66 Sermon Illustrations on Darwinism

Naturalism has become the civil religion of our universities. The article presents a game plan for Christian response.

When Phillip Johnson was in college, a professor told a story about a boy from a backwoods family who was being interviewed by a visiting anthropologist. Asked about his siblings, the boy proudly declared that his brother was at Harvard. The astonished anthropologist asked what the brother was studying. "It's not that way," replied the boy. "They're studying him."

Likewise, the academic world regards Christian theism as an object for study rather than as a participant in academic discourse, as Notre Dame history professor George Marsden has shown (see his new book The Soul of the American University, Oxford). The standards of academia discourage a professor who is teaching, say, the history of Christianity from taking the position that Christianity may be true. Such restrictions do not apply to advocates of other viewpoints. Socialists teach socialism, and feminists teach women's studies. As Marsden wrote in the "Wall Street Journal" (Dec. 22, 1993), "Many contemporary academics insist that the only respectable place for religion in the academy is on the syllabus-as an object of study-where it may be subordinated to Western scientific methods of analysis."

Sometimes this double standard requires that a thinker or group be split into two parts, to separate the politically correct from the incorrect. In Marsden's words: "One conspicuous example is that, although universities welcome African-Americans and build programs in African-American studies, they find little place for positive evaluations of the dominant religion of African-American culture." One might paraphrase this point by saying that the secular content of the Reverend Martin Luther King's views on racial justice has a very different status from the religious background of those same views. The former goes to the university as an honored participant; the latter only as an object of scientific study. Why is that?

ACADEMIC FREEDOM?

One reason is that secularists employ a definition of rationality that allows no place for a supernatural Creator. An ongoing academic freedom case at San Francisco State University provides a striking example of the disapproval with which the scientific community regards the concept of a God who threatens to become a reality we cannot ignore. Biology professor Dean Kenyon was the co-author some 20 years ago of a respected book titled Biochemical Predestination that supported the orthodox scientific theory that living organisms evolved from nonliving chemicals through natural chemical processes. As the years went by, Kenyon's doubts grew, however, and eventually he concluded that the evidence did not support the assumption that unintelligent material processes are capable of forming living organisms by chemical evolution.

As instructor of a large introductory course for nonmajors, Kenyon taught the prevailing theories of chemical and biological evolution, but he also taught the weaknesses of those theories and suggested to his classes that life might in fact be the product of "intelligent design"-however distasteful that prospect might be to orthodox scientific materialists. A few students complained, and the professor was called on the carpet. The dean of science told him that his teaching of intelligent design amounted to biblical creationism, and that to consider this possibility favorably was to bring the forbidden topic of religion into science. To ensure that he had no further opportunity to advocate such absurdities, Kenyon was removed from his regular classroom duties and relegated to laboratory supervision.

Professor Kenyon challenged this administrative action by bringing a complaint before San Francisco State University's Academic Freedom Committee. The committee ruled that professors of biology, like those who teach other subjects, have a right to dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy in their field. It therefore unanimously urged the administrators to reinstate Kenyon in the classroom. The dean and the department chair balked at first, but they gave way after the full academic senate voted to support the committee's recommendation.

Kenyon won a victory, but the conflict is not over. In late February, the Biology faculty at San Francisco State adopted, by a vote of 27 to 5, a resolution declaring that "There is no scientific evidence to support the concept of intelligent design," and that therefore "the intelligent design view is not scientific." In context, the statement, like many others on the subject from the scientific community, combines two discordant propositions. On the one hand, the scientific authorities want to say that intelligent design is not eligible for consideration because it is religion, not science, and hence cannot be tested. On the other hand, they want to say that they have thoroughly tested the concept and rejected it as false. The apparent purpose of this confused declaration is to set the stage for another effort to prevent Kenyon from suggesting to students that there really is evidence for intelligent design, but what will happen next is anybody's guess.

DEBATING DARWINISM

The Kenyon case thus constitutes only a limited victory for those who believe that genuine academic freedom requires a hearing for theistic thinking about problems such as the origin of life; but even this limited victory reflects the fact that a debate about the dogmas of naturalistic evolution has been successfully launched in the universities. In that debate, considerable attention has been paid to my own book Darwin on Trial (InterVarsity), and to the lectures on Darwinism that I have given on many university campuses, some of which have been widely distributed on videotape. Other Christian thinkers have also made substantial contributions to the debate. For example, Whitworth College philosophy professor Steven Meyer published a fine essay on the Kenyon case in the Wall Street Journal just before San Francisco State's academic senate voted on the matter. Kenyon's colleagues thus knew that he was not an isolated individual, but a person asserting a position that has support in the society at large.

The example of naturalistic evolution tells us why theistic thinking has so little standing in the academic world. The contemporary academic world takes for granted a philosophy called scientific naturalism. According to this philosophy, nature is "all there is," which is to say the cosmos is a closed system of material causes and effects that can never be influenced by anything outside of nature-like God-for existence.

"God," in this system of thought, is a product of the human imagination and largely a remnant of prescientific ignorance. At one time, humans believed in a host of gods living in places like Mount Olympus and attributed natural events like storms and fires to the whims of these beings. As knowledge advanced, humans gradually put aside the lesser spirits but retained the one Supreme Being as the cause of our existence.

At last, the greatest scientific discovery of all was made, and humans learned that we are the products of a combination of chance events and impersonal natural laws. This discovery set the stage for the famous "death of God," the insight that man created God rather than the other way around. The most advanced and influential thinkers thereafter ignored the Creator altogether, or they looked for a way to conform religion to naturalism through liberal theology. Others retained some remnant of supernatural religion by imagining the Creator as responsible for establishing the laws of nature at the ultimate beginning of the cosmos, where scientific investigation is unable to penetrate.

Naturalistic philosophy is not necessarily hostile to the "idea of God." On the contrary, that is just the point. For philosophical naturalists, God is not an independent reality but an idea in the human mind. Proper naturalists do not insist upon the nonexistence of God because that is to take the issue more seriously than it deserves. Instead, they consign the whole subject to the category of "religious belief," which is understood to be a product of the human imagination. Although God does not exist, or at least does not take part in historical events, beliefs about God do exist and have important consequences. Such religious belief contrasts with scientific knowledge. The difference is that beliefs are untestable and hence valid only for the person who holds them, whereas knowledge is objective and hence valid for everyone. That is why, in an educational system based on naturalistic principles, naturalistic evolution may be taught to students as fact regardless of whether they or their parents object. No statements assuming the objective existence of God may be made, however, because no student should have to listen to subjective beliefs being presented as if they were facts.

GENTEEL NIHILISM

Naturalistic philosophy has ethical consequences, and these are also manifest in public education and law. At one time it was thought possible to find a basis for morality and justice in science itself, but with the fall of Marxism, that hope has been discredited. The current fashion in academia is a genteel nihilism. Because scientific knowledge extends only to questions of fact and not to questions of value, matters of morality are inherently subjective and relative. In consequence, students in public schools are taught that they must choose standards of morality themselves and should subject all morality that comes to them by tradition or training in the home to critical analysis.

The predominance of naturalistic assumptions in the universities and colleges guarantees that theistic thinking will be taken more as a personal eccentricity than as a serious contribution to knowledge. What is the value of a theism that is founded upon unreality? As naturalists see it, when God died, humankind lost nothing important because we still retained the goodness and rationality that we had projected onto this imaginary father figure in the first place. To bring God back into the picture now is, at worst, to embrace irrationality or, at best, to add some superfluous God-talk to ideas that are justifiable on naturalistic grounds. The most favorable thing you can say about a Christian theist in academia is that his work is so good you would never have guessed he was a Christian.

Many Christian college and seminary professors have understandably wanted to win the respect of their peers in the secular academic world, and so they have worked mightily to reconcile the naturalistic understanding of knowledge with Christian faith. Intelligent naturalists do not necessarily disapprove of this effort, provided it is clear who is in charge. What they do insist upon is that subjective religious belief must always conform itself to objective scientific knowledge, never the other way around. Thus, if a Christian college professor teaches "evolution" exactly as Carl Sagan or Stephen Jay Gould would teach it, he may append a theistic interpretation that characterizes the process as God's way of creating. This interpretation will earn him no great credit from naturalists, but they will be tolerant so long as it is clear that the theism in "theistic evolution" refers to a personal reflection upon a process that is objectively explainable on a naturalistic basis. If a professor were to give his theism some scientific content - for example, by suggesting that pre-existing intelligence may be required to make living organisms from nonliving chemicals - he would forfeit instantly his standing in the scientific community and the secular academic world. Like Dean Kenyon, he would be accused of injecting subjective "religion" into the objective realm of science.

Biblical creationists who challenge the theory of evolution on a combination of scriptural and scientific grounds have fared no better. Their premise, that the Bible has some standing as a record of natural history, seems nonsensical to those who see the world through naturalistic spectacles. To metaphysical naturalists, the Bible belongs to the realm of religion, whereas the history of life on earth belongs to the naturalistic realm of science. There is no reason whatever to expect the two to be consistent, because the biblical account of natural history is deemed to be composed of prescientific legends. The program of squaring science with the Bible is thus about as sensible as trying to square the scientific account of childbirth with the story that the stork brings babies. For naturalists, the proper way of reconciling science and Scripture is to adopt a naturalistic interpretation of Scripture. This is accomplished through what is called the "higher criticism" of the Bible, and it is the orthodox theory of interpretation in most mainline seminaries today.

WHAT WORKS, WHAT DOESN'T

If neither theistic evolution nor biblical creationism is effective in challenging the domination of scientific naturalism in our colleges and universities, what approach does have a chance of success? When I began writing my book Darwin on Trial, several basic points were clear to me:

First, the Darwinian theory of evolution is not merely or primarily a scientific theory of interest to professional scientists in their laboratories and classrooms. It is, first and foremost, a creation story for the culture, a story that is endorsed by government and propagated through the media and the public schools. The story tells us that we were created by blind and purposeless material processes rather than by a purposeful Creator who cares about what we do and what happens to us. The theory entails a naturalistic view of God, whether or not that implication is made explicit in a particular textbook or television program.

Second, what is fundamentally important about the Darwinian theory is not the claim that biological creation was a gradual, long-term process. The important claim is that purposeless material processes, such as random mutation and natural selection, were capable of doing all the work of biological creation so that there is no need for a Creator. This claim - which I call the Blind Watchmaker thesis - masquerades as something that has been proved by scientific evidence. On the contrary, the evidence that the mutation/selection mechanism can create new complex organs or new types of organisms is somewhere between very weak and nonexistent. The Blind Watchmaker mechanism is a child of metaphysical naturalism, not of empirical science. It survives because the leading alternative is supernatural creation, which is unacceptable to the rules of today's science.

Third, the all-important task was to mount a critique of the Blind Watchmaker thesis that the academic and scientific culture could not easily ignore. To do this, it was necessary to put aside all questions of biblical interpretation or veracity and to concentrate entirely on the claims of Darwinism. In the academic world, a Bible/science debate is a nonstarter, because it invokes a stereotype that shuts off thought. What was needed was to press questions that are legitimated within the context of mainstream academic thinking, questions about what has been proved about evolution and what has merely been assumed.

Finally, conditions were, in many respects, more favorable for a re- examination of Darwinism in the 1990s than previously. During the 1980s, widespread publicity had been given to the writings of certain prominent fossil experts, who had insisted that the fossil record was incompatible with the Darwinian picture that major evolutionary changes occur in gradual increments by the accumulation of tiny random mutations through natural selection. The Darwinists had proposed a subtheory to solve the problem, called punctuated equilibria or "punk eek," but this improvisation was vulnerable to criticism. The very need for a new theory to deal with the fossil record indicated that the problem was conceded to be serious.

