Hello readers,

Due to my job situation this summer, I will be unable to update this blog as much. I will do my best to post occasionally, but it won’t be as regular as it has been in the past. Thanks for reading and I look forward to this fall when I can once again post regularly about topics related to Creationism and Intelligent Design.

Here is another interesting post from Dinesh D’Souza that coincides with a previous post of one of his articles where he talks about science classrooms pushing an ideology.

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Biology Without Ideology

Shouldn’t biology teachers and textbooks stick with science and leave metaphysical statements–especially statements implying or promoting atheism–out of the classroom? I have made a constitutional argument that they must, and some leading Christian groups are now reviewing this strategy. Meanwhile, atheists on this blog and elsewhere noisily contend that there is no problem, and that no one is peddling atheism in the name of science.

In this context it’s instructive to review a controversy generated several years ago by the National Association of Biology Teachers (NABT) when the group decided to remove the words “impersonal” and “unsupervised” from its position statement on the teaching of evolution. The NABT is a membership organization of thousands of teachers at the elementary, secondary and college levels. It has been in the forefront of legal battles against “creation science” and “intelligent design.”

The original statement said, “The diversity of life on earth is the result of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent with genetic modification that is affected by natural selection, historical contengencies, and changing environments.” And there it is: the official statement of the largest pro-evolution group of teachers smuggling metaphysical atheism into a scientific claim about evolution. Let’s remember that this metaphysical pronouncement appears in an instruction manual for science teachers nationwide. So much for atheist ideologues who say that this is not an issue for anyone to worry about.

Two thoughtful academics, philosopher Alvin Plantinga and theologian Huston Smith, noticed the problem and wrote the NABT. They pointed out that the vast majority of Americans believe that a personal agent, God, is responsible for both the universe and for life. What Christians object to is not the idea that the earth is old or that one life form has evolved into another; what they object to is the insinuation, using the authority of science, that Gd does not exist and that material reality is all that there is.

Plantinga and Huston noted that terms like “impersonal” and “unsupervised” are not scientific terms. “It is extremely hard to see how an empirical science such as biology could address such a theological question as whether a process like evolution is or isn’t directed by God. How could an empirical inquiry possibly show that God was not guiding and directing evolution?”

The NABT board found the argument persuasive, and decided to drop the two unscientific terms from its statement. At this point, a group of atheists, led by one Massimo Pigliucci, filed an open letter with more than 100 signatures accusing the NABT of bowing to religious pressure. But Eugenie Scott, writing on behalf of the NABT, pointed out that the NABT’s decision was scientific and not political. Scott noted that making metaphysical claims about God’s existence or nonexistence “is venturing outside of what science can tell us.”

Atheists who were hoping to use the battering ram of evolution to attack religion were bitterly disappointed by this outcome. But this was one small episode: I’d like to see a coordinated strategy over the next several years to increase their dismay. Imagine the apoplexy in the God-hating camp if courts rule that atheist interpretations of evolution by scientists such as Richard Dawkins, William Provine, Steven Pinker, Douglas Futuyma and others have no place in the biology classroom! When atheism is the loser, science is the winner.

The recent surfacing of some documents that call into question Einstein’s belief in a higher power has caused an interesting battle as both sides of the atheist-theist debate try to claim this great scientist for their own side.

Dinesh D’Souza has a take on the argument that is worth checking out:

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Einstein’s God

Posted May 21st 2008 1:33PM by Dinesh D’Souza

Atheists seem very eager to claim Einstein for one of their own. Richard Dawkins devotes a whole section to Einstein in The God Delusion and Christopher Hitchens’ Portable Atheist is peppered with Einstein quotations seemingly rejecting all belief in God. Recently an Einstein letter surfaced which showed the great scientist scorning the idea that the Jews were in any sense God’s chosen people.

But all that these quotations prove is that Einstein was not an orthodox believer. He rejected the idea of a personal God “who would directly influence the actions of individuals or would sit in judgment on creatures of his own creation.” Einstein also rejeted the immortality of the soul, noting that “one life is enough for me.”

