A Country Out of Control Caused by a Permissive Culture

A Country Out of Control Caused by a Permissive Culture

After over 30 years of a growing permissive culture where the theme was “everything is okay; whatever you believe or want to do.”

Today liberal’s deride others for the consequences we are experiencing from the deterioration of our culture. Like many liberal ideologues they disregarded unintended consequences have finally proven to be very dangerous as we are seeing on a daily basis.

The root causes? The disregard of “Social Mores”. Mores are the customs, norms, and behaviors that are acceptable to a society or social group. Social Mores are created over a long period of time and it is safe to say it is the glue that binds us together as a people. When your personal behaviors disagree with cultural mores, you should expect to pushback and that others will be annoyed and disparaging. Why? Incurring the consequences of stepping outside the bright lines of the cultural mores keeps a society bound together. Cultural stability is a good thing.

What is now called “Political Correctness” is an attempt to call out a counter-culture effort using the political process. This is when those wanting freedom from scorn or disagreement for their behavior they turn to the “political process”. More often, the strategy is coopting powerful and large groups to support minority views or behaviors that are counter to the current social mores.

What can we conclude? The use of a political process of rapid change has been going on for over 30 years and the consequences are now being felt as we have undone the cultural glue that binds us together as a people.

To be sure, culture does change overtime. However, is must be done gradually and bring along the whole of society in the process. Otherwise, the culture cleaves, and society suffers undue consequences. Many have been witnessing this phenomenon over their life. Some were afraid for the future while others celebrated their efforts. However, few likely saw the future they were living into; the cultural divide and public discord.

In the U.S., the “counterculture movement” has been speed along by those we call liberals, progressives. Their collective efforts utilizing the political process has speed our culture along the path of change that has outpaced the cultures ability to absorb and “choose” the change to the customs, norms, and behaviors that are acceptable to a society.

What is annoying to many in the U.S. is that liberals that are complaining and blaming about the division in our nation while not wanting to accept accountability for causing our cultural norms to be out of balance. They continue to embrace force (laws) and “political correctness” to have their way. Further, they do not want to accept that all cultures tend to cling to the status quo. In fact, that choose to incorporate this “status quo” proclivity as the “boogeyman” in their drive for accepting their world view and cultural change.

The liberals disparage those that are fearful the cultural/social changes are dragging the country down and should accept the change. Four hundred years of social/cultural mores built upon an enduring idea put to writing. This fact will not change by simply being angry and blaming those that continue to hold to the original Social Mores (values and principles in the Declaration of Independence and more) that believe made the country great. A predictable and normal behavior.

Evolutions Misguided Children

THE PITCH FOR NOAH’S ARK

Evolutions misguided children

Many geologists claim that Noah could not possibly have built the ark in the manner described in Genesis. They argue that pitch could not have been used to cover the ark and make it waterproof. Pitch, they claim, is derived from oil or coal, and if coal did not form until during the time of Noah’s Flood, he could not possibly have covered the ark with pitch.

For those who are not geologists, pitch is a black glue-like substance left behind when coal tar is heated or distilled. It belongs to the same family of substances as asphalt or bitumen. Today, it is largely produced by heating coal. Most modern geologists know of no other source for it. But coal tar and petroleum are not the only source for pitch. Anyone who takes the time to consult a reasonable dictionary of geology will find that pitch can be extracted by distilling or heating wood. In fact, prior to the rise of the petroleum and coal industries, this was exactly how pitch was made.

For at least one thousand years, the pitch-making industry in Europe flourished. It was the pitch from this industry which assisted in the construction of those great wooden sailing ships which figured so prominently in European history. Pitch making was a skilled trade, and many European surnames bear testimony to that fact today. In Polish, the word for pitch or tar is ‘smola’. Any Polish telephone directory displays names such as Smola, Smolander, Smolen, Smolenski and Smolarz. These surnames simply mean ‘the man who makes pitch’.

The Scientific Case Against Evolution

The Scientific Case Against Evolution

by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.this survey of the scientific case against evolution (and, therefore, for creation), the reader is reminded again that all quotations in the article are from doctrinaire evolutionists. No Bible references are included,

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

Evolution Is Not Happening Now

First of all, the lack of a case for evolution is clear from the fact that no one has ever seen it happen. If it were a real process, evolution should still be occurring, and there should be many "transitional" forms that we could observe. What we see instead, of course, is an array of distinct "kinds" of plants and animals with many varieties within each kind, but with very clear and -- apparently -- unbridgeable gaps between the kinds. That is, for example, there are many varieties of dogs and many varieties of cats, but no "dats" or "cogs." Such variation is often called microevolution, and these minor horizontal (or downward) changes occur fairly often, but such changes are not true "vertical" evolution.

Evolutionary geneticists have often experimented on fruit flies and other rapidly reproducing species to induce mutational changes hoping they would lead to new and better species, but these have all failed to accomplish their goal. No truly new species has ever been produced, let alone a new "basic kind."

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

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

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

Evolution Never Happened in the Past

Evolutionists commonly answer the above criticism by claiming that evolution goes too slowly for us to see it happening today. They used to claim that the real evidence for evolution was in the fossil record of the past, but the fact is that the billions of known fossils do not include a single unequivocal transitional form with transitional structures in the process of evolving.

Given that evolution, according to Darwin, was in a continual state of motion . . . it followed logically that the fossil record should be rife with examples of transitional forms leading from the less to the more evolved.³

Even those who believe in rapid evolution recognize that a considerable number of generations would be required for one distinct "kind" to evolve into another more complex kind. There ought, therefore, to be a considerable number of true transitional structures preserved in the fossils -- after all, there are billions of non-transitional structures there! But (with the exception of a few very doubtful creatures such as the controversial feathered dinosaurs and the alleged walking whales), they are not there.

