Each week Focus on the Family sends out a Pastor’s Weekly Briefing filled with all sort of newsy tidbits. ¬†There were a couple pertaining specifically to evolution that I found interesting:
- A new Zogby poll shows 78 percent of U.S. voters want both sides of the evolution debate brought up in the classroom – up nine points from a similar poll three years ago. ¬†The poll, commissioned by the Discovery Institute, found both Democrats and Republicans overwhelmingly support discussion for and against evolution. ¬†”Many Darwinists are trying to paint supporters of academic freedom as some kind of crazy, fringe element.,” said Candi Cushman, education analyst at Focus on the Family Action. ¬†”The truth is, the majority of parents want their kids to examine all the scientific evidence, to engage in critical thinking and to have classrooms that are academically challenging – not controlled by political correctness.
- A Gallup poll released this week shows that 39 percent of Americans say they “believe in the theory of evolution,” while a quarter say they do not. ¬†Another 36 percent don’t have an opinion either way, CNN reported. ¬†An earlier Gallup poll on this issue, that was conducted in May 2008, found that 44 percent believe God created human beings within the past 10,000 years.
Considering these statistics, it’s amazing that the theory of evolution continues to be pushed so hard in the public school system and that creationism or the teaching of Intelligent Design is deemed to be not only religious but ridiculous. ¬†Just recently, comedian Ben Stein backed out of giving the commencement address at the University of Vermont because of complaints about his view of evolution. ¬†UVM President Daniel Fogel, who chose him based on a warm response that Stein got at an on-campus lecture last spring, says he was deluged with e-mail messages from people who find Stein’s views of science offensive. ¬†Incidentally, Stein responded by describing the brouhaha over his selection as commencement speaker as “laughable,” calling the whole episode “pathetic.” ¬†In a phone call to the Free Press, Stein said that describing his views as “antithetical to scientific inquiry” was “a wildly unfair characterization.” ¬†Later in an e-mail Stein added, “I am far more pro-science than the Darwinists. ¬†I want all scientific inquirty to happen – not just what the ruling clique calls science.”
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them.  For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.  Professing to be wise, they became fools. . . .- Romans 1:18-22
Darwin majored in a minor thing, which also was a completely false idea. It’s wrong, and a waste to time, to not to open God’s Instruction Manual and get the directions. There are 10,000 opportunties to waste our lives on things that are not important, we need to stay focused on God’s will for our lives.
From an evolutionist’s perspective:
1. The push from religious groups to control curriculum is not providing students a challenging academic environment, but one where fanatics control the masses.
2. Intelligent design has already been sufficiently refuted on a scientific basis.
3. Intelligent design is another ploy of religious fanatics vying for control.
From my perspective:
* The scientific community at large believes so much in #3 above that they didn’t bother with intelligent design whatsoever -or- they think that refutation of creationism is refutation of ID.
* Religious ‚Äúfanatics‚Äù DID latch onto ID and gave it a really bad name — wasn‚Äôt there a debacle regarding a publication called ‚ÄúOf People and Pandas‚Äù or something like that and it was proven to have been directly converted from a strictly creationist viewpoint to the more scientific ID? (For most, that was proof enough of #3 above.)
* From a mathematical standpoint ID is really interesting, but evolution is, too.
* I don‚Äôt want curriculum to follow polls. My advice to those that don‚Äôt like evolutionary based science curriculum: either remove the student to private education or augment their education with other viewpoints. Unfortunately, Christian-based science curriculum CAN be really bad — I‚Äôve cringed when I‚Äôve heard some of the ‚Äúarguments‚Äù against evolution. Focus on the Family‚Äôs webzine Boundless has a list of Lousy Creationist Arguments found here: http://www.boundless.org/2005/articles/a0001968.cfm
* Just to let you know, I’m a creationist in the strictest sense: Life, not the lifeless, was the Originator of all living things and Life, not death, chose the form and purpose of each living thing in the universe.
John MacArthur says, “The real issue in the creation/evolution debate is not the existence of God. The real issue is the nature of God…Evolution was not designed as an attack against theism. It was designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible, and the God of the Bible is clearly revealed through the doctrine of creation…to put it simply, evolution was invented in order to eliminate the God of Genesis and thereby to oust the Lawgiver and obliterate the inviolability of His law.”
