Using Religion to Suppress Debate on Evolution

The Washington Post ^ | March 27, 2009 | John G. West

[GodGunsGuts]

Using Religion to Suppress Debate on Evolution

By John G. West Senior Fellow, Discovery Institute

Evolution was back in the headlines this week as the Texas State Board of Education voted 13-2 to require students to "analyze and evaluate" major evolutionary concepts such as common ancestry, natural selection, and mutations, as well as adopting a critical thinking standard calling on students to "critique" and examine "all sides of scientific evidence."

The vote was a loss for defenders of evolution who had pushed the Board to strip the "analyze and evaluate" language from the evolution standards and gut the overall critical thinking standard.

Evolutionists typically cast themselves as the champions of secular reason against superstition, but in Texas they tried to inject religion into the debate at every turn.

Indeed, this past week it seemed that they couldn't stop talking about religion. They boasted about their credentials as Sunday School teachers and church elders. They quoted the Bible and appealed to theology...

[hunter112]

The truth of what Newt says is evidenced by what happened after Darwin's "Origin" was published.

Wow, good point, before Darwin, everybody was always nice to everybody else.

Do I need a sarcasm tag?

[Fichori]

“Which means????? You and your super-long acronyms!”

In Before The ‘Evolution and Christianity are perfectly compatible’

[GodGunsGuts]

LOL!

[RobbyS]

Well, his second books makes it clear that he was. He himself admitted he was not a good theorist, so he just followed his followers.

[Gordon Greene]

“In Before The ‘Evolution and Christianity are perfectly compatible’”

Any chance they will leave us to this one small victory... just this once?

[GodGunsGuts]

==And they will do anything to keep from being labeled what they are: Religious zealots.

Bingo!

[RobbyS]

What happened before was child’s play with what has happened since.

[editor-surveyor]

"Any chance they will leave us to this one small victory... just this once?"

Naw, he'll be around any minute!

[wendy1946]

Sorry, the original link appears to have died since the last time I looked at it.

[Gordon Greene]

“Naw, he’ll be around any minute!”

Wait for it... wait for it...

DANG! It’s time for me to go to bed and the fun’s not started yet!

[Gordon Greene]

Looking forward to reading up tomorrow.

Keep the faith, my friend

[editor-surveyor]

G’nite mate!

[Alamo-Girl]

Thanks for the ping!

[AndyTheBear]

Interesting post. But I have a nit pick:

Seems like you are assuming Naturalism to be the inevatable conclusion of evolution.

If so I disagree.

I will grant that Naturalism needs Evolution or it fails. For Naturalism to be true, there must be a way for inorganic matter to become organic matter without supernatural intervention. However, I, as many others, think this is plausible and thus not the best grounds for rejecting Naturalism.

But it is not remotely true that if you accept Evolution you must accept Naturalism, for Naturalism also requires that inorganic stuff (matter and energy--all the stuff of nature) came from nothing else. This is not remotely plausible when one takes the time to reason it out. Thus Naturalism fails to rencocile itself to reason. Moreover it also fails other ways. for instance it can not be reconciled with the existance of experience--something we all have inately and constantly.

For the sake of argument though, let us assume you are correct and Evolution is false. I still think it is an ineffective mechanism for freeing the mind from Naturalism. When I was an agnostic, such a focus didn't help me at all. The arguments that freed my mind were based on conscious experience, and on the existance of stuff...things that were so obvious I needed to rely on no-one else's authority to ge the basic facts straight. I think these are the proofs that God gave to the skeptics like myself.

[GodGunsGuts]

You to! All the best—GG plus a G :o)

[Fichori]

“Any chance they will leave us to this one small victory... just this once?”

I don't count on them leaving us anything.

We want victory, we go take it.

(hint: they aren't as smart as they think they are)

[hunter112]

What happened before was child’s play with what has happened since.

I don't believe that, and if it seems so, it's only because we've got better weapons. The Roman Empire could have done much more with gunpowder than it was able to do with mere steel.

[GodGunsGuts]

No problem. I really got excited there for a minute. It’s not often that I run into a new creation site I have never heard of before!

[GodGunsGuts]

That’s the key. We waaaayyyy outnumber them, and they know it (that’s why they’re they’re going to such great lengths to pretend they’re friendly to religion).

[Inappropriate Laughter]

Newt Gingrich once stated the problem of evolutionism and morality about as succinctly as is possible in noting that the question of whether a man views his neighbor as a fellow child of God or as a meat byproduct of random processes simply has to affect human relationships. Once stated where? Here's Newt's actual views on the record:

---

If you'd gone into science instead of politics, where do you think you would have ended up?
I would have been a naturalist. Edward O. Wilson is probably the closest to my model. I really love paleontology and animals and plants and the complexity of ecosystems.

Do you view evolution as "just a theory" or as the best explanation for how we came to be?
Evolution certainly seems to express the closest understanding we can now have. But it's changing too. The current tree of life is not anything like a 19th-century Darwinian tree. We're learning a lot about how systems evolve and don't evolve. Cockroaches became successful several hundred million years ago and just stopped evolving.