Posted on 10/17/2001 5:24:59 AM PDT by ThinkPlease
911 RANG AGAIN - A REVIEW OF THE PBS VIDEO SERIES "EVOLUTION"
Ken Cumming, Ph.D. Biology
It was about 10 a.m. in the morning of September 11, 2001 when Barbara Olson called her husband Tom from a cell phone on board American Airlines flight 77 to tell him, "We've been hijacked!"1 Tom told her in turn that he saw on TV along with millions of others that two airliners already had crashed into the World Trade Center an hour earlier. In one grand wakeup call, America heard the cry for "help" from thousands of civilians victimized by Osama bin Laden's god-squad.
Only 13 days later on Public Broadcasting Stations, a seven-part, eight-hour event of grave importance was also witnessed by millions of Americans, but the pall of New York City, the Pentagon, and the Pennsylvania airline crashes overshadowed all other news. PBS with the aid of WGBH in Boston and Clear Blue Sky Productions televised one of the boldest assaults yet against our public schools and the millions of innocent victims - our school children.2
Both events have much in common. The public was unaware of the deliberate preparation that was schemed over the past few years to lead to these events. And while the public now understands from President Bush that "We're at War"3 with religious fanatics around the world, they don't have a clue that America is being attacked from within through its public schools by a militant religious movement called Darwinists.
"Come on!" you might exclaim. "You're blowing a whistle on American scientists, the very cream of human genius. What evidence do you have for such an outrageous accusation?" To which I say, let this blatant video series speak for it. And let its support documents tell you of mind control beyond anything yet seen in public education. "Evolution" is PBS's assault that's coming to your children's classroom - not soon but now.
The teaching of evolution in public schools isn't new. It was the focus of the "Monkey Trial" in 1925 when John Scopes was found guilty of violating the law by supposedly teaching evolution in a state school.4 Evolution as a philosophy went underground until the advent of Russia's launch of Sputnik in 1945 as the 7th episode points out. This space event opened the schoolyard to the first wave of ideological attack in the form of the Biological Science BSCS science texts for public schools. In 1958 the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study was dedicated to the improvement of biological education and is "generally credited with introducing extensive presentation of evolution while excluding scientific evidence for creation."5
A major theme and some threads for "Evolution" came from the philosophical fantasy of Daniel C. Dennett, Professor at Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts entitled "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" published in 1995. (6) Dennett imagines a dollop of "universal acid" that is so powerful that it can't be contained by any known vessel. It is a childhood concoction of his much like a chemical Godzilla that best explains what he thinks has happened since 1859. "Darwin's dangerous idea is that Design can emerge from mere Order via an algorithmic process that makes no use of pre-existing Mind." Put in more simple terms, Darwin imagined that instead of God creating all things because His Mind was sufficient to make it all happen from the top down, chaos created all things from the bottom up to man in a miraculous cosmic pyramid.
How could this be? It can be, writes Dennett because nature selects the best from the past and those survivors have an accumulated advantage to keep on creating new inventions from the lottery of innovations in each generation that can modify life, improve life, and even produce an evolving mind like unto the Mind of the mystical God, only this great and ever advancing mind is in man. Such an idea is at the heart of humanism.7 This "universal acid" then is Darwinism, an idea that can't be contained and is destroying all of the pre-Darwinian concepts (cause and effect, religion, morality, ethics, etc.) much the same way that the Copernican revolution totally changed the way man viewed the heavens. But is Darwinism really a religious idea?
Darwin died on April 21, 1882 and as the video narrator explains in Episode 7. His friends prevailed upon the Royal Society, House of Commons, and Dean of Westminster Abbey to bury him in the floor of that cathedral. These supporters wanted a state occasion with special anthem celebrating the vast social transformation that England was undergoing.
"Darwin's body was enshrined to the greater glory of these new professionals. For, he had naturalized creation and delivered human nature and human destiny into their hands. Society would never be the same. Darwin's vision of nature was, I believe, fundamentally a religious vision with which he ended his most famous work, On the Origin of Species."
Do you see any small parallel to the death of Darwin and that of Jesus? Darwin set the captives free from Biblical interpretation and turned them over to human hands (humanism) to perfect his legacy. And just what was that legacy? God didn't create man, but nature did so by means of amoeba to man evolution by way of the "Tree of Life."
