Close-minded. Accept their view by faith without questioning. Hostile. Angry. Willing to punish those who disagree ? these are all charges that have been frequently laid at people of many faiths who believe that Charles Darwin got it wrong.
Ever since Baltimore‘s own famous cynic, H.L. Mencken, pilloried William Jennings Bryan during what has become known as the “Scopes Monkey trial, those who oppose Darwinian evolution often have been caricatured as unintelligent and intolerant.
Bryan, a former presidential candidate, opposed evolution after visiting Germany where he heard from those who would evolve into the Nazi party espousing eugenics – applying Darwinian principles to promote “the survival of the fittest” through the elimination of the disabled and the “inferior.”
Bryan thought Darwin’s views were inherently flawed and culturally dangerous. While it would be unfair to blame Darwin for the deeds of Hitler, it is equally unfair to paint opponents of evolution as uneducated hicks.
A new documentary that will hit theaters this week, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein, seeks to put the shoe on the other foot. The movie documents academic intolerance by those who hold evolution to be scientific fact rather than questionable theory. I have not yet seen the movie.
However, if its allegations prove true, that highly qualified people are being denied tenure or harassed in other ways because they choose to question the dominant pro-evolution view, then surely there will be tragic consequences for students in institutions where narrow-mindedness prevails.
Science and theology should not be seen as competitors, but rather as colleagues in pursuit of the common goal of truth. So, hopefully with a touch of humor, let me highlight a few of the reasons why people of faith – and many who are agnostic -have major problems with evolution as it is currently taught.
Let’s start with my dog. Patches is half Jack Russell Terrier and half Beagle – a JackaBee. No one denies you can take two different breeds of dog and mix them to make a superior animal – Patches considers himself to be superior to all other dogs and most humans. However, it is a stretch to conclude from this “micro-evolution” that Darwinian evolution is true. Two dogs produce more dogs – not monkeys.
Over the last 50 years, many fossils have been discovered that have been touted as providing “further proof” of evolution. What is not described with each of these new headlines is that fossils of “transitional life forms” are very rare in the fossil record. Rather than science seeking “the missing link” that proves evolution, there are literally thousands of gaps in the fossil record which have no satisfactory explanation. Most evolutionists are quick to point out that humans and lower animals (like pigs) share 95% of the same DNA. But, Happy Meal toys and artificial hearts could share similar ratios in their component elements. Is it not plausible that an intelligent designer can use common building blocks to assemble very different forms?
In the cornerstone of evolutionary theory, Darwin suggested that, in biology, life has moved from chaos to complexity. Our life experiences suggest that things don’t really work that way. Newton’s Second Law of Thermodynamics famously states that the natural tendency of the universe is away from order and toward chaos, rather than the other way around. If I drive my 1991 Honda into a swamp and leave it there for 50 years – or 50 million years – does anyone think that what will emerge is a Mercedes?
Does such a concept really ring true – from the goo to the zoo to you? From time immemorial, reasonable people have seen in one another the very image of God. The next time you hold a newborn baby, look very, very carefully at her tiny fingers; and then ask yourself, what kind of an engineer could design something so perfect? I have dear and brilliant friends who spend their days looking through both telescopes and microscopes, and what they see are not the products of random selection or cosmic chance, but the fingerprints of God.
Kevin McGhee is a senior pastor at Bethany Community Church in Laurel and a 1978 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He can be reached at [email protected].
