From National Newspaper

[artsylady]

Let's be intelligent about Darwin

Elizabeth Nickson

National Post

February 6, 2004

With our twin election campaigns about to begin, Christian-bashing season is

upon us again. Consider the faint possibility, however, that when you hear

the words "right-wing ideologues," "backwards-leaning bigots," "fringe scientists" operating "on the margins," "uneducated," "illogical," and so on, that in fact, Christian and religious North America is engaged in serious intellectual inquiry, while mainstream academics and scientists

are busy closing the gates of academic freedom. I know it's preposterous,

but hold it in your mind, as a theory, say.

Tuesday is the eve of Darwin's 195th birthday and the debate on his

seminal work only gathers steam. The New York Academy of Sciences will launch,

that night, another salvo in the war against intelligent design by showing a

film and holding an indoctrination session (sorry, discussion) afterward.

Last year, the National Centre of Science Education held an "activists

summit" for science teachers and other educators, looking at strategies on how

to kill the opposition to Darwin dead. They have reason to worry.

Intelligent design is a set of complex ideas which grows in power and persuasion

every single year. Supported in large part by the Discovery Institute, a

think-tank based in Seattle, and by the ever-increasing intellectual

power of Christian universities and colleges, successful initiatives to

"teach the controversy" gained ground in six states in the past year. While the

education establishment twitters and moans, Zogby International

recently found that two-thirds of Ohioans, for instance, supported teaching both

Darwin's theory and the scientific evidence against it. Another poll,

taken a few months later, produced a similar result. Nationally, 71% of

Americans supported teaching evidence both for and against Darwin's theory. An

even greater majority favoured exposing students to "evidence that points to

an intelligent design of life." American parents, apparently, faced with

the choice, want both. The science establishment, en masse, swoons.

Scripture, after all, is for stupid people, not them. Does that mean they will

have to read the Bible?

Furthermore, the purpose of the Discovery Institute is plain. Phillip

Johnson, a senior fellow at the Institute, stated last year on a

Christian radio talk show that "Our strategy has been to change the subject a

bit, so that we can get the issue of intelligent design, which really means the

reality of God, before the academic world and into the schools."

I can only say, right on. Darwin should be vigorously argued against on

many grounds, but chief among them is that the reductive materialism that

results from it is so unbelievably dreary. Scratch a Darwinist, and you find a

depressive. However, that's just me. Not enough to base a change in the

way science is taught. Helloooo Environment Minister David Anderson!

Dumbing down is not an answer either. The Georgia Department of

Education -- faced by 35 Georgia scientists arguing for the academic freedom to

teach the controversy (of the 300 in the U.S.) -- decided to remove all

references to "evolution" in science textbooks, and replace the term with "biological

changes over time."

"This is absurd," said Rob Crowther, spokesman for the Discovery

Institute. "They need to be presenting the scientific evidence both for and

against Darwin's theory. There is growing controversy among scientists about

the ability of natural selection or chemistry alone to explain the

complexity of life. Ignoring the word evolution won't make the controversy go away."

And these are real scientists too, not fundamentalists who believe the

earth is 10,000 years old. In the Discovery Institute's submissions to

various boards of education across the U.S., bibliographies of 40 peer-reviewed

scientific articles raise significant challenges to the key tenets of

Darwinian evolution.Many scientists now question the ability of natural

selection to create fundamentally new structures, organisms and body

plans. The increasing finds in the fossil records are not turning up the

necessary failed experiments. And in 2001, 100 scientists, from institutions such

as MIT, Yale and Rice, published a statement questioning the creative

power of natural selection.

You can only imagine the scorn from the science establishment. And

wonder why. Darwin himself admitted that "a multitude of facts" could be

"viewed ... from a point of view directly opposite" to his, and viewed by

"experienced naturalists." If there are serious questions, and an

increasing number of respected academics and scientists are raising them, why

object to their public investigation and discussion?

Benjamin Wiker explains why in Moral Darwinism, How We Became

Hedonists. Materialists, claims Wiker, rightly fear the intelligent design

revolution because they realize that a moral revolution necessarily follows upon

it. If there is an intelligent designer, or God; and the immortal soul exists;

and if God mandated a moral code, as is suggested in the foundational works

of all religions; then heaven and hell might exist. And the highest value

now held, which Wiker claims is ataraxia, or freedom from disturbance,

would radically shift to something quite else. Which is that each human

possesses an immortal soul, which might well be held to account. This is quite

frightening to materialists because it means that the current world

view, held and vigorously promoted by the keepers of the culture, would

crumble.

Such fun. In the distinctly unfree Dominion, where grim utilitarianism

reigns everywhere, intelligent design is no more than a weird blip on

the American scholastic landscape, never to pollute our freedom from

disturbance. Instead what we have is Anderson fervidly promoting the

increasingly discredited science of Kyoto, and refusing to hear the

testimony of any scientist opposed to his mad totalitarian desire.

According to the Hill Times this week, Environment Canada managers regularly

suppress scientific reports of government climate scientists that do not support

government policy. And as Tim Ball reports, "Scientists regularly

complain of extreme pro-Kyoto bias in the selection of scientific papers and

news articles circulated by Natural Resources Canada". The shutting down of

public debate in this country is far advanced. Let the Christian

bashing begin.

[Ovedya]

Tuesday is the eve of Darwin's 195th birthday...

Ah....I think you still have to be alive in order to have a birthday.

[artsylady]

Yeah, isn't it insane that they celebrate his birthday??

There have been far greater scientists who've made really important discoveries that have really helped humankind (Many of them were creationists) and they get zippo.

Even if the theory of evolution were actually true, it hasn't actually helped us at all. It's just made people believe that we are not accountable to a higher being and that we can go ahead and behave more like animals now. Like the popsong of 5 or 6 years ago went... *(brace yourself) "You and me baby aint nothing but mammals, so let's do it like they do it on the Discovery Channel". What a sad state of affairs.