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What would Darwin have said about the growing intelligent design controversy in Ohio? We can't ask him, of course. He's been dead for 120 years. But there are tantalizing hints in Darwin's writings that he might just have surprised, even shocked, his present-day followers. Darwin was a lot friendlier to intellectual freedom than many neo-Darwinists have been.

Fellows of the Discovery Institute made national headlines this week when they argued in open hearings before the Ohio state board of education for teaching intelligent design alongside evolution. Intelligent design is the scientific theory that natural objects, like organisms, display the hallmarks of a purposeful, deliberate cause -- an intelligent agent -- capable of effects that no natural law or chance process could produce.

The response in much of the press against the intelligent design proponents and the board members who favor it has been vicious. Editorial columns of most Ohio newspapers cried, "Nonsense!" "A dangerous and unwise move," warned worried scientists in Ohio and elsewhere. "There's no place in the science classroom even to discuss proposals such as intelligent design, which depart from the strict naturalism of modern science" -- or so the alarmed editorials have claimed.

What's fascinating is that not all media observers react so hysterically. Commenting in TIME magazine, for instance, science writer Robert Wright noted that intelligent design advocates "have raised productive doubts -- and, in science, being productively wrong is nearly as valuable as being right." Going further, Wright notes that "no one knows how DNA began to replicate or how the universe got built in such a way that replication was possible. It's not crazy to think that such initial conditions were set by some intelligence for an overarching purpose that is still unfolding."

Could an Ohio high school biology student bring this TIME magazine article into her science classroom for discussion? More to the point, could she bring in Darwin's classic, the ORIGIN OF SPECIES itself?

And here's where one can't help but wonder what Darwin would have said about the Ohio controversy. Not many people have read more than a few pages of the ORIGIN OF SPECIES, if they've opened the book at all. But on the last page, Darwin says that life itself was "first breathed by the Creator" -- a phrase that would today give fits to civil liberties lawyers.

And there are other passages in the ORIGIN that should worry the Ohio opponents of intelligent design. In fact, the passage I'm about to read should be posted on the wall of every science classroom in the nation, as a motto upholding the principles of intellectual freedom in science. "For I am well aware," Darwin wrote, "that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question."

Now that's intellectual fairness: fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of the question. That's what many citizens in Ohio are struggling for -- and what, if he were around today, Darwin himself would tell the school board to do -- sounds good to me.

For further reading and information:

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, DEVELOPING A CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW OF SCIENCE AND EVOLUTION (Tyndale House, 1999).

Robert Wright, "Darwinian Struggle," TIME, 11 March 2002.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 020214, "Students and Intellectual Freedom."

BreakPoint Commentary No. 020213, "Darwin's God."

Learn more about the Ohio State Board of Education Science Standards here.

Charles Darwin's ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE can be read here.

Visit the Discovery Institute's website to learn more about Intelligent Design theory.

The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA) fosters conversation about intelligent design among students, educators, and other interested parties.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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Where did religion come from? According to Harvard biologist E. O. Wilson, religion is a product of evolution. In his new book CONSILIENCE, Wilson says belief in God must have given early humans an edge in the struggle for survival. But today, he says, traditional religions are being replaced by a new morality, a new unifying myth, based squarely on evolutionary biology.

Darwinism itself is becoming a new religion.

Wilson may sound radical, but he's right. Darwinism is about much more than science: It provides the scientific support for an entire naturalistic worldview or religion. Broadly speaking, a religion is anything that functions as a person's ultimate belief or worldview -- anything that answers the basic questions of life: Where did we come from? What are we here for? How do we know what's right and wrong?

For many people today, Darwinian evolution answers those fundamental questions. Where did we come from? From chance collisions of atoms, Darwinism says. Why are we here? There is no purpose to life, Darwinism says -- no reason for existence. We are cosmic accidents. How do we know right and wrong? We DON'T know any objective moral law: Morality is merely an idea that appears in the human mind when it has evolved to a certain stage. Hence people make up their own ideas of right and wrong.

Cornell biologist William Provine sums up the implications Of Darwinism in simple bullet points: It means "No life after death; no ultimate foundation for ethics; no ultimate meaning for life; no free will."

This is why the issue of Darwinism versus cosmic design Has become such a fierce battleground in America today. The debate is not just about fossils or genetic mutations. Our theory of origins determines our identity, our values, our sense of meaning.

This is why, in today's world, the Christian message must begin with creation. We cannot simply start off with John 3:16 and the gospel message. That's like starting to read a book in the middle of the story -- you don't know the characters and you can't make sense of the plot. We need to start with creation, where the main character of the "story" is introduced as the Creator of all, and the "plot" of human history begins to unfold.

Creation tells us who we are and why we are here. It tells us our lives DO have ultimate meaning. It gives the basis for morality, because if God created us for a purpose, then morality is the guidebook telling us how we fulfill that purpose. And when we live outside the bounds of the purpose for which we were created, that is sin. Suddenly theological terms make sense.

Creation is the basis for the entire Christian worldview.

A century ago, the great Dutch statesman Abraham Kuyper wrote that if we are going to stand against the powerful forces of unbelief today, we must understand that we face a clash of worldviews -- and we must frame Christianity as an equally comprehensive worldview. That means beginning with the God who created "the heavens and the earth, and everything in it."

For "everything in it" finds its meaning in Him.

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Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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The late comedian Flip Wilson used to get laughs when, by way of explaining his misdeeds, he would say "the Devil made me do it!"

Well, unfortunately, our culture no longer believes in the Devil, so it has to look elsewhere to find explanations for the things men do. Increasingly, evolution has emerged as the explanation of choice -- but it's an explanation that leaves a lot to be desired.

Psychologists, biologists and anthropologists have all taken to explaining human behavior in purely Darwinian terms. In the past few years, scientists have argued that behavior such as jealousy, altruism, and even infanticide, have their origins in our ancestors' struggle to survive and pass on their genes.

The newest addition to the list is rape. In their book, A Natural History of Rape, to be published this week, Randy Thornhill and Craig T. Palmer, argue that rape is "natural." That is, it occurs in nature and can be explained in biological terms.

The authors reject the view, best represented by Susan Brownmiller's 1975 book, Against Our Will, that rape is "an act of aggression, designed to intimidate women."

Instead, they contend that rape has its origins in what could be called the "Darwinist imperative," to reproduce and pass on one's genes.

According to the authors, rape is what they call "an adaptive reproductive strategy." In other words, males resort to rape when all other efforts to attract a mate fail. They cite examples of rape among animals and point to the fact that most rape victims are of child-bearing age. They conclude that rape must be motivated, however unconsciously, by the desire to impregnate.

Not surprisingly, feminists are in an uproar. Thornhill has been the object of protests wherever he speaks. And in the latest issue of Time magazine, feminist writer Barbara Ehrenreich takes the pair to task.

It's mildly amusing, I must say, to watch the feminists in their uproar. Whether they realize it or not, they're in a logical bind. Most are avowed evolutionists, and yet here evolution is being used to justify the exploitation of women. They are impaled on the sword of their own worldview.

The truth is that the whole evolutionist idea that we are manipulated by our genes is nonsense. Evolution can't explain most human behavior, especially those traits that Lincoln called "the better angels of our nature," like altruism and mercy.

No, if you really want to understand what makes us tick, the only sensible answer resides in a Christian worldview. As I wrote in my recent book, "How Now Shall We Live," this worldview centers on three key ideas: creation, fall, and redemption.

Since we are made in the image of God, we are capable of acts like kindness and mercy, which reflect the nature of God. Since we are also fallen, we are also capable of great brutality, such as rape.

Books like A Natural History of Rape purport to explain reality with reference to the biblical worldview. But, they end up demonstrating that only the biblical worldview offers an explanation of reality that makes sense - and that's a message our neighbors need to hear.

Because, in the end, "evolution made me do it," not only isn't as funny as Wilson's line, it's also not true.

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Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

According to the conventional wisdom, creation is religion while evolution is science. Cornelius G. Hunter delivers a fresh critique of this common assumption. Hunter shows that religious concerns lay at the root of Darwin’s case for evolution and that they drive the scientific arguments for evolution even to this day.

Hunter challenges many conventional thoughts about evolution on both sides of the debate. Creationists often argue that evolution presupposes the nonexistence of God, while evolutionists commonly claim to be convinced of evolution independent of any religious presuppositions. According to Hunter, neither claim is true: “Evolution is neither atheism in disguise nor merely science at work.” [1] Rather, the theory of evolution formulated by Charles Darwin in his 1859 book, ORIGIN OF SPECIES, presupposed a specific concept of God that was common in Victorian society.

As the book’s subtitle indicates, Darwin’s theory of evolution was actually devised as a solution to the problem of evil. The crux of his argument was that life in the real world is not the pretty or pleasant existence a good God would make it. Darwin could not persuade himself that God intended “that the cat should play with mice.” [2] Modern thinkers from Milton to Leibniz resolved the problem of moral evil — the bad things that humans do — by distancing God from human events: God made human beings autonomous and cannot be blamed for their imperfections. Darwin resolved the problem of NATURAL evil — the “bad” things that occur in nature — by distancing God from natural events: God made nature autonomous and cannot be blamed for ITS imperfections. In this way, Darwin defended God’s goodness at the cost of denying His sovereignty.

The seemingly neutral argument of Darwin’s ORIGIN OF SPECIES, then, turns out to depend on metaphysical, religious presuppositions. Hunter shows that the main evidences for evolution depend on the assumption that if God had created living things directly He would not have made them the way they are. In three chapters, Hunter summarizes the purported evidence for evolution from comparative anatomy, observable small-scale changes in living things, and the fossil record. Along the way he points out various problems with the evidence and exposes the metaphysical arguments underlying the scientific considerations. For example, he quotes evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould as saying, “Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution — paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce.” [3] In this same vein, Darwin once joked that he found it hard to believe that “the shape of my nose was designed.” [4] In a later chapter, Hunter explains that “nature’s failure to fulfill our ideals and expectations was considered clear proof of evolution. All birds should fly, but since some don’t, there must be a crude law of nature rather than a Creator behind such incompetence.” [5]

To a great extent, then, Darwin’s theory of evolution was prompted by the inadequacies of creationism as understood in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Having proved that species are not the immutable, optimally designed creatures that creationists purported them to be, Darwin concluded that creationism was false. Hunter writes: “Evolution is supported by the premise that God must make species absolutely fixed — beaks must not get longer and coloration must not change. And since beaks do get longer and coloration does change, we know that God must not have created them” (p. 64). In Darwin’s day, creationists assumed that God would never allow any species to become extinct. The revelations of extinct species in the fossil record seemed, therefore, to disprove creation.

DARWIN’S GOD, while provocative and insightful, is lacking in one respect. Again and again Hunter makes the crucial point that Darwin’s theory of evolution was an attempt to explain how God could have created a world with suffering and death. Darwin’s explanation is ultimately at odds with the biblical view of God as Creator and providential Caretaker of His world. Unfortunately, Hunter does not clearly offer an alternative. Granted that Darwin’s solution to the problem of natural evil is biblically unacceptable, Christians need to offer a fully developed, positive alternative that is BOTH biblically sound and scientifically credible.

Robert M. Bowman, Jr. is president of the Institute for the Development of Evangelical Apologetics (IDEA), in Pasadena, California. Mr. Bowman is co-author with Kenneth D. Boa of Faith Has Its Reasons: An Integrative Approach to Defending Christianity (NavPress, 2001).

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1. “Darwin’s God,” by Cornelius G. Hunter, p. 8.

2. ibid., p. 12.

3. ibid., p. 48.

4. ibid., p. 63.

5. ibid., p. 105.

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[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #18783]

You've seen the stories: They're nothing short of horrifying. An 18-year-old girl at her high school prom delivers her baby in a bathroom stall, then leaves the dead child in a trash can and returns to dancing. We shudder at the breathtaking callousness and disregard for human life; yet for some scientists, such behavior is only natural.

