary presents is how natural selection, or “survival of the fittest,” was a “guiding idea” for Hitler and the Nazis.

Dr. D. James Kennedy, senior pastor of Coral Ridge Presbyterian Church, simply put it, “No Darwin, no Hitler.”

Elaborating on that connection, Ham stated that Hitler used evolution to justify what he did with the Jews or “cleaning up the gene pool,” as the experts called it.

Denouncing Coral Ridge Ministries for making such a link, Anti-Defamation League called it “twisted.” The ADL released a statement on Tuesday denouncing the ministry “for misleading Dr. Francis Collins, the director of the National Human Genome Research Institute for the NIH, and wrongfully using him as part of its twisted documentary, ‘Darwin’s Deadly Legacy,’ further saying that Collins had “no knowledge that Coral Ridge Ministries was planning a TV special on Darwin and Hitler.”

Coral Ridge, however, stated that Collins was informed that he was being interviewed for a program that would address the adverse social consequences of Darwin and that he was asked specifically about the Darwin-Hitler connection. Collins had responded during the interview that he did not agree with that view. Additionally, Collins also signed a Talent Release giving the ministry the right to use his interview “without limitation in all perpetuity.”

Nevertheless, both parties reached an understanding and agreed to remove Collins from all future airings of the documentary.

In any case, “Darwinism gets humans wrong,” as Chuck Colson, founder of Prison Fellowship, had stated in a daily column. And Coral Ridge plans to present evidence “that Darwin had it wrong on the origin of life.”

The 60-minute special will feature Coulter; Richard Weikart, author of From Darwin to Hitler; Lee Strobel, author of The Case for a Creator; Jonathan Wells, author of Icons of Evolution; and other experts.

==============================

**Darwin smacked in new U.S. poll: Whopping 69% of Americans want alternate theories in classroom (WorldNetDaily, 060307)

A new poll shows 69% of Americans believe public school teachers should present both the evidence for and against Darwinian evolution.

The Zogby International survey indicated only 21% think biology teachers should teach only Darwin’s theory of evolution and the scientific evidence that supports it.

A majority of Americans from every sub-group were at least twice as likely to prefer this approach to science education, the Zogby study showed.

About 88% of Americans 18-29 years old were in support, along with 73% of Republicans and 74% of independent voters.

Others who strongly support teaching the strengths and weaknesses of evolutionary theory include African-Americans (69%), 35-54 year-olds (70%) and Democrats (60%).

Casey Luskin, program officer for public policy and legal affairs with Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture said while his group does not favor mandating the teaching of intelligent design, “we do think it is constitutional for teachers to discuss it precisely because the theory is based upon scientific evidence not religious premises.”

The Seattle-based Discovery Institute is the leading promoter of the theory of Intelligent Design, which has been at the center of challenges in federal court over the teaching of evolution in public school classes. Advocates say it draws on recent discoveries in physics, biochemistry and related disciplines that indicate some features of the natural world are best explained as the product of an intelligent cause rather than an undirected process such as natural selection.

“The public strongly agrees that students should be permitted to learn about such evidence,” Luskin said.

The Discovery Institute noted Americans also support students learning about evidence for intelligent design alongside evolution in biology class – 77%.

Just over half – 51% – agree strongly with that. Only 19% disagree.

As WorldNetDaily reported, more than 500 scientists with doctoral degrees have signed a statement expressing skepticism about Darwin’s theory of evolution.

The statement, which includes endorsement by members of the prestigious U.S. National Academy of Sciences and Russian Academy of Sciences, was first published by the Discovery Institute in 2001 to challenge statements about Darwinian evolution made in promoting PBS’s “Evolution” series. The PBS promotion claimed “virtually every scientist in the world believes the theory to be true.”

==============================

**Q & A: What is Intelligent Design? (Christian Post, 050511)

A national debate has hit the roof over how evolution should be taught in the state’s public schools

Here are some often asked questions and answers about Intelligent Design:

What is Intelligent Design?

Intelligent design is the theory that the complexity and organization of life are evidence of the living things having been designed, calling on an intelligent creator or designer that may be responsible for their complexity.

Where was the theory originated?