Instead of filling in the gaps in the fossil record with so-called missing links, most paleontologists found themselves facing a situation in which there were only gaps in the fossil record, with no evidence of transformational intermediates between documented fossil species.⁴

The entire history of evolution from the evolution of life from non-life to the evolution of vertebrates from invertebrates to the evolution of man from the ape is strikingly devoid of intermediates: the links are all missing in the fossil record, just as they are in the present world.

With respect to the origin of life, a leading researcher in this field, Leslie Orgel, after noting that neither proteins nor nucleic acids could have arisen without the other, concludes:

And so, at first glance, one might have to conclude that life could never, in fact, have originated by chemical means.⁵

Being committed to total evolution as he is, Dr. Orgel cannot accept any such conclusion as that. Therefore, he speculates that RNA may have come first, but then he still has to admit that:

The precise events giving rise to the RNA world remain unclear. . . . investigators have proposed many hypotheses, but evidence in favor of each of them is fragmentary at best.⁶

Translation: "There is no known way by which life could have arisen naturalistically." Unfortunately, two generations of students have been taught that Stanley Miller's famous experiment on a gaseous mixture, practically proved the naturalistic origin of life. But not so!

Miller put the whole thing in a ball, gave it an electric charge, and waited. He found that amino acids and other fundamental complex molecules were accumulating at the bottom of the apparatus. His discovery gave a huge boost to the scientific investigation of the origin of life. Indeed, for some time it seemed like creation of life in a test tube was within reach of experimental science. Unfortunately, such experiments have not progressed much further than the original prototype, leaving us with a sour aftertaste from the primordial soup.⁷

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

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

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

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

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

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

So how do evolutionists arrive at their evolutionary trees from fossils of organisms which didn't change during their durations?

Fossil discoveries can muddle over attempts to construct simple evolutionary trees -- fossils from key periods are often not intermediates, but rather hodge podges of defining features of many different groups. . . . Generally, it seems that major groups are not assembled in a simple linear or progressive manner -- new features are often "cut and pasted" on different groups at different times.¹¹

As far as ape/human intermediates are concerned, the same is true, although anthropologists have been eagerly searching for them for many years. Many have been proposed, but each has been rejected in turn.

All that paleoanthropologists have to show for more than 100 years of digging are remains from fewer than 2000 of our ancestors. They have used this assortment of jawbones, teeth and fossilized scraps, together with molecular evidence from living species, to piece together a line of human descent going back 5 to 8 million years to the time when humans and chimpanzees diverged from a common ancestor.¹²

Anthropologists supplemented their extremely fragmentary fossil evidence with DNA and other types of molecular genetic evidence from living animals to try to work out an evolutionary scenario that will fit. But this genetic evidence really doesn't help much either, for it contradicts fossil evidence. Lewin notes that:

The overall effect is that molecular phylogenetics is by no means as straightforward as its pioneers believed. . . . The Byzantine dynamics of genome change has many other consequences for molecular phylogenetics, including the fact that different genes tell different stories.¹³

Summarizing the genetic data from humans, another author concludes, rather pessimistically:

Even with DNA sequence data, we have no direct access to the processes of evolution, so objective reconstruction of the vanished past can be achieved only by creative imagination.¹⁴

Since there is no real scientific evidence that evolution is occurring at present or ever occurred in the past, it is reasonable to conclude that evolution is not a fact of science, as many claim. In fact, it is not even science at all, but an arbitrary system built upon faith in universal naturalism.

Actually, these negative evidences against evolution are, at the same time, strong positive evidences for special creation. They are, in fact, specific predictions based on the creation model of origins.

Creationists would obviously predict ubiquitous gaps between created kinds, though with many varieties capable of arising within each kind, in order to enable each basic kind to cope with changing environments without becoming extinct. Creationists also would anticipate that any "vertical changes" in organized complexity would be downward, since the Creator (by definition) would create things correctly to begin with. Thus, arguments and evidences against evolution are, at the same time, positive evidences for creation.

The Equivocal Evidence from Genetics

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

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

The most frequently cited example of DNA commonality is the human/chimpanzee "similarity," noting that chimpanzees have more than 90% of their DNA the same as humans. This is hardly surprising, however, considering the many physiological resemblances between people and chimpanzees. Why shouldn't they have similar DNA structures in comparison, say, to the DNA differences between men and spiders?

Similarities -- whether of DNA, anatomy, embryonic development, or anything else -- are better explained in terms of creation by a common Designer than by evolutionary relationship. The great differences between organisms are of greater significance than the similarities, and evolutionism has no explanation for these if they all are assumed to have had the same ancestor. How could these great gaps between kinds ever arise at all, by any natural process?

The apparently small differences between human and chimpanzee DNA obviously produce very great differences in their respective anatomies, intelligence, etc. The superficial similarities between all apes and human beings are nothing compared to the differences in any practical or observable sense.

Nevertheless, evolutionists, having largely become disenchanted with the fossil record as a witness for evolution because of the ubiquitous gaps where there should be transitions, recently have been promoting DNA and other genetic evidence as proof of evolution. However, as noted above by Roger Lewin, this is often inconsistent with, not only the fossil record, but also with the comparative morphology of the creatures. Lewin also mentions just a few typical contradictions yielded by this type of evidence in relation to more traditional Darwinian "proofs."

The elephant shrew, consigned by traditional analysis to the order insectivores . . . is in fact more closely related to . . . the true elephant. Cows are more closely related to dolphins than they are to horses. The duckbilled platypus . . . is on equal evolutionary footing with . . . kangaroos and koalas.¹⁵

There are many even more bizarre comparisons yielded by this approach.