This rebellion against God is also seen in the misguided newer approach of Intelligent Design. This new scientific approach is basically saying that there just simply has to be some intelligence behind all this, it’s just way to complex, so they have invented ID; however, they stop short of saying that the intelligence is the God of the Bible. The are OK with any other gods or even aliens, but not God. Why?
Because evolution gods are private, they don’t bother anyone. They make no absolute ethical or moral demands. They require no responsibility, and no guilt. Evolution and ID, eliminate the God of the Bible as Creator, Sustainer, Savior, and Judge; at least in their own minds…for now.
How careful do we have to be with this? Karl Giberson, science and religion teacher at Eastern Nazarene College in Quincy and director of the Forum on Faith and Science at Gordon College and author of “Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution” (2008), in an article titled “Why I am not a Creationist” said, after explaining he chose ENC because of his love for the Red Sox, “ENC was a Christian college and I was expecting that my creationist beliefs would be reinforced by my studies there. However, although the college was throughly Christian, with wonderful faculty and students eager to serve God, creationism was not taught in either the science or religion classes.” Sadly, Giberson goes on to discuss how he completely abandons creationism, among many other disturbing comments about his beliefs and ENC, that can be found in his book.
Finishing with Mac, “Scripture, NOT science is the ultimate test of all truth… Scripture cautions against false “knowledge” (1 Tim. 6:20), particularly so-called “scientific” knowledge that opposes the truth of Scripture. When what is being passed off as “science” turns out to be nothing more than a faith-based world-view that is hostile to the truth of Scripture, our duty to be on guard is magnified.” I couldn’t agree more. As Christians we should be exposing these lies (Eph. 5:11), NOT trying to learn from them.
Outstanding contribution, Rob! Thanks for sharing those helpful (and revealing) citations and your ensuing exhortation. Well said!
Thank-you Matt. These are issues Christians need to take much more seriously.
I recently read Al Mohler’s book, “Culture Shift.” In chapter nine titled, “Needed: An exit Strategy From Public Schools” he answers his own question on the subject of what he believes Christian parents and churches should now be doing concerning the breakdown of the public-school system, which Mohler calls a national tragedy. He says, “I am convinced that the time has come for Christians to develop an exit strategy from the public schools. Some parents made this decision long ago. The Christian school and home school movements are among the most significant cultural developments of the last thirty years. Other parents are not there yet. In any event, an exit strategy should be in place.”
My wife and I made this decision two years ago with our four children to homeschool them. I was hesitant at first, for the main reason I didn’t know much about it. I have found it to be a far superior quality education than what the public school now provides. My oldest daughter at 15 is working on college level courses, and more importantly, they all are learning the truth about creation and other issues without having their minds polluted with lies.
Sadly, one of the most common questions, even from Christians is “What about their social lives?” While I am still unclear what one 15 year old can teach my 15 year old, I often think of one of the girls my daughter knew from town (also 15) who after just a short high school career, has purple hair, is pierced, and pregnant.
excellent point Rob!
Amanda Jones
I think I understand the gist of what Rob is saying:
There is a war of ideas taking place where the bad side (non-Christian) is adopting and pushing ideas that undermine Christian ideas which promote wholesome living and a restored relationship with the Creator-God of the universe where God is honored and glorified to the greatest extent. They want Christians to join them in their rebellion and adopt thoughts and behaviors that are destructive to creation, others and themselves. Christians have Scripture which will tell them exactly what is right and wrong and what to look out for. Without Scripture, Salvation & the Holy Spirit, we will be just like them.
Unfortunately, I think Rob misidentified the stance of Intelligent Design and over-demonized evolution.
Evolutionary theory is mutually exclusive to Christianity, but there are many Christians that espouse Neo-Darwinism without understanding how it undermines some fundamental principles of Christian thought summarized in Romans 5:12. For some people (not me), the contradictions between Neo-Darwinism & creationism are nuances not worth dealing with. So, I would have to say that evolutionary thought allows one to eliminate God, but does not necessitate the elimination.
