Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 10:19:25 -0500 (GMT-05:00)
To: aagapud@yahoo.com
Subject: Reply to Intelligent Design article
An open letter to Albert Gapud and the readers of the Mobile Press-Register:
I would like to respond to the article published in the May 25, 2008 edition. For continuity, I will structure my response according to the sequence in the original article.
The article begins with an emotion-grabbing “straw-man” about the Alabama educational system, implying that the main subject of the rest of the article, the teaching of Creation/Intelligent Design, results in the “sabotage” of “our science curricula.” That is curious, since home-schooled children (who are not brainwashed in the evolutionary dogma) consistently score higher in math and science on standardized tests than do public school students. Perhaps the problem lies elsewhere.
I do not claim any particular credentials as the article seems to demand. That does not mean that I am stupid or uneducated. I was an instructor in the Air Force for 15 years, and when I retired I taught high school for 13 years before falling victim to the same trouble facing local teachers today. “Discerning readers” also realize that it doesn’t take a PhD to recognize phony arguments, empty claims, faulty logic, and misrepresentation.
Can “a devout Roman Catholic” see that there is no Biblical basis for the selling of indulgences (documents that would absolve a person of guilt for any sin they committed), or the torture, mutilation, and murder of non-Catholics (as in the Inquisition)? Being a member of a particular church is no guarantee of being free from error. It is also important to remember that it was the “deeply religious” who betrayed, rejected, and crucified Jesus, and flew planes into the Twin Towers on 9-11. Again, it is no guarantee of perfection.
As far as there being “no conflict between science and religion,” let me cite more expert testimony than my own. (As with all of the quotations I will cite, I am omitting the references for the sake of space, but have them available for anyone who wants to verify them.) Microbiologist Richard Dawkins says, “Don’t fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of questions.” He sees evolution as a new religion in direct opposition to Christianity. Atheist G. Richard Bozarth says, “The whole justification of Jesus’ life and death is predicated on the existence of Adam and the forbidden fruit he and Eve ate. Without the original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam’s fall into a life of constant sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity? None. … Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death … and this is what evolution does, then Christianity is nothing!” Wolfgang Smith agrees with Dawkins when he says, “The doctrine of evolution has swept the world, not on the strength of its scientific merits, but precisely in its capacity as a Gnostic myth. It affirms, in effect, that living beings create themselves, which is in essence a metaphysical claim. This in itself implied, however, that the theory is scientifically unverifiable … . Thus, in the final analysis, evolutionism is in truth a metaphysical doctrine decked out in scientific garb.” George Johnston wrote, “It’s natural selection or a Creator. There is no middle ground. This is why prominent Darwinists like G.G. Simpson and Stephen Jay Gould, who are not secretive about their hostility to religion, cling so vehemently to natural selection. To do otherwise would be to admit the probability that there is design in nature – and hence a Designer.” The science referred to by these men is a science based in evolutionary humanism and naturalism that rejects any existence of, or participation by, a Creator. That brings evolutionary science into direct conflict with Christianity.
Anyone who reads Genesis 1 can see that the order in which God said He created the universe is diametrically opposite of that proposed by evolution; earth before the sun, light before the sun, water before an atmosphere, earth covered in water instead of being a molten mass, plants before sealife, birds before land animals, etc., just to name a few. Lest someone say, “That was only Moses’ opinion,” Second Timothy 3:16 says, “All Scripture is inspired by God.” That includes Genesis 1. That means God was speaking through Moses’ pen as he wrote what God wanted him to write. An even stronger verse is Exodus 20:11, where the Bible says that God created everything in six days. This verse is stronger because, in Exodus 32:1, God told Moses to carve two new tablets (to replace the ones he broke when he found the Jews worshiping a golden calf), and He would (personally) write in them the words that were on the first tablets. Therefore, while the description of the creation in 20:11 may have been dictated (and supposedly subject to error by Moses), 32:1 says the same things were written by God Himself the second time around. Anyone denying the creation is thus not only calling Moses a liar, but also calling God Himself a liar.
The article then says, “I believe there is intelligent design to everything in existence.” What is that belief based on? The statement implies that there is evidence in the created universe that it really was created. If so, then it is hypocritical and dishonest (as well as very poor instructional integrity) to refuse to provide students with that evidence. Professor G.W. Harper said, “For some time, it has seemed to me that our current methods of teaching Darwinism are suspiciously similar to indoctrination.” That’s what happens when material is censored from the classroom. W.R. Thompson (Director of the Commonwealth Institute of Biological Control, Ottawa) wrote, “It is … right and proper to draw the attention of the non-scientific public to the disagreements about evolution. But some recent remarks of evolutionists show that they think this unreasonable. This situation where scientific men rally to the defense of a doctrine they are unable to define scientifically, much less demonstrate with scientific rigor, attempting to maintain its credit with the public by suppression of criticism and the elimination of difficulties, is abnormal and undesirable in science. … The success of Darwinism was accompanied by a decline in scientific integrity.” To that I would add that academic integrity has suffered as well.