At the same time, Walter Isaacson in his celebrated new biography Einstein provides ample evidence that Einstein not only believed in a higher or transcendent power, but also that Einstein despised atheists. Here are some quotations, drawn from Isaacson’s book with full documentation, that I offer as a needed counterbalance to the one-sided list provided by Dawkins, Hitchens and the others.

On whether he considered himself religious: “Yes, you could call it that. Try and penetrate with our limited means the secrets of nature and you will find that, behind all the discernible laws and connections, there remains something subtle, intangible and inexplicable. Veneration for this foce beyond anything we can comprehend is my religion.”

On whether he accepted the historical existence of Christ: “Unquestionably! No one can read the Gospels without feeling the actual presence of Jesus. His personality pulsates in every word. No myth is filled with such life.”

On whether he considered himself an atheist: “I’m not an atheist. The problem involved is too vast for our limited minds. We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books but doesn’t know what that is. That, it seems to me, is the attitude of the most intelligent human toward God.”

On the nature of God: “That deeply emotional conviction of a presence of a superior reasoning power, which is revealed in the incomprehensible universe, forms my idea of God.”

On whether science leads to religion: “Every one who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that a spirit is manifest in the laws of nature–a spirit vastly superior to that of man, and one in the face of which we with our modest powers must feel humble. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort.”

On how religion motivates scientific inquiry: “The cosmic religious feeling is the strongest and noblest motive for scientific research.”

On whether science and religion are at odds: “The situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.”

On how he feels about atheist efforts to claim him as an ally: “There are people who say there is no God, but what makes me really angry is that they quote me for support of such views.”

On how he regards atheists: “The fanatical atheists…are creatures who cannot he[a]r the music of the spheres. I do not share the crusading spirit of the professional atheist. What separates me from most so-called atheists is a feeling of utter humility toward the unattainable secrets of the harmony of the cosmos.”

D’Souza presents an interesting take on how prevent the proliferation of atheism in the guise of science in the public school classroom.

Full text follows:

The real problem with Darwinism in the public school classroom is that it is often taught in an atheist way. Textbooks by biologists like William Provine and Richard Dawkins routinely assert that evolution has done away with the need for God. The claim is that chance and natural selection have demonstrated that we can have design–or the appearance of design–without a designer. In this sense Darwinism becomes propaganda for atheism.

Typically evangelical Christians seek to counter this atheism by trying to expose the flaws in the Darwinian account of evolution. This explains the appeal of “creation science” and the “intelligent design” (ID) movement. These critiques, however, have not made any headway in the scientific community and they have also failed whenever they have been tried in the courts. Fortunately there is a better way.

Consider this: the First Amendment to the Constitution prohibits public schools from teaching or promoting atheism in any way. How do I know this? Well, the religion clauses of the First Amendment protect the “free exercise” of religion and at the same time forbid the “establishment” of religion. Courts have routinely held that the free exercise clause protects not only religious beliefs but also the absence of religious beliefs. If you are fired from your government job because you are an atheist, your First Amendment rights have been violated. In other words, the term “religion” means not only “religion” but also “atheism.”

Yet if the free exercise clause defines religion in a way that includes atheism, then the no-establishment clause must define religion in the same way. So the agencies of government are prohibited from “establishing” not only religion but also atheism. This means that just as a public school teacher cannot advocate Christianity or hand out Bibles to his students, so too public school textbooks and science teachers cannot advocate atheism.

I’d like to see Christian legal groups suing school districts for promoting atheism in the biology classroom. No need to produce creationist or ID critiques of Darwinism. All that is necessary is to parade the atheist claims that have made their way into the biology textbooks and biology lectures. The issue isn’t the scientific inadequacy of evolution but the way in which it is being used to undermine religious belief and promote unbelief. If the case can be made that atheism is being advocated in any way, then the textbooks would have to be rewritten and classroom presentations changed to remove the offending material. Schools would be on notice that they cannot use scientific facts to draw metaphysical conclusions in favor of atheism.

In this way Darwinism in the public schools would no longer be a threat to religion in general or Christianity in particular.

This is an interesting post from Uncommon Descent that references some articles worth checking out about the downfall of evolution as an all-encompassing theory that explains everything.

