Posted on 02/14/2007 2:07:15 PM PST by Tim Long
There is scant reporting on the anti-religious zeal with which many atheists promote Darwinism.
February 12 used to be known in classrooms across the nation as Abraham Lincoln’s birthday. But over the last decade, an increasing number of schools and community groups have decided to celebrate the birthday of the father of evolution instead.
The movement to establish February 12 as “Darwin Day” seems to be spreading, promoted by a evangelistic non-profit group with its own website (www.darwinday.org) and an ambitious agenda to create a “global celebration in 2009, the bicentennial of Darwin’s birth and the 150th anniversary of the publication of The Origins of Species.”
Darwin Day celebrations provide an eye-opening glimpse into the world of grassroots Darwinian fundamentalism, an alternate reality where atheism is the conventional wisdom and where traditional religious believers are viewed with suspicion if not paranoia.
Promoters of Darwin Day deny that their activities are anti-religious, but their denial is hard to square with reality.
According to the Darwin Day website, the movement’s inspiration was an event sponsored by the Stanford Humanists and the Humanist Community in 1995. Since then the honor roll of groups sponsoring Darwin Day events has been top-heavy with organizations bearing such names as the “Long Island Secular Humanists,” the “Atheists and Agnostics of Wisconsin,” the “Gay and Lesbian Atheists and Humanists,” the “Humanists of Idaho,” the “Southeast Michigan Chapter of Freedom from Religion Foundation,” and the “San Francisco Atheists.” The last group puts on an annual festival called “Evolutionpalooza” featuring a Darwin impersonator and an evolution game show (“Evolutionary!”).
Given such sponsors, it should be no surprise that Darwin Day events often explicitly attack religion. At a high school in New York a few years ago, students wore shirts emblazoned with messages proclaiming that “no religious dogmas [were] keeping them from believing what they want to believe,” while in California a group named “Students for Science and Skepticism” hosted a lecture at the University of California, Irvine, on the topic “Darwin’s Greatest Discovery: Design without a Designer.” This year in Boston there is an event on “Biological Arguments Against the Existence of God.”
A musical group calling itself “Scientific Gospel Productions,” meanwhile, mocks gospel music by holding annual Darwin Day concerts featuring such songs as “Ain’t Gonna Be No Judgment Day,” the “Virgin of Spumoni” (satirizing the Virgin Mary), and my favorite, “Randomness Is Good Enough for Me,” the lyrics of which proclaim: “Randomness is good enough for me./ If there’s no design it means I’m free./ You can pray to go to heaven./ I’m gonna try to roll a seven./ Randomness is good enough for me.” The same group’s website offers for sale a CD titled “Hallelujah! Evolution!”
The original “honorary president” of Darwin Day was biologist Richard Dawkins, author most recently of The God Delusion. Dawkins is best known for such pearls of wisdom as “faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate,” and “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.”
The Darwin Day group’s current advisory board includes not only Dawkins but Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education (an original signer of the “Humanist Manifesto III”), philosopher Daniel Dennett (who praises Darwinism as the “universal acid” that eats away traditional religion and morality), and Scientific American columnist Michael Shermer (an atheist who writes that “Science Is My Savior” because it helped free him from “the stultifying dogma of a 2,000-year-old religion”).
Perhaps in an effort to revise the image of Darwin Day as merely a holiday for atheists, last year a professor from Wisconsin urged churches to celebrate “Evolution Sunday” on or near Darwin Day. But the fact that some liberal churches have now been enlisted to spread the Darwinist gospel cannot cover up the anti-religious fervor that pervades the Darwinist subculture.
Darwin Day celebrations are fascinating because they expose a side of the controversy over evolution in America that is rarely covered by the mainstream media. Although journalists routinely write about the presumed religious motives of anyone critical of unguided evolution, they almost never discuss the anti-religious mindset that motivates many of evolution’s staunchest defenders.
On the few occasions when the anti-religious agenda of someone like Dawkins is even raised, it is usually downplayed as unrepresentative of most Darwinists.
What Darwin Day shows, however, is just how ordinary the anti-religious views expressed by Dawkins are among grassroots Darwinists. Far from being on the fringe, Dawkins’ views form the ideological core of mainstream Darwinism.
Not that this should come as a shock. According to a 1998 survey of members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS), nearly 95 percent of NAS biologists are atheists or agnostics. A look at the major critics of the theory of intelligent design reveals similar views. Barbara Forrest, co-author of the anti-intelligent design harangue Creationism’s Trojan Horse, is a long-time activist and board member with a group calling itself the “New Orleans Secular Humanist Association,” although she fails to disclose that fact in her book, and reporters studiously avoid asking her about her own religious beliefs.
