Something is rotten in the state of Denmark

Karsten Pultz reports from Denmark on efforts to suppress the idea of design in nature that are coming from the Danish church. Mr. Pultz is also the author of “Why I have a problem with theistic evolution,”:

Intelligent design being suppressed in academia is old news. But in Denmark even a Christian newspaper participates in biased coverage in favour of evolution.

Recently, Mads Jakobsen, a priest and theologian in the Danish state church, was reprimanded by his bishop, Marianne Christiansen because he had written critically about Darwin’s theory in his parish magazine. The theologian had mainly identified the moral problems which arise when trying to combine survival of the fittest with Christian beliefs, but he seems also to have admitted his doubt of the science behind the theory.

The bishop was outraged that the priest would doubt a “scientifically proven” theory and she publicly demanded that he commit himself to be re-educated in the theory of evolution. The bishop recommended that , Niels Henrik Gregersen, professor of theology at the University of Copenhagen, should provide this criminally ignorant theologian with the proper literature, so that his delusions could be corrected.

The bishop was supported by Svend Andersen, theology professor at the University of Århus, who insisted that “There ought not to be room for such views within the church.” Professor Andersen also expressed the view that a certain intellectual standard must be required of ministers, implying that only a moron would doubt evolution.

The battle between the bishop’s supporters and the few theologians who supported the priest’s right to criticize evolution has been played out mainly in the Christian newspaper Kristeligt Dagblad. The argument has turned mostly on whether the priest has the right to publicly express his view on evolution, and unfortunately not as much on the validity of the theory itself.

Some small comments in the debate section of the newspaper have tried to direct attention to the science itself but alas, it seems that the debate will end before a real discussion of evolution has been ignited. With a population where 85% believe in evolution, we actually do need the theory to be openly questioned.

In the ongoing debate, university teacher Hans Henrik Hjermitslev, who has co-authored papers on creationism in Europe, provided a rather extensive piece about the growth of creationism. Hjermitslev,who has a Phd in the history of science, listed my book Exit Evolution as an example of the contemporary promotion of creationism.

In his article Hjermitslev omits the fact that my book is a purely scientific critique of evolution, based on the books and scientific papers produced by Stephen Meyer, Michael Behe, Douglas Axe, Jonathan Wells etc. My book promotes ID, and I do not mix Bible verses in with the science or base any conclusions on the interpretation of the Bible. I have written several pieces in the newspaper I work for, criticizing creationism for its backward reasoning. It starts with the assumption that a certain interpretation of the Bible is true and then cherry-picks evidence to support this belief, instead of doing what I find more appropriate and satisfying, namely the ID approach. There, we look only at the empirical evidence approach and then draw the conclusions, while keeping religious and philosophical questions secondary and preferably in a separate sphere.

Despite the fact that I’ve publicly criticized creationism, Dr. Hjermitslev still defined my work as creationism. Of course, there is nothing new in that regard, it’s the good old trick of categorizing ID as creationism in order to avoid addressing the serious scientific issues it raises. It surprised me to even be mentioned by this academic expert. But maybe the Danish evolutionists are beginning to feel the hot breath from ID on their necks, and are therefore starting to launch preemptive strikes against ID proponents like myself.

What is slightly annoying is the fact that I’m being deprived of the opportunity to respond to the allegations raised against me by this university teacher. The Christian newspaper, Kristeligt Dagblad, simply refuses to air my side of the story. The journalist who manages the debate section chooses to ignore me. I sent him a piece in which I explain what ID is, and how it differs from creationism, for example, that ID considers only empirical evidence and that inference to the best explanation is valid for the ID hypothesis, just as it is for the theory of evolution.

My piece was, naturally, written in defense of pastor Mads Jakobsen but I also made the excuse for the bishop that she, hardly a villain, is just acting in accordance with what we all have learned in school, namely that evolution is a fact. She should not be blamed for the extremely biased way evolution is taught all the way from primary school to university. I got no answer from the journalist, no reaction, and no explanation, – I’m being met with complete silence. So what we have is a Christian newspaper which willingly airs unsubstantiated allegations against my work but at the same time refuses to bring my side of the story.

During the last few months there have been several articles in this Danish Christian newspaper which misrepresents the ID view in the most ignorant ways. In one article it was even defined as a belief in God-directed evolution. Both I and others from the Danish ID movement have tried to make the newspaper correct these errors, but we are being ignored. So the current state ID is facing in Denmark is that a Christian newspaper gangs up with the theological elite to heckle Darwin doubters and prevent an open debate about the validity of Darwin’s theory.