They believe that humans are robots, programmed by our genes, to dump newborns into garbage cans if our gene-controlled brains determine that such cold- hearted actions are in our Darwinian best interest.

Well, in his new book, "THE WEDGE OF TRUTH: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism," author Phillip Johnson challenges the naturalistic view of human nature. Our true nature, he says, which finds such acts morally wrong, is profoundly different.

Johnson starts with this provocative question: Why exactly is it wrong to kill babies? In the case of the 18-year-old who abandoned her newborn in a bathroom, the MIT evolutionary psychologist and science popularizer Steven Pinker wrote in the NEW YORK TIMES that the young woman was acting on a "genetic imperative." That means, basically, that impersonal forces of natural selection had molded her behavior, through her genes, to jettison any drag on her future "reproductive success."

Pinker wrote, "If a newborn is sickly, or if its survival is not promising," a mother may cut her "losses, and favor the healthiest in the litter or try again later on."

Yet this explanation, even if true (and there are many reasons to doubt it) simply doesn't answer Johnson's first question. Pinker's answer doesn't explain why we find the actions of the 18-year-old mother morally reprehensible. If there really is no difference between human beings and other animals, then we would no more condemn the young woman's abandoning her newborn than we would condemn her for clipping her fingernails or plucking her eyebrows.

But that isn't the case. We do condemn such behavior. The tragic young woman in question was convicted of homicide and sent to prison. Why? Because human beings recognize the reality of a moral realm which is not derived from nature. As Phillip Johnson argues, evolutionary psychologists like Pinker can explain that moral realm only by suspending their naturalistic rule of reasoning.

Pinker himself admits that infanticide is wrong, yet he is more or less helpless to explain WHY he thinks it's wrong. Instead, he flatly proclaims. "Science and morality are separate spheres of reasoning."

But not so fast, objects Johnson. If we genuinely know that some actions, such as infanticide, are wrong, then that knowledge must have an ultimate source or cause. Our moral knowledge, therefore, must in some sense be "immaterial" or "supernatural," stemming from an ultimate source other than nature.

For Johnson, as for the great ethical philosophers throughout the centuries, that ultimate source is God. In THE WEDGE OF TRUTH, Johnson the feisty law professor makes a compelling case that our moral nature is not Darwinian but theistic. And it's a case that you and I can and must make to our neighbors.

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Copyright (c) 2000 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

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In the early twentieth century -- during the Scopes Trial, for instance -- evolution was the new theory challenging settled opinions about divine creation. Now, however, said Bill Rice on National Public Radio, it's evolution that "is being questioned." Darwinian evolution has become the established view -- and those who want to consider alternatives to Darwinism have become the innovative thinkers challenging the status quo.

Nowhere is this stunning role reversal better portrayed than in the new documentary, "Icons of Evolution." "Icons" tells the story of Roger DeHart, a high school biology teacher in Washington state who wanted to tell his students about evidence that casts doubt on aspects of Darwinian evolution. The evidence that DeHart hoped to discuss wasn't fringe stuff. It was the material already published in scientific literature. For example, biology textbooks have long featured drawings of animal embryos, purporting to show similarity. This was widely taken as proof that the species in question shared a common evolutionary ancestor.

But the drawings are seriously inaccurate, omitting many details and falsely suggesting similarities among embryos. Stephen Gould, the noted Harvard paleontologist, called the drawings "scientific fraud," and he said that we should "be ashamed and astonished by the century of [their] mindless recycling" in textbooks.

It sounds like something students ought to know about, yet, when DeHart wanted to bring Gould's article about the fraudulent drawings into his classroom, the school administration forbade him from doing so. He wasn't even allowed to discuss Gould's article or say anything questioning the drawings in the school district's officially mandated textbook.

But the censorship didn't stop there. DeHart wanted to tell his students about the "Cambrian Explosion," the sudden appearance of the major groups of animals about 550 million years ago. The Cambrian Explosion has long been a puzzle for Darwinian evolution. Again DeHart was forbidden to bring in any supplementary materials offering an alternative explanation. It didn't matter that the issue is part of ongoing scientific debate. DeHart's students weren't allowed to see or hear anything challenging textbook orthodoxy.

All this, and more, is retold by the participants themselves in the documentary "Icons of Evolution." You'll hear from Chinese paleontologists who worked with the Cambrian Explosion fossils and believe that Darwinian evolution fails to explain the data. You'll hear from Roger DeHart himself about his experiences and also from his school's administrators, telling why they wouldn't let him depart from the established curriculum.

It's an amazing, even shocking, story -- shocking, that is, because most people assume that science ought to be a search for the truth about the natural world. While we may be cynical about advertising, or politics, or the media, science is still supposed to be above it all, pursuing what is really true.

The "Icons" documentary will shake you up. Science teaching today has become indoctrination, but the good news is we can still do something about it.

For more information:

"Icons of Evolution: Dismantling the Myths," VHS video, Focus on the Family/Coldwater Media, 2002.

Jonathan Wells, ICONS OF EVOLUTION: SCIENCE OR MYTH? (Regnery, 2002).

PBS is airing its series, "Evolution," again in May and June. Learn more here: . You can read a critique of the "Evolution" series here: .

Robert Siegel and Bill Rice, NPR report on "Ohio Intelligent Design Forum," 12 March 2002.

Stephen Jay Gould, "Abscheulich! Atrocious!" NATURAL HISTORY, March 2000, 42-49.

Carol Kaesuk Yoon, "Stephen Jay Gould, Biologist and Theorist on Evolution, Dies at 60," THE NEW YORK TIMES, 20 May 2002.

Fred Heeren, "A Little Fish Challenges a Giant of Science," BOSTON GLOBE, 30 May 2000.

Learn more about intelligent design theory and evolutionary theory at the Discovery Institute's Website: .

The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA) fosters conversation about intelligent design among students, educators, and other interested parties.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

In 300 consecutive columns in NATURAL HISTORY magazine, Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould pondered questions like whether the zebra is black with white stripes or white with black stripes, and why .400 hitters have become extinct. From diverse starting points, he always arrived at the same conclusion: Everything that exists evolved by natural processes. Nature created itself.

His column title, "This View of Life," came from the closing sentence of Darwin's ORIGIN OF SPECIES: "There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; ... from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved." In essence, "This view of life" was his "life verse."

Gould recognized that the fossil record has major gaps. But instead of letting that observation persuade him to abandon evolution, he modified the theory. He explained the lack of transitional fossils by postulating what he called "punctuated equilibrium." The ordinary state of nature is a steady equilibrium, but, he speculated, this was "punctuated" by creative spurts too rapid to leave fossil evidence -- an interesting attempt to cover one of Darwin's flaws.

In Gould's view of life, even human intelligence must have originated naturally. He once told PBS, "The main reason for considering intelligence accidental is pretty clear. It's only evolved in one species after four and one-half billion years of the history of the Earth, which is about half the Earth's potential history if the sun's due to explode in five billion years or so." That makes it an open-and-shut case: A random process did it. The idea that a Supreme Being may have gifted homo sapiens with His extraordinary intellect is rejected out-of-hand.

When the oncologist told him he was terminal, Gould told readers he would not take refuge in religion. He opined that acknowledging God's existence between the lines of nature was "raw hope all gussied up as science."

What made Stephen Jay Gould so popular with the media? Partly a flair for picturesque expression -- what one analyst called "beautifully written speculations based on data which don't support the speculation as well as they might ... a triumph of form over content."

But my friend Phillip Johnson thinks the primary reason for Gould's popularity was his worldview. Referring to the ideological "high priests" who decree what is and is not acceptable in the scientific and educational establishments and media, Johnson commented, "Whatever his merits, Gould is a popularizer. He never made a scientific discovery and eventually abandoned his [own] research. But from the adulation [he received], you would think he ranked with Darwin, Einstein, and Newton. Why? Because the first priority of the mandarins is to finish removing God from reality."

Gould's last two books hit the bookstores earlier this year. Like his earlier output, they contain interesting information and colorful analogies. But if your friends read them, explain to them that his naturalism and his Marxism seasoned everything he wrote as he relentlessly promoted what he called "this view of life" -- even when, as with the gaps in the fossil record, the facts got in the way.

For further information:

Phillip E. Johnson, DARWIN ON TRIAL (InterVarsity Press, 1993).

BreakPoint commentary no. 020314, "What Would Darwin Say?"

BreakPoint commentary no. 02050, "Big Mysteries, Tiny Organisms."

The "Icons of Evolution" video focuses on the incorrect assumptions and data used by Darwin and the scientific facts that refute them.

Visit the Origins website for more information on evolution, intelligent design, and related issues:

Carol Kaesuk Yoon, "Stephen Jay Gould, Biologist and Theorist of Evolution, Dies at 60," NEW YORK TIMES, 21 May 2002.

Charles Osgood, "The Osgood File" feature about Gould (three sections down), WCBS news radio, 21 May 2002.

John Wilson, "Death of an Evolutionist," BOOKS & CULTURE, 28 May 2002.

David Berlinksi, "Stephen Jay Gould, 1942-2002: In Memoriam," Discovery Institute, 29 May 2002.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

"Design," write Union University professors, Dr. Jimmy Davis and Dr. Harry Poe, "has generally been regarded as a code word for Christianity, though ... it is one of those rare features of faith common to virtually all religions."

Davis and Poe make a great team of writers on the intelligent design of the universe. Poe, a theologian and the first Charles Colson Professor of Faith and Culture at Union, examines how philosophers and religions have recognized the design features of the world from ancient times and helps the reader understand how worldview has often been an important, if unrecognized, influence in scientific inquiry.

Davis, professor of chemistry and associate provost of Union, guides the reader through the complexities of cosmology, math, physics, chemistry, and biology, pointing out the difference between actual science and the worldview behind the science.

They begin with religion and philosophy, showing that design arguments for the existence of God go back at least as far as Plato in Western thought and are common throughout the world. Design arguments, however, fell out of favor after Darwin offered a naturalistic explanation for the variety of living things. But in the last decade, the old argument has gained new life in what is being called today intelligent design.

Davis and Poe go on to show how intelligent design is based on the implications of recent scientific discoveries and has arisen among scientists working in a number of fields. There are evidences of design throughout creation. Davis and Poe examine topics from the atomic structure of carbon to the shape of birds' beaks and from pollination to DNA. They point out the irreducible complexity and sheer beauty of all creation.

My favorite example of theirs is water. The water that's everywhere has a unique molecule and unexpected characteristics. Using chemistry principles, they point out, we would expect water to be a gas at room temperature, not a liquid. We would expect ice to sink rather than float. And we would expect water to be toxic and/or corrosive.

If water followed the trends of similar chemicals, life on earth would be impossible. If water were a gas at room temperature, the atmosphere would be too dense. If ice didn't float, aquatic life would die in the winter. And if water were toxic, earth would be a wasteland. Does that prove intelligent design? No, but the uniqueness of water is just one indication of a world carefully balanced to sustain life.

Most Christians are not in a position to appreciate the research on which intelligent design is based. As a result, we tend to cave in as soon as someone with scientific credentials speaks to the issue. And we don't recognize that there always comes a point where the scientist stops talking about science and starts talking about philosophy or theology. Our job is to see where his basic presuppositions kick in.

Davis and Poe make a great case, explaining why increasing numbers of scientists believe in intelligent design. Their book, DESIGNER UNIVERSE, will definitely stretch your thinking. But with a topic so central to biblical worldview and so many issues facing our culture, the stretch will do you -- and the neighbors you talk to -- good.

For further information:

Jimmy H. Davis and Harry L. Poe, DESIGNER UNIVERSE: INTELLIGENT DESIGN AND THE EXISTENCE OF GOD (Broadman & Holman, 2002).

Learn more about intelligent design by visiting the Discovery Institute's website.

