So, there’s no actual evidence in the bushel baskets after all. This is the “empty” part of the apostle Paul’s phrase, “philosophy and empty seduction” that describes the essential character of the reasoning systems opposed to the truth of God. Empty reasoning systems by definition have no substance, and therefore must rely upon various techniques of seduction to make them seem legitimate. The NAS writers employ many seductive techniques, of which the following are examples.
AUTHORITATIVE REPETITIVE FALSE AFFIRMATION
A major technique of seduction used by the writers of the NAS book is authoritative repetitive false affirmation. Again and again, in slightly different forms, they write that evolution is true, and that all scientists worthy to be so-called affirm that it is true. Here are some of these authoritative repetitive false affirmations, with their respective page numbers following:
. . . the overwhelming majority of the scientific community accepts evolution as the basis for modern biology. xii.
. . . there is no controversy in the scientific community about whether evolution has occurred. xiii.
. . . evidence supporting descent with modification, as Charles Darwin termed it, is both overwhelming and compelling. xiii.
Because of the immense body of evidence, scientists treat the occurrence of evolution as one of the most securely established of scientific facts. xiii.
. . . our understanding of both the fact and the processes of biological evolution. 1
The theory of evolution is supported by so many observations and experiments that the overwhelming majority of scientists no longer question whether evolution has occurred and continues to occur . . . 3
Is evolution a theory or a fact? It is both. 11
. . . past and continuing occurrence of evolution is a scientific fact. 11
Because the evidence supporting it is so strong, scientists no longer question whether biological evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur. 11
. . . the process of biological evolution . . . [has] been overwhelmingly substantiated. 12
. . . biological evolution has produced the diversity of living things over billions of years of Earth’s history. 12
. . . the theory of evolution is foundational scientific truth, one that has stood up to rigorous scrutiny and upon which much of human knowledge and achievement rests. 14
Many kinds of evidence have contributed to scientific understanding of biological evolution. 17
. . . [Scientists] are asking specific questions to learn more about how, not whether, evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur. 18
Biological evolution is part of a compelling historical narrative that scientists have constructed over the last few centuries. 18
. . . the appearance of life set in motion a process of biological evolution that continues to this day. 18
Each species that lives on Earth today is the product of an evolutionary lineage . . . 24
The occurrence of biological evolution both explains . . . diversity and accounts for its distribution. 26
Molecular biology has confirmed and extended the conclusions about evolution drawn from other forms of science. 28
The study of biological molecules has done more than document the evolutionary relationships among organisms. 31
Study of all the forms of evidence discussed earlier in this booklet has led to the conclusion that humans evolved from ancestral primates. 32
. . . today there is no scientific doubt about the close evolutionary relationships between humans and all other primates. 33
. . . the forces responsible for the evolution of all other life forms on Earth account for the biological evolution of human characteristics. 33
About 2.3 million years ago, the earliest species of Homo, the genus to which all modern humans belong, evolved in Africa. 34
The sequence of fossils across Earth’s sediments points unambiguously toward the occurrence of evolution. 38
. . . evolutionary science provides one of the best examples of a deep understanding based on scientific reasoning. 39
. . . overwhelming evidence that evolution has taken place and is continuing to occur. 39
. . . there are no viable alternatives to evolution in the scientific literature . . . 42
Evolution is supported by abundant evidence . . . 47
Scientists’ confidence about the occurrence of evolution is based on an overwhelming amount of supporting evidence . . . 49
Evolution is accepted within the scientific community . . . 49
. . . evolution itself has been so thoroughly tested that biologists are no longer examining whether evolution has occurred and is continuing to occur. 50
. . . the fact that evolution has occurred and continues to occur. 51
. . . no scientific controversy about the basic facts of evolution. 52
. . . arguments that attempt to confuse students by suggesting that there are fundamental weaknesses in the science of evolution are unwarranted based on the overwhelming evidence that supports the theory. 52
. . . [evolution] is supported by overwhelming evidence and widely accepted by the scientific community . . . 53
Above, there are 40 of these authoritative repetitive false affirmations. In the entire NAS book, I count over 80 such false affirmations. There are only 55 pages of text in the book, and many of those pages have illustrations. It averages out to about two false affirmations per page of text. If evolution really is true, why do the NAS writers have to say so over 80 times in a 55-page book? We find the word “overwhelming” eight times within the repetitions cited above. Based on their superficial readings of the NAS book, The Washington Post and other gullible media have editorialized that the evidence for evolution is “overwhelming.” Actual evidence for evolution is absent in the NAS book. The only thing that’s overwhelming is the NAS book’s repetitive false assertions that the evidence is overwhelming! This isn’t science—it is a form of enchantment, a work of the flesh (Galatians 5:20).
The repetitious affirmations of evolution as “truth” serve an important seductive purpose. The effect is subliminal and hypnotic: “You are getting sleepy . . . evolution is true … evolution is proven . . . all scientists believe it . . . evolution is true . . . all scientists believe . . . when we say evolution is a theory, we mean that it’s a fact . . . evolution is true . . . all scientists believe it . . .when you are finished the book, you will believe that evolution is true and all scientists believe it . . . you won’t understand why these things are so, but that doesn’t matter . . . evolution is true and all scientists believe it.”
