DARWINISM

THE SECULAR PSEUDO-GOSPEL ACCORDING TO ANDREW MARR

 

INCLUDING A POINT-BY-POINT

‘SPAR WITH MARR’

by

Dr Alan C. Clifford

(AC)

 

Darwin's Dangerous Idea, presented by Andrew Marr, is on Thursdays at 2100 GMT on BBC Two from 5 March.

Story from BBC NEWS:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/sci/tech/7924423.stm

Published: 2009/03/05 10:08:00 GMT

© BBC MMIX
 

The Danger of Worshipping Darwin

by

Andrew Marr

(AM)

Presenter: Darwin's Dangerous Idea

AM:

His vast brow hangs over us all. His foamy white beard cascades down in the familiar Michelangelo Old Testament style.

 

AC: Why compare him with an Old Testament prophet since you obviously think that Darwin has discredited the Bible? A pagan Greek philosopher would make a more appropriate comparison.

 

AM:

He speaks to mankind of ancient origins and end times.

 

AC:

He does nothing of the kind. Again, your mismatch lets you down. In his evolutionary ideas, Charles Darwin speculates about these things like a philosopher (and not even a fact-based scientist) instead of speaking like a prophet.

 

AM:

In this year of his double anniversary, are we in danger of turning Charles Darwin if not into God, at least into the founder of a secular religion?

 

AC:

There is no doubt that Darwin has become a secular saint if not an idol for 21st century atheists (even though he was not an atheist himself). You certainly preach Darwinism with quasi-religious fervour in your confused, questionable and unconvincing programmes. You obviously feel that Darwinism is a replacement for religions in general and Islam and Christianity in particular.

 

AM:

I’m a lapsed Presbyterian Christian. I had a blinding revelation of disbelief at the age of around 15. It was every bit as clear and convincing as others describe revelations of faith. Back then, I explained to the school chaplain that I could accept religion, but only as a metaphor - Heaven and Hell on Earth, that sort of thing. Kindly but firmly, and rightly, he said that no, this would not be sufficient.

 

AC:

You are more than ‘lapsed’. You are an apostate - having moved away from the foundation of Christian truth. Claiming a Presbyterian origin, you have betrayed Christ and broken your baptismal covenant with God. This places you in an alarming spiritual state, with dire eternal consequences unless you repent before you die.

 

Unlike faith, unbelief is never a ‘revelation’. It is the natural ‘spiritually blind’ state of someone without God. Presumably, you were taught this in your Church of Scotland catechism class. You needed true conversion to Christ at the age of 15. Sadly, your growth into adulthood has just been a perpetuation of your natural, sinful, unenlightened blindness. Your school chaplain was indeed right to deny the validity of your uninformed view of religion. I hope he warned you--kindly but firmly--of the consequences.

 

AM:

There’s no doubt that Darwinism, and indeed scientific truth generally, can supply people like me with some of the nourishment religion offers.

 

AC:

Just as you discredit the reality of religion by making it metaphorical, your scientific substitute can only supply metaphorical ‘religious’ rather than actual nourishment! So what is your metaphorical alternative to religion? Replacing the Bible with the Origin of Species? Praying at dead Darwin’s tomb instead of calling on the living God in Christ? Singing hymns to Darwin and other secular saints instead of praising God our Creator, Provider and Saviour? Finding ethical guidance in a dubious theory that has destroyed moral values and inspired Communism and Fascism, instead of following the compassion for our neighbour revealed in the Bible? Can you find forgiveness and peace of conscience through psychotherapy, hedonism and drugs instead of trusting in the saving sacrifice of Jesus, the Son of God? And what comfort can Darwinism give to a dying person? Can you really say Darwinian-based nourishment is nourishment and not poison?

 

AM:

Richard Dawkins wrote an excellent book, Unweaving the Rainbow, about this.

But aren’t there also dangers in trying to replace religion with a secular equivalent?

 

AC:

You clearly admire Dawkins as well as Darwin. So what is excellent about Richard Dawkins’ irrational polemic against Christianity? Since he thinks that evolution invalidates religion, doesn’t evolution destroy itself when you give it quasi-religious status? If evolution is presented as science, doesn’t its failure to validate itself empirically also destroy itself? My case against him is appended below.