ID does not eliminate the God of the Bible whatsoever. In fact, it leaves plenty of space for Him while excluding Darwinism. Sure, one may like to put another god or an alien in that place, but TRUE SCIENCE cannot make the distinction without a way to make observations and test such a hypothesis. In purely scientific contexts, any proponent of ID that does not reveal the identity of the designer is right in doing so.
I believe Christians can be critical thinkers. They can be confronted with these ideas, dissect them and take away the worthwhile if there be any.
The other day, the forecast called for an inch of snow, turning to rain. What we got instead was several inches of snow, with it still coming down when I managed to get inside the house.
Apparently, the same scientists who can’t tell us what will occur an hour from now are supposed to be trusted with what happenned at the dawn of time.
Isaac Newton put his faith in the Bible and the living God. Sounds like a good idea to me, too.
Just this morning, a colleague sent me three contrasting quotes. Here are the three from the evolutionists’ perspective:
“Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator or organisms from the sphere of rational discussion.” – Sir Julian Huxley
“Life has no higher purpose than to perpetuate the survival of DNA…. Life has no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind pitiless indifference.” – Richard Dawkins
“There are no gods, no purposes, and no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death…. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans.” – William Provine
Now here are three quotes from the creationists’ perspective:
“This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being.” – Isaac Newton, Father of Universal Gravitation
“[When] I study the book of nature I find myself oftentimes reduced to exclaim with the Psalmist, ‘How manifold are Thy works, O Lord! In wisdom Thou made them all!’” – Robert Boyle, Father of Modern Chemistry
“Yet even in earthly matters I believe that ‘the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead.’” – Michael Faraday, Father of Electromagnetism
Which quotes, to you, have the ‘ring of truth’ in them? “For what man knows the things of a man except the spirit of the man which is in him? Even so no one knows the things of God except the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit who is from God, that we might know the things that have been freely given to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:11-12).
I don’t believe I had even begun to “over-demonize” evolution (by the way, superior choice of words). Anyway, since we now have identified the real author of the doctrine of evolution, let me try.
First, Johnny Mac, “Evolution is simply the latest means our fallen race has devised in order to suppress our innate knowledge and the biblical testimony that there is a God and that we are accountable to Him (Rom. 1:28). By embracing evolution, modern society aims to do away with morality, responsibility, and guilt.” And how deep does this lie go? Mac says, “The evolutionary lie is so pointedly antithetical to Christian truth that it would seem unthinkable for evangelical Christians to compromise with evolutionary science to ANY degree…Remarkably, many modern evangelicals…have already been convinced that the Genesis account of creation is not a true historical record.”
It is extremely sad that many Christians have been deceived and do not stand firm in defense/belief of Creation; even fearful to see them deny the truthfulness clearly laid out for us by God in Genesis 1. Or as Mac would say, “You’re treading on very serious ground when you strike a blow against the revelation of God. It is blasphemous to deny the reality of Genesis 1. This is God’s inspired record of how He created the universe. This is it.”
To retort Nathan’s comment, “So, I would have to say that evolutionary thought allows one to eliminate God, but does not necessitate the elimination,” one just has to listen to the words of Richard Dawkins, British ethologist, evolutionary biologist, popular science author, and very famous outspoken atheist, commenting on if he was called to a courtroom to find out if his study of evolution was guilty of turning him toward atheism, he said very candidly, “I would have to say yes.” In the movie expelled, one evolutionist after another admits that evolution is the strongest engine for atheism. Surprisingly, when pressed, Dawkins, again a very devout atheist, in the movie admits he is not against Intelligent design, just certain types of designers, namely God.
So, therefore, evolution, and it’s more mature baby sister, ID, are atheistic alternatives to the biblical view of creation. TRUE SCIENCE, by definition, can give us no knowlege whatsoever about where we came from or how we got here because science deals with what can be observed and reproduced by experimentation. And the origin of life can neither be observed nor reproduced in any laboratory. Consequently, evolution has never been and never will be established in any way as fact. Belief in evolutionary theory is a matter of sheer faith.
Again, SCRIPTURE, NOT SCIENCE, is the ultimate test of ALL truth. The further we get from that conviction, the less evangelical and more humanistic we become. God is not looking for us to “leave plenty of space for Him.” If you put evolution or ID on His throne in ANY way, you have laid the foundation for spiritual disaster.