The Intelligent Design and Evolution Awareness Center (IDEA) fosters conversation about intelligent design among students, educators, and other interested parties.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Did paleontology just fill in a gap in the human family tree? That's what you'd think from reading the headlines this month. "A fossil unearthed in Africa pushes back human origins," reported The New York Times on page one.

But, as is often the case with scientific discoveries relating to the theory of evolution, you've got to read more than just the headlines. The details point to a much less triumphalistic picture.

The new fossils, unearthed by a French team in Chad, included a nearly complete skull, which has been dubbed "Toumai." Dated at between six and seven million years old, Toumai has been given the formal scientific name Sahelanthropus, after the harsh Sahel Desert where the fossil was found. Sahelanthropus has been classified as an entirely new genus of primate -- something scientists do only when those fossils have features that don't fit into any existing group.

That's where the Toumai puzzle begins. Paleontology is an interpretative science. Fragmentary fossil remains don't announce what species they are or their lineage. Paleontologists have to figure that out, if they can. Since nearly all fossil groups are extinct, there's plenty of room for disagreement about the correct interpretation.

And that's exactly what happened with Toumai. No sooner was the discovery announced than another French paleontologist, Dr. Brigitte Senut of the National History Museum in Paris, said that she doubted any link to humans. The features of the skull that the Toumai team had interpreted "hominid," Senut claimed, would be better explained if the skull actually came from an extinct species of gorilla. Toumai had a short face and small canine teeth, and Senut thinks that these are the characteristics "of the skull of a female gorilla," not a human ancestor.

On hearing of Senut's dissenting interpretation, the Toumai team called a news conference to denounce her view. Such strong disagreements mark the history of paleoanthropology. It's an enterprise where leading researchers have had long-running feuds with each other, and where conflicting scenarios for human evolution come and go with remarkable frequency.

Why the conflict? Well, think of the fossils themselves as bricks -- the building materials for a scientific theory. These bricks are, however, too few in number and, in most cases, poorly preserved. Nevertheless, evolutionary paleoanthropologists want to make a building out of them, the story of human evolution. So they patch the bricks together with a lot of mortar of their own making.

With Toumai, for instance, anthropologist Bernard Wood of George Washington University said that the discovery may show many other fossil hominids are not human ancestors at all. Wood locates Toumai in evolutionary history by ripping out the theoretical mortar others have used in the past and adding some of his own.

What's a thoughtful onlooker to conclude? That the fossils are real, but their interpretation is very much up for grabs. The theories of relationships between extinct groups have short lives. Keep that in mind next time you read the science headlines, or your neighbor tells you scientists have found the "missing link" -- not so. It's pure conjecture, nothing more.

FURTHER READING & INFORMATION

Daniel Lieberman, "Upending the Expectations of Science," The New York Times, 14 July 2002. (This piece by Lieberman, an anthropologist at Harvard, is especially good, as he points out how the discovery of Toumai overturns accepted evolutionary theories.) http://www.nytimes.com/2002/07/14/opinion/14LIEB.html

Claude Canellas, "Man or Gorilla?: Experts at Odds over Ancient Skull," Reuters, 12 July 2002. (Original story on Brigitte Senut's differing interpretation.) http://www.reuters.com/news_article.jhtml?type=search&StoryID=1196368

Bernard Wood, "Palaeoanthropology: Hominid Revelations from Chad," Nature 418, (11 July 2002): 133-35. http://www.nature.com/cgi-taf/DynaPage.taf?file=/nature/journal/v418/n6894/full/418133a_fs.html

Jimmy Davis and Harry Poe, Designer Universe: Intelligent Design and the Existence of God (Broadman and Holman, 2002).

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, Developing a Christian Worldview of Science and Evolution (Tyndale, 1999).

Learn more about evolution and intelligent design by visiting the Discovery Institute's web site. http://www.discovery.org/

RECOMMENDED RESOURCES

Designer Universe: Intelligent Design and the Existence of God by Jimmy Davis and Harry Poe describes how advances in scientific knowledge during the twentieth century have raised new questions.

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

The recent announcement that scientists have deciphered the human genome has secular scientists buzzing. And their editorials in the New York Times and elsewhere praise, not the Creator, but Darwinian evolution. We need to know, however, that these new discoveries are no threat to the Christian worldview. Rather, they are a bold verification of its coherence.

The human genome -- the molecular-biological blueprint of the human body -- is written in a language of four letters (A, C, T, and G), which represent the amino acids that produce the proteins that make up our biology. The arrangement of these letters in the genome account for things like hair and eye color and a host of physical traits. Even male pattern baldness has a genetic link.

But, much to the amazement of the translators of our genetic code, instead of the human genome consisting of 100,000 genes that account for biological traits, the human blueprint is only around 30,000 genes. Since the fruit fly possesses between 13,000 and 14,000 genes, scientists believed that, to account for all the differences between fruit flies and humans, our genome would have to be many times larger. Not so.

If their measurements are accurate, the human genome is just over twice the size of the fruit fly's. But all this proves, of course, is that the language of the genome is much subtler than scientists thought previously.

This shouldn't surprise us. The fact that our biology is written in a decipherable language testifies even more brilliantly to a God who speaks. That he created all living things from a relevantly similar blueprint is, likewise, no surprise. That the language of the human genome is close to that of other species is no surprise, either.

The latest research reveals that chimpanzees share 98.8 percent of our genes; mice share 85 to 90 percent; and bananas, 50 percent of our genes. Well, for Christians whose worldview includes the affirmation that we were made from the dust of the earth, this hardly comes as unsettling information. To go on to conclude, as evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould has done in the New York Times, that the similarities between genomes point to Darwinian evolution requires an act of faith that is simply breathtaking.

Subtle differences in the language of our genomes results in profound differences between us and other species -- and vive la difference!

The point is, interpreting the information in our cells requires a set of worldview lenses through which to view the information. A Darwinian sees through Darwinian glasses. But the more we learn about DNA, the more difficult it becomes for Darwinists to explain what they see.

How does information, through a process of chance evolution, become rational, coherent instruction for the building of a body? Well, this is why Gould and his colleagues talk about "blind watchmakers" and other oxymorons. Francis Crick, the co-discoverer of the double helical nature of the DNA molecule, has even declared, "Biologists must constantly keep in mind that what they see is not designed, but rather evolved." It's as if reminding themselves of their own dogma will convince them that the evidence for a Designer is a mirage in the desert of scientific explanation.

Christians know that the Creator has left his fingerprints on everything he created. And the God who speaks, in his infinite wisdom, uttered the language that brought us all into existence.

For further reference:

Crick, Francis. What Mad Pursuit: A Personal View of Scientific Discovery. New York: Basic Books, 1988; p. 138.

Gould, Stephen Jay. "Humbled by the Genome's Mysteries." New York Times, 19 February 2001.

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Copyright (c) 2001 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

It's a humbling experience we've all had on the way to the morning shower -- looking at our bodies in the mirror. Even the physically fit can spot areas for improvement. And some of us, of course, don't need a mirror to tell us what needs fixing!

We're not perfect creatures. But do our imperfections prove that we're evolved by natural selection, and not created by an intelligent designer? Well, a recent article in the magazine Scientific American makes that very claim.

Entitled "If Humans Were Built to Last," the article by S. Jay Olshansky, Bruce Carnes, and Robert Butler argues that the human body reflects the mindless process of natural selection, and not purposeful design. Olshansky and colleagues write that many of our physical shortcomings exist because natural selection causes us to survive "just long enough to reproduce." Once we've passed on our genes, they say, our bodies start to fall apart.

If we had been intelligently designed, they argue, we should last much longer. And we wouldn't choke on food, suffer detached retinas, or a host of other ailments.

Well, this argument for naturalistic evolution dates back well before Darwin. The eighteenth-century philosopher David Hume, for one, argued that the miseries of human existence are best explained by "blind nature," not design. But this misrepresents what intelligent design really says. It also overlooks the powerful insights of the Christian worldview.

First, intelligent design does not say that any currently existing organism, including human beings, should be perfect. Every designed system in our present universe is subject to physical laws, and involves trade-offs with a wide range of functional requirements.

Consider, for example, your throat. The esophagus (the passage to the stomach) and the trachea (the passage to the lungs) come together at the top of the throat. When you swallow, a structure called the epiglottis closes to cover your trachea. You can feel this if you put your finger on your Adam's apple and swallow.

Sometimes, when people take excessively large bites of food, or if they're inebriated, the epiglottis may not close properly, and they choke.

Now, Olshansky and company argue that if our throats had been intelligently designed, this wouldn't happen. They suggest that a better design would have placed the trachea higher, near the nasal passage. .... Maybe, but maybe not.

You see, it would be impossible to speak if air only passed through your nostrils, not your mouth. Catching a cold could be a life-threatening illness, because congestion would block the only pathway for oxygen. And if you needed more air -- running to catch the bus, for example -- sorry, opening your mouth for extra oxygen won't help.

Yes, humans occasionally choke. But there is absolutely no evidence that another system would work better. It's easy to speculate about what an intelligent designer would have done, but there's a world of difference between speculation and science.

The Christian worldview tells us not to expect perfection. While God created the world, it's also fallen -- a world with illness and pain, waiting to be redeemed by God's new creation.

So remember that the next time you look in the bathroom mirror. If your current model is due to expire, don't worry about it: There's an incomparably better one coming!

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For further reference:

Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, [1776] 1980.

Olshansky, S. Jay, Bruce A. Carnes, and Robert N. Butler. "If Humans Were Built to Last." Scientific American, March 2001, pp. 50-55.

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Copyright (c) 1999 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

This year, the State Board of Education in Ohio is considering new science education standards. Recently, controversy erupted because the state board is listening to citizens who want students to be free to evaluate evolutionary theory critically -- and to consider alternatives to naturalism in science.

I want to recommend two new books that should help Ohioans in this debate -- not to mention the rest of us. The first is DARWIN'S GOD by Cornelius Hunter. Hunter exposes one of the most interesting, but least understood aspects of the evolution debate: Beginning with Darwin himself, evolutionary biologists have leaned heavily on theology in their thinking about the world.

Hunter shows how Darwin's major work, ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES, is loaded from start to finish with "Why would God have done it that way?" questions -- what Hunter calls "negative theology." Darwin wondered why a wise designer would have used the same bone pattern in the forelimbs of mice and whales, or why people sometimes choked on food. In effect, Darwin asked whether these designs were the best that the Creator could do. And these sorts of questions live on today, whenever the subject of evolution is taught.

But students can't properly answer these questions without being given the freedom to challenge Darwin's theology -- that is, his view of God. As Hunter points out in DARWIN'S GOD, "negative theology was a consistent theme for Darwin, and it remains popular with today's evolutionists." If evolutionary biologists can say what God wouldn't have done, then why can't students challenge their conclusions by employing different theological assumptions? It's only fair. Darwin's view of the designer shouldn't be the only one available. If the ORIGIN OF SPECIES, the founding document of evolutionary biology, already presupposes theology, students shouldn't be prevented from joining the conversation -- which brings me to a second book.

In NO FREE LUNCH, William Dembski discusses the science of intelligent design. The firestorm in Ohio wouldn't have flared up so fiercely if citizens hadn't also asked for the freedom to introduce into the classroom ideas like intelligent design. Science, after all, moves on from discarded theories to better theories. If evolutionary theory can't explain the origin of biological complexity -- as many scientists now conclude -- then we should consider alternatives. Intelligent design is, from my point of view, a very worthy alternative.

Drawing on discoveries in molecular biology and mathematics, Dembski shows how the complex design of organisms requires an intelligent cause. Attempts to get such design from blind natural causes only move the problem; they don't solve it. The most reasonable response to complex designs in nature is not to debate what God would or wouldn't have done, but to see design as evidence of the Intelligent Designer.

