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Evolution Has
No Intelligent Design
In
Harrisburg Pennsylvania, a courtroom battle has been taking place
that some have called “Scopes II”, calling to mind the
great “Scopes monkey trial” that took place in Dayton,
Tennessee, in the early 1900’s. Because of that trial, the
nation largely determined that evolution should be taught in science
classes in our nation’s school systems. However, the outcome
of the current trial is intended to decide whether or not a teaching
called “Intelligent Design” may be included in the science
curriculum for public school students, in addition to evolution. For
about the last 100 years or so, the nationally accepted curriculum
for public school science classes stipulates that the theory of
evolution should be taught as the mechanism by which all of life
has come about. The history of how this theory developed has become
well known to the point that it is now considered legendary. Charles
Darwin, a disenchanted English clergyman, determined that he wanted
to become a naturalist (a scientist who studies biological life
and nature). He embarked on his now famous voyage on the S.S.
Beagle that left Devonshire, England on December 27, 1831 and
lasted for 5 years. While sailing around the world, Darwin visited
many exotic locations and studied the wildlife, taking extensive
notes. At the end of his journey, Darwin wrote his now famous
work, The Origin of the Species. In his book, Darwin indicated
he believed that the massive varieties of different species of
plants and animals started with common ancestors. He suggested
that over many thousands of years (which scientists have now stretched
into many millions of years) all of the thousands of different
species of plants and animals that live today, including human
beings, have come into existence because of slow changes over
many hundreds of generations from older species. This change took
place due to what Darwin called the “great principle of evolution”.
The
idea that all species of animals, and particularly humans, have
evolved from lower life forms has terrible consequences, which
are mostly ignored in modern times. However, when this doctrine
first appeared in the mid 1800’s the masses of the world’s
civilized nations were shocked. Certainly, it was bad enough in
Christian and Jewish circles because it looked as though science
was contradicting the Bible. However, the implications, even from
a secular standpoint, were devastating. If mankind evolved from
lower forms of life, that means human beings, themselves, are
no more than animals. If we are animals, then perhaps we have
no more of a soul than any animal has. If God was not necessary
to create us, then maybe God doesn’t exist at all. If God
doesn’t exist, then where did the idea of morality come from,
and why do we have it? Why should anybody think in terms of good
or bad? Why should we worry about being good at all? Why shouldn’t
an individual cheat, rob, steal, or kill or anything else he wants
to do? After all, if this life is all you have, you might as well
get everything out of it that you can. After all, you only turn
into dirt, when it is over.
When
these arguments were advanced against Darwin’s frightening
new ideas, the atheists simply laughed and scoffed that science
had finally proven that there was no need for God. Over the last
hundred years, academic intellectuals wholeheartedly bought into
the ideas of evolution, and have laced those ideas into every
single subject of study in modern university life. Meanwhile,
those of us who were Christians have been forced to learn the
violent dogmas of the “survival of the fittest” for
evolving life forms in our biology classes in high school and
college, and then when we went to church we had to “throw
out” our intelligence at the front door in order to believe
the Bible was true, when it said that God created every single
species of life independently in an orderly process of creation.
Such is the despair I personally felt until I entered my third
year of college.
I
was later shocked to learn that my science teachers lied to me.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not accusing any one teacher
of lying. I don’t doubt that most of my teachers who taught
evolution honestly believed it was true. However, in my junior
year of college I learned that there were a huge number of facts
that I had never been exposed to. I learned that evolution was
a theory full of holes so large you could float cruise liners
through them. Here is a set of examples: (1) Scientists should
have already discovered thousands of transitional forms between
animals, and they have yet to discover a single one that is indisputable.
Darwin said there should have been myriads of forms showing the
change, for example, from a fish to an amphibian, or from a reptile
to a bird. The ancient fossil showing a lizard like bird with
teeth, called archaeopteryx, was once thought to be such a form,
but has since proven to be more of a odd type of bird, whose teeth
have sockets like those of a mammal, instead of in a single row
like a reptile. (2) The embryo structures of animals may look
similar, but they are radically different as cell structures for
each type of animal. (3) The vast majority of “missing links”
for humans have turned out to be frauds. For example, the “Nebraska
Man” was built entirely from the jawbone of extinct pig.
What few complete skeletons have been found could have been extinct
apes or even extinct tribes of modern men (or even pygmies) and
prove nothing about human evolution. (4) Mathematicians and geneticists
now admit that it would have taken many more billions and billons
of years for all the necessary mutations to take place to allow
evolution to occur throughout the different species on earth.
Astronomers don’t believe the entire universe could be that
old. These are just a few of the facts my science teachers never
told me in class at school. They were not careful to study out
all the facts. They misrepresented the truth to all of my fellow
students and me. As far as I am concerned, that is the same thing
as a lie, whether they realized it or not.
Intelligent
Design (ID) is a new movement among many hundreds of prominent
scientists over the last 20 or 30 who have rebelled against the
old school of evolution, because they believe, as I believe, that
evolution is a house of cards that will one day fall to pieces.
ID has no agenda to push belief in God; the movement simply wants
to honestly promote all of the true scientific facts as we know
them. Scientists endorsing ID have written volumes of academic
research indicating that the existence of life on earth is far
too complex to explain by the faulty theory of evolution, or by
any natural means known to man. The only alternative they can
suggest is that some great Intelligence designed the many complexities
of life as we know it. I’ll go along with that! After all
the scripture says, “My ways are higher than your ways, and
my thoughts, than your thoughts.” (Isa 55:8). Let us hope
that the courts in Pennsylvania will soon realize that evolution
is not a very intelligent design.
James
Sanders
Pastor, ,
sandersjc@yahoo.com
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