The abundance of so-called "junk DNA" in the genetic code also has been offered as a special type of evidence for evolution, especially those genes which they think have experienced mutations, sometimes called "pseudogenes."¹⁶ However, evidence is accumulating rapidly today that these supposedly useless genes do actually perform useful functions.

Enough genes have already been uncovered in the genetic midden to show that what was once thought to be waste is definitely being transmitted into scientific code.¹⁷

It is thus wrong to decide that junk DNA, even the socalled "pseudogenes," have no function. That is merely an admission of ignorance and an object for fruitful research. Like the socalled "vestigial organs" in man, once considered as evidence of evolution but now all known to have specific uses, so the junk DNA and pseudogenes most probably are specifically useful to the organism, whether or not those uses have yet been discovered by scientists.

At the very best this type of evidence is strictly circumstantial and can be explained just as well in terms of primeval creation supplemented in some cases by later deterioration, just as expected in the creation model.

The real issue is, as noted before, whether there is any observable evidence that evolution is occurring now or has ever occurred in the past. As we have seen, even evolutionists have to acknowledge that this type of real scientific evidence for evolution does not exist.

A good question to ask is: Why are all observable evolutionary changes either horizontal and trivial (so-called microevolution) or downward toward deterioration and extinction? The answer seems to be found in the universally applicable laws of the science of thermodynamics.

Evolution Could Never Happen at All

The main scientific reason why there is no evidence for evolution in either the present or the past (except in the creative imagination of evolutionary scientists) is because one of the most fundamental laws of nature precludes it. The law of increasing entropy -- also known as the second law of thermodynamics -- stipulates that all systems in the real world tend to go "downhill," as it were, toward disorganization and decreased complexity.

This law of entropy is, by any measure, one of the most universal, best proved laws of nature. It applies not only in physical and chemical systems, but also in biological and geological systems -- in fact, in all systems, without exception.

No exception to the second law of thermodynamics has ever been found -- not even a tiny one. Like conservation of energy (the "first law"), the existence of a law so precise and so independent of details of models must have a logical foundation that is independent of the fact that matter is composed of interacting particles.¹⁸

The author of this quote is referring primarily to physics, but he does point out that the second law is "independent of details of models." Besides, practically all evolutionary biologists are reductionists -- that is, they insist that there are no "vitalist" forces in living systems, and that all biological processes are explicable in terms of physics and chemistry. That being the case, biological processes also must operate in accordance with the laws of thermodynamics, and practically all biologists acknowledge this.

Evolutionists commonly insist, however, that evolution is a fact anyhow, and that the conflict is resolved by noting that the earth is an "open system," with the incoming energy from the sun able to sustain evolution throughout the geological ages in spite of the natural tendency of all systems to deteriorate toward disorganization. That is how an evolutionary entomologist has dismissed W. A. Dembski's impressive recent book, Intelligent Design. This scientist defends what he thinks is "natural processes' ability to increase complexity" by noting what he calls a "flaw" in "the arguments against evolution based on the second law of thermodynamics." And what is this flaw?

Although the overall amount of disorder in a closed system cannot decrease, local order within a larger system can increase even without the actions of an intelligent agent.¹⁹

This naive response to the entropy law is typical of evolutionary dissimulation. While it is true that local order can increase in an open system if certain conditions are met, the fact is that evolution does not meet those conditions. Simply saying that the earth is open to the energy from the sun says nothing about how that raw solar heat is converted into increased complexity in any system, open or closed.

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

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

From the statements of evolutionists themselves, therefore, we have learned that there is no real scientific evidence for real evolution. The only observable evidence is that of very limited horizontal (or downward) changes within strict limits.

Evolution is Religion -- Not Science

In no way does the idea of particles-to-people evolution meet the long-accepted criteria of a scientific theory. There are no such evolutionary transitions that have ever been observed in the fossil record of the past; and the universal law of entropy seems to make it impossible on any significant scale.

Evolutionists claim that evolution is a scientific fact, but they almost always lose scientific debates with creationist scientists. Accordingly, most evolutionists now decline opportunities for scientific debates, preferring instead to make unilateral attacks on creationists.

Scientists should refuse formal debates because they do more harm than good, but scientists still need to counter the creationist message.²⁰

The question is, just why do they need to counter the creationist message? Why are they so adamantly committed to anti-creationism?

The fact is that evolutionists believe in evolution because they want to. It is their desire at all costs to explain the origin of everything without a Creator. Evolutionism is thus intrinsically an atheistic religion. Some may prefer to call it humanism, and "new age" evolutionists place it in the context of some form of pantheism, but they all amount to the same thing. Whether atheism or humanism (or even pantheism), the purpose is to eliminate a personal God from any active role in the origin of the universe and all its components, including man.

The core of the humanistic philosophy is naturalism -- the proposition that the natural world proceeds according to its own internal dynamics, without divine or supernatural control or guidance, and that we human beings are creations of that process. It is instructive to recall that the philosophers of the early humanistic movement debated as to which term more adequately described their position: humanism or naturalism. The two concepts are complementary and inseparable.²¹

Since both naturalism and humanism exclude God from science or any other active function in the creation or maintenance of life and the universe in general, it is very obvious that their position is nothing but atheism. And atheism, no less than theism, is a religion! Even doctrinaire-atheistic evolutionist Richard Dawkins admits that atheism cannot be proved to be true.

Of course we can't prove that there isn't a God.²²

Therefore, they must believe it, and that makes it a religion.

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

Darwinism rejects all supernatural phenomena and causations.²³

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

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

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

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

Another way of saying "religion" is "worldview," the whole of reality. The evolutionary worldview applies not only to the evolution of life, but even to that of the entire universe. In the realm of cosmic evolution, our naturalistic scientists depart even further from experimental science than life scientists do, manufacturing a variety of evolutionary cosmologies from esoteric mathematics and metaphysical speculation. Socialist Jeremy Rifkin has commented on this remarkable game.

