The almost incredible hysteria generated by the nation's evolutionary establishment over the recent Kansas decision is further indication that the creation/evolution issue is essentially a spiritual battle. No mere scientific question could ever produce such a torrent of unscientific vituperation as did the Board's action to relax the dogmatic evolutionism mandated by the proposed science standards for the Kansas public schools.
The change neither banned evolutionary teaching nor required creationist teaching, but left the question for each local school board to decide on its own. This approach seems to most Americans to be eminently fair, but not to evolutionists, who apparently consider all young people in the schools as their own captive audience.
Evolutionists continually repeat their mantra that evolution is science while creation is religion. Stephen Jay Gould, who may be their chief spokesman, pronounced "evolution to be as well documented as any phenomenon in science, as strongly as the earth's revolution around the sun. . . ."
This is nonsense. No one, in all human history, has ever documented a single example of macroevolution. Just where is all this "documentation" alleged by Gould? Creationists have won hundreds of formal scientific debates with evolutionists precisely because they have produced scientific evidence supporting the creation model of origins while their evolutionist opponents are unable to present any proof of evolution. Evolution has never been observed to occur in the present, the ubiquitous absence of transitional structures in the fossil record indicates that it never occurred in the past, and the universal law of increasing entropy (universal as a tendency, even in "open systems") shows that it probably could never occur at all. As the old television commercial used to say: "Where's the beef?" If evolutionists would demonstrate that just one example of real macroevolution has ever taken place, that would go further toward stopping the creationist revival than all their anti-creationist harangues. Why don't they try that novel approach?
The Catholic geologist, Skehan, calls the Kansas Board action a "deplorable vote" which strengthens our alleged creationist "strategy of `dumbing down' science teaching. . . . This educational disaster gives free reign to creation science's relentless war to destroy science."2 This is still more nonsense.
Neither the Kansas Board nor any creationist organization has ever proposed to remove evolutionary teaching from the schools. The creationist proposal is always to include more science by adding and discussing the scientific problems with macroevolution instead of just giving the present one-sided indoctrination in evolution as a belief system. The law of decay, the fossil gaps, the harmful nature of mutations, the extreme improbability of even the simplest cell arising by chance, the many amazing symbiotic relationships in nature—all these are scientific facts which have nothing directly to do with religious faith at all, but which are hitherto unsolved scientific problems in terms of evolution.
But evolutionists do not want these problems even mentioned in the classroom or the textbook because they might "confuse" students. After all, our evolutionary scientists just know evolution is true even though there are all these problems. That is all that the students need to be taught. According to Gould, evolution is "one of the firmest facts ever validated by science. . . ." "Evolution is true" he says, for it is "an empirical reality."3
Empirical means observable, testable, repeatable, and one would think such a dogmatic authority as Gould could give us the empirical evidence. What he says, however, is that the proof of evolution is found in "imperfections" in nature, such as the panda's thumb. A similar evidence was offered by Irvin DeVore, another Harvard professor like Gould. He notes that "almost all species that ever lived on Earth have become extinct," which means to him "that God would be capricious."4
Imperfections and extinctions—are these the empirical proofs of evolution? They would seem rather to be polar opposites of evolution—say, "devolution." Yet evolutionists insist that creationists are unscientific and are acting on blind faith alone. A professor at the University of Georgia makes another odd comment. He says that "the supernatural (by which he means creation) cannot be tested by the material methods of science, and we should force creationists to admit it."5
"Admit it," he says? We have always insisted on it! Creation took place in the unobserved past, not at present. It cannot be tested empirically in the laboratory or in the field, since it was completed in the past, by definition. However, as a "model," it fits all the facts that can be observed in the present. That is, it predicts the gaps in the fossil record, the irreducible complexity of living systems, the probability of decay from primeval perfection (such as imperfections and extinctions), etc.
On the other hand, evolution can be tested empirically, since it has presumably been brought about by the same natural processes that we can observe operating today. In fact, it has been tested empirically, time after time, and has always failed. Thousands of attempts have been made to produce new species in the laboratory by mutation and natural selection, but they never work. They produce imperfections and extinctions, all right, but never new, viable, more complex species. If any scientific theory has ever been disproved scientifically and empirically, it would seem to be evolution.
The mystery is how this pseudo-scientific evolutionary worldview, based on no real scientific evidence (in fact, negated by all such evidence) could be believed in so passionately. Dr. Gould and his evolutionary colleagues are, by all worldly measures, brilliant scholars. Neither are they dishonest hoaxers, as some creationists have been tempted to believe. Then why do they believe in evolution?
The answer has to be a spiritual answer, not scientific. At least that is the Biblical explanation. As the Apostle Paul said concerning the skeptics of his own day: "If our gospel be hid it is hid to them that are lost. In whom the god of this world [that is, Satan] hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them" (II Corinthians 4:3,4).
That is, a person can be ever so brilliant in science, or business, or philosophy (he may even be a Doctor of Philosophy!), or any field, and yet be utterly unable to comprehend the "glorious gospel of Christ"—that is, the wonderful revealed truth of creation and redemption by God in Christ, with forgiveness and eternal salvation freely offered to all who come to Him in faith. Even a child can understand and believe the saving gospel of Christ, although it all seems incredible to intellectuals. Whether such men and women cannot see, or will not see, the fact is, they do not see, and so are lost.
Paul puts it even more strongly in another classic passage: ". . . they received not the love of the truth, that they might be saved. . . . for this cause God shall send them strong delusion, that they should believe a lie" (II Thessalonians 2:10,11).
What else can we call this pervasive belief in evolution, held in spite of all the overwhelming negative evidence against it, except some kind of delusion? Note also the words of the Lord Jesus Christ Himself. "For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world; but that the world through Him might be saved. . . . And this is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. . . . But he that doeth truth cometh to the light" (John 3:17,19,21).
How then can we, as Bible-believing Christian creationists, ever hope to win these people to Christ and His truth, when their minds have been blinded by Satan and are under such strong delusion that they have become sincerely committed to the false worldview of evolution? Creationists almost always (we would say always!) win formal scientific debates with evolutionists, but very rarely (if ever) win the evolutionist debater. Such debates are often fruitful in opening the spiritual eyes and minds of people in the audience, but not those of our opponents in the debates.
Perhaps the best answer in such cases is found in still another of Paul's wise counsels. "The servant of the Lord must not strive; but be gentle unto all men, apt to teach, patient. In meekness instructing those that oppose themselves; if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth; and that they may recover themselves out of the snare of the devil, who are taken captive by him at his will" (II Timothy 2:24-26).
References
1 Stephen Jay Gould, "Dorothy, It's Really Oz," Time (August 23, 2999), p. 59.
2 Rev. S. J. Skehan, "Creation Science: Bad Science, Bad Religion," Geotimes (volume 44, October 1999), p. 18.
3 Stephen Jay Gould, "Darwin's More Stately Mansion," Science (volume 284, June 25, 1999), p. 2087.
4 Cited in "Can Science and Theology Find Common Ground?" by Vincent Kiernan, Chronicle of Higher Education (volume XLV. April 30, 1999), p. A-17.
5 Barry A. Palevitz, "Science and the Versus of Religion," Skeptical Inquirer (vol. 23, July/August 1999), p. 34.
* Dr. Morris is Founder and President Emeritus of ICR.
