Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Amendment I to the Constitution of the United States of America
BELIEF IN EVOLUTION REQUIRES AN ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF FAITH
We saw in Chapter 3 that the NAS admits in its book that they have no evidence whatsoever for how matter turned into life. They do, however, speculate wildly about it in the following paragraph from page 22 of their book. I have italicized the iffy words and phrases:
. . . researchers have shown how this process might have worked by studying a molecule known as RNA. Researchers recently discovered that some RNA molecules can greatly increase the rate of specific chemical reactions, including the replication of parts of other RNA molecules. If a molecule like RNA could reproduce itself (perhaps with the assistance of other molecules), it could form the basis for a very simple living organism. If such self-replicators were packaged within chemical vesicles or membranes, they might have formed “protocells”—early versions of very simple cells. Changes in these molecules could lead to variants that, for example, replicated more efficiently in a particular environment. In this way, natural selection would begin to operate, creating opportunities for protocells that had advantageous molecular innovations to increase in complexity.
When I read in the second chapter of Genesis that God makes Adam “of soil from the ground, and He is blowing into his nostrils the breath of the living, and becoming is the human a living soul,” I find it very easy to believe. On the other hand, evolutionists, in order to believe their above paragraph, have some extraordinary faith-stretching to do. Their paragraph is written entirely in the subjunctive—the mood which presents the molecular events not as factual, but as contingent, possible, and doubtful. It might have happened, perhaps, if. The point is that their views constitute a belief-system, an extremely far-fetched belief system at that. They believe that their above speculation is a reasonable explanation for the origin of life. Faith in molecules-to-man evolution, absent evidence for it, is a belief-system. It is thus religious in essence.
Happiness is one of the emotions. Its opposite, unhappiness, also falls under the category of emotions. Likewise, since theism is a belief-system or religion, its opposite, atheism, also falls under the category of a belief-system or religion.
Within the framework of their own book, they define themselves as embracing a religious belief. They write on page 50:
. . . an important component of religious belief is faith, which implies acceptance of a truth regardless of the presence of empirical evidence for or against that truth.
Do they accept as one of their “truths” that life spontaneously generated itself from matter through the operation of natural selection—“regardless of the presence of empirical evidence for or against that truth”? Yes, they do. Ergo, hence, and therefore, evo-atheism is a religious belief. They say quite correctly that “an important component of religious belief is faith.” How do the evo-atheists make up for the fact that they don’t have a stitch of evidence to put into the bushel baskets? They make up for it with their remarkable faith. Let’s go even deeper into this rich faith of theirs—because it surely is not science. And why isn’t it science? Because as the NAS writers say on page 12 of their book, “. . . science is a way of knowing that differs from other ways in its dependence on empirical evidence . . .” (my emphasis). No empirical evidence, no science.
NATURAL SELECTION AS THE GOD OF ATHEIST EVOLUTION
We saw in Chapter 2 that “natural selection” is, first and foremost, a figure of speech, and that the NAS writers define it three different ways. It is the “driving force” of evolution. They also describe it as a “process,” and as an outcome (“reproductive success”). Natural selection is a driving force, a process, and an end result.
In my faith, Jesus is the “way.” In evo-atheism, Natural Selection is the way, or process (I’m capitalizing the phrase for the rest of this chapter out of respect for their religion). In my faith, Jesus is the “Alpha and Omega,” the “First and the Last.” In the faith of evo-atheism, Natural Selection is the first and the last—the driving force and the outcome.
In the Hebrew Scriptures, Yahweh is one of the names of the Supreme Creator God. Pertaining to His mastery over all time, it means basically “Is-Becoming-Will Be.” Natural Selection in a sense imitates the meaning of Yahweh’s Name with its “driving force-processoutcome.” On page 6 of their book, the NAS writes that Natural Selection “can have radically different evolutionary effects over different timescales.” Natural Selection is a god of time who accounts for everything in nature.
The NAS’s made-up account of the beginning of life, cited at the beginning of this chapter, gives us even more insight into the imaginary “awesome power” of Natural Selection. Please read their fanciful paragraph again. As you do so, you will note that even after they force all the necessary, preposterous contingencies into place, still no life emerges. But then, Natural Selection shows up on the scene, “creating opportunities for protocells” to come alive. This is the evo-atheist version of God breathing life into Adam. Yea and verily, Natural Selection, that astonishing and worthy figure of speech, hath created life. From this point on, Natural Selection a “driving force” takes over, then Natural Selection a “process” moves in, and finally Natural Selection an outcome rules. Three Natural Selections in One Natural Selection. Natural Selection, that oh-so-venerable figure of speech, turns out to be very similar to the obtuse mystery of the Roman Catholic Trinity as Thomas Aquinas described it in his Summa Theologica.