Should students in Ohio hear about these ideas? Of course. Our schools today are faced with a choice: Keep the antiquated system we have of science education bound in by naturalistic philosophy, or science education that pursues intellectual freedom and truth. The decision ought to be simple. Let's hope there is the courage to make it.

For further reading:

Charles Colson and Nancy Pearcey, DEVELOPING A CHRISTIAN WORLDVIEW OF SCIENCE AND EVOLUTION (Wheaton, IL: Tyndale House Publishers, 1999).

Cornelius G. Hunter, DARWIN'S GOD: EVOLUTION AND THE PROBLEM OF EVIL (Brazos Press, 2001).

William A. Dembski, NO FREE LUNCH: WHY SPECIFIED COMPLEXITY CANNOT BE PURCHASED WITHOUT INTELLIGENCE (Rowman & Littlefield, December 2001).

William A. Dembski and James Kushiner, SIGNS OF INTELLIGENCE: UNDERSTANDING INTELLIGENT DESIGN (Brazos Press, 2001).

Learn more about the Ohio State Board of Education Science Standards here

Leo Shane III, "Support for creationism resurfaces: some politicians push for intelligent design," THE CINCINNATI ENQUIRER, 4 February 2002.

Charles Darwin's ON THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES BY MEANS OF NATURAL SELECTION, OR THE PRESERVATION OF FAVOURED RACES IN THE STRUGGLE FOR LIFE can be read here

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Copyright © 2002 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. 'BreakPoint with Chuck Colson' is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

If you’ve got a teenager at home, now that school’s out, he’s going to spend a lot of time studying philosophy. “Not my kid,” you might respond. “He’s not into philosophy.”

Well, he might not be reading Plato or Aristotle, but if he sees a few movies this summer, he’s going to get what amounts to a survey course in philosophy whether he knows it or not.

Everyone embraces one philosophy or another — a worldview that defines his conception of the world, of reality, of human life. These beliefs are woven into movies — often in such subtle ways that viewers miss them.

For example, in the film CAST AWAY, fate is offered as a God substitute when a FedEx employee is marooned on an island after a plane crash. As Brian Godawa writes in his book, HOLLYWOOD WORLDVIEWS, “God is conspicuously absent..... [The man] is all alone in a naturalistic universe.” In the end, he finds his way back home and meets a woman to replace the one he lost. Thus, Godawa writes, “humanity finds meaning in hope for another human being, and the benevolent impersonal fate will work it all out for us in the end.”

Your kids may also meet the Eastern philosophy called MONISM. A monist believes that all of reality is ultimately one: Evil arrives when people make distinctions among things; redemption occurs when we understand this pantheistic oneness.

One recent film that promotes monism is POWDER, about a rejected messiah figure with superhuman intelligence and special powers. In one scene, a sheriff gives up hunting when the messiah figure “connects” him with a deer the sheriff has just shot: Enlightenment comes when the sheriff realizes he is “one” with the deer.

Newer films also feature plots expressing neo-Darwinism. For example, in the computer-animated film DINOSAUR, a meteor strikes the earth, forcing the dinosaurs to migrate to a new home. Along the journey, the dinosaurs fight among themselves and permit larger animals to prey on smaller ones. But then, Godawa says, a wise “Moses-like [plant-eating animal] encourages them to cooperate.” They “learn that they will only survive through helping one another. DINOSAUR thus embodies the theory of evolutionary psychology that cooperation” — not competition — “is a trait of survival of the fittest.”

In the darkness of a theater, kids may also bump into neopaganism, Gaia worship, existentialism, and postmodernism. The question is, will they recognize these unbiblical philosophies when they see them?

Francis Schaeffer once wrote that philosophy — often dismissed as irrelevant — is, in reality, a powerful engine that drives cultural change. Ivory Tower ideas filter down into popular culture, including films. There, they influence millions who often have no notion of what they’re consuming along with the car chases, love scenes, and popcorn.

That’s why it’s so important that we teach our kids how to find the worldview message in EVERY film — including the G-rated ones. The time for philosophy lessons, you see, is BEFORE our kids walk into the multiplex — not when the lights go down.

FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

Brian Godawa, HOLLYWOOD WORLDVIEWS (InterVarsity, 2002). Visit GODAWA’S WEBSITE.

BreakPoint Commentary No. 010814, “ADRIFT IN THE UNIVERSE: THE WORLDVIEW OF CAST AWAY.”

Visit the “WORLDVIEW FOR PARENTS“ page weekly for more resources and information to help you cultivate biblical worldview understanding in your children.

For more movie reviews, VISIT THIS PAGE. And see the WILBERFORCE FORUM RECOMMENDED FILMS 2003 list.

Robert K. Johnston, REEL SPIRITUALITY: THEOLOGY AND FILM IN DIALOGUE (Baker Book House, 2000).

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Copyright (c) 2003 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Ask someone who the first Darwinist was, and they're likely to think it's a trick question, like “Who's buried in Grant's tomb?” But as a recent book tells us, it's not Darwin — at least not in regard to the way a materialistic worldview shapes our morals.

That book is Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists by Benjamin Wiker. Wiker of Franciscan University in Steubenville, Ohio, calls the Greek philosopher Epicurus, who lived in the third century before Christ, the “first Darwinist.” Actually, as Wiker says, it would be more accurate to say that Darwin was an Epicurean — probably the most influential one ever.

What he means is that Darwin represented the culmination of what Wiker calls “Epicurean Materialism.” While Epicureanism is commonly associated with hedonism, the fact is that Epicurus “offered the first thorough-going materialist view of the universe where the mere chance interaction of brute matter swirling about created all things.”

So, human beings are “just one more soul-less product of evolution,” and “there is ultimately no good and evil.” This account of the universe was the “foundation” of Darwin's system and his materialistic explanation for the world.

Wiker writes that Epicurean materialism is “fundamentally antagonistic” to Christianity. For two thousand years, these worldviews have contradicted one another with regard to God, nature, human nature, and morality.

The last part is especially important. Just as Epicurean materialism provided the foundation for Darwinism, Darwinism is the foundation for “one of the two sides in the culture war”: the side “that champions sexual freedom, abortion, [and] euthanasia.”

A materialistic worldview undermines the very basis for morality by denying that we are distinct from the other animals and created in the image of God. Instead, we are considered the product of chance and impersonal forces. If that's so, why prohibit murder? Nobody talks about “murdering” a dog or a fly. The very idea of “murder” assumes that there's something unique about being human.

What's true about murder goes double for human sexuality and familial relationships. If there is no God, soul, or afterlife, all that's left, as Wiker's subtitle tells us, is hedonism. In a world that is amoral, how we should live becomes a matter of “continually balancing bodily pleasures and pains.” Morality and the distinction between good and evil are purely human creations with no intrinsic authority.

This link between materialism and amorality, along with materialism's account of the origins of the universe, makes attempts to “reconcile” Darwinism with Christianity — which some Christians try to do — wrong-headed. If there is one lesson to be learned from “moral Darwinism,” it is that Darwinism and materialism are not “morally neutral.”

Materialism is very strong in American culture today. And we ought to be prepared to highlight for neighbors and friends the moral and cultural dead end to which materialism leads. A world in which good and evil are the product of the “random jostling of brute atoms” is not a place where most people want to live. But it's the world that Darwinism and materialism gives us.

FOR FURTHER READING:

• Benjamin Wiker, Moral Darwinism (InterVarsity, 2002).

• Benjamin Wiker, “Playing Games with Good & Evil: The Failure of Darwinism to Explain Morality,” Crisis, May 2002.

• Benjamin Wiker, “Darwin and the Descent of Morality,” First Things, November 2001, 10-13.

• “Darwin as Epicurean: An Interview with Benjamin Wiker,” Touchstone, October 2002.

• Richard Weikart, “Epicurus' — and Darwin's — Dangerous Idea,” Books & Culture, 18 November 2002.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 030507, “Abusing Our Power: Do Christians Sanction Cruelty to Animals?”

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Copyright (c) 2003 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

Richard Dawkins, an Oxford science philosopher, once stated, “If you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that).” For that and other similar comments, Dawkins has earned the nickname “Darwin's pit bull.”

Dawkins's latest book, A DEVIL'S CHAPLAIN, touches on themes dear to his heart, especially his belief in evolution and his contempt for religion. In his eyes, people of faith are simply trying to avoid the facts that science teaches — namely, that there is no God and no life after death.

Dawkins sees himself, on the other hand, as someone who has taken a stand for absolute truth and will brook no opposition. He won't even debate creationists or intelligent design theorists, since that might “lend ... respectability” to what he calls their “nonsense.”

To give Dawkins his due, he's a witty, engaging, and intelligent writer and lecturer — so much so that I wonder how many of his readers and listeners realize how dangerous his ideas are. For instance, he writes, “Society, for no reason that I can discern, accepts that parents have an automatic right to bring their children up with particular religious opinions.”

To Dawkins's mind, that's a completely unreasonable thing to believe. For him, if the scientific facts back up his atheistic worldview, then to teach religion to children is deceitful, and it's wrong to lie to children.

Now, I won't get into the intelligent design debate and proofs for God's existence. I've discussed these many times in this column, and you can read about them on our BreakPoint website (www.breakpoint.org). The point that really interests me is how Dawkins's dislike of religious freedom and lack of respect for religious people are related to his worldview of scientific absolutism.

Because he can see religion only as a source of lies, Dawkins complains, “Why do we have to respect [religious opinions], simply because they are religious?”

Dissenters from Darwinism don't even deserve mention. Parents should not have the right to raise their children with religion. Religious opinions need not be respected. This, you see, is the totalitarian impulse in Dawkins' scientific secularism and the great danger of the movement he represents. If there really is no source of truth higher than human beings (or, as Dawkins would put it, higher than human beings and their fellow animals), then it makes sense to see Dawkins and his scientific colleagues as guardians of all the truth that we can know about the universe. Religion, then, is a silly superstition, and it makes perfect sense to put down religious people who try to hide and distort absolute truth.

Christians also believe in absolute truth. All truth — even the truth we discover through science — comes from God. The difference is that, unlike Dawkins, we also believe that God gives humans the dignity of freedom, even if they would use that freedom to deny His very existence. We are told to speak the truth to unbelievers lovingly, not coerce or deride them. Christian absolute truth, you see, includes a universal respect for others.

Darwin's pit bull gets points for tenacity, but his view of the world and the way he would implement that view are tragically flawed and dangerous.

FOR FURTHER READING AND INFORMATION:

• Richard Dawkins, “The future looks bright,” Guardian, 21 June 2003. (More of Dawkins's dubious insights into religion and atheism.)

• Robin McKie, “Dawkins versus the priests and New Age shamans? No contest,” Observer, 9 March 2003.

• Gregg Easterbrook, “'Bullied and Brainwashed,'“ Beliefnet.com, January 2004.

• Laura Sheahen, “Religion: For Dummies“ (interview with Dawkins), Beliefnet.com, 9 December 2003.

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040308, “Science in the Light of Faith: A Valuable Perspective.”

• BreakPoint Commentary No. 040301, “Charles Darwin Knew: Science and Freedom.”

• Albert Mohler, “The Devil's Chaplain: Richard Dawkins on Christianity,” Crosswalk.com, 25 February 2004.

• Charles W. Colson, “The Devil in the DNA,” Christianity Today, 10 August 1998 (reprinted at BreakPoint Online).

• Al Dobras, “It's All about Luck,” BreakPoint Online, 7 April 2003.

• Learn more about intelligent design at the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture.

• See BreakPoint's “Worldview for Parents” pages: “Is What We See All We Get?“; “Micro- and Macroevolution: Is There a Difference?“; and “Did Life Evolve?“

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Copyright (c) 2004 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

*

Intelligent design has generated controversy because it deals with issues at the core of the current debate between secularists and people with a Christian worldview, said William Dembski, one of the ID movement's leading thinkers.