Astronomer James Trefil wrote that “The distinguishing feature of science – the thing that makes it different from fields like literary criticism – is its unrelenting demand that all ideas and claims about the universe be checked by experiment on or observation of the universe itself. I don’t think it’s going too far to say that if a statement can’t be subjected to experimental or observational test, it simply isn’t a part of science.” I concur with this. However, by this definition, evolution is not part of science either. Biologists Green and Goldberger stated, “The macromolecule-to-cell transition is a jump of fantastic dimensions, which lies beyond the range of testable hypothesis. In this area all is conjecture. The available facts do not provide a basis for postulating that cells arose on this planet.” Physicist H.S. Lipson said, “If living matter is not, then, caused by the interplay of atoms, natural forces, and radiation, how has it come into being? … I think, however, that we must … admit that the only acceptable explanation is creation. I know that this is anathema to physicists, as indeed it is to me, but we must not reject a theory that we do not like if the experimental evidence supports it.” Legitimate science cannot reject, a priori, any possible explanation of the data, yet this is precisely what evolution requires. That’s not good science, or good education.
The reference to the Dover court case should be considered irrelevant to the question of whether Creation/Intelligent Design is an appropriate topic for a science classroom. That case, as have been all other similar cases, was decided on the basis of the imaginary separation of church and state (which does not exist in the Constitution), and not on the weight of scientific evidence. The fear of a lawsuit is a powerful weapon that the ACLU and other atheist organizations use to browbeat people into stifling legitimate discussion. Silencing all opposition has been a tactic of totalitarian dictatorships for as long as men have sought to dominate other men. Just as an aside, it is interesting to note that the “dominion mandate” (see Genesis 1:26 & 28) gave man authority over virtually everything in creation except other men.
The subject of scientific bias is also legitimate. The article says, “The impartiality of physical data frees any proposed model from human bias.” That is simply not true. Facts do not speak for themselves at all; they must be interpreted, and that’s where biases come in. Niles Eldredge said, “In the real world, in the competitive fray that is science, data forging, plagiarism, and all manner of base and venal but utterly human failings make a mockery of the counterimage of detached objectivity.” Physicist H.S. Lipson said, “Evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it.” Atheist and evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould said ”The stereotype of a fully rational and objective ‘scientific method,’ with individual scientists as logical (and interchangeable)(pito-parenthesis in the original) robots, is self-serving mythology.” Stefan Bengtson (Institute of Paleontology, Uppsala University, Sweden) observed “Paleontologists are traditionally famous (or infamous) (pito) for reconstructing whole animals from the debris of death. Mostly they cheat.” In other words, scientists frequently manipulate the evidence to fit their theories, or to satisfy the people who are supplying them with grants to fund their research. Although the possibility exists that Creationists might be guilty of the same dishonesty, I submit that they are much less likely to do so due to their recognition that they will have to answer to God for what they say and do – a “problem” the evolutionists do not believe they have.
Anyone who doubts that scientists lie, or allow biases to color their reality, should look at the history of evolutionary science. Piltdown Man, found in 1912, was the subject of hundreds if not thousands of doctoral theses, and provided evidence of man’s evolution at the famous Scopes “Monkey Trial,” until it was exposed, in 1953, as a deliberate hoax. Nebraska Man, also introduced into evidence in the Scopes trial, and based on a single tooth, was declared by Osborne (of the Museum of Natural History) to be a missing link in man’s evolution, until it was found to belong to an extinct pig. The “Lucy” model on display in several museums features human feet, when in fact no foot bones were found with the skeleton, and other fossils of the same kind of creature that “Lucy” was have been shown to have feet with opposing thumbs like monkeys and apes. Just after Darwin published his theory, Ernst Haeckel produced a series of drawings that supposedly showed that embryos of numerous animals were virtually identical, and that human fetuses retraced their evolutionary history as they developed in the womb. For more than 100 years it has been known that the drawings were frauds, but you can still find them in textbooks in use today. Abortionists use this same phony argument to convince pregnant girls (and women) that the “thing” growing inside them isn’t really human but is nothing more than a glob of tissue going through the “fish stage” or “amphibian stage” of evolution, and can be aborted without actually killing a person. Samuel Paul Welles wrote two articles for World Book Encyclopedia. In one, he said “Scientists determine when fossils were formed by finding out the age of the rocks in which they lie.” In the other article, he said, “The age of rocks may be determined by the fossils found in them.” That is clearly circular reasoning, but is promoted as objective, demonstrated fact.