"There is grandeur in this view of life with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved."8
Don't be deceived by that "breathed by the creator" phrase. At this point in his life (1859 and later), Darwin's atheism was under severe attack by the church of his day so he threw in a sop to his readers as if he somehow thought that God was still involved. He really didn't think so.9
In one eulogistic monolog, narrator Moore now elevates Darwin even higher than Jesus for He has no role in man's salvation but the creation in the form of "Darwin's Dangerous Idea" does it for Him. Too bad Jesus, you died for nothing. Can there be any doubt that this is an evolutionary moment when the Great High Prophet of the Humanistic Religion assumes his office, receives homage, and passes his vision on to the evangelists who proselytize those millions of victims that can't protect themselves and whose parents don't understand that another, quiet religious war has been declared on America from within.
Undermining Faith
Lest you think that this isn't a religious war of humanism against theism, let's now look at Episode 7. "What About God?" The narrator puts the sacrifice on the altar: "The majesty of our birth, the beauty of life. Are they the result of a natural process called evolution or the work of a divine creator? This question is at the heart of a struggle that threatened to tear our nation apart," says the narrator. Ken Ham appears on the scene to say, "I think it is a war. It is a real battle between world views." After panning his church seminar in Canton, Ohio and making him look like a huckster through editorial license, the producer unfolds two staged case studies that purport to be objective inquiry into the whole topic of Darwinism but in reality are examples of proselytizing and blocking in action.
Right before your eyes, you can see the destructive "universal acid" at work in undermining both a Christian University and three of its students because the students don't believe that the Bible is literally true and haven't been taught the true nature of humanism.
Wheaton College invited the attack by encouraging a double-minded professor to speak to their students. His message was that there is no problem in being both an orthodox Christian and Darwinist. Dr. Keith Miller, a Geology Professor from Kansas State University was asked to give the keynote address at a symposium on the fossil record and geological history. To no one's surprise he advocates the teaching of evolution and the centrality of evolution as a unifying theory of origins. He didn't find any conflict; he doesn't understand the facts underlying these two opposing religions. There are lots of transitional forms he declares. Some of the silent audience ask, name one and prove that it is. The narrator acknowledges that some students are still troubled after this one-sided presentation. Three students are followed in their developmental thought over time on this challenge to their faith. All three are swayed to an insecure position and acceptance of the propaganda. At least that is the edited version of the video that millions of Americans watched; such editing is seldom trustworthy.
In a second case, students at Jefferson High School in Lafayette, Indiana petitioned their school board to have special creation added to their science curriculum. Over half the student body and 35 members of the faculty supported their petition. "Teach us the facts and let us choose," they asked. They claimed that complex biological structures could not have arisen through natural selection at all, but had to be created by some higher intelligence. After three hours of deliberations, the board decided that creation science couldn't be taught under biology but possibly under the humanities. The religion of Darwinism doesn't violate separation of church and state but creation science does.
Behind the scenes, Dr. Eugenie Scott, Director of the National Center for Science Education (formerly the Committees of Correspondence on Evolution)10 was Available to help the Lafayette students' teacher, Steve Randek, fight off the petition. This is what Scott likes to do - defend evolution. Scott said that Justice Brennan wrote "that alternatives for evolution could be taught, if they have a scientific basis. So that they [creationists] could duck under the first amendment." Darwinists practice their religion in the schools under the first amendment. Since when does a scientific theory of any merit need a body guard to protect it from open inquiry? If the theory has substance, then it should be open to falsifiability and not duck under any amendment.
911 rang again. Did you pick up on it?
References
1. Cantlupe, Joe, "Author calls spouse from doomed plane", San Diego Tribune, September 12, 2001, A13.
2. Hutton, Richard, Executive Producer, The Evolution project, WGBH Boston, September 24-27, 2001
3. Thomas, Evan and Mark Hosenball, Bush: 'We're At War' Newsweek, September 24, 2001, 26.
4. Taylor, Ian T., In the Minds of Men, (Toronto: TFE Publishing, 1991), 232.
5. Bird, Wendell R., The Origin of Species Revisited, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1991), vol. II, 356.