We are enthusiastic Maryland Terrapin basketball fans around here. In the years around the team’s national championship season, they had a player who could make lay-ups, hit three-pointers, pass off, get rebounds, play defense, and fire up the team. We used to say that he was everywhere and could do it all. Some people used to say they saw him in the stands at halftime, hawking beer and peanuts to the fans.
The NAS writers claim that Natural Selection is everywhere and can do it all, too. But their pet notion is not at all like our favorite Terp basketball player—whose abilities were real. In truth, Natural Selection is nowhere and does nothing. It is just a figure of speech employed by atheists so that they don’t have to acknowledge or give thanks to their Creator.
NATURAL SELECTION AS A MYSTICAL, MIRACULOUS, SUPERNATURAL FORCE
The NAS writers acknowledge on page 54 of their book that “many religious beliefs involve entities or ideas that currently are not within the domain of science.” What they refuse to acknowledge is that their be-all and do-all, Natural Selection, is just such an entity or idea. The evo-atheists call it a “driving force”—a force that cannot be measured, and which appears to be without measure. If Jesus, Who has been given the Spirit of God without measure (John 3:34), possesses supernatural aspects, so then does Natural Selection in their religious scheme.
Natural Selection is omnipresent. It operates upon every flora population in South America, upon all the rat populations in Asia, and upon the tsetse fly populations in Africa—all at the same time. From the evo-atheist standpoint, without Natural Selection, there can be no life. Jesus said, “I am the Way and the Truth and the Life.” The evo-atheists of the NAS believe that Natural Selection is the way and the truth and the life. Without it, chaos reigns, and so it becomes, for the evo-atheists, the central organizing principle of all life, including human consciousness. The Scriptures teach that by God and through Christ, all things consist (Colossians 1:15-17). The evo-atheists believe that by evolution through Natural Selection, all living things consist.
Natural Selection’s reality is neither apparent to the senses nor obvious to the intelligence, and its character is profoundly inexplicable. This makes it mystical.
No law of Natural Selection has ever been formulated. According to the evo-atheists, it is a force, a process, and a result in the physical world deviating from the known laws of nature, actually transcending our knowledge of these laws. The NAS writers’ description of life coming into being through the “creative power” of Natural Selection is nothing less than the description of a miracle. We’ve seen in Chapter 4 that the NAS writers cannot intelligibly explain how Natural Selection accounts for irreducibly complex systems in nature, yet they still insist that in some unrevealed way, it can. This is mysticism, and perhaps, another miracle. Natural Selection, as the evo-atheists themselves describe it, is both miraculous and supernatural.
EVO-ATHEISTS URGE FAITH IN THEIR SCIENCE
According to Scripture, “faith is an assumption of what is being expected, a conviction concerning matters which are not being observed” (Hebrews 11:1). So it is also with the evolutionists. The spontaneous chemical generation of life from matter, the evolution of the sexes, and speciation never have been observed, yet evo-atheists have faith in all three. While Christians have faith in what God will do in the future, the evo-atheists put their faith in what science will do:
The history of science shows that even very difficult questions such as how life originated may become amenable to solution as a result of advances in theory, the development of new instrumentation and the discovery of new facts. (p. 22).
EVO-ATHEISTS ADMIT THE REALITY OF THEIR RELIGION
We’ve seen that some evo-atheists are very straightforward about what their evo-atheism really is. Richard Dawkins titled the first chapter of his book The God Delusion, “A Deeply Religious Believer in No God.” Sir Julian Huxley called evolution “religion without revelation.” Cornell University professor, Will Provine, wrote that one can have a religious view compatible with evolution “only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism.” Leading biologist and evolutionist, Lynn Margulis, disapproves of the uncritical belief by many of her colleagues in Natural Selection thus:
The Darwinian claim to explain all of evolution is a popular half-truth whose lack of explicative power is compensated for only by the religious ferocity of its rhetoric.1
Indeed, the NAS hierarchy pushes its evo-atheistic religion in the classroom with “ferocity,” and with a zeal that’s hardly matched in Christianity. We can’t properly call them evangelical, however, because that word comes from the Greek eu-angellion, meaning literally, well-message, more commonly, good news. Teaching children or adults that they are descended from reptiles is never good news. We should call evo-atheists mal-angelical, because it accurately describes what they’re doing: spreading hopelessly bad religious news.
