Recently, President Bush raised some eyebrows during a round-table interview with reporters. Prodded about his views of the origin of life and what he thought of the Darwinism vs. Intelligent Design debate, Bush reluctantly said,

"I think that part of education is to expose people to different schools of thought. You're asking me whether or not people ought to be exposed to different ideas; the answer is yes."

As expected, Bush's comments were immediately met by howls of indignation that the President was mixing pure science (Darwinism) with pure religion (Intelligent Design). Such mixing is an intellectual and political no-no, they warn.

Intellectually, there is no place for God in science, or even the merest hint of an intelligent cause. All apparent "design" in nature must be explained only in terms of the twin powers of chance and material necessity, as prodded and kneaded by natural selection. Politically, as we all know, the Constitution absolutely forbids any mention of God in the classroom (or if we do mention God, it better be in a religion classroom in a private school, not receiving any funding from the federal government).

So they say. So we are told.

But perhaps it isn't as simple as that. Let's begin with Darwinism. Is it really a pure science...or is it, by design, a view of science "purified" of any reference to God? Not purified because science demands it, but because a particular secularist ideology or worldview demands it?

I am suggesting a parallel to our political situation. The First Amendment of our Constitution states that "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;..." The obvious meaning: Don't establish a state church either directly (as the Anglicans did in England) or indirectly by outlawing all but the favored denomination.

We are now told--obvious appearances to the contrary--that this statement means that all mention of God must be actively and zealously stripped from the public square. In short, politics must be "purified" of religion. And that means: no mention of God in the classroom, especially in the science classroom; no mention of design in biology, for that would imply a Designer. Thus, only "pure" Darwinism may be taught, which by definition eliminates the need for a Creator. No questions asked, because none are allowed.

There is a pattern here, if we step back and view things in its larger historical context. Both the exclusion of religion from politics and the intellectual exclusion of intelligent design from biology are part of a larger, more comprehensive, well-planned secularizing project. Over the last several centuries, secularists have been intent on stripping God from public life; Darwinism provides the scientific mandate for the project.

Think that's too strong a claim? Grist only for right-wing, know-nothing conspiracy theorists?

Consider carefully the following interesting statement made by a very reputable molecular biologist, Franklin Harold.

"We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity; but we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical system, only a variety of wishful speculations."

Harold is a magnificent biologist who has written one of my favorite books on the glories of the cell, The Way of the Cell. The Way of the Cell is a long argument against the reductionism inherent in Darwinism...yet Harold still takes the side of Darwin. It is clear that he has been indoctrinated against design. Why?

The entire of Darwin's argument rests on its ability to provide detailed accounts of biological systems. Darwin made a bet against design. He admitted living things certainly appeared to be so complex that only a divine intelligence could have been their cause, but he bet that natural selection, continually choosing the most fit utterances from "the dialogue of chance and necessity," could explain the bit by bit build-up of any and every biochemical system.

After a century and a half, we're faced with "only a variety of wishful speculations" and we think Darwin has won the bet? Why are "wishful speculations" any more than a protracted sigh of faith, a confession of hope for things yet unseen?

We're not dealing then with a controversy between science and religion, but a clash between two faiths, two religions. One is the religion of Secularism that demands unbelief in God, evidence or no evidence. Witness the oft-quoted words of Darwinian biologist Richard Lewontin (interestingly, another trenchant critique of the reductionism of his fellow Darwinists).

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Lewontin claims that we must be materialists because "To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."

This is, of course, a real fear, but a false claim. To argue that things in nature are designed is precisely to focus on their evident, regular, and complex order. But the materialist's fear of miracle, that is certainly quite real, and we are right to be suspicious that there's more than meets the ear in the howls of indignation at President Bush's words.

“Evolution Wars”

This week's Time magazine asks the question, “Does God have a place in science class?” Instead, shouldn’t we ask, “Does teaching students the materialistic dogma that there is no God and that we are mere material happenstance have a place in science class?”

Harold Evans, a BBC News columnist, this week echoes the now accepted Darwinian mix of part science/whole cosmology when he writes:

"Yet, as Charles Darwin demonstrated in his book Origin of Species in 1859, we weren’t designed by any hidden hand in a single brilliant moment, but have all evolved from lower orders – ape to man – over hundreds of millions of years."

Evans is, of course, wrong. Darwin’s book does not demonstrate this, it proposes this. Not even the fossil record, to date, demonstrates this. His use of the phrase “single brilliant moment” is most unfortunate. If there is anything today that most scientists agree on it is the importance of both the Big Bang and its characteristics in the subsequent formation of the universe.

Darwin proposed a developmental theory and a cosmology. Micro-evolution, one aspect of that developmental theory, has been largely supported by fossil evidence. Macro-evolution, the proposal that whole new species can be formed through evolution, does not have the same support in the fossil record. With regards to Darwin’s cosmology, that our origins are purely the result of unintentional and random material events, science itself is moving away from this assertion, attempting to find organizing mechanisms within the universe to account for how finely tuned the universe is and what a rare event our existence on earth turns out to be.

Unmasking Darwin's Cosmology

In the 80 years since John Scopes was convicted for teaching evolution in a Tennessee classroom, the bickering over what should be taught in science classrooms has only escalated. The results of consequent court battles turned the tables so completely that not only were Tennessee's laws banning the teaching of evolution overturned but also overturned was the idea that Biblical faith could be compatible with modern science. The battle is doomed to endless repetition until the false claim that the controversy is simply a matter of pure science versus religious faith is discredited.

When Darwin titled his book: Origin of the Species, he moved beyond pure science into the realm of cosmology. Understood more accurately, by teaching only Darwinism in science classrooms, we are already teaching both science and religion!! Darwin's exclusive materialist account of human origin is a worldview claim, one that Secularists are determined to keep as the only account taught in our schools. So long as Darwin's cosmology is allowed to masquerade as pure science, Secularists can defend it as the reigning worldview against all others. Maybe that's what the bickering is about!

Talk about cosmological bias!

Harvard University has just announced the launch of a research project called: The Origins of Life in the Universe Initiative. Their objective is to confirm what they apparently already know to be true.

According to an Associated Press report, David R. Liu, professor of chemistry and chemical biology at Harvard expressed confidence about the expected outcome of the 1 million dollar a year project.

"My expectation is that we will be able to reduce this to a very simple series of logical events that could have taken place with no divine intervention."

If you don't believe us... ask a Darwinian theorist.

"Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Richard Lewontin

The tables have turned.

In 1968 the Supreme Court ruled that it is not constitutional to ban a theory because it contradicts religious beliefs. But isn’t that exactly what our courts and schools are now doing again? Aren’t we banning scientifically based competing theories of origins from the science curriculum because they violate the religious belief of right-wing materialists that the universe is purely the result of unintended forces?

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