It comes from prehistoric design argument expounded by British theologian William Paley in the 19th century using the analogy of the watchmaker – “just as we infer a watchmaker from the complex workings of a pocket watch, we must infer a creator of the universe from the complex systems of the natural order.”

The advocates of intelligent design claim that while Paley’s argument was based on Christian God, their perspective is the product of scientific discovery, which has left behind some profound and fundamental phenomena unexplained. Majority of intelligent design advocates are Christians and nearly all are theists.

What do ID proponents believe about evolution?

While many ID proponents do not disagree with most of the original claims about evolution, they do believe that “random genetic mutation and natural selection” cannot be an explanation for certain biological phenomena, such as the human eye or the body’s blood clotting mechanism. They argue that it is “statistically impossible” for such systems to occur through such natural processes, which implies that a designer may have guided the process.

How does intelligent design differ from creationism?

Although many critics of ID combine the two theories, creationism usually refers to the theory or belief that God created the universe and human beings in six days as recorded in Genesis, the first book of the Bible. As some creationists accept the Genesis account literally, thus believing that earth is less than 10,000 years old, others, seeking to reconcile the Bible with modern science, believe that each Genesis day may have represented several billion years.

ID does not speculate nor contradict either position about the age of the earth. As some creationists believe humans did not evolve from other species, but were created directly by God, ID does not challenge the idea that humans developed over time as a result of evolution.

What do critics say about intelligent design?

Some critics equate intelligent design theory with the so-called “God of the gaps” fallacy—resorting to a divine intelligence to explain the existence of natural phenomena for which we have no scientific explanation. Some opponents have also called it “creationism in a lab coat,” saying that to point to an intelligent designer as the cause of certain biological systems is to abandon scientific inquiry. They argue that, over the decades, science has frequently closed “gaps” and explained previously inexplicable phenomena.

Who are the most vocal supporters of ID?

Many of the strong advocates of ID are prominent individuals with scientific backgrounds and credentials including Michael J. Behe, a professor of biological sciences at Lehigh University. Behe regards ID as a “minimalist position,” saying “it only requires that there be physical evidence of an intelligence behind creation of complex natural systems. Who did the creating, or why, comprise a separate set of questions.”

The intelligent design debate centers on three issues: First, whether the definition of science is broad enough to allow for theories of human origins which incorporate the acts of an intelligent designer; second, whether the evidence supports such theories; third, whether the teaching of such theories is appropriate in public education.

==============================

** ‘Expelled’ Explodes into Top 10 Box Office (Christian Post, 080421)

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” the pro-intelligent design documentary featuring actor Ben Stein, made history this weekend as it propelled full speed into the top 10 box office. It opened as the widest and one of the most commercially successful releases for any documentary film.

In an impressive opening weekend, the film debuted at No. 9 at the box office, earning a respectable $3.2 million while only appearing on 1,052 screens.

“Leatherheads,” the story of a struggling football team based in Duluth, Minnesota, and written and directed by George Clooney, trailed the new documentary film, placing at only No. 10 its third week at the box office, despite showing at over twice as many screens.

Although the new pro-intelligent design documentary had struggled with a reported marketing and production budget that ranged only in the single digit millions – a miniscule figure compared to the standard $117 million regularly burned by Hollywood productions – the film proved to defy expectations and panning by critics.

From the beginning of its conception, the film had been heavily criticized by scientists who dismissed the film as inaccurate, misleading, and dishonest in its portrayal of the shortcomings of evolution.

Reviewers were also among the film’s vocal critics, and in an article written for the Orlando Sentinel, Roger Moore was among those who believed the film would fail commercially, describing the film as a “mockery.”

“‘Expelled’ is a full-on, amply budgeted Michael Moore-styled mockery of evolution, a film that dresses creationist crackpottery in an ‘intelligent design’ leisure suit and tries to make the fact that it’s not given credence in schools a matter of ‘academic freedom,’” Moore wrote in his description of the film.

Producers of the film, however, had hoped that while disadvantaged and outmanned in the realm of Hollywood, active marketing and outreach with Christian groups and homeschoolers could help propel the movie, in the manner of David versus Goliath, into a box office hit – a strategy that appears to have worked.

