Posted on 07/05/2004 7:40:31 PM PDT by Zender500
When my fiftieth birthday arrived in 1990, just before the publication of Darwin on Trial, my wife Kathie organized two surprise birthday parties, one in the morning for our Presbyterian church Bible study fellowship, and the other in the afternoon for my University of California law school faculty colleagues. Each party had its own specially decorated birthday cake. For the church group, the cartoon on the frosting was of the young David (me) slaying the giant Goliath (Darwinism).
Kathie thought that a more ironic theme would be appropriate for the secular professors, most of whom weren’t sure what to make of my emerging notoriety as the scourge of Darwinism, and so the afternoon cake displayed Don Quixote tilting at windmills. Almost fifteen years later, those two birthday cakes still pose an unavoidable question about the prospects of the intelligent design movement. Are we slaying giants, or tilting at windmills?
Can we possibly succeed in slaying the gigantic error at which we have aimed our logical slingshot, and thereby liberate the people of God from their bondage to the Philistine philosophy of scientific naturalism? Sometimes the mission we have undertaken seems almost impossible, because the Darwinists are backed by the financial power of the federal government and the major foundations, plus the cultural power of the academic elite and the national media.
Those are pretty mighty windmills, and they put out a lot of wind. Cultural mandarins with that kind of backing can misrepresent scientific challengers as religious fanatics yearning to impose a theocracy, and they can impose censorship and thought control while portraying themselves in their own newspapers, television programs, and classrooms as voices of reason standing up for religious liberty and honest science. In a word, the manipulators can get away with a lot of lying, and they take full advantage of the opportunity.
The continual exploitation of the Inherit the Wind myth of the 1925 Scopes trial is an egregious example. The real Scopes trial was an ACLU publicity stunt, in which nobody’s liberty or job was at stake. The famous play, which is regularly revived in theaters across America and even in Britain, converts this farce into a moving tale of vicious persecution by Christian ministers that bears little resemblance to what actually happened. The Hollywood movie of the play is still frequently shown to public school science classes for the purpose of teaching the students to associate evolution with freedom and divine creation with repression.
Darwinism’s Failure
Dr. Goebbels would have been impressed to see what propaganda can accomplish even in a democracy, where citizens are legally free to protest. If a cultural elite has sufficient control of the news media and the textbooks, it can marginalize disfavored opinions by confining them in categories that effectively label them as unworthy of serious consideration.
The Darwinists have the media and the money on their side, but the challengers increasingly have the science. I wish we could resolve our dispute with the Darwinists by scientific experiments, rather than having to spend most of our energies and resources battling to escape from a pejorative stereotype. In fact, the experiments have been done, and they show that, despite more than a century of prodigious efforts, no natural mechanism capable of producing significant biological transformations has ever been observed. After all the desperate efforts to confirm Darwin’s theory, the record of failure is strong evidence that no such mechanism exists.
This is not surprising, once one understands that such a mechanism would need to accomplish not just change, but information creation on a colossal scale. Biologists who believe that the Darwinian mechanism can account for the extreme complexity and diversity of life hold that belief not because of what they have observed in their microscopes and in their experiments, but in spite of everything they know of biology from empirical observation and testing.
Fifty years ago, biologists and chemists confidently expected that newly discovered evidence would fix any deficiencies in the Darwinian model of evolution. If the theory were true, that probably would have happened. Instead, the Darwinists are losing some of their best textbook examples, including the fraudulent drawings of embryonic similarities and the staged photographs of moths on tree trunks. When new discoveries are made—like the recent discovery that non-coding regions of DNA are not “junk,” as Darwinists had assumed, but have important biological functions—they tend to expose new problems for the ruling theory or reveal that old problems remain unsolved.
I have on my desk an impressive collection of scientific articles by prominent biologists, titled Origination of Organismal Form. The Introduction describes organismal form as the “forgotten cause in evolutionary theory,” which is a bit like saying that gravity is the forgotten cause in physics. The editors go on to describe many open questions, which amount in toto to an acknowledgment that nothing much is known about how the forms of organisms originate. A perceptive critic observed long ago that “Darwin explained the survival of species but not the arrival of species.”
Just about anything related to “origination” is still a mystery to those who derive their conclusions from scientific evidence rather than from materialist philosophy or “just so” storytelling. Honest evolutionary biologists who want to survive in the profession have to be sufficiently circumspect that they can describe the evidence accurately, while carefully avoiding saying anything so unmistakably anti-Darwinian that they risk being shunned as traitors to the tribe.