 

Churches to science

AM:

Late last year, during filming, I visited both the Kensington and Oxford University natural history museums. A pair of magnificent buildings, they are startlingly and unmistakably like Christian cathedrals. In Oxford, the delicate carvings of animals and plants entwine pillars and arches, while statues of scientists look like latter-day saints. In London, Darwin himself presides over the nave, as Gothic, Venetian and Renaissance styles jostle round.

 

AC:

Yes, all this looks suspiciously like a substitute religion. The kind of idolatry found in many cathedrals was obviously a model for the substitute idols inspired by Darwinian piety. I notice you endorse a Roman Catholic/Anglican model here instead of a Reformed Presbyterian one. In this respect, you are indeed a lapsed Presbyterian!

 

AM:

I've since learned, thanks to Sir David Attenborough, that the London building by Waterhouse was always meant to mimic a cathedral. Its founder, Richard Owen, wanted the museum to be a “temple of nature” and when it opened, it was dubbed “the animals’ Westminster Abbey”. But where is Owen’s statue now? An enemy of Darwin, hustled away from the altar to make way for Charles D. Though he coined the word dinosaur and was a remarkable fellow, he is generally cast out as a disbeliever, schismatic and bad egg. And what are most sacred objects in Kensington? Well, bones, of course - not saints’ bones, but bones collected by Darwin on his travels, a voyage which brings a whiff of pilgrimage to the tale. One could go on in this fairly trivial way, and have plenty of fun with the comparison.

 

AC:

Are you simply having ‘fun’ with these parallels? It all sounds rather serious to me. Even Richard Owen seems to have suffered from quasi-religious persecution while Charles Darwin is canonised if not idolised by you and your fellow devotees.

 

‘Revelation’

AM:

Darwinism has its bishops and its schisms. There are Darwin cartoon books for children, not dissimilar in tone to blandly uplifting Sunday School booklets.

 

AC:

Again, your resort to such religious analogies sounds more serious than fun. You really feel the ‘religious’ impact of ‘St Charles de la Beagle’ don’t you?

 

AM:

More significant, though, is that Darwinism, like a religion, offers both a method and a message.

 

“ Darwinism underpins today’s acceptance of the importance of the web of life ”

 

AC:

Now you try to strip the religious analogies from your perception of Darwinism.

You do this in order to establish it as a scientific outlook.

AM: It does not suggest prayerfulness or mantras, but it is grounded in the scientific method of observation, rigorous testing and peer group review. It lays the groundwork for others to pick up and follow. Hardly unique to Darwin, of course, but its steady press-ahead of revelation makes the growth of Darwinists and Darwin-admirers inevitable.

 

AC:

Your claim for Darwinism is totally invalid. As I and others have cogently argued, Darwinism derives from subjective speculation rather than objective experimentation (see Appendix).

 

AM:

As for its message, though you can believe in evolution while being sceptical about some aspects of ecological science, and while you can be both a creationist and worried about the current state of nature, Darwinism underpins today’s acceptance of the importance of the web of life.

 

AC:

‘Belief’ in evolution? Again, that’s ‘religious’ not scientific language. While Darwinism ‘underpins’ a secular view of ‘the web of life’, it is merely a hypothesis, not self-evident by itself. As with Creationism, Darwinism is a ‘faith view’. Your very language proves the point! It is undeniable that Darwinian thinking informs the presuppositions of its ‘priestly scientists’. It is not deducible from data based on actual experimentation.

 

AM:

His work, for instance, on worms and coral reefs began to reveal the interconnectedness of apparently very distant life systems. And that paved the way for modern environmentalism. With the Earth going through an unprecedented rate of species extinction now - the man-made so-called “sixth great extinction” - and with the threat from climate change, these are potent and urgent questions. To deal with the consequences, we have to turn to scientific evidence, which will be brought to us by - yes - Darwinists.

 

AC:

Yes, you are now getting closer to empirical science. Worms, coral reefs and climatic change are legitimate material for scientific research. With non-Darwinian assumptions about origins, it is possible to engage in verifiable research in environmental phenomena without being a Darwinist. Creationists - if they can get a job from Darwinian bosses - can maintain research integrity without being Darwinians.

 

AM:

Darwin showed not only that we originated in animal nature, but he also implied that if we damage nature too severely we might bring about our premature extinction.