The beginning of Chapter 59 of Isaiah speaks of those whose “lips speak falsehood . . . and the webs of a spider are they weaving.” The prey of the spider get stuck on one sticky silk strand, and, as they try to get free, they get stuck on another, and then another until they are helplessly trapped within the web. Similarly, the NAS book writers weave their web of false affirmations throughout the book. If the readers don’t get stuck on page 2 or page 11 or page 18, they will begin to get stuck on page 21, and then become even more stuck on page 24, and even more stuck on page 33, and so on, until their minds are trapped within their broadly cast web of “evolution is true” affirmations. The NAS book is an atheist’s hunting snare specifically designed to capture the minds of the young, the gullible, and the unstable, to get them to repeat the evo-atheist mantra as their own, and ultimately to redefine their reality, their mental framework, and their life-orientation away from God.
THE DISGUISED TAUTOLOGY DECEPTION
We’ve seen that a tautology is a redundancy, a statement which conveys no new or helpful information. Here’s one of the many disguised tautologies from the NAS book:
. . . there is no controversy in the scientific community about whether evolution has occurred. (p. xiii).
The tautology is disguised because they infuse the term “scientific community” with a very specialized meaning. As we have seen, to the NAS “evolution is science,” and those who do not accept evolution are not scientists. The scientific community, to the NAS, is made up only of those who believe in evolution. What they are saying in the above sentence is that “there is no controversy among those scientists who accept that evolution has occurred about whether evolution has occurred.” Their sentence thus has no meaning, merit or relevance whatsoever in the evolution-creation debate. It’s a dog chasing its own tail. Their intent is to downplay and disguise the fact that there is a huge controversy. That’s why they published their book, to respond to the controversy! But now if they are to be believed, there isn’t one! The only thing their disguised tautology proves is that the NAS book writers have the ability to manipulate language in their favor in order to give a false impression of what the facts are. Here are some more examples from their book:
. . . there are no viable alternatives to evolution in the scientific [evolution-promoting] literature . . . (p. 42).
(or put another way, “No alternatives to evolution exist in the evolution-promoting literature”).
Evolution is accepted within the scientific [evolution-promoting] community . . . (p. 49).
In both sentences, they say basically the same thing twice—that’s what makes them tautologies. There is no information in the predicate not already inherent in the subject. The NAS writers use tautologies such as these over and over to persuade the readers that evolution is true. Besides being deceptive, their statements convey no useful information regardless of their length or complexity. We already know that evolutionists believe in evolution!
One of the great things about tautologies, from the NAS standpoint, is that they cannot be proven false. “Evolution is accepted within the evolution-promoting community.” How true! “There are no viable alternatives to evolution in the evolution-promoting literature.” You got that right, sister! This technique also is a form of enchantment.
AUTHORITATIVE OBFUSCATION
In 2002, Illustra Media produced a fascinating DVD/VHS called Unlocking the Mystery of Life: The Scientific Case for Intelligent Design. If you haven’t seen it, I recommend it highly to you. From its own description:
Using state-of-the-art computer animation, “Unlocking the Mystery of Life” transports you into the interior of the living cell to explore systems and machines that bear the unmistakable hallmarks of design. Discover the intricacy of a microscopic bacterial rotary motor, which spins at 100,000 rpm. Within the nucleus explore the wonder of DNA, a thread-like molecule that stores instructions to build the essential components of every living organism. It is part of a biological information processing system more complex and more powerful than any computer network. This compelling documentary examines an idea with the power to revolutionize our understanding of life . . . and to unlock the mystery of its origin.
The video is an outgrowth of the work of Michael J. Behe of Lehigh University who wrote Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, and who coined the term “irreducible complexity.” As a household example of irreducible complexity, Behe chooses the mousetrap—a machine that could not function if any of its pieces were missing, and whose pieces have no value except as parts of the whole. What is true of the mousetrap, he says, is even truer of the bacterial flagellum, a whip-like cellular organelle used for propulsion that operates like an outboard motor. That microscopic motor includes a water-cooled rotary engine, forward and reverse gears, a direction-reversing capability within one-quarter of a turn, a hard-wired signal transduction system with short-term memory, a proton motive-force drive system, and self-assembly and repair.
The possibility that this intricate array could have arisen through evolutionary modification is virtually nil, Behe argues, and that points to intelligent design.
The NAS book, however, asserts that irreducible complexity is “disproven by the findings of modern biology,” and presents its “proof” in the following paragraph:
. . . [T]here is no single, uniform structure that is found in all flagellar bacteria. There are many types of flagella, some simpler than others, and many species of bacteria do not have flagella to aid in their movement. Thus, other components of bacterial cell membranes are likely the precursors of the proteins found in various flagella. In addition, some bacteria inject toxins into other cells through proteins that are secreted from the bacterium and that are very similar in their molecular structure to the proteins in parts of the flagella. This similarity indicates a common evolutionary origin, where small changes in the structure and organization of the secretory proteins could serve as the basis for flagellar proteins. Thus, flagellar proteins are not irreducibly complex. (p. 41).