The discussion of “peer-reviewed publications” is a serious one. The fact is that creationists do not have huge numbers of published studies in the standard scientific journals is not due to the lack of scientific validity of their studies, but because of the strangle-hold evolutionists have on the journals, book publishers, academic institutions, and political power-brokers. This was clearly demonstrated by Ben Stein in his recent film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed.” Evolutionists simply will not allow any scientist thought to be anti-evolutionary to be published. The article said that intelligent design “has no peer-reviewed, published experimental data to substantiate its claim as science.” Let’s look at some of the published data related to evolution that you won’t read in the textbooks.
Biochemist Klaus Bose wrote, “At present all discussions on principle theories and experiments in the field (of chemical and molecular evolution) either end in stalemate or in a confession of ignorance.” Astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle said “There is not a shred of objective evidence to support the hypothesis that life began in an inorganic soup here on the Earth.” Biophysicist Hubert Yockey says “One must conclude that no valid scientific explanation of the origin of life exists at present.” Molecular biologist Michael Denton wrote “In terms of their biochemistry, none of the species deemed ‘intermediate,’ ‘ancestral,’ or ‘primitive’ by generations of evolutionary biologists, and alluded to as evidence of sequence in nature, shows any sign of their supposed intermediate status.” Geneticist N. Takahata said “None of the hypotheses seems compatible with the observed DNA variation.” Wolfgang Smith said “It can be said with the utmost rigor that the (macroevolutionary) doctrine is totally bereft of scientific sanction. … Given the multitude of extravagant claims about evolution promulgated by evolutionists with an air of scientific infallibility, this may indeed sound strange. And yet the fact remains that there exists to this day not a shred of bona fide scientific evidence in support of the thesis that macroevolutionary transformations have ever occurred.” Biologist Pierre Grasse said “The explanatory doctrines of biological evolution do not stand up to an objective, in-depth criticism. They prove to be either in conflict with reality or else incapable of solving the major problems involved.” Jeremy Rifkin wrote “What the (fossil) ‘record’ shows is nearly a century of fudging and finagling by scientists attempting to force various fossil morsels and fragments to conform with Darwin’s notions, all to no avail. Today the missions of fossils stand as very visible, ever-present reminders of the paltriness of the arguments and the overall shabbiness of the theory that marches under the banner of evolution.” Microbiologist Michael Denton declared “It was not only his general theory that was almost entirely lacking in any direct empirical support, but his special theory was also largely dependent on circumstantial evidence. A striking witness to this is the fact that nowhere was Darwin able to point to one bona fide case of natural selection having actually generated evolutionary change in nature, let alone having been responsible for the creation of a new species.” George Johnston said “No one has ever seen one species change into another either in the fossil record or in breeding experiments. Darwin himself was unable to come up with a single indisputable case of one animal changing into another via ‘natural selection.’ His case was entirely theoretical; it rested on a chain of suppositions rather than empirical observation; the ‘facts’ that he mustered were either made to fit the theory or were explained away.” Geologist James H. Shea stated “Much of Lyell’s uniformitarianism … has been explicitly refuted by the definitive modern sources, as well as by an overwhelming preponderance of evidence that, as substantive theories, his ideas on these matters were simply wrong.” Gareth V. Nelson (Ichthyologist, American Museum of Natural History) said “The history of comparative biology teaches us that the search for ancestors is doomed to ultimate failure … this search is an exercise in futility.” D.V. Ager (President of the Geological Association) said “It must be significant that nearly all the evolutionary stories I learned as a student … have now been ‘debunked.’” Mathematician Chandra Wickramasinghe testified “From my earliest training as a scientist, I was very strongly brainwashed to believe that science cannot be consistent with any kind of deliberate creation. That notion has had to be painfully shed. … At the moment, I can’t find any rational argument to knock down the view which argues for God. … We used to have an open mind; now we realize that the only logical answer to life is creation – and not accidental random shuffling.” Mathematicians/Astronomers Sir Fred Hoyle and Chandra Wickramasinghe concluded that “Life cannot have had a random beginning. The likelihood of the spontaneous formation of life from inanimate matter is one to a number with 40,000 noughts (zeros) after it. … It is big enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. … If the beginnings of life were not random, they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence.” So much for the “centuries-old understanding of the mechanisms of biological evolution.”