Full text follows:

Christian commentator Dinesh D’Souza has recently been arguing that the real problem with Darwinism in the classroom is that it is used to promote atheism. Today,

I noticed he had an interesting item in TotheSource, which is not yet archived, talking about Darwin’s own agnosticism-bordering-on-atheism. I have elsewhere pointed out that Darwinism has always been sold primarily as the creation story of atheism.

And with good reason. If we survey the patterns in the actual history of life from the Ediacaran period to the present, given what we know today, it is most unlikely that we would credit Darwin’s theory of natural selection acting on random mutations with explaining how most of it happened.
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That is why I was somewhat impatient with D’Souza’s contention that we need only prevent people from using Darwinism as a tool of atheism and everything will be fine. (See “Earth to planet D’Souza.”*)

The reality is that right now, scientists seem to be trying to dump Darwin’s theory as a theory of everything in biology, yet the secular chants of praise for Darwin have increased in volume in the popular media - competing with a flood tide of nonsense from evolutionary psychologists, flogging to journals material that, if only it were well written and a little more plausible, might have morphed into saleable “Clan of the Cave Bear” fiction. For that sort of thing, Darwin’s theory is far more essential than it is for biology.

One of the common criticisms against ID is that it fails to use the scientific method. I was skimming through an ID website that I hadn’t visited before and found this useful article that lays out the scientific method used by ID researchers.

Here is an excerpt:

Many critics of intelligent design have argued that design is merely a negative argument against evolution.
This could not be further from the truth. Leading design theorist William Dembski has observed that “[t]he
principle characteristic of intelligent agency is directed contingency, or what we call choice.”1 By
observing the sorts of choices that intelligent agents commonly make when designing systems, a positive
case for intelligent design is easily constructed by elucidating predictable, reliable indicators of design.

Design can be inferred using the scientific method of observation, hypothesis, experiment, and conclusion.
Design theorists begin with observations of how intelligent agents act when designing, to help them
recognize and detect design in the natural world. - Casey Luskin

This is an interesting article written in the opinion section of the Register-Guard Newspaper in Eugene, OR. The author, Norm Fox, presents a solid argument against some claims that Richard Dawkins has made.

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Case against intelligent design fails

Published: May 4, 2008 12:00AM

The universe either made itself or it was made. Any argument supporting either alternative automatically opposes the other. This is why neither of these competing cosmogonies can be honestly advanced without at least contemplating its opposite, either philosophically or scientifically.

The alleged third alternative, that all physical reality oscillates eternally through cycles of disintegration and reorganization, is purely metaphysical and not subject to scientific examination since we are, as far as we can tell, in the relentless grip of a universe-wide atrophy arc.

Richard Dawkins’ essay “Creationists haven’t got a chance against aliens” (Commentary, April 27) claims to offer arguments against the universe having been made by a creative intelligence outside itself. Thus by default (since he makes no mention of the oscillating universe hypothesis) he is arguing for a self-created universe without quite confessing so. As a dogmatically atheistic evolutionist and author of the book “The God Delusion,” he is defending the only position his worldview will allow.

Dawkins’ principal strategy, consuming roughly half of his essay, is to focus on “directed panspermia,” (aka “exogenesis”), the irrelevant notion that life on Earth was “seeded” by life forms residing elsewhere in the universe. It’s irrelevant as a theory of the origin of life, of course, because it does not account for life’s origin at all but merely pushes the problem further out in the universe, and I have never heard a creationist advocate it. I’ve heard it proposed by evolutionists, most of whom discuss it seriously but admit its inadequacy to account for ultimate origins. Dawkins tries to turn this tangent into evidence that creationist arguments are dishonest.

His own argument, meanwhile, climaxes in the assertion that a complex, eternal creator is no more conceivable than complex, eternal flagellar motors. Proponents of intelligent design would retort that they can rationally distinguish the likelihood of an eternal creator from the improbability of an eternal product. Still, Dawkins insists, “A creator god who has always existed would be far more improbable” than “visitations from distant star systems.”