“These issues of intelligent design and creation really cut to the heart of worldviews, what we are about, how we're putting life together and what's ultimately meaningful, what morality is based on,” Dembski said.

Dembski currently is associate research professor in the conceptual foundations of science at Baylor University in Texas but will join Southern Seminary's faculty in June as the Carl F.H. Henry Professor of Science and Theology. Dembski and other proponents of intelligent design theory contend that some features of the natural world are best explained as the products of an intelligent cause rather than naturalistic evolution.

Addressing a forum sponsored by Southern Seminary's Carl F.H. Henry Institute for Evangelical Engagement, Dembski said he looks forward to serving at the Louisville, Kentucky, campus because of the school’s willingness to sponsor intelligent design research as a legitimate scientific enterprise -- an attitude that some Christian colleges and universities do not share because they believe embracing intelligent design will compromise their status in the academic world.

“Even many Christians who have been raised and indoctrinated in a secular mindset ... will say, 'Look, we're just going to have to accept the science of the day and try to make our peace with it theologically,'“ Dembski said. “And there is no peace theologically ... ultimately with this view [Darwinian evolution]. But they accept it. And so, this idea of intelligent design becomes very threatening.”

Intelligent design's first goal is to demonstrate the inadequacy of Darwinian evolution as an explanation of the origin of the universe, Dembski said. One of the chief methods of accomplishing this, he said, is to demonstrate the weakness of the scientific evidence presented in support of Darwinian evolution in many school classrooms.

“Evolutionary theory is in such a weak position that it shouldn't be taught at all ... in this grand global sense,” Dembski said. “If you want to say natural selection operates in accounting for antibiotic resistance in bacteria, you can make a case there. But if you are going to try to say that's how you get bacteria, insects, all this in the first place, that's a huge extrapolation. The [Darwinian] theory doesn't support that.”

After offering a critique of Darwinian evolution, intelligent design proposes alternative theories about the origin of the universe, Dembski said. These theories argue that a designer must have fashioned the complex biological and physical mechanisms humans observe in the world, he said.

As the data supporting intelligent design increases, some members of the secular scientific community have changed their minds and considered the possibility of an intelligent designer for the first time, Dembski said, noting that several researchers from major universities have contacted him and expressed a desire to conduct intelligent design research.

“I think the other side is worried,” Dembski said. “And they are right to be worried because I think the ideas are on our side.”

Although much of the scientific community views intelligent design with disdain, Dembski said that in popular culture as many as 90 percent of Americans “are favorably disposed” to the idea.

Because naturalism has influenced a variety of fields such as science, philosophy, business and economics, Christians must be prepared to combat the naturalistic worldview in every arena of life, Dembski said. Especially effective, he said, is using intelligent design to challenge the basic assumptions of naturalism and Darwinian evolution.

“I like to get back to the axioms, to the basics. If you can get at the taproot, at the thing that's really fundamental, then I think all these superstructures, the whole house of cards will come down,” Dembski said. “Intelligent design is pressing that you can't get [the design of the universe] without intelligence.”

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #21021]

Antony Flew, a legendary British philosopher and atheist, has changed his mind about the existence of God in light of recent scientific evidence.

Flew -- a prolific author who has argued against the existence of God and the claims of Christianity for more than 50 years -- first revealed his change of mind in a video of a discussion with several others at New York University organized by the Institute for Metascientific Research. The video, released in December, is titled, “Has Science Discovered God?”

Flew said he is now best described as a deist -- a person who believes God created the universe but is not actively involved in people's lives today.

“I don't believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to that,” Flew said in an interview for the winter 2005 edition of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. “But it seems to me that the case for...[a] God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence is now much stronger than it ever was before.”

Flew, 81, regularly attended the Socratic Club, a weekly religious forum led by famed Christian apologist C.S. Lewis while he attended college at Oxford. Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading universities in Britain. He also published numerous books and articles denouncing belief in God.

Flew credits his newfound belief in God to arguments from design such as those espoused by the “intelligent design” (ID) movement. ID argues that the universe operates in such a way that it points to the existence of an intelligent creator.

“I think that the most impressive arguments for God's existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries,” Flew said. “...I think the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.”

Although many atheists appeal to naturalistic evolution as a method by which the world could have come into existence apart from God, Charles Darwin himself acknowledged that the process of evolution requires a creator to start the process, Flew said.

“Darwin himself, in the fourteenth chapter of The Origin of Species, pointed out that his whole argument began with a being which already possessed reproductive powers,” Flew said. “This is the creature the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account.”

While Flew said he does not believe in a God who is active in the lives of humans, he is “open to” the possibility of divine revelation. He also believes that Christians are intellectually justified in holding to their religion and that the resurrection of Jesus has more evidential support than any other reported miracle in history.

“The evidence for the resurrection is better than for claimed miracles in any other religion,” Flew said. “It's outstandingly different in quality and quantity, I think, from the evidence offered for the occurrence of most other supposedly miraculous events.”

Gary Habermas, chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Virginia, told Baptist Press that Flew's decision to believe in God points to the strength of theistic arguments.

“His conversion is a testimony to the many, especially scientific figures, who are coming by way of intelligent design,” said Habermas, who conducted the interview with Flew in Philosophia Christi. “...The fact that he has become a theist is a testimony to the type of evidence we have for God's existence today.”

Flew's status as a world-famous atheist makes his conversion to belief in God particularly significant, Habermas said in an interview with Baptist Press.

“His conversion to theism is very valuable because of his stature,” Habermas said. “The reason this story is going around the world is that he, not just anybody, but he, has converted to theism. I think that's very significant.”

Despite his belief in the existence of God, Flew said it is unlikely that he will ever become a Christian. The major evidence against the God of Christianity is the problem of evil, Flew said.

The problem of evil refers to the apparent tension between the existence of a good God and the presence of evil in the world.

“The problem of evil is a problem ... for Christians,” Flew said. “The thesis that the universe was created and is sustained by a Being of infinite power and goodness is flatly incompatible with the occurrence of massive undeniable and undenied evils in that universe.”

Flew also argues that God does not have “any preferences ... about or any intentions concerning human behavior or about the eternal destinies of human beings.”

Although he does not accept Christianity, Flew emphatically denies the possibility that he would ever become a follower of Islam, citing Islam's commitment to conquer all of its opponents.

“I would never regard Islam with anything but horror and fear because it is fundamentally committed to conquering the world for Islam,” Flew said.

Flew will present a more fully developed explanation of his conversion to belief in God in a forthcoming edition of his book, “God & Philosophy.”

Earlier works by Flew include “Atheistic Humanism,” “Darwinian Evolution,” “A Dictionary of Philosophy,” “Introduction to Western Philosophy” and “How to Think Straight: An Introduction to Critical Reasoning.”

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Version by Rev. Brett Blair:

A British philosophy professor who had been a leading champion of atheism for more than a half-century changed his mind last week. He now believes in God. His name is Antony Flew. You don’t know him but you have heard of the people he hung around with in 1950. In that year Professor Flew presented a paper called Theology and Falsification to a gathering of religious men called the Socratic Club at Oxford University. The club’s leader was C.S. Lewis. Another member of the club was JRR Tolkien. I don’t know how you stand in front of the author of The Chronicles of Narnia and the author of Lord of The Rings and argue that God doesn’t exist. But Professor Flew did and this is what he said. He began with this parable:

Once upon a time two explorers came upon a clearing in the jungle. In the clearing were growing many flowers and many weeds. One explorer says, “Some gardener must tend this plot.” The other disagrees, “There is no gardener.” So they pitch their tents and set a watch. No gardener is ever seen. “But perhaps he is an invisible gardener.” So they set up a barbed-wire fence. They electrify it. They patrol with bloodhounds. But no shrieks ever suggest that some intruder has received a shock. No movements of the wire ever betray an invisible climber. The bloodhounds never give cry. Yet still the Believer is not convinced. “But there is a gardener, invisible, intangible, insensible, to electric shocks, a gardener who has no scent and makes no sound, a gardener who comes secretly to look after the garden which he loves.” At last the Skeptic despairs, “But what remains of your original assertion? Just how does what you call an invisible, intangible, eternally elusive gardener differ from an imaginary gardener or even from no gardener at all?”

That’s the opening and it’s a powerful parable. Dr Flew became as popular in atheist circles as much as Lewis and Tolkien did in Christian. His presentation laid out the case that there is no empirical evidence for the existence of God. Nature doesn’t show us God. Science doesn’t prove God. Knowledge doesn’t conclude there is a God. There is no evidence for God. That was Professor Flew 54 years ago. But now at the age of 81 the professor has recanted. In a new presentation, not before the Socratic Club at Oxford, but before a distinguished gathering of scientist in New York last week, the atheist professor, after 50 years of reflection, surprised his audience in saying that science “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life) intelligence must have been involved.” Did you hear that last part? Listen again, science “has shown, by the almost unbelievable complexity of the arrangements which are needed to produce (life) intelligence must have been involved.”

It’s funny isn’t it? 50 years ago Flew argued there was no proof of a Gardner. Now back in the same garden he says there must be a Gardner. What did he miss then that he now sees? It would be interesting to hear him reflect on that.

But before we get too caught up in Dr. Flew’s conversion, let’s consider... Professor Flew doesn’t believe in the Christian God or the Muslim God. Here is how he defines God, “I'm thinking of a God very different from the God of the Christian and far and away from the God of Islam, because both are depicted as omnipotent Oriental despots, cosmic Saddam Husseins.” He goes on to say that God “could be a person in the sense of a being that has intelligence and a purpose, I suppose.”

Here is what I would like to say to the Professor, “Dr. Flew, what you missed in the garden 54 years ago you have missed in Christianity today. The Christian God is no tyrant. He is no Saddam Hussein. He does not oppress his people. Rather, he saves them!

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

"Atheist's turn toward God was a 4-year process, friend says," by David Roach.

Baptist Press, December 22, 2004.

Christian apologist Gary Habermas had just finished debating noted British atheist Antony Flew about the existence of God and the resurrection of Jesus Christ.

The two friends rode an elevator together as they left the Californian university where the debate was held in January 2002. As Habermas exited the elevator, he extended his hand through the open door. “Tony,” he said, “this is it for now. I enjoyed talking with you. When you become a Christian, I want to be the first one to know.”

Flew laughed and responded, “I think you deserve that right.”

The doors closed.

Most observers of the debate never thought that Flew would take steps toward Christianity. The former professor at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading universities in Britain had argued against the existence of God for more than 50 years, publishing such books as “Atheistic Humanism” and “Darwinian Evolution.”

But in December 2004 the unexpected happened when Flew took a step toward Christianity, announcing that scientific evidence led him to a belief in God.

Habermas was among the first people he told.

Habermas, chairman of the department of philosophy and theology at Liberty University in Lynchburg, Va., had known that Flew was reconsidering his position since the fall of 2000 when Flew sent Habermas a letter in which the atheist acknowledged the strength of arguments for theism and Christianity.

“In September 2000, that's about the earliest indication that I had that he was changing,” Habermas said in an interview with Baptist Press. “He wrote me a long letter, quite an incredible letter, where at several points he conceded the evidence for [theism and Christianity].”

When Habermas received the letter, he knew something was happening in Flew's life.

“I distinctly remember reading that letter when it came in the mail and thinking, 'Wow, something huge is happening with this guy,'“ Habermas said.

Over a period of three years the two scholars corresponded about God. By January 2003 Flew began considering arguments from the “intelligent design” movement and was on the verge of belief in God.

Intelligent design is a theory arguing that some features of the natural world are best explained as the products of an intelligent cause rather than naturalistic evolution.

“He told me he was really rethinking theism and had corresponded with [naturalistic scientist Richard] Dawkins and was putting the ID arguments up against what Dawkins was saying and trying to compare the arguments,” Habermas said. “And he was going back and forth as to whether he should be a theist or not.”