Writings that convey a message of overall skepticism are common in mainstream biology, but the authors try to put a vaguely Darwinian spin on their findings wherever they can. They are resentful if creationists or other unbelievers quote their admissions to score points against Darwinism, even when the quotations are accurate and in context. To be fingered as one who has aided the enemy is not good for one’s career in biology. Edward Sisson in this issue has it right: Evolutionary biologists play the role of a hardball litigation firm that has taken on scientific naturalism as a client, and will do whatever it takes to win its case. When scientists become single-minded advocates for a holy cause, then what they produce is known as “junk science.”
Darwinism’s Demise
I am convinced that the factor that makes it extremely difficult to discredit Darwinism today is the very factor that ensures the theory’s demise in the not very distant future. The crucial factor is that the cultural stakes are colossal. If Darwinism were to disappear tomorrow, experimental science would be unaffected, except insofar as the prestige of the ruling biologists might suffer so much that their funding would drop.
The importance of Darwinism is cultural, not scientific. The power of the Darwinian myth over modernist minds is so complete that reasoning in all subjects, including law, literature, ethics, and sometimes even theology, has to start from the assumption that God is out of the picture. The prestige of most of the professors and pundits who have cognitive authority in our culture depends on the public’s acquiescence in the materialist creation myth that Darwin is thought to have proved. That means that there are many clever and wealthy people who have an overwhelming interest in preserving the regnant creation story and demonizing its critics.
It also means that there are many clever and hungry people who have a motive for wanting to topple the ruling mythology and replace it with something that better fits their sense of what is ultimately real. When the hungry clever people finally understand their opportunity, Darwinism will join its cousins Marxism and Freudianism in the dustbin of intellectual history. Won’t that take the cake?
rather than having to spend most of our energies and resources battling to escape from a pejorative stereotype.
The ACLU did not prosecute Snopes.
The Scopes Trial had its origins in a conspiracy at Fred Robinson's drugstore in Dayton. George Rappalyea, a 31-year-old transplanted New Yorker and local coal company manager, arrived at the drugstore with a copy of a paper containing an American Civil Liberties Union announcement that it was willing to offer its services to anyone challenging the new Tennessee anti-evolution statute. Rappalyea, a modernist Methodist with contempt for the new law, argued to other town leaders that a trial would be a way of putting Dayton on the map. Listening to Rappalyea, the others--including School Superintendent Walter White--became convinced that publicity generated by a controversial trial might help their town, whose population had fallen from 3,000 in the 1890's to 1,800 in 1925.
The conspirators summoned John Scopes, a twenty-four-year old general science teacher and part-time football coach, to the drugstore. As Scopes later described the meeting, Rappalyea said, "John, we've been arguing and I said nobody could teach biology without teaching evolution." Scopes agreed. "That's right," he said, pulling a copy of Hunter's Civic Biology--the state-approved textbook--from one of the shelves of the drugstore (the store also sold school textbooks). "You've been teaching 'em this book?" Rappalyea asked. Scopes replied that while filling in for the regular biology teacher during an illness, he had assigned readings on evolution from the book for review purposes. "Then you've been violating the law," Rappalyea concluded. "Would you be willing to stand for a test case?" he asked. Scopes agreed. He later explained his decision: "the best time to scotch the snake is when it starts to wiggle." Herbert and Sue Hicks, two local attorneys and friends of Scopes, agreed to prosecute.
Rappalyea initially wanted science fiction writer H. G. Wells to head the defense team. "I am sure that in the interest of science Mr. Wells will consent," Rappalyea predicted. Wells had no interest in taking the case, but others did. John Neal, an eccentric law school dean from Knoxville, drove to Dayton and volunteered to represent Scopes. When William Jennings Bryan offered to join the prosecution team--despite having not practiced law in over thirty years--, Clarence Darrow, approaching seventy, jumped to join the battle in Dayton. Darrow was not the first choice of the ACLU, who was concerned that Darrow's zealous agnosticism might turn the trial into a broadside attack on religion.The ACLU first preferred former presidential candidates John W. Davies and Charles Evans Hughes, but neither was willing to serve alongside Darrow. Instead, it dispatched Arthur Garfield Hays, a prominent free speech advocate, to join the defense team. The final member of the defense team was Dudley Field Malone, an international divorce attorney (and another volunteer who the ACLU might have preferred to stay at home). Completing the prosecution team in Dayton were present and former attorneys general for Eastern Tennessee, A. T. Stewart and Ben B. McKenzie, and Bryan's son, federal prosecutor William Jennings Bryan, Jr.