Cosmologies are made up of small snippets of physical reality that have been remodeled by society into vast cosmic deceptions.²⁶

They must believe in evolution, therefore, in spite of all the evidence, not because of it. And speaking of deceptions, note the following remarkable statement.

We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, . . . in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated commitment to materialism. . . . we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.²⁷

The author of this frank statement is Richard Lewontin of Harvard. Since evolution is not a laboratory science, there is no way to test its validity, so all sorts of justso stories are contrived to adorn the textbooks. But that doesn't make them true! An evolutionist reviewing a recent book by another (but more critical) evolutionist, says:

We cannot identify ancestors or "missing links," and we cannot devise testable theories to explain how particular episodes of evolution came about. Gee is adamant that all the popular stories about how the first amphibians conquered the dry land, how the birds developed wings and feathers for flying, how the dinosaurs went extinct, and how humans evolved from apes are just products of our imagination, driven by prejudices and preconceptions.²⁸

A fascinatingly honest admission by a physicist indicates the passionate commitment of establishment scientists to naturalism. Speaking of the trust students naturally place in their highly educated college professors, he says:

And I use that trust to effectively brainwash them. . . . our teaching methods are primarily those of propaganda. We appeal -- without demonstration -- to evidence that supports our position. We only introduce arguments and evidence that supports the currently accepted theories and omit or gloss over any evidence to the contrary.²⁹

Creationist students in scientific courses taught by evolutionist professors can testify to the frustrating reality of that statement. Evolution is, indeed, the pseudoscientific basis of religious atheism, as Ruse pointed out. Will Provine at Cornell University is another scientist who frankly acknowledges this.

As the creationists claim, belief in modern evolution makes atheists of people. One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.³⁰

Once again, we emphasize that evolution is not science, evolutionists' tirades notwithstanding. It is a philosophical worldview, nothing more.

(Evolution) must, they feel, explain everything. . . . A theory that explains everything might just as well be discarded since it has no real explanatory value. Of course, the other thing about evolution is that anything can be said because very little can be disproved. Experimental evidence is minimal.³¹

Even that statement is too generous. Actual experimental evidence demonstrating true evolution (that is, macroevolution) is not "minimal." It is nonexistent!

The concept of evolution as a form of religion is not new. In my book, The Long War Against God,³² I documented the fact that some form of evolution has been the pseudo-rationale behind every anti-creationist religion since the very beginning of history. This includes all the ancient ethnic religions, as well as such modern world religions as Buddhism, Hinduism, and others, as well as the "liberal" movements in even the creationist religions (Christianity, Judaism, Islam).

As far as the twentieth century is concerned, the leading evolutionist is generally considered to be Sir Julian Huxley, primary architect of modern neo-Darwinism. Huxley called evolution a "religion without revelation" and wrote a book with that title (2nd edition, 1957). In a later book, he said:

Evolution . . . is the most powerful and the most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on earth.³³

Later in the book he argued passionately that we must change "our pattern of religious thought from a God-centered to an evolution-centered pattern."³⁴ Then he went on to say that: "The God hypothesis . . . is becoming an intellectual and moral burden on our thought." Therefore, he concluded that "we must construct something to take its place."³⁵

That something, of course, is the religion of evolutionary humanism, and that is what the leaders of evolutionary humanism are trying to do today.

In closing this survey of the scientific case against evolution (and, therefore, for creation), the reader is reminded again that all quotations in the article are from doctrinaire evolutionists. No Bible references are included, and no statements by creationists. The evolutionists themselves, to all intents and purposes, have shown that evolutionism is not science, but religious faith in atheism.

References

1. Jeffrey H. Schwartz, Sudden Origins (New York, John Wiley, 1999), p. 300.
2. Ernst Mayr, "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American (vol. 283, July 2000), p. 83.
3. Jeffrey H. Schwartz, op. cit., p.89.
4. Ibid.
5. Leslie E. Orgel, "The Origin of Life on the Earth," Scientific American (vol. 271, October 1994), p. 78.
6. Ibid., p. 83.
7. Massimo Pigliucci, "Where Do We Come From?" Skeptical Inquirer (vol. 23, September/October 1999), p. 24.
8. Stephen Jay Gould, "The Evolution of Life," chapter 1 in Evolution: Facts and Fallacies, ed. by J. William Schopf (San Diego, CA., Academic Press, 1999), p. 9.
9. J. O. Long, The Rise of Fishes (Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1995), p. 30.
10. Niles Eldredge, The Pattern of Evolution (New York: W. H. Freeman and Co., 1998), p. 157.
11. Neil Shubin, "Evolutionary Cut and Paste," Nature (vol. 349, July 2, 1998), p.12.
12. Colin Tudge, "Human Origins Revisited," New Scientist (vol. 146, May 20, 1995), p. 24.
13. Roger Lewin, "Family Feud," New Scientist (vol. 157, January 24, 1998), p. 39.
14. N. A. Takahata, "Genetic Perspective on the Origin and History of Humans," Annual Review of Ecology and Systematics (vol. 26, 1995), p. 343.
15. Lewin, op. cit., p. 36.
16. Rachel Nowak, "Mining Treasures from `Junk DNA'," Science (vol. 263, February 4, 1994), p. 608.
17. Ibid.
18. E. H. Lieb and Jakob Yngvason, "A Fresh Look at Entropy and the Second Law of Thermodynamics," Physics Today (vol. 53, April 2000), p. 32.
19. Norman A. Johnson, "Design Flaw," American Scientist (vol. 88. May/June 2000), p. 274.
20. Scott, Eugenie, "Fighting Talk," New Scientist (vol. 166, April 22, 2000), p.47. Dr. Scott is director of the anti-creationist organization euphemistically named, The National Center for Science Education.
21. Ericson, Edward L., "Reclaiming the Higher Ground," The Humanist (vol. 60, September/October 2000), p. 30.
22. Dawkins, Richard, replying to a critique of his faith in the liberal journal, Science and Christian Belief (vol. 7, 1994), p. 47.
23. Mayr, Ernst, "Darwin's Influence on Modern Thought," Scientific American (vol. 283, July 2000), p. 83.
24. Todd, Scott C., "A View from Kansas on the Evolution Debates," Nature (vol. 401, September 30, 1999), p. 423.
25. Ruse, Michael, "Saving Darwinism fron the Darwinians," National Post (May 13, 2000), p. B-3.
26. Rifkin, Jeremy, "Reinventing Nature," The Humanist (vol. 58, March/April 1998), p. 24.
27. Lewontin, Richard, Review of the Demon-Haunted World, by Carl Sagan. In New York Review of Books, January 9, 1997.
28. Bowler, Peter J., Review In Search of Deep Time by Henry Gee (Free Press, 1999), American Scientist (vol. 88, March/April 2000), p. 169.
29. Singham, Mark, "Teaching and Propaganda," Physics Today (vol. 53, June 2000), p. 54.
30. Provine, Will, "No Free Will," in Catching Up with the Vision, ed. by Margaret W. Rossiter (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), p. S123.
31. Appleyard, Bryan, "You Asked for It," New Scientist (vol. 166, April 22, 2000), p. 45.
32. Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989), 344 pp.
33. Julian Huxley, Essays of a Humanist (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), p. 125.
34. Ibid., p. 222.
35. Ibid.