By early 2004, Flew completed his transition to theism and indicated his change of mind to Habermas in a telephone conversation.

When media reports revealed Flew's belief in God in December 2004, some skeptics argued that the former atheist had changed his mind suddenly. But Habermas said such allegations are clearly incorrect in light of the four-year dialogue he had with Flew.

“The implications that he's just recently arrived at theism ... and that he hasn't had time to think through this aren't correct,” Habermas said. “The first sign that I've seen of him changing goes back to the fall of 2000. So he's been thinking about these things for four years.”

Flew currently holds a position known as deism -- the belief that God created the universe but is not actively involved in people's lives today, Habermas said. Because deism is traditionally a “tenuous” position, Flew could move closer to traditional Christianity in the days ahead, he said.

“Deism is a very tenuous position, and deistic belief is a short-lived movement in the history of philosophy over the last few centuries,” Habermas said. “One reason deism is a troubled position is that it usually moves one way or the other.”

Flew could revert back to atheism, Habermas noted. “Still, he has made a number of statements to me indicating that he is open, even to revelation,” Habermas said.

“Three weeks ago I received a letter from him where he said that he was rereading my arguments for the resurrection and was very impressed with them,'“ he said.

Despite his interest in the resurrection, however, Flew remains far from belief in Christianity, Habermas said.

“He's told me on many occasions that he was impressed with the arguments for the resurrection ... and he says it's the best miracle claim in the history of religions,” Habermas recounted. “So he's impressed with them. Enough to believe? I don't think so, certainly not right now.”

The dialogue with Flew highlights the need for Christians to engage non-believers in meaningful, caring friendships, Habermas said. Christian scholars in particular should bear in mind the need to build relationships with non- believing scholars, he said.

There are “benefits of carrying on a genuine friendship with people who do not agree with you on things,” Habermas said. “I mean a genuine friendship where you're there for them in season and out of season. You're there for them when they're having bad days. You can tell them things that are on your mind. ... It's not connected to whether the people convert or not.”

Christians should rejoice that Flew has adopted a belief in God but remember that mere belief in God falls short of the belief in Jesus Christ that Scripture requires for eternal life, Habermas said.

“His deism provides no relief for dying because he doesn't believe in life after death,” he said. “It's not ... an 81-year-old who is embracing God so that he can come out on the good side when he dies. If you said that to him, he would say, 'I'm just going where the evidence leads.'“

An interview conducted by Habermas exploring Flew's conversion to belief in God will be published in the winter 2004 issue of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society.

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

"Famous Atheist Now Believes in God"

One of World's Leading Atheists Now Believes in God, More or Less, Based on

Scientific Evidence; The Associated Press, New York, December 9, 2004.

http://abcnews.go.com/US/wireStory?id=315976

Antony Flew, the 81-year-old British philosophy professor who taught at Oxford and other leading universities, became an atheist at age 15. Throughout his long career he argued - including in debates with an atheist-turned-Christian named C. S. Lewis - that there was a “presumption of atheism,” that is, the existence of a creator could not be proved.

Flew told Habermas, “This is the creature, the evolution of which a truly comprehensive theory of evolution must give some account. Darwin himself was well aware that he had not produced such an account. It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design.”

Flew has, thus, become a Deist - that is, he acknowledges God as creator but not as a personal deity. In his opinion, “There is no room either for any supernatural revelation of that God or any transactions between that God and individual human beings.” In fact, he told a group last May that he considers both the Christian God and the Islamic God to be “omnipotent Oriental despots - cosmic Saddam Husseins.”

“I don't believe in the God of any revelatory system, although I am open to that,” Flew said in an interview for the winter 2005 edition of Philosophia Christi, the journal of the Evangelical Philosophical Society. “But it seems to me that the case for...[a] God who has the characteristics of power and also intelligence is now much stronger than it ever was before.”

“I think that the most impressive arguments for God's existence are those that are supported by recent scientific discoveries,” Flew said. “...I think the argument to Intelligent Design is enormously stronger than it was when I first met it.”

Flew, 81, regularly attended the Socratic Club, a weekly religious forum led by famed Christian apologist C.S. Lewis while he attended college at Oxford. Flew proclaimed the lack of evidence for God while teaching at Oxford, Aberdeen, Keele and Reading universities in Britain. He also published numerous books and articles denouncing belief in God.

Flew credits his newfound belief in God to arguments from design such as those espoused by the “intelligent design” (ID) movement. ID argues that the universe operates in such a way that it points to the existence of an intelligent creator.

Christians should rejoice that Flew has adopted a belief in God but remember that mere belief in God falls short of the belief in Jesus Christ that Scripture requires for eternal life, Habermas said.

“His deism provides no relief for dying because he doesn't believe in life after death,” he said. “It's not ... an 81-year-old who is embracing God so that he can come out on the good side when he dies. If you said that to him, he would say, 'I'm just going where the evidence leads.'"

*

[Original illustration at this number was a duplicate of HolwickID #26171]

In his book RIVER OUT OF EDEN, Oxford scientist Richard Dawkins explains, “The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”(1) In a similar vein, Dawkins praises the humorous rejoinder of Douglas Adams to arguments claiming an apparent order and purpose in the universe. Writes Dawkins, “To illustrate the vain conceit that the universe must be somehow preordained for us because we are so well suited to live in it, [Adams] mimed a wonderfully funny imitation of a puddle of water, fitting itself snugly into a depression in the ground, the depression uncannily being exactly the same shape as the puddle.”(2) Their claim is clear: Humanity has adapted to a blind and indifferent universe like water to the shape of its container.

Ernest Gordon may have at one time agreed. An officer of the British army during the Second World War, he was captured by the Japanese while at sea. At the age of 24, he was sent to work in the prison camp that would be constructing the Burma-Siam railroad. [see HolwickID #1795]

For every mile of track, 393 men are said to have died. Wearing nothing but loincloths, they worked for hours in scorching temperatures, chopping their way through tangled jungles. Those who paused out of exhaustion were beaten to death by guards. Treated like animals, the prisoners became themselves like beasts trying to survive. Adapting to their harsh captivity, theft was as rampant as disease among them. Gordon himself eventually became so weak from illness that he was removed and placed in the Death House. He describes his purposeless existence in that cruel and indifferent setting: “I was a prisoner of war, lying among the dead, waiting for the bodies to be carried away so that I might have more room.”(3)

Each night the Japanese guards would count the work tools before anyone was permitted to return to camp. One evening, when a shovel was found to be missing, a guard shouted relentlessly that the guilty man must present himself. When no one responded, he ordered callously, “All die! All die!” At this, a young man stepped forward, confessing to the theft, and was immediately killed before them.

The railroad prison camp was a place where many could have observed in horror, “the universe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no God watching over those in dire need of hope.” Like water conforming to the shape of its container, the captured men became like men fighting to survive, void of right and wrong, void of reverence for life, void of all meaning. Yet, amidst the stagnant waters of hatred and bitterness, something was astir.

After the incident with the shovel, upon returning to the camp, one of the guards discovered a mistake in their counting. There had never been a missing shovel. One innocent man had sacrificed his life to preserve the life of his fellow inmates.

Attitudes among the camp began to change dramatically. Instead of men in a detached game of survival of the fittest, they began to look out for each other. One of the men remembered the words of Scripture: “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends.” Gordon, who once lay forgotten for dead, was slowly nursed back to health by fellow prisoners. Fully recovered, he eventually became a makeshift chaplain of the camp. When the prison was liberated in 1945 — three years after his capture — Gordon entered seminary to become a minister of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. “Faith thrives where there is no hope but God,” he later testified. How contrary to the words of Richard Dawkins.

The transformation in the men of the prison was so thoroughly unlike the world they were forced to live in that one could argue it was more like a waterfall defying gravity and moving upstream than a puddle naturally fitting into the crevice that holds it. The sacrifice of one innocent man can reverse the flow of history. The Kingdom of God is among us, a spring of living water in a dry and weary land.

________

1. Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden (New York: Basic Books, 1995), 133.

2. As printed in The Guardian, May 14, 2001.

3. Ernest Gordon, To End All Wars (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2002).

________

Copyright © 2005 Ravi Zacharias International Ministries (RZIM). Reprinted with permission. "A Slice of Infinity" is a radio ministry of Ravi Zacharias International Ministries.

A Harris Poll reveals that 64 percent of American adults believe “human beings were created directly by God,” while only 22 percent believe they “evolved from earlier species.”

Those on the battle field in the nation's schools, where the debate over teaching evolution, creation and intelligent design continues, may be interested that of those surveyed, more than half believe children should be taught about all three. Of the remaining, 23 percent support teaching creationism only, 12 percent evolution only and four percent intelligent design only.

Other key findings from the poll include:

A majority of U.S. adults (54%) do not think human beings developed from earlier species, up from 46 percent in 1994.

Forty-nine percent of adults believe plants and animals have evolved from some other species while 45 percent do not believe that.

Adults are evenly divided about whether or not apes and man have a common ancestry (46 percent believe we do and 47 percent believe we do not).

Again divided, 46 percent of adults agree that “Darwin's theory of evolution is proven by fossil discoveries,” while 48 percent disagree.

*

[This article is a summary of HolwickID #29802]

Evangelical Christianity and evolution are incompatible beliefs that cannot be held together logically within a distinctly Christian worldview, R. Albert Mohler Jr. says in the Aug. 15, 2005, edition of TIME magazine.

TIME solicited the views of four experts with different answers to the question “Can you believe in God and evolution?” Mohler, president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, comments from an evangelical Christian perspective.

Other participants include Francis Collins of the Human Genome Research Institute who argues for theistic evolution, Harvard University psychology professor Steven Pinker who articulates the naturalistic evolutionary position, and Lehigh University professor Michael Behe who makes a case for intelligent design.

Mohler, a young-Earth creationist, says the Bible is clear about the way in which God created the earth in six days. He argues that Christianity and evolution offer opposing views of human origins.

“Given the human tendency toward inconsistency, there are people who will say they hold both positions,” Mohler writes. “But you cannot coherently affirm the Christian-truth claim and the dominant model of evolutionary theory at the same time.

“...I believe the Bible is adequately clear about how God created the world, and that its most natural reading points to a six-day creation that included not just the animal and plant species but the earth itself.

“But there have always been Evangelicals who asserted that it might have taken longer. What they should not be asserting is the idea of God's having set the rules for evolution and then stepped back. And even less so, the model held by much of the scientific academy: of evolution as the result of a random process of mutation and selection.”

Pinker argues that the moral design of nature “is as bungled as its engineering design,” evidence itself that life did not arise from an intelligent and good creator.

“Many people who accept evolution still feel that a belief in God is necessary to give life meaning and to justify morality,” Pinker says. “But that is exactly backward. In practice, religion has given us stonings, inquisitions and 9/11. Morality comes from a commitment to treat others as we wish to be treated, which follows from the realization that none of us is the sole occupant of the universe. Like physical evolution, it does not require a white-coated technician in the sky.”

Behe says he does not reject Darwinian evolution on theological grounds but disagrees with it for scientific reasons. God could have made life any way He wanted to, says Behe, a Roman Catholic.

“I think God could have made life using apparently random mutation and natural selection,” Behe writes. “But my reading of the scientific evidence is that he did not do it that way, that there was a more active guiding.

“I think that we are all descended from some single cell in the distant past but that that cell and later parts of life were intentionally produced as the result of intelligent activity. As a Christian, I say that intelligence is very likely to be God.”

Collins, who considers himself a Christian, says believers may view evolution as a bona fide explanation for the origin of the universe.

“I see no conflict in what the Bible tells me about God and what science tells me about nature,” Collins says. “...I do not find the wording of Genesis 1 and 2 to suggest a scientific textbook but a powerful and poetic description of God’s intentions in creating the universe. The mechanism of creation is left unspecified.”