Dawkins’ determination to render a creator “improbable” does not provide a compelling basis for treating an intellectually respectable issue — whether God exists — as if it were a question firmly settled in the negative. Observations that call into question the self-creative adequacy of the universe abound all across the natural sciences from astronomy to biochemistry to genetics to paleontology to zoology and back, but since arguments against atheistic evolution are automatically arguments for an intelligent designer, they are being censored with increasing fervor as a matter of public policy. Scholars who admit to the slightest suspicion that the universe did not generate and organize itself are often professionally intimidated (sometimes even “expelled”), casting a chill over scientific inquiry as it relates to origins.

Most scientists or laymen who conclude that intelligent design best explains the complexity of the universe do so not because they are, in Dawkins’ language, “lying for Jesus,” but because they have been impressed with the scientific evidences for design and/or have thought through a sequence of reasoning similar to the following:

1) Something is eternal. If there had ever been absolutely nothing, that condition would have persisted.

2) Biological life is evidently not eternal, being represented by organisms that without exception come from similar temporarily living organisms and then die.

3) Matter-energy is evidently not eternal, as it inescapably spends itself with every energy transaction at a net cost to the whole system. This process cannot have gone on eternally, because it would culminate in the eventual “heat death” of the universe in some finite amount of time (barring the oscillating universe mythology that belongs somewhere beyond science fiction).

4) Our consistent experience is that mind manipulates matter, not vice-versa, suggesting that an eternal mind having formed matter is more plausible than matter having created information-rich structures such as the human mind. Here, and with the next point, the “design demands a designer” argument fits.

5) Our consistent experience is that every effect must have an adequate cause. Thus, the universe viewed as a sequence of causes and effects points back to a first cause which is itself uncaused (see point No. 1 above). Just as logically, the universe viewed as a single huge effect also requires a sufficient cause outside itself.

The fact that these arguments are centuries old and have a venerable philosophical pedigree does not diminish their cogency or their relevance to a 21st century debate. Similarly, the existence of vigorous but time-worn rebuttals against these arguments cannot legitimately turn a two-sided issue into a closed question. The doctrinaire teaching of spontaneous macroevolution and the authoritarian stonewalling of intelligent design seeks to do exactly that by penalizing skepticism about the materialist world view and its central article of faith.

This is an interesting article written by a prominent creation scientist that sums up the Creationist side of the debate well. It is lengthy so I will post a few excerpts, but you can check out the full article here.

Note- Please read the article before commenting. I know many will dismiss it because it has the tag “creationism” attached to it, but you are failing to engage in intelligent debate if you attempt to comment without reading the source material it makes you look like nothing more than a flamer (disrespectful comments that contain name calling will be deleted). Thanks.

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The Scientific Case Against Evolution

by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.

Belief in evolution is a remarkable phenomenon. It is a belief passionately defended by the scientific establishment, despite the lack of any observable scientific evidence for macroevolution (that is, evolution from one distinct kind of organism into another). This odd situation is briefly documented here by citing recent statements from leading evolutionists admitting their lack of proof. These statements inadvertently show that evolution on any significant scale does not occur at present, and never happened in the past, and could never happen at all.

A current leading evolutionist, Jeffrey Schwartz, professor of anthropology at the University of Pittsburgh, has recently acknowledged that:

. . . it was and still is the case that, with the exception of Dobzhansky’s claim about a new species of fruit fly, the formation of a new species, by any mechanism, has never been observed.¹

The scientific method traditionally has required experimental observation and replication. The fact that macroevolution (as distinct from microevolution) has never been observed would seem to exclude it from the domain of true science. Even Ernst Mayr, the dean of living evolutionists, longtime professor of biology at Harvard, who has alleged that evolution is a “simple fact,” nevertheless agrees that it is an “historical science” for which “laws and experiments are inappropriate techniques”² by which to explain it. One can never actually see evolution in action.

Neither is there any clue as to how the one-celled organisms of the primordial world could have evolved into the vast array of complex multi-celled invertebrates of the Cambrian period. Even dogmatic evolutionist Gould admits that:

The Cambrian explosion was the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life.⁸

Equally puzzling, however, is how some invertebrate creature in the ancient ocean, with all its “hard parts” on the outside, managed to evolve into the first vertebrate — that is, the first fish– with its hard parts all on the inside.