God and Man Made Global Warming

God and Man Made Global Warming

The Cultural Mandate

By Gary North

"And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth" (Gen. 1:28).

Inescapably, the first chapter of Genesis involves us in the doctrine of the sovereignty of God. God, as the creator of all things, must be honored by the entire creation as Lord over all (Isaiah 45:23; Philippians 2:10). But honoring God as creator obviously requires a full acknowledgment of His law-order. Should any Christian deny his responsibility and position in God's plan of creation and history, he stands as a rebel.

There are at least three fundamental economic issues contained in Gen. 1:28: the calling, the question of natural law, and the concept of development.

The Calling

Adam was given tasks to perform in the garden even before Eve was provided as his helper (2:15, 19, 20). Man is therefore not to be defined apart from his calling before God. Even as God "labored" to create the universe, and "rested" the seventh day (obviously, He was not exhausted), so is man, as God's image-bearer, to labor and to rest. God, as self-contained and self-defined, can be defined apart from His creation, but man, as a created being who must serve God in all his affairs, is not self-existent and self-defined. Man is God's vice-regent on earth, a subordinate official, a worker who is to implement God's sovereign rule on earth and in time. Labor is not something added to man as an afterthought; only the curse on labor, as a result of man's rebellion, is a new factor (3:17-19).

Natural Law

Present-day ecological romantics, like Rousseau and nineteenth-century Romantics before them, long for a world which is free from the effects of man the destroyer. In this they are agreed with Christians, for, we assert that the whole creation groans to be delivered from "the bondage of corruption" (Romans 8:21). But Christians "are saved by hope" (Romans 8:24), a hope in God's redemption, not in hope of some return to a "natural" paradise. Man is indeed a destroyer, an ethical rebel who seeks release from God's created law-order. But "man the destroyer" is not the result of "man the controller"; he is the product of "man the ethical rebel." It is not man's dominion over the earth that is illegitimate, but rather man's attempt to dominate the earth apart from God's control over man. Yet the only foundation of man's claim of limited, derivative sovereignty is an acknowledgment of God's ultimate sovereignty. Captains who rebel against generals can expect their corporals to be insubordinate. Our polluted world is rebelling against our lawless, rebellious rulership, not against rulership as such.

The assumption of the ecological romantics is that nature is guided by its own autonomous laws. Man must conform to these hypothetically impersonal laws of nature. Man is therefore to be under nature, dominated by nature, the servant of nature. Nature--the creation--is sovereign in this scheme, not God's decree, a decree which involves personal responsibility of men before God to rule over His creation. This is why the call for a "return to the laws of nature" is ultimately secular and satanic. It is a denial of man's legitimate subordinate sovereignty and hence a denial of God's legitimate absolute sovereignty.

Development

The language of growth is an obscenity inside many ecological circles. If growth is seen as unlimited and costless, it is illegitimate, since the creation was clearly limited even before the fall of man. But this is not to argue that nature is static or was ever meant to be static. Nature as it existed on the fifth day of creation was incomplete; it was "good" as far as it went, but God was yet to add His vice-regent, man, to the order of creation. God created man to subdue nature, develop its full potentialities, and bring forth its fruits more abundantly. Adam was to dress the garden and name (classify) the animals. Such classification was no antiquarian exercise; it was presumably the first step in his overall task of dominion. Selective pruning of the garden and careful selective breeding of the animals were involved. Man is to be an ecologist, but one enforcing God's laws over nature, some of them revealed by God to men by special revelation (such as resting the land every seventh year).

The language of the status quo in nature is ridiculous. Neither man nor nature can escape God's historical decree. History is linear, not circular. The so-called "balance of nature" is not one of eternal repetition, but of development and change. The pruning, calculating dresser of the garden is basic to God's decree. Man is to direct the development of nature, not sit idly on the sidelines, letting it degenerate. Nature is not autonomous; without man it is incomplete. To deny development under man's rule is to affirm the laws of impersonal, autonomous evolution, the rule of "tooth and claw."