In one such campaign, the producers of the film offered to award as much as $1,000 in a contest among church groups to bring the largest crowds to see the film.

Christian groups in general proved to be receptive to the film’s message.

Anthony Horvath, executive director of the Athanatos Christian Ministry, an online apologetics academy dedicated to the defense of the Christian faith, praised the film.

“The outrage expressed by the atheistic community at Ben Stein’s movie, ‘Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed’ has been so palpable you could bottle it up and sell it as an energy drink. They are practically foaming at the mouth,” he said in a statement.

“The blogosphere reveals the utter disdain that the hard core atheists have for anyone who merely suggests that it might be possible to scientifically detect design. If all Stein’s movie accomplishes is revealing more publicly what many in the scientific community have been saying quietly all along, that is a major accomplishment,” he added.

Richard Land, president of the Southern Baptist Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, gave the film a thumbs up, commenting, “I think it should be required viewing for anyone who wants to understand what is going on and what is at stake in the debate over worldviews in this society,” according to Baptist Press. “This is one of these times when you can vote with your pocketbook. You can vote with your economic franchise, and Hollywood will listen when they see the dollar signs.”

“Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” is a feature-length documentary film about researchers, professors, and academics who claim to have been marginalized, silenced, or threatened with academic expulsion because of their challenges to some or all parts of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Makers of the documentary said the movie doesn’t seek to champion intelligent design as the sole truth but calls for more academic freedom, where challenges to any scientific theory including Darwinism would be fairly considered.

==============================

**Mounting Evidence for Intelligent Design Discovered in 2007 (Christian Post, 080101)

From jellyfish fossil finds to the newly discovered function of the appendix, a science and technology watchdog group has released a list of some of the year’s top news that reflect mounting evidence supporting intelligent design.

The Access Research Network – which reports on science, technology and society from an intelligent design perspective – recently released its “Top 10 Darwin and Design News Stories” list for 2007.

“Overall in 2007 I’d say we’ve observed a growing consternation running through many scientific disciplines over Darwinian explanations of the evidence that were once thought to be resolved long ago,” said Kevin Wirth, ARN director of media relations.

Among the top stories the group considers a “growing burden” to Darwinists is the increasing level of complexity being discovered in small biological systems such as living cells and in early life history such as jellyfish. Newly uncovered jellyfish fossils in Utah were dated back 200 million years earlier than the oldest specimens of the modern jellyfish yet showed the same complexity as modern orders and families of jellyfish. These findings, according to ARN, challenge Darwin’s molecule-to-man theory because they reveal that there was an insufficient amount of time for complex life to have developed only via the Darwinian principles of random mutations and natural selection.

Darwin’s “Tree-of-Life” model was also hit hard in 2007 when a scientist at the National Center for Biotechnology Information published a paper claiming the tree pattern could not explain major transitions in biological evolution and instead proposed a “Biological Big Bang” model.

ARN executive director Dennis Wagner noted that science is still recovering from a whole generation of people who have been raised according to “Darwinian fairytales,” such as the teaching that human and chimpanzee genetics only differ by 1% and that the appendix is a leftover evolutionary vestige.

“These are Darwinian ‘arguments from ignorance’ that continue to be discarded as scientists uncover the incredible design and purpose of biological systems,” he said.

But the challenges to Darwinism have not been without opposition.

The group notes in its list that political and academic persecution against those who question the evolutionary theory has also been a hallmark for 2007.

“Our modern western culture is so ingrained in the naturalistic Darwinian creation story that those who challenge the story, even with scientific evidence in hand, are treated as outsiders and outcasts,” observed Wagner.

He hopes that Ben Stein’s documentary “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” scheduled for release in early 2008, will serve as a “eye-opener” to Americans on the growing hostility toward individuals who have suggested alternative views to Darwinism.

The debate about origins is expected to heat up again significantly in 2008, Wirth said.

“I think we’re beginning to see a growing trend overall that the sufficiency of Darwinian explanations to describe how life evolved is turning out to be substantially inadequate in a growing number of fields, particularly in the areas of genetics and molecular biology,” he noted. “I think it’s becoming clear that Darwinism is on the verge of one of the greatest challenges it has faced in many decades.”