Only the blue-billed snopes of the Everglades. The others were not on the endangered species list.
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LOL, good catch!They are resentful if creationists or other unbelievers quote their admissions to score points against Darwinism, even when the quotations are accurate and in context.
LOL! I like the quote "even when the quotations are accurate and in context." Emphasis on the word "even" meaning most of the time they are when they quote they are often inaccurate and out of context
And the Schickelgruber did not gas people.
Andrew, Andrew, Andrew. There's just no pleasing you. If Darrow had won the Snopes trial, you'd be mad about that. Instead, he lost, and you're still mad.
That's irrational.
You are projecting. I'm not mad about anything. I am merely stating what appear to be facts.
Oh, you just mentioned Hitler for no particular reason at all?
No it was for effect. I suppose most people know that the Schickelgruber did not actually murder the millions, but those murders no doubt lay at his feet. The ACLU may not have prosecuted Scopes, but the trial apparently lies at their feet.
Are you arguing that William Jennins Bryan put on a show trial for the ACLU?
No, I am relating that WJB participated in a show trial caused by the ACLU.
Sorry, it takes two to tango, and two sides for a lawsuit. No matter how bad the defense wanted the case, without a prosecutor, no prosecution.
Methinks what irks you is that the mainstream coverage of the case makes creationists looks bad. I have no real idea why, I think Jennings is portrayed with honesty, in a way which reflects well on creationism. Far better than most of the creationists who post (or have posted) on Free Republic.
Darrow, of course, is portrayed as a superstar, but he sort of was one. Egomaniac, too, of course.
I was watching "The Witches of Eastwick" again last night, which my husband hates because he thinks it portrays Christians in a bad light. I have to say I disagree, everything Felicia (the editor's wife) said happened to be true, and I thought she was actually better looking than Cher, Susan Saranwrap, or Michelle Pfeiffer.
I have no idea how many Americans are Young Earth Creationists, but it's not really a popularity contest out there is the public eye. Your side wins all the battles when it makes the movies, and my side wins all the battles when it makes the movies. As is often said, the victors decide what happened when the history books are written. My sense is that my side is winning, I suspect yours differs.
For sure, we've got the high ground in the mainstream.
Did you read the story on my link? Herbert and Sue Hicks, two local attorneys and friends of Scopes, agreed to prosecute.
Again, you are projecting. I am not irked, upset, or emotionally attached to the trial in any fashion. I merely am repeating what seems to be factual material. We have had a similar trial(show trial) recently. Michael Newdow lost because of his attempt at a show trial. What is disturbing, in this case, is that it took the Supreme Court to decide a simple matter of legal standing.
I think the phrase you are looking for, the mot juste, is "test case," not "show trial." "Show trial" implies that nothing was at stake. "Test case" means someone decides to test the law.
At any rate, Bryan is the one who set the case into motion. He was the one who promoted the law that was passed prohibiting teaching of evolution.
Uhh, you were the one that first used the term "show trial". And by your argument, you would blame the legislators and others for setting a murder case against Kevorkian into motion!?
I asked if you were arguing it was a show trial, and you said yes.
I see you are conceding that the legislature wrote the law, and Scopes broke the law, so it seems to me that logically, you have no reason to blame the trial on the ACLU, which did not write the law nor break the law nor prosecute the case. In fact, they didn't even hire Clarence Darrow, he horned in for the publicity.
The prevalence of evolution as an explanation in the natural sciences owes its place to the fact its a parsimonious account of processes in the natural world shorn of "attractive" features. This is not to say there is no God or Creator. Rather, life can be simply explained as operating in accordance with natural laws. As for the issue or the origin or the creation of life, that is best left to the theologian and philosopher to speculate on.
No you did not. You asked "Are you arguing that William Jennins Bryan put on a show trial for the ACLU?".
I see you are conceding that the legislature wrote the law, and Scopes broke the law, so it seems to me that logically, you have no reason to blame the trial on the ACLU, which did not write the law nor break the law nor prosecute the case.
I don't need to concede anything, that is how a republic functions(legislatures writing laws). Most certainly the ACLU was the impetus to the trial as this link also states http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/trials1.htm
There are numerous instances of laws passed, then broken, and no trial ensues.
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