Ultimately, it is never a question of development or no development. It is a question of which kind of development. There is no escape from linear history. Either we affirm the cultural mandate, with godly men directing the creation as obedient servants of God, or else a hypothetically autonomous, godless nature controls man's development, thereby thwarting the historical decrees of God. Deny the cultural mandate and you will find yourself clinging to the cosmology of Charles Darwin.

An Honest Assessment of Why Darwinism Is Popular

An Honest Assessment of Why Darwinism Is Popular

By Granville Sewell 

High school and college biology texts almost uniformly present Darwinian evolution as a theory that is now as well established as any other theory in science, and almost uniformly refuse to acknowledge that any serious scientists have doubts that the struggle for survival could produce human brains and human consciousness.

James Madison University mathematician Jason Rosenhouse has written a postcriticizing a post, "Mathematicians Are Trained to Value Simplicity," that I wrote at Uncommon Descent. The main point of my article was that if you don't believe in intelligent design, you must believe that a few fundamental, unintelligent forces of physics alone can rearrange the basic particles of physics into (for example) Apple iPhones and nuclear reactors.

My first thought on reading the response from Rosenhouse was, wouldn't it be nice if high school biology texts presented as honest an assessment of the real reasons most scientists accept Darwinism as Jason Rosenhouse does. 

He writes:

Personally, I find it incredible that the four fundamental forces of physics, operating from the moment after the Big Bang, could rearrange matter into everything that we see today. Those unintelligent causes can ultimately lead to the creation of intelligent creatures, who can then rearrange matter and energy in clever ways, is, I entirely agree, hard to believe. And Darwinian evolution strains credulity as well. I am very sympathetic to the view that natural forces do not construct delicate, biomolecular machines.

But he concludes:

However superficially implausible they seem, the only alternative on offer is much harder to believe.

Sewell urges us to look for the simple explanation. But there is nothing simple in the idea of an omnipotent magic man who lives in the clouds. Whatever mysteries you think you have found in the naturalistic view of life pale in comparison to what happens when you try to comprehend an entity with the attributes God is said to have...

Young children are content with magical, supernatural explanations for things. But as we grow up most of us come to realize that invocations of God never really explain much of anything. They just create big mysteries where only small ones existed before.

Actually, I didn't say "God" was a simple explanation. I didn't even mention God. I just said that there was a very simple argument against any naturalistic explanation. Of course I do understand why many people find invocations of "God" difficult to accept. All explanations of how we got here are difficult to believe. Yet here we are.

Telling high school students that no good scientists doubt that the survival of the fittest can account for all the magnificent species in the living world while pretending to be surprised that anyone would find this idea surprising, is not the only alternative to attributing it to a "magic man who lives in the clouds." There is always the alternative of honestly admitting that we don't know how life began or evolved, and that some scientists think these problems are fundamentally harder than others solved by science.

How about acknowledging, as Rosenhouse does, that "Darwinian evolution strains credulity," and that it remains popular with scientists primarily because they see it as the only alternative to intelligent design? Then maybe we could let students wrestle for themselves with the philosophical question of whether it seems more reasonable to believe that intelligence came first and created the unintelligent forces of nature, or that these unintelligent forces created intelligence.

Now if biology textbooks would start presenting evolution as candidly as Jason Rosenhouse does, I would be quite satisfied.

Dr. Sewell is professor of mathematics at the University of Texas El Paso, and author of a recent Discovery Institute Press book, In the Beginning and Other Essays on Intelligent Design, 2nd edition.

The end of the human race?

The end of the human race?

By Rabbi Hillel Goldberg

THE END of the human race as we know it might be upon us. I refer not to some very distant, natural evolution of the human species — perhaps possible, perhaps not; in any event, unknowable to us. Rather, I refer to three prospective human interventions in the nature of humanity that, if let to proceed unfettered, will have far reaching consequences, namely, an end of the human race as we know it.

These three interventions are a radical tethering of humans to computers, a radical change in genetics, and a redefinition of gender. What each of these interventions have in common is speed. It takes far less time to effectuate radical change than at any time in history.

What these interventions have in common in a much narrower sense — the sense in which they are presented here — is that each is more complex than a column can allow for. But if we do not begin to face these issues, history may overtake us in ways we do not expect. So, for the sake of stimulating discussion, investigation and, possibly, action, here goes.

ROBOTIC, computerized humans. If you think that human beings, with their ceaselessly moving thumbs, with trillions of electronic messages sent or received daily, with the exponential jump in commerce and research online, is revolutionary, consider this: Human beings not separated from their computers, but unified with them. Unified — not metaphorically, not behaviorally, not visually, but literally.

Imagine a day in which the computer is plugged into the brain or attached to other parts of the body. Imagine a day in which preprogrammed instructions drive not just a computerized robot, but the human being attached to it.

Imagine a day in which human behavior cannot proceed absent the input of a computerized robot directly into the biochemistry of the human being.

A dissolving line between the human and the robotic is not science fiction, but just around the corner.

Unfettered extension of the use of computerized robots from measuring to intervening in bodily functions will, no doubt, be presented as a boon to health. Perhaps it will indeed be a boon to the health of individual organs or cellular or intracellular processes. But along with these health advantages will loom a new shape to humanity — human beings no longer blessed with the free choice to take medicines, or not to take them, or to undergo procedures or surgeries, or not to; but human beings ruled by decisions that will be made by a computer, based on initial instructions programmed into it.

Look forward to intimations of this radical change in humanity as the range and sophistication of robots gain speed. The time to begin thinking about the ethics of the combination of robotic instruments and human beings is now.

GENETICS. David Baltimore and Paula Berg, both Nobel laureates, inform us in the Wall Street Journal (April 8) that the old-line racist nonsense of eugenics is now a technological possibility.