Yet the transition from spineless invertebrates to the first backboned fishes is still shrouded in mystery, and many theories abound.⁹

Other gaps are abundant, with no real transitional series anywhere. A very bitter opponent of creation science, paleontologist, Niles Eldredge, has acknowledged that there is little, if any, evidence of evolutionary transitions in the fossil record. Instead, things remain the same!

“It is a simple ineluctable truth that virtually all members of a biota remain basically stable, with minor fluctuations, throughout their durations. . . .”¹⁰

Nevertheless, because of the lack of any direct evidence for evolution, evolutionists are increasingly turning to dubious circumstantial evidences, such as similarities in DNA or other biochemical components of organisms as their “proof” that evolution is a scientific fact. A number of evolutionists have even argued that DNA itself is evidence for evolution since it is common to all organisms. More often is the argument used that similar DNA structures in two different organisms proves common evolutionary ancestry.

Neither argument is valid. There is no reason whatever why the Creator could not or would not use the same type of genetic code based on DNA for all His created life forms. This is evidence for intelligent design and creation, not evolution.

The fact is that the best known and most fundamental equation of thermodynamics says that the influx of heat into an open system will increase the entropy of that system, not decrease it. All known cases of decreased entropy (or increased organization) in open systems involve a guiding program of some sort and one or more energy conversion mechanisms.

Evolution has neither of these. Mutations are not “organizing” mechanisms, but disorganizing (in accord with the second law). They are commonly harmful, sometimes neutral, but never beneficial (at least as far as observed mutations are concerned). Natural selection cannot generate order, but can only “sieve out” the disorganizing mutations presented to it, thereby conserving the existing order, but never generating new order. In principle, it may be barely conceivable that evolution could occur in open systems, in spite of the tendency of all systems to disintegrate sooner or later. But no one yet has been able to show that it actually has the ability to overcome this universal tendency, and that is the basic reason why there is still no bona fide proof of evolution, past or present.

The atheistic nature of evolution is not only admitted, but insisted upon by most of the leaders of evolutionary thought. Ernst Mayr, for example, says that:

Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations.²³

A professor in the Department of Biology at Kansas State University says:

Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.²⁴

It is well known by almost everyone in the scientific world today that such influential evolutionists as Stephen Jay Gould and Edward Wilson of Harvard, Richard Dawkins of England, William Provine of Cornell, and numerous other evolutionary spokesmen are dogmatic atheists. Eminent scientific philosopher and ardent Darwinian atheist Michael Ruse has even acknowledged that evolution is their religion!

Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion — a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality . . . . Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.²⁵

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Those are just a few excerpts from a much lengthier article. Check it out as it sums up well the Creationist side of the argument.

Often those who study and espouse a form of ID are ridiculed as not using the scientific method and not having anything published in peer-reviewed publications. This list will lay that nonsense to rest. There will be those who will call the list short, but you have to remember that the number of scientists who study ID are far fewer (and have far less access to funding) than those who espouse Darwinian evolution so it is to be expected that ID’ers would have fewer publications (not to mention the hostility to ID that also undoubtedly makes it harder to get published).

There is an interesting post up over at Evolution News about the evolutionary bias of the MCAT. It is worth checking out.

I have a friend in medical school who can attest not just to the bias in testing required to get into medical school, but also to the lack of openness to anyone who would question evolution. Forget the main goal of science in exploring new theories and hypotheses, evolution is the be all, end all, theory for explaining origins.

Here’s an excerpt:

I find this not only poor science for those that are preparing to enter the medical field, but it also makes a very poor basis for assessing a person’s competence in biology. Not only that, this is an incredibly stressful and tense test. I understand them testing our knowledge of evolution (as a hypothesis) on the biology section and I would not object to that. But why do they insist on using it unnecessarily in the verbal reasoning section on an exam, and always treating it as a widely accepted fact? It seems that they are using my acceptance of evolution as a measure of my competence as a doctor, and I find that to be both bad science and bad medicine. My ability to treat patients with care, compassion, and competence in no way relates to my beliefs about Darwinism.