==============================

**Intelligent Design Group Identifies Failures of Darwinism (Christian Post, 071221)

An intelligent design think tank has launched a new website recounting the failures of Darwinism that were left unmentioned by study materials on a PBS documentary covering the 2005 Dover trial.

The Discovery Institute plans to post a slide show presentation critiquing the online materials from PBS-NOVA’s “Judgment Day: Intelligent Design on Trial” documentary on www.judgingpbs.com.

The presentation, entitled “Darwin’s Failed Predictions,” challenges an assertion made by PBS that evidence “unequivocally supports the theory of evolution by natural selection.”

“The following slides show that scientists are increasingly skeptical that natural selection is the primary agent of evolutionary change,” according to Anika Smith, a contributor for the group’s Center for Science & Culture.

“Moreover, key postulates of Darwin’s theory – universal common descent, the continuity of life, and transitions in the fossil record – have come under intense scientific scrutiny from a diverse array of fields, including molecular biology, developmental biology, genetics, biochemistry, and paleontology,” Smith added.

According to the website, some of Darwin’s failed predictions include:

• The failure of evolutionary biology to provide detailed evolutionary explanations for the origin of complex biochemical features

• The failure of the fossil record to provide support for Darwinian evolution

• The failure of molecular biology to provide evidence for universal common descent

• The failure of genetics and chemistry to explain the origin of the genetic code

• The failure of developmental biology to explain why vertebrate embryos diverge from the beginning of development.

In addition to Judgingpbs.com, the Seattle-based group has published a briefing packet about intelligent design for teachers in response to a teacher’s guide on the documentary that was issued by PBS.

Experts at the Discovery Institute charged PBS with injecting religion in the classroom through the guide with questions such as “Can you accept evolution and still believe in religion?”

The documentary, which first aired in November, follows the federal case where a group of parents challenged the Dover School District’s requirement of teaching of intelligent design as an alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. The judge ruled in favor of the parents.

Contributors at the intelligent design group have regularly pointed out inconsistencies to the documentary through its blog site evolutionnews.org.

==============================

**Academia’s Assault on Intelligent Design (Townhall.com, 070527)

By Ken Connor

“There is evidence for intelligent design in the universe.” This does not seem like an especially radical statement; many people believe that God has revealed himself through creation. Such beliefs, however, do not conform to politically correct notions in academia, as Professor Guillermo Gonzalez is learning the hard way. An astronomer at Iowa State University, Professor Gonzalez was recently denied tenure—despite his stellar academic record—and it is increasingly clear he was rejected for one reason: He wrote a book entitled The Privileged Planet which showed that there is evidence for design in the universe.& nbsp; Dr. Gonzalez’s case has truly distressing implications for academic freedom in colleges and universities across the country, especially in science departments.

Dr. Gonzalez, who fled from Cuba to America as a child, earned his PhD in astronomy from the University of Washington. By academic standards, Dr. Gonzalez has had a remarkable career. Though still a young man, he has already authored sixty-eight peer-reviewed scientific papers. These papers have been featured in some of the world’s most respected scientific journals, including Science and Nature. Dr. Gonzalez has also co-authored a college-level text book entitled Observational Astronomy, which was published by Cambridge Press.

According to the written requirements for tenure at the Iowa State University, a prospective candidate is required to have published at least fifteen peer-reviewed scientific papers. With 68 papers to his name, Dr. Gonzalez has already exceeded that requirement by 350%. 91% of professors who applied for tenure at Iowa State University this year were successful, implying that there has to be something seriously wrong with a candidate before they are rejected.

What’s wrong with Dr. Gonzalez? So far as anyone can tell, this rejection had little to do with his scientific research, and everything to do with the fact that Dr. Gonzalez believes the scientific evidence points to the idea of an intelligent designer. In fact, as World Magazine has reported, at least two scientists in the Physics and Astronomy Department at the Iowa State University have admitted that intelligent design played a role in their decision. This despite the fact that Dr. Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in any of his classes, and that none of his peer-reviewed papers deal with the subject. Nevertheless, simply because Gonzalez holds the view that there is intelligence behind the universe, and has written a book presenting scientific evidence for this fact, he is considered unsuitable at Iowa State.