But theistic evolution usurps the biblical teaching of man being made in the image of God, Mohler says. Evangelicals must affirm the special creation of humans by the sovereign Creator who rules, cares for and governs His creation, Mohler says. The God of Scripture is not merely a “blind watchmaker” who steps back from His creation and watches in a detached fashion, Mohler says.

Stalwart evolutionists in recent years have moved away from theories that involve God, Mohler points out. While he disagrees vigorously with their views, Mohler says the evolutionist’s rejection of God and embrace of pure naturalism is more consistent than theistic evolution’s attempt to wed the God of the Bible with natural selection.

“I think it's interesting that many of evolution's most ardent academic defenders have moved away from the old claim that evolution is God's means to bring life into being in its various forms,” he says.

“More of them are saying that a truly informed belief in evolution entails a stance that the material world is all there is and that the natural must be explained in purely natural terms. They're saying that anyone who truly feels this way must exclude God from the story. I think their self-analysis is correct. I just couldn't disagree more with their premise.”

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.

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New York Times Magazine has a long piece by cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker called “The Moral Instinct.” Pinker’s article is part of the Darwinian Cleanup Project. This project is an attempt to plug the holes in Darwinism which has a very hard time accounting for -- a) the origin of life, b) consciousness and c) morality. Pinker begins with an interesting comparison between Mother Teresa, Bill Gates and Norman Borlaug (the father of the Green Revolution in agriculture). Pinker argues that while Mother Teresa may have had the noblest intentions, Gates and Borlaug probably did more to help people than the saint of Calcutta. In other words, morality is not simply a matter of intention but also of what one actually does to help people. Excellent point, but what does it have to do with an evolutionary foundation for ethics? Not much.

For the past several decades, leading neo-Darwinists have labored hard to provide a Darwinian basis for morality. The basic idea here is that morality is a form of extended selfishness. The mother who leaps into the burning car to save her children is acting unselfishly from her point of view, but from her genes’ point of view, the action is entirely self-interested. The mother is simply trying to ensure that her genes make it into the next generation. Some evolutionists like Robert Trivers extend this logic to explain why we treat even strangers decently and fairly. This is called “reciprocal altruism,” which may be translated as “I’ll be nice to you, so that you can be nice to me.”

This entire framework of Darwinian analysis does not even come close to explaining morality. It confines itself to explaining altruism, and at best it explains “low altruism.” But humans also engage in “high altruism” which may be defined as behavior that confers no reciprocal or genetic advantage. A man stands up to give his seat on the bus to an old lady. She is nothing to him, and he is certainly not thinking that there may be a future occasion when she will give him her seat. He does it because he’s a nice guy. There’s no Darwinian rationale that can account for his behavior.

Consider the true story of the Catholic priest Maximilian Kolbe, who was imprisoned in a German concentration camp for his anti-Nazi activities. Each day the Nazis would choose one person from the group for execution. One of the first persons they selected was a man who pleaded for his life, saying he had a wife and children who were dependent on him and he needed to live in order to look after them. Just as the Nazis were about to drag him from the room, the priest stood up and said, “Take me in his place.” The Nazis were baffled and refused, but the priest insisted. The man was equally uncomprehending, so the priest told him, “I don’t have a family, I am old and won’t be missed like you will.” The Nazis finally agreed, and the priest went to his death. The man whose place he took survived the war and returned to his family.

Now what is the Darwinian explanation for Kolbe’s behavior? It does not exist. Ernest Mayr, a leading evolutionary biologist, admits that “altruism toward strangers is behavior not supported by natural selection.” Richard Dawkins concedes that Darwinism cannot even explain why people donate blood, an action he puts down to “pure disinterested altruism.” I enjoy reading Pinker, Trivers and the others, but I don’t think that the Darwin Cleanup Crew is going to come up with a comprehensive account of morality. The simple reason is that the evolutionary project is necessarily confined to the domain of survival and reproductive advantage -- in other words, to the domain of self-interest -- while it is the essence of morality to operate against self-interest. The whole point of morality is to do what you ought to do, not what you are inclined to do or what it is in your interest to do.

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Response by a reader:

And once again, Dinesh, you are trying to force darwinism to explain everything. It’s like pointing at the theory of gravity and saying, “Hey! Explain how you affect the geopolitical structure of the middle east! Uh huh, I thought so.”

Morality is a phenomenon exclusive to humanity, until we encounter another intelligent species face to face. We don’t ask about the morality of cows or wolves or oak trees, yet there can be no doubt that all three are under the effect of darwinist forces.

Yet darwinism has provided genetic reasons for non-sentient species to work in concert. And this is the most primal basis for morality and ethics: the ability of a species to act for the survival of other members of their species. For example, a wolf on their own is terribly limited by the amount of prey they can kill. Wolves, working in concert, can bring down much larger prey and provide enough meat for not just the individual wolf, but for all wolves.

Apes and primates, our evolutionary ancestors, were also pack animals. Each pack has an evolutionary stake in the survival of the whole. If one member thrives at the expense of the others, then that’s the genetic equivalent of putting your eggs in one basket. Using primitive altruism, the group as a whole thrives far more effectively than just the individual might.

And what about interpack relations? Why would altruism exist then? In a nutshell, sex. Without genetic colonialism, a specific gene pool is a sitting duck. It takes fifty genetically diverse females to keep a gene pool healthy and discourage inbreeding. Going out and helping another pack gives access to females of that other pack, and vice versa. Sure, you could try to do it by force, but that’s a method with far greater risks. After all, you might be killed before you have a chance to mate with the new females. Or you may drive the females off.

Morality as you are describing it, Dinesh, is the product of this entirely natural genetic phenomenon coupled with language and most importantly, records. Without records it is impossible for a culture to teach its morality. Morality becomes an invention of the moment, rather than the product of generations. And it is largely self-centered towards the betterment of the individual through the betterment of the whole.

So what about the good priest? His sacrifice, in Darwinian terms, was a bid to spare genes that he saw as valuble to the overall group of humanity: the man’s concern for his family. Somewhere in the world there were people who shared genetic commonalities with the good priest. He might not have known they were out there, or who they were, but on a fundamental level he knew that we are all interrelated. By sacrificing himself, he was actually making a genetic bid for the future.

It’s early so I’ll sum up. Morality is the evolutionary descendant of the ability of organisms to act in concert. It follows darwinist theory because related members in a group have a greater chance of their genes repeating. Purely selfless acts infact help sponsor specific genes in those that we help, and reciprocation gives us comfort knowing that if we help others then with a little luck, others will be willing to help us.

"Somber" at 9:29AM on Jan 14th 2008

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[Original illustration at this number was added to HolwickID #25185]

Over the years, you’ve heard me recommend many publications on the subject of intelligent design. But I believe it is safe to say that I have never before discussed one that featured two chapters on Shakespeare’s HAMLET.

The reasoning behind these chapters is that Benjamin Wiker and Jonathan Witt’s new book, A MEANINGFUL WORLD, is about so much more than the narrow concept that many people have of “intelligent design.” Their book’s subtitle helps explain their idea: HOW THE ARTS AND SCIENCES REVEAL THE GENIUS OF NATURE. It’s an original and utterly fascinating approach to the subject.

Wiker and Witt are arguing against what they call the “poison” of our time: reductionist materialism and the nihilism that stems from it. To put it more simply, they are fighting against the idea that the universe is without meaning. We’ve all heard this idea before, but we don’t always realize just how much it has permeated our culture and our lives.

Which brings me back to Shakespeare. Most of us have heard someone say that “if a million monkeys banged away on typewriters for a million years, eventually they would generate the entire works of Shakespeare.” I have tended to laugh this off as most of us do, not aware that the people who embrace reductionist materialism are really serious.

As Wiker and Witt explain it, “Reductionist materialism seeks to give an entirely material explanation of human intelligence, one that reduces it to a string of pointless material causes. It must kill the soul, and in the process, reduce all the evident genius of humanity to dust.”

And that, the authors show us, is exactly why materialists came up with the “million monkeys” idea. Scientific reductionism — the view that we all came into being by random chance — is closely linked to literary reductionism — the desire to “force the beauties of [literature] into [a] box.”

Thus, scientists came up with the “million monkeys” theory to show that Shakespeare’s genius was nothing special, that his works could have come about purely by chance. And, the theory goes, “If monkeys could knock out a Shakespearean tragedy given enough time, then what about creating Shakespeare himself? Couldn’t he be almost as easily explained on Darwinian grounds?”

But do you know what happened when scientists tried to test their theory? Obviously, they couldn’t test it for a million years, but they thought they could get some idea about the truth of the theory by testing it for a month. The monkeys pressed some random letters on the keyboard, bashed the computer with stones, and — to put it as delicately as possible — used it as a toilet. “Suffice it to say,” the authors remark dryly, “their literary efforts fall a good deal short of the Bard.” It’s difficult to see how extending this farce for a million years would have made any difference at all. In fact, a scientist at MIT used a computer simulation to prove that it could not have happened.

This is only the beginning of Witt and Wiker’s exploration of their theme. Tomorrow, Mark Earley will be with you to take a look at their argument that not only do the arts and culture point to a universe full of meaning, but so do mathematics and the sciences.

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Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.

In the new novel THE ROAD, by Cormac McCarthy, an unnamed catastrophe has wiped out most of humanity. What remains is a colorless, lifeless shell where “long lines of charred and rusting cars,” filled with incinerated corpses, sit “in a stiff gray sludge of melted rubber.”

The survivors find themselves living in what Thomas Hobbes called “the war of all against all”: scrounging for food while avoiding their fellow men, many of whom have turned to cannibalism.

Among the survivors are the unnamed protagonists of the novel: a man and his 10-year-old son who was born after the catastrophe. As the father tells his son, “I was appointed by God to [take care of you]. I will kill anyone who touches you.”

At the same time, he wants to preserve his son’s goodness, which is next-to-impossible in this post-apocalyptic wasteland. In the novel’s world, the boy’s survival depends on his father eradicating his altruistic impulses. The man must teach his son that being willing to “give that little boy half of my food” is a bad idea.

McCarthy’s protagonist isn’t the only one who has trouble reconciling our survival instinct with our capacity for altruism. As the philosopher David Stove pointed out, altruism — the willingness, that is, to sacrifice for others — is obviously disadvantageous in what Darwin called “the struggle for life.” In a world where the goal is to pass on your selfish gene, helping someone else pass on theirs makes no sense.

While Darwin himself never acknowledged the difficulty posed by altruism, his acolytes and disciples did. Their responses led to the creation of the discipline known variously as “evolutionary psychology” or “sociobiology.”

Whatever it’s called, the evolutionary “explanation” for altruism is basically the same: It’s really selfishness in disguise. When the son offers to give away half of his food, it’s not goodness — it’s a kind of enlightened self-interest. We do what we perceive as “good” for others so that they, in turn, might do the same for us and, thus, increase both of our chances for survival.

Of course, the transaction being described isn’t “altruism” at all; it’s called “cooperation.” It’s the stuff of zebras and baboons, both of which live in large groups for mutual protection and neither of which would knowingly sacrifice its life to save another’s.

But in the Darwinian scheme, true altruism “has no place in nature.” When you start from the assumption that our behavior is the product of “selfish genes,” then you must agree with the sociobiologist who wrote “scratch an ‘altruist’ and watch a hypocrite bleed.”

Little wonder that Stove called Darwinism, especially sociobiology, a “ridiculous slander on human beings.” Darwinism not only cannot account for what is most essentially human — that is, things like altruism and music — it insists on denigrating them, as well.

In contrast, Christians understand that while we are born with the capacity for selfishness and even cruelty, we are also capable of caring for others. Because we are created in the image of God, we not only don’t have to be at war with our neighbors, we can willingly die for them, as well.

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Copyright (c) 2006 Prison Fellowship Ministries. Reprinted with permission. "BreakPoint with Chuck Colson" is a radio ministry of Prison Fellowship Ministries.