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`Evolution' Loses Its Grip |
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by Paul Craig Roberts The Kansas State Board of Education courageously stood up to the evolution lobby Aug. 11 and denied it a monopoly on explaining the origin of life to schoolchildren in public schools. This is a good development for which we all should give thanks regardless of whether we are religious or believe in God. It is a good development because monopolies, especially in ideas, always are bad; they become dogmas. That is what evolution has become. Originally a speculative theory, if that, -- a metaphor really -- useful in debunking religious dogmas, evolution has become in many school systems an ironclad dogma for which there is no evidence. Evolutionists claim that life originated in the chance forming of minute cells in oceans and evolved through fish, birds, mammals and apes into humans. There is no evidence whatsoever for this concept that biologists call "macroevolution." Distinguished scientists and mathematicians have calculated the statistical probabilities of life arising from the chance happenings of "blind naturalistic forces" and undergoing the countless mutations that evolution assumes. They found the probability too small to measure. In other words, the probability of anything like macroevolution happening is impossible. So why do so many biology teachers and scientists believe in it? It is their religious commitment. The struggle between "creationism" and evolution is not a struggle between religion and science. It is a struggle between two belief systems. Evolution's adherents prefer evolution because in this belief system there is no maker to hold man and woman accountable. Evolution lets us be our own master. Laws and morals do not come from God. We choose what suits us: pro-life or anti-life; chaste or promiscuous. The godless tyrannies of the 20th century are based on man-made laws that justified killing scores of millions of "class enemies" in Communist Russia and China and millions of "race enemies" in National Socialist Germany. "Thou shalt not murder" does not apply in the absence of God. Thus, atheistic governments could organize mass murder in order to make a "better" society. This does not mean that people who believe in evolution want to kill people and are anti-life. They like to believe in evolution because evolution leaves man accountable only to himself. There is another, more limited, version of evolution known as "microevolution." Microevolution is a misleading name. It is really about adaptation -- how a bird's beak changes to adapt to the environment, how an insect develops resistance to pesticides and germs to antibiotics. There is solid evidence for adaptation -- this is what Charles Darwin found. But there is no evidence showing how a bird changes into some other creature or an ape changes into a man. Evolutionists claim that adaptation proves evolutionary changes. But this is a non sequitur. The cockroach with pesticide resistance is still a cockroach. And the bird that adapts to its environment is still a bird. There are many different life forms, and the likely answer is that they each had independent origins. The classifications of these life forms do not point to evolutionary overlaps. And there are no signs today of any creature evolving into another. The Kansas State Board of Education has taken no action to prevent evolution from being taught in public schools. Indeed, the board mandates that microevolution be taught. All that the board has done is to stop macroevolutionists from having a monopoly on explaining the origin of life. Helen Alexander, a professor of biology at the University of Kansas, scoffs at the Board of Education for "biblical literalism." But all the board has done is to show itself more tolerant of different views than are professors. If facts matter, archaeologists actually have found far more evidence in behalf of the Bible than scientists have for macroevolution. Think about it yourself. Which is easiest to believe? That God created the world, or that a fish evolved out of nothing and, over millions of years, evolved into a human? Paul Craig Roberts is a columnist for the Washington Times and is nationally syndicated.
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