The anti-religious outlook of many of Darwin’s chief boosters exposes the hypocrisy in current discussions over Darwin’s theory. The usual complaint raised against scientists who are skeptical of Darwin’s theory is that many of them (like the vast majority of Americans) happen to believe in God. It is insinuated that this fact somehow undermines the validity of their scientific views. Yet, at the same time, defenders of Darwinism insist that their own rejection of religion is irrelevant to the validity of their scientific views—and most reporters seem to agree.
Of course, in an important sense these defenders of Darwinism are right. Just because leading Darwinists are avowed atheists or agnostics does not mean that their scientific beliefs about evolution are wrong. Scientific propositions should be debated based on their evidence, not on the metaphysical beliefs of those who espouse them.
But if Darwinists have the right to be debated based on evidence, not motives, then scientists who are supportive of alternatives to Darwin’s theory such as intelligent design should have the right to expect the same treatment.
If Darwin Day helps expose the blatant double standard about religious motives operating in the current evolution debate, then its evangelistic boosters will have performed an invaluable public service—however unintentionally.
—John G. West is a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute and author of Darwin’s Conservatives: The Misguided Quest.
It would probably make your head explode to learn that millions of devout Christians accept evolution as a valid scientific theory.
Yes. The Rain is either natural (condensed water vapor), or supernatural (God made the rain). It can't possibly be both.
Are you an idiot? How can you belive the garbage you post? Is your world-view so fragile?
Based upon your scholarly work and careful study of evolutionary theory, could you kindly point out the part that suggests that modern apes (or monkeys as you call them) should be expected to evolve into humans? Nothing I have read or been taught has ever suggested that creatures leave successful niches unless there is a compelling force or untapped opportunity waiting to be exploited.
Oh, so you believe only Protestants go to Heaven then and all Catholics are going to Hell or am I wrong?
There is intolerance of religion right here on FR, in most creation vs. evolution threads. There's one running right now. There are radical atheists who post on FR, saying things completely indistinguishable from what you would find on a leftist forum, and making statements just like those cited in the OP.
I've posted Dawkins' quotes in the past. Please don't make me look them up again. :>)
Go to the source web site, www.darwinday.org, and show me where the anti-religious talk is. I'll be waiting for some kind of trash mouth writing like the two blogers John Edwards hired.
I'll be waiting.
"I am intolerant of intolerance, and it's the creationists attacking science who are on the wrong side of this issue."
So does that make you intolerant? Sounds like it to me.
It's almost as good as "Darwin’s Greatest Discovery: Design without a Designer". By definition, this quote completely contradicts itself. A Design, by definition, requires a Designer.
***Then came the "creation science" movement in the 1980's, and my respect for Christianity started downhill.***
You made your choice live with it. What do you care about the church after letting your Christianity go down hill.
Who cares what Dawkins said? I disagree with Dawkins and will regardless of how many quotes of his you post.
I have to admit that I actively try hard not to disbelieve Christianity because of the deceitful "creation science" charlatans. I used to take their claims on trust alone...but when I started to look at them as a scientist--as critically as I examined other scientific claims--I realized how absurdly poor they were. I also realized there were obvious attempts to deceive non-scientists into believing the scientific evidence supported creationism. It seemed to conflict badly with the proscription of "bearing false witness."
Do the lies of creation scientists mean that creationism is false? No. But there sure isn't much evidence for it when you strip away the lies. :-(
No. Are you? I'm not the one who believes an impossible religious view presented as science.
I happen to be a practicing Catholic and take it as a truth that Jesus, as a man, had the same common ancestry through evolution that we all have. Yes, the human Jesus was a product of evolution just as we all are.
So Republicans and conservatives don't want our votes. Ok. Fine.
The sad thing is that this junk was published in National Review. I didn't know they were a religious doctrine magazine.
"When conservatives chase away people who are scientifically literate, do you think there will be enough creationists left to win a vote?"
Most of the dogmatic, fanatic evolutionists and people who bad-mouth Christians are on the Demonrat-leftist-Marxist side of the fence anyway.
So creationists don't like Catholic voters either.
It will surely be President Hillary! then.
Jesus help...I'm off this thread...nothing but a bunch of hee-haws here....
Dawkins is a leading evolutionist, and he says that rational people realize that if a natural process like evolution is true, then there is no need for any God.
He boils it down to them versus us. If it's "A," then it cannot be "B."
I tend to agree with him. The God that emerges from theistic evolution is hardly a god, and is more a Star Trek master race.
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