OWH & Evolution

Perhaps the best argument for teaching the Bible to your children - hey, get them out of the public schools fast! - is the manifest blindness, blasphemy, and bigotry evidenced by the World Herald editorial of July 24th, “Let There Be Light The editorial is one of those rare object lessons that parents would do well to clip from their paper. Then, they can tell their children, “If you don’t read the Bible, you will grow up to be this ignorant, and all the literate, educated people in the world will laugh at you.”

It is both surprising and instructive for us to realize that this is the official position of the newspaper on both evolution, and the Scriptures.

Blindness
I say “blindness" advisedly, and it covers both science and Bible.

It has historically been the case in the English-speaking world– and still is – that a man ignorant of the Scriptures is truly illiterate. The pretentious and high-minded tone of the editorial only serves to heighten the embarrassment it is to our entire community, insofar as the World herald is a dominant and locally monopolistic print medium.

First, as anyone even slightly familiar with the subject will tell you, "science" is the study of how things go on. It involves the process of examination we call "empiricism", and therefore is the compilation of assertions, facts, and conclusions based on observation. One may not empirically conclude about the origin of a thing by observing the way it goes on. One may posit (hypothesize) how he thinks something behaves, and then construct a theory of that behavior, but in order for the theory to be accepted as valid, it must not be contradicted EVER, and it must WORK. That is to say, one must be able to take a theory, predict results, and with them to persuade a qualified observer. Reproducing the results consistently is one way to be persuasive. Evolutionists have done none of that even to explain the way things go on, let alone the impossible task of infering an origin.

Take any simple item concerning which you may observe many details, like your watch. You may observe the way it functions, and assay all the elementary materials from which is it composed. You may construct a hypothesis and a theory that it moves uniformly in time, and even prove such a theory. But from that information you cannot safely infer, or come anywhere near accurately guessing the processes and tooling used to manufacture it.

So the empirical method is not useful for inferring origins, and the study of the origin of creation is not called "evolution" but "cosmogony." It is comprised of all matter of wild speculation, and is nowhere properly called science. It was a pastime of speculative Jews and also of the ancient Greeks, who, according to Paul the apostle, had nothing to do but sit around on Mars Hill, and speculate concerning some new thing.

Cosmogony speculation was fundamental to the ancient Gnosticism that crept in early to pollute Christianity, and posed all manner of notions about aeons and endless genealogies that were of no profit whatsoever. One may be confident that in that system of lunacy, someone probably suggested common - probably angelic - ancestors to men and animals. Anything that will deny the bible truth that "in the image of God created He him, male and female created He them," is acceptable in such a system.

Furthermore, no scientist - even one despising the Scriptures of God as the editorial author does - would identify himself with the thought (or lack of it) that the evolution discussion is about “solid science”. Even purely secular thinkers - themselves willfully ignorant concerning the creation - would not class “evolution” thus, even if they mistakenly beloved it to be scientific enquiry at all. And they certainly would not confuse “natural selection” - which is science - with the “theory” of evolution. After all, natural selection is a statistical scientific law.

Time and space would limit taking up the foolish discussion the writer opens when he suggests that there does not need to be evidence of intermediate forms of life connecting man and the make-believe “theoretical” ancestor for the “theory” to hold true, and yet claims “central to the case for evolution is that it works over millions or billions of years.” If the process is slow and imperceptible, then some intermediate state of “ancestor” is only reasonable. But forget that for a minute: What sort of science is it to say “millions” or “billions” of years when one is at least a thousand times more than the other? Don't we require “science” to be a bit more precise than that? If Plancke’s constant were variable by even a fraction, all matter would collapse into itself.

Second, the W-H editorial writer is also completely ignorant of what the Bible teaches, because he claims that those who believe in the plenary verbal inspiration of Scripture “insist that about 4,000 years ago, the Deity created human beings and the rest of the world in six days - period.” Now, I personally believe the Bible is the Word of God in inspired form, fully, and verbally (which is to say it is complete, and word-for-word). I have met with literally scores of divergent views concerning the Bible, especially the first chapter. But I have NEVER heard anyone who reads the Bible at all - Christian, Jew, or atheist - suggest that God created man 4,000 years ago.

Everything in the Bible would indicate that Abraham begat Isaac roughly 4,000 years ago, and that is approximately 350 years after the deluge that Noah survived. The deluge is in turn MEASUREABLY 1,656 years after Adam, according to the Bible. “OK,” you might say, “So the guy makes a mistake, and says 4,000 instead of 6,000.” He made that mistake in front of hundreds of thousands of people and with ample time to research it, and with ample opportunity to edit it. A person so careless as this is likely playing fast and loose with the other facts as well. And he is. Good grief, not only do we have bad science, but AWFUL Journalism!

Bigotry In fact, the journalism is SO BAD , that one suspects bigotry. And serious bigotry at that.

The writer labels those who fault evolution “theory” as faulty science as being liars, or those who do not understand science at best. The very tone of the editorial belies any sort of fairmindedness or even rational discourse, and should be taken as a serious warning to be vigilant concerning those who weild influence in our commmunity, especially the Omaha World Herald.

The writer further misleads us greatly concerning the law of our state in education. He may suggest that a well-rounded economics student understands communism. But it is not LAW that a student does so. It is not a mandated piece of elementary or secondary curriculum. Neither should the teaching of evolution be a law, legislative or administrative. (On the other hand, the teaching of the fallacies of Nazism IS the law of our state, for instance, but it isn't being taught.)

There is much more to be said here: concerning the issue of our children's education, the courage of our Attorney General, the manifest bigotry and hatred of Christian thought exhibited continually by the World Herald editorial editor. Underneath the tone, the false assertions, and the bad science is the innuendo that those of us who belive the literality, inerrancy, inspiration, and completeness of the Scriptures are somehow unscientific buffoons. That is good Marxist Leninism, but is still innacurate and ignorant.

Perhaps we could observe the views of better men from a better time:

William Gladstone, four times prime minister of Britain, and perhaps the greatest legal mind in the English-speaking world, said at the turn of the 19th century that he had “been associated with sixty of the master minds of the century, and all but five of the sixty were Christians.”

Michael Faraday, perhaps the greatest empiricist of the 19th century, and the man who is credited with laying the foundations of classical field theory prior to our own civil war said, “Why will people go astray when they have this blessed book of God (the Bible) to guide them?”

Sir Isaac Newton, perhaps the greatest scientist in human history, who, among other things, discovered the universal law of gravitation, the composition of white light, particle theory, and helped form the basis for modern quantum mechanics, said: “If the Bible is true, the time is coming when men shall travel at 50 miles an hour.”

Blasphemy To top it off, the writer appropriates to himself Scripture itself to headline his editorial. He is fortunate to live in an ostensibly Christian nation (no thanks to him), because such blashemy might cost him his life if he did such to, say, the Koran. Of course it is Jesus Christ who died for his sins, and not Mohammed.

Voltaire, the French philosopher and leader of the so-called enlightenment, commented cynically on Newton's Bible study, and prediction, saying, ironically, “Poor Isaac. He was in his dotage when he made that prophecy. It only shows what Bible study will do to an otherwise scientific mind.”

Later, in his last breaths, Voltaire was said to have screamed in terror into a Christless eternity, while his dispossessed homestead became the house of a Bible printing press.