Hitler and Mengele thought they could breed a superior race. They did not know how; they only knew how to torture and murder. Today, however, it is now possible to alter not just somatic cells, the effects of which are not transmitted to the next generation, but germ-line cells. Changes to these cells unalterably affect all future generations.

In what surely earns an award for understatement, Baltimore and Berg write: " . . . the decisions to alter a germ-line cell may be valuable to offspring, but as norms change and the altered inheritance is carried into new genetic combinations, uncertain and possibly undesirable consequences may ensue." Indeed.

But still more. " . . . germ-line modification would involve attempts to modify inheritance for the purpose of enhancing an offspring's physical characteristics or intellectual capability. . . . choosing to transmit voluntary changes to future generations involves a value judgment on the part of parents, a judgment that future generations might view differently." Indeed.

The authors ask for voluntary genome alteration to be outlawed at the present state of knowledge due to the unexpected consequences of a given gene alteration, which, if I understand this arcane expertise, is irreversible.

The counterargument is that germ-line alteration could prevent the transmission of a disease to offspring. However, the authors argue, there are different ways to achieve the same result without the risks entailed by germ-line genetic alteration.

The authors related that at a critical conference on genetics back in 1975, germ-line alteration seemed so far into the future that it was not seriously discussed. Now, human beings must choose whether to allow technology to march on unfettered by human values.

GENDER. Genesis 1:26 states, "And G0D created Man in His image, in the image of G0D He created him; male and female He created them."

Accept or reject the biblical account as you like, but it has hardly been surprising for millennia that human beings come in two distinct genders.

Later, in the second chapter of Genesis, it says that G0D formed man from the dust of the earth (2:7), that it was not good for the man to be alone (2:18), that G0D built woman from a rib of man (2:21-22), that G0D then said, "let a man leave his father and his mother and cling to his wife and they shall become one flesh" (2:24). Again, take the biblical story as you like, but starting here and continuing down through the religious and secular literature of humanity, the presupposition has always been two ineradicably distinct genders.

Perhaps no more. If a person can legally and socially define his or her gender by how he or she feels, then gender becomes a meaningless marker: feeling, not biology. This alters humanity as we have known it.

Some think this is wonderful — an expansion of human rights. Others observe that in both its legal and narrative segments, and not just in a verse here or there, the Hebrew Bible posits the reality and value of two distinct genders. Is Genesis, in specifying these two genders, and thus in saying that the human being is created "in the image of G0D," still relevant?

The prospect of a genderless, or a gender-fluid, humanity is not overwrought. A quarter of a century, short as it might be in the span of human history, has proven to be more than an adequate time span for a major evolution of human attitudes toward sexual orientation. Gender could be next. Genetics could be next. Robotic, computerized human beings could be next.

I DO NOT think it is too late for society to ask whether this is the future it wants. One thing is clear. This is a future that, if won, will be won in small, seemingly harmless steps. If this is the future you want, welcome these steps. Advance them. If this is not the future you want, do not be fooled, for example, that a school kid winning the right to use the bathroom of the sex that is opposite to his biological gender is an oddity. Not responded to, small steps like these will determine the social, genetic and medical future of humanity.

People speak of the great changes in civilization coming due to alterations in racial composition, or indistinct national borders, or nuclear proliferation. Large as these changes loom, they are not the major issues on the horizon of humanity.

Race to me is a purely neutral category; the racial composition of society is of no concern to me, one way or the other. Nationalism to me is still an important determinant of freedom, but admittedly not an inherent value; while nuclear proliferation is a critical risk to the human condition. But even if nationalism and nuclear proliferation go in the wrong direction — even then, short of the actual use of a nuclear weapon, these changes would be nothing compared to the possibilities of human variation due to radical new approaches to robotics, genetics and gender.

One thing I think we can all agree on: These radical interventions in the human condition shouldn't just "happen," shouldn't be allowed to catch us, unawares. If we want one or more of these interventions, we should guide them. If we do not want one or more of them, we should oppose them

You don't have to be a Creationist to NOT believe in Darwinist Evolution nonsense

You don't have to be a Creationist to NOT believe in Darwinist Evolution nonsense!

“The pitch cuts the inside corner of the plate for strike two.” That familiar sound is heard on radios around the world. In fact, some of the best pitchers in America are not Americans. Great pitching ability is not limited to ethnicity or geography, but rather to human beings alone. Great pitchers make it look so easy, and “practice makes perfect,” but it helps that the brain power necessary for control, neurological connections, and muscular arrangements for the human arm are exceedingly better than any system that exists on the planet. Is throwing a ball really that complex?

Most people have heard of “gray” matter and “white” matter in the brain. If the brain were cut in half and viewed from the end, two distinct layers would be seen. The darker-colored outer layer of the brain, about one quarter inch thick, is the gray matter, and the white-yellow area inside is the white matter. In very broad terms, the gray matter associates sensory input with memories, plans motion and muscular activities, and provides awareness of sensations. It is called the cortex and is the conscious part of the brain. The white matter is composed of nerves that are covered in an insulating material with high fat content, giving it a whiter color. The connections are not random, but organized into “tracts” carrying data from one specific point to another. However, the number of connections is huge, so every part of the brain is essentially connected to every other part.

One part of the pitcher’s cortex is the premotor area. Since childhood, the pitcher has been storing thousands of plans in this area that coordinate the actions of whole groups of muscles. It is the primary storage location in the brain for learned skills, particularly ones that are repetitious in nature. While every pitch is unique, the general plan for muscle coordination pertaining to each type of pitch is stored—and constantly refined—in that area. A great major league pitch was started possibly at age two when the pitcher was handed a ball by his father and he made his first toss, influenced by every throw since then. Today, the pitcher will pull a general plan for a curveball from the premotor cortex.