What is the state of academic freedom when well qualified candidates are rejected simply because they see God’s fingerprints on the cosmos? Isn’t the Academy supposed to be a venue for diverse views? Aren’t universities supposed to foster an atmosphere that allows for robust discussion and freedom of thought? Dr. Gonzalez’s fate suggests that anyone who deigns to challenge conventional orthodoxy is not welcome in the club.

In the future, will scientists who are up for tenure be forced to deny that God could have played any role in the creation or design of the universe? Will Bible-believing astronomers be forced to repudiate Psalm 19, which begins, “The heavens declare the glory of God; the skies proclaim the work of his hands”? Will faithful Catholics be required to reject the teaching of Vatican I, which said that God “can be known with certainty from the consideration of created things, by the natural power of human reason...” Just where will this witch hunt lead?

The amazing fact is that, even as many science departments are working overtime to forbid professors from positing that there is evidence for intelligent design in the universe, more and more scientists are coming to this conclusion. The Discovery Institute has compiled a list of over seven-hundred scientists who signed the following statement: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” The list of scientists who find good reason to doubt the strictly materialistic Darwinism that is currently scientific orthodoxy is growing every day.

It seems that many scientists and academicians who hold views contrary to Dr. Gonzalez have concluded that the best way to avoid debate about the evidence for intelligent design is to simply deny jobs to those who will not affirm their atheistic worldview. The fact that these scientists, who are supposedly open to following the evidence wherever it leads, have resorted to blatant discrimination to avoid having this conversation speaks volumes about the weakness of their position. They realize their arguments are not sufficient to defeat the intelligent design movement and they must, therefore, shut their opponents out of the conversation. All the evidence suggests that it is unjust that Dr. Gonzalez was denied tenure and that this ruling should be overturned on appeal. Nevertheless, what happened to Dr. Gonzalez is a reflection of the growing strength of the intelligent design movement, not its weakness.

==============================

**University President Denies Pro-’Design’ Professor’s Appeal for Tenure (Christian Post, 070605)

Iowa State University (ISU) president Gregory Geoffroy announced Friday that he had denied the appeal for a pro-intelligent design (ID) professor to receive tenure.

Guillermo Gonzalez, professor of astronomy and author of the intelligent design book The Privileged Planet, filed the appeal after he was denied tenure last month, citing that the rejection was based off discrimination for his support of ID – which holds that the biological aspects of life are too complex to have evolved randomly, but must have been produced by an unidentified intelligence.

ISU faculty has stood by its position, however, stating that they have a right to select who is suitable for their permanent staff.

“I independently concluded that he simply did not show the trajectory of excellence that we expect in a candidate seeking tenure in physics and astronomy – one of our strongest academic programs,” explained Geoffroy in a statement.

Supporters of Gonzalez are expressing the opposite, however, in defense of the astronomy scientist. They say that he is more than qualified for receiving tenure, and have argued that he is even more so qualified than professors already on the ISU staff.

“It’s a sad day for science and free inquiry when tenure is denied to a scientist of Guillermo Gonzalez’s caliber,” said Dr. John G. West, associate director of the Center for Science & Culture for the ID think tank Discovery Institute. “President Geoffroy has clearly demonstrated that academic freedom is not as important to Iowa State University as passing an ideological litmus test.”

Gonzalez, who is also a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, has a list of credentials that many say are more than enough to grant him tenure.

He has written 68 peer-reviewed journals (53 more than the 15 required by his department to meet its standard of excellence in research), helped in the discovery of two planets, helped build technology that discovered extrasolar planets, and wrote a college-level astronomy textbook published by Cambridge University.

According to the Smithsonian/NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS), which calculates the scientific impact of scientists in astronomy, the ID advocate had the highest score among the entire faculty in the ISU astronomy department. The number is based off how often a scientist’s papers are cited by other researchers. He also has the top ranked “h-index,” which also measures the number of citations, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education.

The astronomy professor has explained that he does not teach ID thought in his classes, but that it is completely extracurricular work.

Still, several of the professors that chose not to grant tenure to Gonzalez have admitted that ID was the key factor to his denial, despite the fact that some of them have voiced much respect for the work he has done.