1. Not all evolutionists make the same conclusions as Dawkins and the others in Expelled, but I agree that evolutionary thought can lead some people astray (at various levels).
2. What’s wrong with making an observation of something in the world and concluding that it is a result of intelligence instead of randomness?
3. I think there is a more accurate way of saying “Scripture, NOT SCIENCE, is the ultimate test of ALL truth.”
Don’t believe me? Please use Scripture to test these truth claims:
* The specific heat of steel is 0.5557
* The cosine of 45 degrees is sqrt(2) / 2
* Bob Smith killed JonBenet Ramsey
* Jesus walked on water on more than one occasion
The Bible is completely true, but it doesn’t contain everything that is true, which is stated in the Bible itself‚Ķ
A belief in evolutionary thought is not “leading people astray.” Belief in evolutionary thought IS people astray. Evolution was devised to explain away the God of the Bible, not because evolutionists really believed a Creator was unnecessary to explain how things began, but because they did not want the God of Scripture as their Judge.
Martin L. Lubenow writes, “It (evolution) was designed as a specific attack against the God of the Bible, and the God of the Bible is clearly revealed through the doctrine of creation. Obviously, if a person is an atheist, it would be normal for him to also be an evolutionist. But evolution is as comfortable with theism as it is with atheism.” In other words, evolution was INVENTED in order to eliminate the God of Genesis and all His rules. It is impossible to say you believe in God but in the same sentence say you believe in evolution or ID if that ID belief does not name the God of Genesis as the creator of ALL things.
As Expelled demonstrates, the most damaging ideologies of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries were all rooted in Darwinian thought running the full spectrum of evil tyranny from Marx-inspired communism at one extreme and Nietzsche-inspired fascism at the other. Darwin’s ideas set the stage for the amorality and genocide (the deliberate extermination of a whole race of people) that characterized so much of the 20th century. ALL the philosophical fruits of Darwinism have been negative, ignoble, and destructive to the very fabric of society. That’s what lies do.
I suppose it would have been nice if God were to issue us a newsletter at the end of every year that we could tuck in our Bible’s at the end of Revelation updating us on all the amazing events that transpired, all the incredible discoveries, and even all the tragedies that took place. However,the Bible is unmistakably clear that EVERYTHING we need to know for life and godliness is there in Scripture (2 Peter 1:3).
God only wrote one book, the Bible. It contains ALL the truth God intended us to order our spiritual lives by. It is the same truth Abraham, Moses, David, and the apostles believed long before Darwin and it is still the same for us. Changing times do not change the truth. We need to adapt all our understanding to the truth of God’s Word, we are never to try and manipulate Scripture in a vain effort to harmonize it with the changing opinions of the world. We do not need to ever consult any other source for spiritual or moral principles to govern our lives. ALL claims of truth are measured against Scripture.
Of course God doesn’t give us a newsletter, as I have explained, we don’t need one. But for a small glimpse of the depth of the Bible’s truth, we can simply study George Washington Carver’s life. Born as a sickly, ophaned slave, he became a scientist of international reputation to whom the world owes a great debt of gratitude. In 1921, Carver found himself invited to Washington D.C. to speak to the House and Ways Commitee as an expert on the peanut. After being astonished from all the products he made from just a peanut, the committee chairman said, “Dr. Carver, how did you learn all of these things?” Carver answered, “From an old book.” “What book?” asked the chairman. Carver replied, “The Bible.” The chairman asked, “Does the Bible tell about peanuts?” “No, sir” Dr. Carver replied, “but it tells about the God who made the peanut. I asked Him to show me what to do with the peanut, and He did.”
Just because you don’t see something in the Bible, doesn’t mean it isn’t there. By the 1940′s, Carver’s research and agricultural contributions resulted in a 500 million dollar peanut industry. His life is a testimony of what God can do through someone who is totally yielded to His purposes. The murder, destruction, and confusion caused by Darwinism is a testimony of what Satan can do through someone who is totally yielded to his purposes. To paraphrase Matt, “which one rings true for you?”