Who Created God?

Who Created God?

The question “If God created the universe, then who created God?” is often used to challenge the truth of the Genesis account of Creation. Many claim that invoking a supernatural act by a Creator who is beyond our time/space universe is unscientific. But the naturalistic view of the origin of the universe has to explain how nothing became everything by itself, and this view actually violates the known laws of science. As such, they must invoke their own supernatural ‘first act’.

In reality, the universe displays all the hallmarks of complex and purposeful design. Indeed the ‘heavens declare the Glory of God’ and reveal His purpose for mankind.

Why I teach my kids evolution

Why I teach my kids evolution

A homeschooling mother’s approach to ‘immunizing’ her children against humanism in science

by Cheri Fields

It was Summer, 2012. I’d just started writing about kids and creation science when a prominent media ‘science guy’ came out with a video claiming you can’t do science without evolution. I couldn’t wait to respond, and knew just whom to interview. My brother was now an engineer and had been homeschooled from the beginning. It would take a simple phone call to collect the proof I needed.

Before I dialed the number, though, my heart quailed: years ago, my brother had adopted the world’s priorities and standards instead of God’s. 

What if he had accepted evolutionary thinking along the way? I had to ask anyway. Sure enough, he is now a theistic evolutionist, seeing no difficulty between Jesus as his Savior and evolution as the way He created. But, he was careful to inform me this hadn’t happened in college. It had happened in his late teens already, when he read a fascinating article in a popular-level science magazine.

Good intentions, but…

My parents started homeschooling us in ’82 with the barest of resources. We used the only curriculum we knew of and were pretty happy with it. 

I remember being taught about Lamarckian acquired traits,¹ which no one believes in today, and the inaccuracy of the peppered moth story, but that seems to have been the bulk of what they covered about evolution. 

Later, we found a new program which taught us some amazing science and medicine, but it did not address creation/evolution at all.

This was done on purpose. The idea was to train us in the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth so thoroughly that we would recognize a lie as soon as we heard it. It sounded reasonable. But, far too often, this approach has ended in disaster. Our ability to discern is a lot like our immune system's ability to recognise an invader

Many young people from Christian homes, only exposed to things they were expected to accept as truth, have later applied the same trust to the secular things they encountered.
The world is well-versed in packaging its ideas in attractive, reasonable, and compelling ways. Without tools to recognize and counter the lies, they were left dangerously exposed.
Now I’m on the other side, homeschooling my own children. I know I won’t be able to shield my kids forever from the tsunami of ungodly thinking and assumptions ‘out there’. So how am I to prepare them for this onslaught? Here’s the way I look at it. Hebrews 5:13–14 says:

For everyone who lives on milk is unskilled in the word of righteousness, since he is a child. But solid food is for the mature, for those who have their powers of discernment trained by constant practice to distinguish good from evil.

Our ability to discern is a lot like our immune system’s ability to recognize an invader.
So, I train my kids like we do our bodies: exposing them to what they will face, in a way designed to disarm the danger. This slowly and carefully helps them build the spiritual muscles they will need to discern between the good and the bad. A big part of this training is teaching kids more than the evolutionists want them to know.

We don’t expose our kids to feathered dinosaur characters at two and three years old, but we do watch other programs with more subtle messages beginning soon after. 

And we talk about it. A big part of this training is teaching kids more than the evolutionists want them to know. If kids learn the assumptions up front that scientists have to accept, they are far less likely to just take their word for it.

One of my sons is beginning to learn world history. We use colorful secular materials available anywhere. When the book claimed people lived 10,000+ years ago, I gave a brief explanation of carbon dating methods. The next time such a big number came up, I asked him how they ‘know’, and what the Bible says.

(By the way, when we read how people ‘may have discovered’ farming, metallurgy, music, etc., I love to take my kids to the early chapters of Genesis. We don’t have to guess like the secular world does, we can trust the historical account God preserved for us!)

I recently taught my kids earth science. The book had a double-page spread of the ‘Timeline of Life’ starting with the ‘first cells’. We stopped and pushed the story back further than most evolutionists want kids to go: Spontaneous Generation, today relabelled Abiogenesis.² Then we discussed how their series of developing organisms is based on how deeply each creature was buried. 

My oldest two are starting to study anatomy and biology. Now it’s time to introduce them to mutations, the only mechanism evolution has to develop new features.³ And natural selection.⁴

None of the evolutionary kids’ books I’ve seen explain why they believe what they teach. They just state the end conclusions as if they are undeniable facts. This is also true of most materials for adults. In fact, to find the basis for their claims, you often have to go to publications designed to be read by scientists—the initiated, who can be trusted to protect the fragile secrets of their assumptions.⁵

The last area we cover in our training concerns the worldview consequences of evolutionary thinking. Like every mindset, evolutionism and creationism have to answer the big questions of life:

1. Who am I?
2. Why am I here?
3. Where am I going?
4. What really matters in life?

The Bible is full of answers to these questions. Evolution has them, too, but they are normally only communicated subtly because the answers are so unappealing. Consider:

1. A random collection of matter
2. No reason (unless it is to perpetuate your DNA, which is for no other reason anyway)
3. Nowhere
4. Nothing

It’s hard to imagine a person wanting to choose the emptiness of naturalism until sin and pride have a huge hold on them. Most children from Christian homes haven’t sunk to such levels—yet.

Do I think this will guarantee my children stick close to God their whole lives? No, but I’m not afraid for them either. My part is to pray, live out my life devoted to Jesus, and invite them to join their father and me in His kingdom. 

Changing hearts isn’t any human being’s job—it’s God’s. My desire is to give the Holy Spirit the most tools to work with.

So it is not the will of my Father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. (Matthew 18:14).