THE NAS VIOLATES THE ESTABLISHMENT CLAUSE OF THE FIRST AMENDMENT
The National Academy of Sciences has had a mandate from Congress since 1863 to advise the federal government on issues of science and technology, and that’s all. What are they doing coming into all of our elementary schools, all of our junior highs, and all of our high schools with a disguised demand that our children embrace their evoatheism? What are they doing teaching our children that they are descended from worms and reptiles? What are they doing imposing their atheistic religious faith on our children when we’re not around? What are they doing sowing atheism in our schools?
On page 52 of their book, the NAS writers say that “arguments that attempt to confuse students by suggesting that there are fundamental weaknesses in the science of evolution are unwarranted . . .” Unwarranted means unauthorized. Criticism of evo-atheism in the science classroom is currently unauthorized.
Could the U.S. Congress pass a constitutional law saying that, in the science classroom, only the evo-atheist religious viewpoint is acceptable? No way. It would be a violation of the establishment clause of the First Amendment. Yet, based on the situation in our public school classrooms today, such a menacing law may as well have been passed already. The effect is the same, and that’s what matters. Evoatheists have imposed their own religious viewpoint, and established it as the only authorized one throughout all the public school science classrooms in America.
There is no question that belief in evolution requires a huge amount of religious faith, and that Natural Selection is their miraculous, mystical, and supernatural god. Sokrates worshipped Pan, the god of nature. The evo-atheists of the NAS worship that same god under the name, Natural Selection.
We’ve seen that the big wigs among the evo-atheists admit that their views constitute a religious outlook. Ironically, their own words on page 45 of their book condemn their adamant insistence that their religious dogma must dominate the minds of students in the science classroom:
. . . [A]s civil servants, public school teachers must be neutral with respect to religion, which means that they can neither promote nor inhibit its practice . . . Because the Constitution of the United States forbids a federal establishment of religion, it would be inappropriate to use public funds to teach the views of just one religion or one religious subgroup to all students.
But the atheistic hypocrites at the NAS won’t let that happen without a bitter fight. They realize that yielding on any point—the fact that they have no evidence for evolution, that they cannot honestly explain irreducible complexity, or that they have no business sowing atheism in the classroom—will lead to an opening of the flood gates, and that deluge will ultimately wash their evo-atheist religion and their phony “factual theory” down the sewer where it belongs.
While the NAS book promotes primarily its own evo-atheist religion in the science classroom, it also promotes as acceptable any other religion that accepts evo-science. This is a violation of the establishment of religion clause of the First Amendment as well. The twisted logic begins here as they write, “Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversy where none needs to exist” (p. 12). Then they define an acceptable religion, as noted in Chapter 5, as one that accepts evo-atheism. We find another disguised tautology here. What they are really saying is that there need be no controversy between evo-science and religious groups that accept evoscience. As soon as every religion accepts evo-science, no controversy at all will remain, because evo-science gets along so well with itself! Remember, the committee chairman of the NAS book project, Francisco J. Ayala, is a professor of (can you believe it?) logic.
In direct reply to the mastermind behind this transparent tautology and to the rest of the deceptions in his book, let me say, “Likewise, Professor Ayala, there need be no controversy between my belief in the absolute truth of the Scriptures and the beliefs of others—so long as they also believe in the absolute truth of the Scriptures.”
THE RELIGIOUS UNTOUCHABLES ACCORDING TO THE NAS
Speaking of the Scriptures, who are the religious groups that will not get on board the NAS peace train? The NAS book singles out essentially just one group:
Religious denominations that do not accept the occurrence of evolution tend to be those that believe in strictly literal interpretations of religious texts. (p. 12).
With a single sentence, they try to dismiss the tens of millions of us (it wouldn’t matter if it were only ten of us) who believe the claim the Bible makes of itself—that it is the true and inspired Word of the Creator God. But instead of dismissing us, their language lends credence to the creationist position. The primary meaning of “literal” is “true” or “truthful.” While I and many others believe in strictly true interpretations of religious texts, Zimmerman, Mr. X, and all the other evo-atheists must embrace strictly false interpretations of religious texts. Every true interpretation of Scripture—God’s Word—is like hot acid on the evo-atheist’s thin skin.
The writers of the NAS book cannot be honest and say what they mean: “We are atheists, and to us, by definition, the Bible is false. Do not take any of its passages literally; that is, do not take any of its passages ‘as truthful,’ if you expect to learn our brand of science and prosper in it.”