6. Dennett, Daniel C., Darwin's Dangerous Idea, (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995), 83.
7. American Humanist Association, "Humanist Manifesto II," The Humanist, vol.33 (September/October 1973), 4-9.
8. Darwin, Charles, The Origin of Species, (Philadelphia: David McKay, Publisher), Sixth edition, 474'.
9. Taylor, Ian T., In the Minds of Men, (Toronto: TFE Publishing, 1991), 126.
10. Bird, Wendell R., The Origin of Species Revisited, (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, Inc., 1991), vol. II, 352.
I was rather disappointed in the factual mistakes in the article as well. Sputnik, for example, was launched in 1957, not 1945. And it's Ted Olson, not Tom Olson. A few minutes of fact checking might have saved them a few errors.
Here's what's the NCSE thinks of their comparisons:
To compare an act of that resulted in so many deaths with a TV series is outrageous. It does show, however, how low the ICR are prepared to go in their desparate attempts to link 'Darwinism' with any possible kind of evil they can.
Loonies.
If you want to get up to date, check out Access Research Network
It is hard to imagine the average modern student sitting through a series controlled by nineteen fifties “gee whiz” scientism.
Sadly, Public Television which often imitates television evangelists right down to the pledge drives still does not get it right. Gantry was never dull.
America is being attacked from within through its public schools by a militant religious movement called Darwinists.
Deranged creationists are so totally detached from reality that they can't see the similarity between themselves and the Taliban. Indeed, the only difference between the fools at ICR and the Taliban is that the latter whackos have political power, and are -- for now -- free to kill those who don't share their insane worldview. But if the ICR crowd had the chance, does anyone doubt that they'd behave more or less the same?
Idealistically, I would hope not. I did not want to make the same parallels that you just did, merely because I felt I was stooping to their level to do so. My hopes are that they would not stoop thus, simply because I have at least some hope for fundamentalist Christianity.
My wife is joining my church (Roman Catholic) and I am attending classes with her as moral support. The sister who spoke last night pointed out one of the main differences between the Catholic church and some Protestant churches was in their interpretation of the Bible. The Catholics see the Bible as a message from God -- it cannot be taken literally when it comes to history or science. Many Protestants see the Bible as literal historically and scientifically -- even though such views are untenable, to say the least.
The above article strikes me as a desperate cry for attention from a scientifically illiterate perspective. When it comes to scientific understanding most fundamentalist Protestant Christians are indistinguishable from fundamentalist Moslems -- the only difference being the latter are willing to slaughter people to get their point across, whereas the former would simply like to outlaw anything which might contradict orthodoxy.
That's not much of a difference. How do you think the laws would be enforced, if evolution and other science were outlawed here in the West? To me, the only difference is that one group of whackos (Islamic fundamentalism) is in already power, and the other (our own, home-grown young earth creationism) isn't -- yet. Like you, I hope that the Christian form of fundamentalism, when in power, would be more benign than the Islamic variety. But I wouldn't want to bet on it.
My comment is that science isn't decided by majority rule. If the creationists and IDers have alternate theories, they should publish them in peer reviewed biological science journals. They don't, because their ideas don't add up, and certainly don't supplant evolution.
Hey, stop that. Don't you know the Taliban is a faith-based organization, too? ....
Ooooops!
What evidence do you have for Protestants trying to outlaw anything that contradicts their orthodoxy? And no, I'm not a fundamentalist Protestant.
If you're referring to the decision of the Kansas state school board, there was no "outlawing" of anything there. Their decision was to remove the requirement for testing students for knowledge of macroevolution. It did not outlaw teaching anything. (It did not outlaw anything, for that matter.)
I've said this before, and I'll say it again. The only differences (in principle) among the different fundamentalist movements are: 1) the deity, 2) the prophet, 3) the scripture, and occasionally 4) the language. Everything else is window dressing.
As for the Christian variety being more benign, the historical evidence doesn't bode well: The Spanish Inquisition, hanging of Witches in Salem, MA, and most recently, the murderous behavior of the Christian Falangist militia in Lebanon are not exactly ringing examples of religious tolerance and restraint.
I'm REALLY, REALLY tired of Christian bashers' use of the "hanging of the Witches in Salem" as an example of Christian violence and intolerance.
The witch trials were conducted, and the sentences executed, by the SECULAR authorities.
By contrast, it was the RELIGIOUS authorities who put a STOP to the witch hysteria.
The hysteria was fomented primarily by a group of teen-aged girls. And we know how bizarre they can be.
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