“[Gonzalez] is very creative, intelligent and knowledgeable, highly productive scientifically and an excellent teacher,” wrote John Hauptman, a colleague to the ID advocate, in an editorial. “An assistant professor at a university has every right to pursue whatever investigations he or she so chooses to investigate. There must be no bounds, no restrictions and no penalties for research of any kind.

“[But] intelligent design is not even a theory. It has not made its first prediction, nor suffered its first test by measurement. Its proponents can call it anything they like, but it is not science,” added Hauptman. “It is purely a question of what is science and what is not, and a physics department is not obligated to support notions that do not even begin to meet scientific standards.”

Those backing Gonzalez have called this kind of policy hypocritical, however, in that one’s outside research does not have “no bounds” if they are then punished for their beliefs in a professional setting.

“Americans like to think of our university system as a haven for unimpeded truth-seeking, where tenured professors press the boundaries of knowledge, no holds barred,” explained David Klinghoffer, a senior fellow at Discovery Institute, in an op-ed column. “The picture is attractive but false when it comes to scholarly consideration of big questions such as: Is the universe meaningful?”

ISU is one of the many schools that have already drafted a policy refuting ID as science. According to professors at the school, ISU did not want to be aligned with the contested idea, but Gonzalez had given the university a reputation of being an “ID school.”

The ID-astronomer was one of only three professors out of a total 66 not to receive tenure throughout all of ISU’s applicants. Typically, those individuals who do not receive tenure leave the university they are working at.

He has 20 days to decide whether to appeal Geoffroy’s decision to the Iowa State Board of Regents.

Geoffroy said that because the issue of tenure is a personnel matter, he was not able to share the rationale for his decision with the public.

==============================

**U.S. Lags Behind Europe, Japan in Acceptance of Evolution (Foxnews, 060811)

[KH: note bias in using the word “fundamentalist”]

A comparison of peoples’ views in 34 countries finds that the United States ranks near the bottom when it comes to public acceptance of evolution.

Only Turkey ranked lower.

Among the factors contributing to America’s low score are poor understanding of biology, especially genetics, the politicization of science and the literal interpretation of the Bible by a small but vocal group of American Christians, the researchers say.

“American Protestantism is more fundamentalist than anybody except perhaps the Islamic fundamentalists, which is why Turkey and we are so close,” said study co-author Jon Miller of Michigan State University.

The researchers combined data from public surveys on evolution collected from 32 European countries, the United States and Japan between 1985 and 2005.

Adults in each country were asked whether they thought the statement, “Human beings, as we know them, developed from earlier species of animals,” was true or false, or if they were unsure.

The study found that over the past 20 years:

— The percentage of U.S. adults who accept evolution declined from 45 to 40%.

— The percentage overtly rejecting evolution also declined, from 48 to 39%.

— And the percentage of adults who were unsure increased, from 7 to 21%.

Of the other countries surveyed, only Turkey ranked lower, with about 25% of the population accepting evolution and 75% rejecting it.

In Iceland, Denmark, Sweden and France, 80% or more of adults accepted evolution; in Japan, 78% of adults did.

The findings are detailed in the Aug. 11 issue of the journal Science.

Religious belief and evolution

The researchers also compared 10 independent variables — including religious belief, political ideology and understanding of concepts from genetics, or “genetic literacy” — among adults in America and nine European countries to determine whether these factors could predict attitudes toward evolution.

The analysis found that Americans with fundamentalist religious beliefs — defined as belief in substantial divine control of the universe and the efficacy of frequent prayer — were more likely to reject evolution than Europeans with similar beliefs.

The researchers attribute the discrepancy to differences in how American Christian fundamentalists and other forms of Christianity interpret the Bible.

While American fundamentalists tend to interpret the Bible literally and to view Genesis as a true and accurate account of creation, mainstream Protestants in both the United States and Europe instead treat Genesis as metaphorical, the researchers say.

“Whether it’s the Bible or the Koran, there are some people who think it’s everything you need to know,” Miller said. “Other people say these are very interesting metaphorical stories in that they give us guidance, but they’re not science books.”

The latter view is generally shared by the Roman Catholic Church.