Do you notice the utter lack of clarity here? The reason for their lack of clarity is that their own minds are not clear as to what they are saying. Just on the basis of the logic of language, their refutation of irreducible complexity fails. They draw a factual conclusion from a perplexingly derived (to say the least) possibility. In the next to last sentence they write that “secretory proteins could serve as the basis for flagellar proteins” (my emphasis). All they can logically infer as their conclusion is, “Thus, flagellar proteins may not be irreducibly complex.” But as is most typical, they leap from speculation to “fact” without comment.
Average readers accept the NAS’s “authoritative obfuscation” because, even though their “refutation” of intelligent design is obscure, complicated, and confusing, they figure that the NAS authorities must know what they are talking about.
BAIT AND SWITCH
The NAS writers present an example of non-controversial changes within a species (microevolution, sometimes called horizontal evolution), and then switch to writing about the extremely controversial molecules-to-man evolution, falsely implying that the evidence for one adds credence to the other. It is somewhat ironic that their bait in this “bait and switch” ruse is a small fish that lives in the Aripo River on the island of Trinidad. They write:
Guppies that live in the river are eaten by a larger species of fish that eats both juveniles and adults, while guppies that live in the small streams feeding into the river are eaten by a smaller fish that preys primarily on small juveniles. The guppies in the river mature faster, are smaller, and give birth to more and smaller offspring than the guppies in the streams do because guppies with these traits are better able to avoid their predator in the river than are larger guppies. When guppies were taken from the river and introduced into a stream without a preexisting population of guppies, they evolved traits like those of the stream guppies within about 20 generations. (p. 7).
These relocated guppies did not “evolve” traits in their new environment, rather they manifested them. As Henry M. Morris has pointed out, “[M]any varieties [are] capable of arising within each kind, in order to enable each basic kind to cope with changing environments without becoming extinct.”1 This is an ability the different species owe to their Creator.
After setting the bait, the NAS writers immediately switch to molecules-to-man evolution (so-called and unproven macroevolution, sometimes referred to as vertical evolution) and present the following utterly unfounded inference from the story of the guppies: “Incremental evolutionary changes can, over what are usually very long periods of time, give rise to new types of organisms, including new species.”
Thus, the NAS writers trick the casual reader into thinking that they have just been presented with evidence for molecules-to-man evolution, when they have not.
SLAPPING SCIENCE LIPSTICK ON THE NO-EVIDENCE PIG
“Slapping lipstick on the pig” refers to deceptive efforts used to cosmetically hide or camouflage something ugly, or better yet, to make it seem like there’s nothing ugly there at all. Out of millions of species on this planet, the evo-atheists cannot specifically trace back the “evolutionary” ancestry of one of them even a single “evolutionary” generation. That’s an ugly embarrassment and an ugly fact. The NAS writers have to slap some lipstick on their “no-evidence” pig.
Throughout their book, the NAS writers use the word “science” 402 times, the word “scientific” 116 times, and the word “scientists” 66 times for a total of 584 times. For the evo-atheists, those words are the best lipstick money can buy. They point out in the very first sentence of their book that, “Scientific and technological advances have had profound effects on human life.” They mention, among other things, the computers, cars, airplanes, and medicines we use to fend off and cure diseases. Who isn’t grateful to “science” and “scientific” research and to “scientists” for these things?
The NAS book writers smear their “sciency” lipstick all over their evidence-shy pig. With only 55 pages of text in the book, the word “science” and its derivatives appear on average more than 10 times per page. That’s a lot of lipstick, but they need every bit of it to hide the ugly fact that they do not have any evidence.
Let’s change that metaphor a bit. All of those “science” words are a lot of cheese sauce to put on undercooked broccoli, and they are a lot of icing to put on a salty cake. The NAS hierarchy is fortunate that most of their naïve readers, including influential publishers, editors, newsmen, and television producers, are content just to nibble on the cheese sauce, and snack on the icing. Let’s go back to the original lipstick metaphor: these media big shots have been tricked into making out with the National Academy of Sciences’ no-evidence pig.
SLAPPING CHRISTIAN LIPSTICK ON THE ATHEIST HOG
The NAS hierarchy knows how ugly their atheism looks to the God-fearing citizens of America, so they’ve got to smear a lot of lipstick on their atheist hog. They use liberal, apostate Christianity for that purpose without, of course, using the words “liberal” or “apostate.” The NAS book asserts:
As Science, Evolution, and Creationism makes clear, the evidence for evolution can be fully compatible with religious faith . . . Many religious denominations and individual religious leaders have issued statements acknowledging the occurrence of evolution and pointing out that evolution and faith do not conflict. (pp. xiii, 13).
By “religious denominations” they mean mostly those of liberal, mainstream Christianity. The theme of the “compatibility” of evolution and Christianity appears throughout their book. They smear the lipstick of liberal, apostate Christianity all over their ugly atheist hog. By the time they complete their deception, you’d think the atheist NAS book authors did their writing in church pews. This particular seduction of theirs is so wicked, contemptible and devious that we need to devote the entire next chapter to it.