Another “straw-man” is the idea that “thousands and thousands of books” would have to be discarded, and we would have to “try to explain how every single page of those books is invalid.” No one has suggested such an extreme measure. Such an “all-or-nothing” position is illogical, inaccurate, and unnecessary. The only thing that would have to be changed is the unfounded claims made by the historical evolutionists, since their theories are not subject to scientific examination. Still another “straw-man” is the statement that “the intelligent-design movement would also have us believe that the Darwinian model is so full of holes that it ought to be dismantled.” I disagree. I believe that the best thing scientists and science educators could do would be to present evolution – with all its holes clearly exposed – along with the solid experimental evidence that demonstrates the overall inadequacy of the evolutionary theory to explain anything of real merit. Then encourage people to think for themselves.
Colin Patterson (Senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History) said “Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. … It does seem that the level of knowledge about evolution is remarkably shallow. I feel that the effects of hypotheses of common ancestry has not been merely boring, not just a lack of knowledge; I think it has been positively anti-knowledge.”
In terms of the “entire fields of scientific knowledge” that evolution supposedly “spawned,” Paul R. Ehrlich & L.C. Birch wrote “Some biologists claim that an understanding of the evolutionary history of organisms is prerequisite to any comprehension of ecology. … Since the level of speculation (rather than investigation)(pito) is inevitably high in phylogenetics of any kind, a preoccupation with the largely unknown past can be shown to be a positive hindrance to progress. Professor G.W. Harper summarized the situation this way: “It is frequently claimed that Darwinism is central to modern biology; on the contrary, if all references to Darwinism suddenly disappeared, biology would remain substantially unchanged. Grandiose doctrines in science are like some occupants of high office; they sound very important but have in fact been promoted to a position of ineffectuality.”
It should be remembered that majority opinion, even among the intelligentsia, is no guarantee that the topic under consideration is correct. America lost one of, if not the, most important figures in its history because of the false belief among doctors that patients should be “bled” to treat fevers and other ailments, and George Washington was bled to death. Less than 200 years ago doctors practiced none of the sanitation and disinfecting procedures that are essential to saving life. It was the elite in what was arguably the most erudite and intelligent nation on earth that set the stage for the holocaust in Nazi Germany. As long as students continue to be bombarded with the message that they are nothing more than glorified pond scum, it should come as no surprise when they act like the wild animals they are told they are related to, and strike out, killing each other. In examining what evolution has truly “spawned,” Nazi Germany, Marxist Communism, and other such atheistic regimes are testimony to the kind of fruit Darwin’s tree produces. They are simply trying to make certain that they are the “fittest” to survive, by eliminating those they see as “unfit.”
In Genesis, the first thing the Bible reveals about God is that He was the Creator. In Revelation 4:11, describing the worship in heaven, the Bible says God is worthy of worship, and the first reason it gives for Him being worthy of worship is that He is the Creator. Numerous times in between, the Bible calls God our Maker. In Romans, chapter 1, Paul lays out the charges against sinful mankind, “who suppress the truth by their wickedness.” He said “Since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities – His eternal power and divine nature – have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse. For although they knew God, they neither glorified Him as God” (giving Him credit for His creation) “nor gave thanks to Him. But their thinking became futile and their foolish hearts were darkened. Although they claimed to be wise, they became fools, and exchanged the glory of the immortal God for images made to look like mortal man and birds and animals and reptiles.” They refused to acknowledge God as Creator, and began to worship themselves (atheistic humanism) or other created things (paganism and pantheism). I don’t think a more accurate description of today’s scientific establishment, or the culture at large, could be made.
The article comes across as a regurgitation of the “party line” promoted in schools. Like the lessons in scientific atheism or evolution, it is totally lacking in hard evidence, but is replete with gross generalizations and unsubstantiated claims. I challenge the reader(s) to check the facts for themselves, rather than mindlessly swallow these empty claims.
Lester V[.]
Daphne, AL
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Date: Wed, 28 May 2008 22:27:13 -0700 (PDT)
From: Albert Gapud
Subject: Re: Reply to Intelligent Design article
Thank you for your letter, even though it filled me with such despair. The ID group has been exposed time and again as a group with highly questionable motives, but their extensive propaganda has succeeded in convincing you to treat anyone associated with science with distrust and suspicion. It is ironic that the ID movement claims to be in favor of giving all sides equal time, but anyone who questions THEM is dismissed as being part of some cult or some grand conspiracy. Are you aware that you have prejudged and categorized me? You don't even know me.
Your thoroughly written statements are such faithful regurgitations of ID rhetoric, that it is obvious you have not made independent checks on their claims. This cult-like devotion is something I just do not understand. Based on all the evidence that proves what the ID movement really is, how could you trust them so completely? Because they use the Bible? Well, so have other groups that have wrought awful atrocities.
Let me put it another way: The ID movement is on an active campaign to discredit entire fields of science. So how can you trust them to provide reliable information about those sciences? Is it not like trusting a Nazi to give an "alternative" description of a Jew?