Politics and the flat Earth

Politics is also contributing to America’s widespread confusion about evolution, the researchers say.

Major political parties in the United States are more willing to make opposition to evolution a prominent part of their campaigns to garner conservative votes — something that does not happen in Europe or Japan.

Miller says that it makes about as much sense for politicians to oppose evolution in their campaigns as it is for them to advocate that the Earth is flat and promise to pass legislation saying so if elected to office.

“You can pass any law you want, but it won’t change the shape of the Earth,” Miller told LiveScience.

Paul Meyers, a biologist at the University of Minnesota who was not involved in the study, says that what politicians should be doing is saying, “We ought to defer these questions to qualified authorities and we should have committees of scientists and engineers whom we will approach for the right answers.”

The researchers also single out the poor grasp of biological concepts, especially genetics, by American adults as an important contributor to the country’s low confidence in evolution.

“The more you understand about genetics, the more you understand about the unity of life and the relationship humans have to other forms of life,” Miller said.

The current study also analyzed the results from a 10-country survey in which adults were tested with 10 true or false statements about basic concepts from genetics. Americans had a median score of 4 out 10 correct answers.

One of the statements was “All plants and animals have DNA.” (The correct answer is “yes.”)

Science alone is not enough

But the problem is more than one of education — it goes deeper, and is a function of our country’s culture and history, said study co-author Eugenie Scott, director of the National Center for Science Education in Oakland, Calif.

“The rejection of evolution is not something that will be solved by throwing science at it,” Scott said in a telephone interview. Myers expressed a similar sentiment.

About the recent controversy in Dover, Pa., over the teaching of “intelligent design,” Myers said, “It was a great victory for our side and it’s done a lot to help ensure that we keep religion out of the classroom for a while longer, but it doesn’t address the root causes. The creationists are still creationists — they’re not going to change because of a court decision.”

Scott says one thing that will help is to have Catholics and mainstream Protestants speak up about their theologies’ acceptance of evolution.

“There needs to be more addressing of creationism from these more moderate theological perspectives,” Scott said. “The professional clergy and theologians whom I know tend to be very reluctant to engage in that type of ‘my theology versus your theology’ discussion, but it matters because it’s having a negative effect on American scientific literacy.”

The latest packaging of creationism is intelligent design, or “ID,” a conjecture which claims that certain features of the natural world are so complex that they could only be the work of a Supreme Being.

ID proponents say they do not deny that evolution is true, only that scientists should not rule out the possibility of supernatural intervention.

But scientists do not share doubts over evolution. They argue it is one of the most well tested theories around, supported by countless tests done in many different scientific fields. [KH: this is a lie, or else it equates those who don’t believe evolution as not scientists; there are lots of scientists who openly reject evolution.]

Scott says promoting uncertainty about evolution is just as bad as denying it outright and that ID and traditional creationism both spread the same message.

“Both are saying that evolution is bad science, that evolution is weak and inadequate science, and that it can’t do the job, so therefore God did it,” she said.

Another view

Bruce Chapman, the president of the Discovery Institute in Seattle, the primary backer of intelligent design, has a different view of the study.

“A better explanation for the high percentage of doubters of Darwinism in America may be that this country’s citizens are famously independent and are not given to being rolled by an ideological elite in any field,” Chapman said. “In particular, the growing doubts about Darwinism undoubtedly reflect growing doubts among scientists about Darwinian theory. Over 640 have now signed a public dissent and the number keeps growing.”

Nick Matzke of the National Center for Science Education points out that most of the scientists Chapman refers to do not do research in the field of evolution.

“If you look at the list, you can’t find anybody who’s really a significant contributor to the field or anyone who’s done recognizable work on evolution,” Matzke said. [KH: again, a lie]

Scott says the news is not all bad.

The number of American adults unsure about the validity of evolution has increased in recent years, from 7 to 21%, but growth in this demographic comes at the expense of the other two groups.

The percentage of Americans accepting evolution has declined, but so has the percentage of those who overtly reject it.

“I was very surprised to see that. To me that means the glass is half full,” Scott said. “That 21% we can educate.”

==============================

Supplemental Articles in a separate file (click here to read)