"For two millennia, the design argument provided an intellectual foundation for much of Western thought. From classical antiquity through the rise of modern science, leading philosophers, theologians, and scientists. From Plato to Aquinas to Newton, maintained that nature manifests the design of a preexistent mind or intelligence. Moreover, for many Western thinkers, the idea that the physical universe reflected the purpose or design of a preexistent mind, a Creator, served to guarantee humanity's own sense of purpose and meaning. Yet today in nearly every academic discipline from law to literary theory, from behavioral science to biology, a thoroughly materialistic understanding of humanity and its place in the universe has come to dominate. Free will, meaning, purpose, and God have become pejorative terms in the academy. Matter has subsumed mind; cosmos replaced Creator."
- Steven Meyer

Excerpt from Pulitzer Prize-winning author Daniel Walker Howe’s What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815-1844, p. 464:

As this chapter is written in the early twenty-first century, the hypothesis that the universe reflect intelligent design has provoked a bitter debate in the United States. How very different was the intellectual world of the early nineteenth century! Then, virtually everyone believed in intelligent design. Faith in the rational design of the universe underlay the world-view of the Enlightenment, shared by Isaac Newton, John Locke, and the American Founding Fathers. Even the outspoke critics of Christianity embraced not atheism but deism, that is, belief in an impersonal, remote deity who had created the universe and designed it so perfectly that it ran along of its own accord, following natural laws without need for further divine intervention. The common used expression “the book of nature” referred to the universal practice of viewing nature as a revelation of God’s power and wisdom. Christians were fond of saying that they accepted two divine revelations: the Bible and the book of nature. For desists like Thomas Paine, the book of nature alone sufficed, rendering what he called the “fables” of the Bible superfluous. The desire to demonstrate the glory of God, whether deist or – more commonly – Christian, constituted one of the principal motivations for scientific activity in the early republic, along with national pride, the hope for useful applications, and, of course, the joy of science itself.

From the author of the article above:

For 30 years I didn’t believe in a personal God. I was not an outright atheist but was an agnostic leaning just a little towards new age explanations and interpretations of the reality we experience. I had the greatest mistrust in the Bible although I found the New Testament important as a philosophical text. I considered the Bible a collection of myths rather than historical facts. I was raised with a materialistic worldview but happened to experience so much spiritual richness in music, that it made me wonder how scientific materialism could be true. I had no solution to this cognitive dissonance because I, through education and media, had learned that materialism was true. I had no reason to doubt educated men in lab coats and instead put my trust in crazy Bible-thumping Christians.
So what was my main reason for believing in scientific materialism and reject the Bible, Christianity, and a personal God? The answer is simple, and I can with great confidence say that this answer applies to most non believers I’ve encountered among my fellow Danish countrymen, and it is EVOLUTION.
Darwin’s theory of slow gradual evolution of life by random mutation and natural selection is by far the most important argument for materialism, because it shows how life can be produced by random physical processes without the need for a creator. I and 85% of all other Danes were raised with this belief, and today, in 2018, we see the clear result in the form of empty churches every Sunday. We do not believe in the Bible anymore because it has been overruled by what people believe to be science, and the master over-ruler is evolution.
Through the theory of intelligent design I, at the age of 37, learned that the evidence for evolution was not there. I spent four years investigating evolution and ID before I was satisfied that the empirical data was totally in favour of ID and that evolution simply does not fit the evidence. A five-year process, including Bible studies, eventually lead me to accept the Bible as the nearest I, with the limitations of being human, could get to knowing the truth about what we call reality. So I went from being an agnostic because I knew that evolution was true, to being a Christian believer because I, through personal research, learned that evolution is false.
A crucial point was realizing that the probabilistic resources would be completely inadequate for random mutations to produce new information. No new DNA information would mean no new proteins and no new body shapes, and hence it would be impossible to get from ape to man regardless of how much time available. And another thing; the irreducible complex morphological system of a tree climbing monkey cannot gradually change into another irreducible complex system, namely that of bipedal walking and running human, it is pure nonsense seen from an engineering perspective. The result would be transitional individuals that could not either climb trees nor walk or run properly—not exactly qualities for natural selection to select from. These revelations were important, because I was now in a position where I could accept Adam and Eve as historical persons.
Now some wise guys will tell me that evolution and the Bible can be combined in a belief called theistic evolution, hmmm! They insist that my conversion was not necessary at all, I could just have kept my belief in evolution and at the same time—out of the blue—gained trust in the Bible, Christianity, and a personal God.
My goodness! This means that all my cognitive dissonance was in vain because it’s that easy, you just accept the Bible while still believing in evolution. What a moron I am; here I thought that I, as an enlightened science nerd, knew how evolution works, namely by the mechanism of random mutation and natural selection, and now I’m told that evolution was God’s way of creating. Ouch! What do I do now?
I came to faith in the Bible because I discovered that evolution was false. I realized that the story of Adam and Eve could actually be historically correct, which was one of the main reasons that I gained trust in the bible. Now proponents of theistic evolution want me to re-accept the belief that we came from monkeys while keeping my faith in the Bible which was achieved through knowing that it is not possible that we came from monkeys, – HELP!
As a now very experienced and well educated proponent of ID, I use my knowledge when doing apologetics, simply because ID was my own path to Christian belief. I know from my own life and from the society I grew up in, how powerful evolution is as a supporting pillar for scientific materialism, therefore I find no other way than to start people’s journey toward Christ, by informing them about the falseness of evolution. It’s pure logic; evolution makes people atheists, so debunking evolution must be the first priority when doing apologetics.
I find it rather insulting when proponents of TE indirectly claim that I for 30 years simply wasn’t smart enough to reconcile evolution with belief in God. I, on the other hand, will insist that it was precisely because I understood how evolution works, that I was unable to trust the biblical narratives, (one of the few points where Dawkins and I agree).
I’m now being attacked by theistic evolutionists in my own country with the claim that I’m doing harm to Christianity by not accepting evolution. So what do I do? 10 years of research into evolution and ID has convinced me and still convinces me that evolution is false. If I was presented with evidence that random mutation and natural selection can produce new life forms I would definitely return to being an agnostic or possibly even outright an atheist. So what will the theistic evolutionists advise me to do?
Here are five questions for the proponents of TE:
1) How will you reconvert me to evolution while at the same time not reconverting me to agnosticism?
2) Has 10 years of research into evolution and ID somehow made me less informed?
3) Spending thousands of hours on research, I have seen tons of evidence for ID but not yet seen empirical evidence for theistic evolution, – where do you hide this evidence?
4) Will you claim I was lead to Christ through a falsehood called ID?
5) Should I give up on leading people to Christ via ID? (I assume that logically theistic evolutionists will take the position that since ID is false, it will be the same as leading people to Christ using a lie if I use ID in apologetics.)
A little story to put things into perspective:
I gave an ID talk at a bible college where I was met with hostility from the theology students for criticizing evolution. When the talk was over, I was approached by a young man who, through his study of psychology, had lost his faith in God, precisely because psychology rests quite a lot on evolution. The young man said that he was very happy with my talk and that I might just have saved his faith.
Think about the irony of that, I was heckled by the theologians for using ID as an apologetic tool, while at the same time I probably saved the faith of a young man who had suffered from an overdose of evolution.
Kind Regards
Karsten Pultz
Composer, musician and author.

It is not the same article as the one posted above and it talks specifically about your statement that “ Evolutionary theory is entirely consistent with the practice of Christianity and I suggest you re-read it.

That said, maybe you could somehow substantiate your statement and explain how evolution is compatible with the practice of Christianity. Was evolution somehow directed to create mankind? If so, this is not the standard theory of evolution according to the ‘experts’:

Dawkins - we are merely lumbering robots doing the bidding of selfish genes created by a blind watchmaker in a universe of blind pitiless indifference without good or evil.
Rosenberg – we have an illusion that thoughts really are about stuff in the world - we live with the myths that we have purposes that give our actions and lives meaning - and that there is a person “in there” steering our body.
Provine - no ultimate foundation for ethics exists - no ultimate meaning in life exists – and human free will is nonexistent.
Pinker - brains are shaped for fitness, not for truth
Ruse - ethics is an illusion created by our genes to deceive us – morality is an adaptation.
Harris - Free will is an illusion. Our wills are simply not of our own making…. You will do whatever it is you do, and it is meaningless to assert that you could have done otherwise.
Coyne - You are robots made out of meat - behavior is absolutely determined by the laws of physics… That is the infinite regress and the sort of annoying thing about determinism. It’s turtles all the way down.
Dennett - Nobody is conscious - we are all zombies - Darwinism is like “a universal acid; it eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view.

No one can claim that neo-darwinism, which is ultimately a mindless process, made our brains but yet has no relevance on the brain's contents - our thoughts and behavior (see Darwin’s, Descent of Man or Evolutionary Ethics ). This underlying fundamental idea that deals with mankind’s very essence is what separates neo-darwinism from other scientific theories and I do not see how it is consistent with the practice of Christianity - as you state.

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