 

AC:

He did not ‘show’ anything of the kind. He simply speculated about human origins based on dubious anti-creationist assumptions. That we might damage presently-observable environmental conditions is an entirely separate question, with no necessary connection with a theory of origins.

 

AM:

There may have been no Darwinist Eden but there is certainly a Hell waiting for a species that makes the worst choices. And thus, back to my schoolboy metaphor.

 

AC:

The biblical account of Eden included stewardship of the environment by human beings. Nothing mythical about this! Heaven and hell are spiritual realms which transcend space-time reality. In this respect, there’s nothing metaphorical about them either. Messing up the environment might be horrific but hell is something else. Your schoolboy understanding is not an adult way of assessing the issues. Dare I say it, such youthful conceptions need to ‘evolve’ into something more mature. So grow up, Andrew!

 

A word of warning

AM:

So where is the danger? I believe Darwin was right and that as science advances, he is proved more prescient, not less.

 

AC:

You only ‘believe’ Darwin was right? You cannot demonstrate this objectively? Of course, this is not possible. The danger is to imagine that Darwinian speculation is based on empirical science, which it certainly is not (see Appendix).

 

AM:

But religions are absolute. They bring their truth and then repel all boarders. They divide mankind into the saved and the ignorant damned. In this story, there is no ‘us’ and ‘them’.

 

AC:

Just a moment. ‘Darwinian religion’ - as preached by Richard Dawkins - is pretty absolute, inflexible and dogmatic. Doesn’t Dawkins with inquisitorial venom dismiss Creationists as ‘ignorant damned’? Then there are very significant differences in religions, properly called. Islam and Roman Catholicism are absolute and inflexible, maintaining many dogmas without biblical foundation or warrant. Their absolutism is invalid. The Reformed Christian Faith (of which John Calvin’s Presbyterianism is an honourable expression) is based on biblical evidence rather than Islam’s fanciful fabrications and Rome’s superstitious speculations. Reformed Christianity is validly absolute, rooted in fact and solid argument. Darwinism has methodological affinities with Islamic and Roman Catholic rather than Reformed thinking. On the other hand, Creationist science is consistent with the Reformed view of Holy Scripture.

 

AM:

Darwinism, as I take it, is a creed of observation, fact, a deep modesty about conclusions and lifelong readiness to be proved wrong.

 

AC:

There is confusion and error here. Darwinian evolution is a quasi-religious creed, and certainly not based on observation. It is hypothesis not fact. You are perhaps a little more modest that Richard Dawkins, but are you prepared - on strictly empirical scientific grounds - ‘to be proved wrong’? If so, there’s sizable corpus of documented scientific argument available to demonstrate the falsehood of Darwinism.

 

AM:

I don't say it offers everything that religion can. But I do say that, in this respect, it is better.

 

AC:

So then, in the final analysis, Darwinism is a religion, and a better one than Reformed Christianity? Darwinism, which inspired the cruelties of Communism and Fascism, is better than the Reformed Faith, which inspired democracy, freedom, and - eventually - toleration? Yours is an evaluation of history, which is worthy only of contempt.

 

AM however

we celebrate the old man, we mustn't let his work crust into creed or harden to dogma.

 

AC:

For all his personal kindness and family loyalties, there are better ‘old men’ to celebrate than Charles Darwin. His speculation-based, quasi-religious scientific creed has hardened already into dogma, a dogma that deserves to be dismissed by all right-thinking people.

 

Appendix

 

DARWIN’S BIG LIE

&

DAWKINS’ DECEIT

OR

CREATION

NOT

EVOLUTION

 

 

 

Some years ago, before he achieved his more recent celebrity status, I wrote to Dr Richard Dawkins after one of his radio statements. I challenged his aggressively-atheistic anti-creationism on strictly scientific grounds.

 

First

, I pointed out that the evolution hypothesis is contrary to the well-established second law of thermodynamics. According to the latter empirically-based theory, entropy tends to a maximum, or, in short, everything is ‘running down’. As with physics, so with biology, evidential genetic change suggests decreasing not increasing complexity, decay not development (as in the case of non-reproducing hybrid mutations, e. g. mules).

Second

, I pointed out that evolution couldn’t be demonstrated by an empirical method. Indeed, to achieve the status of a valid scientific theory, observable phenomena require repeated experimental testing before any data-based conclusions may be drawn. This well-established philosophy of science argued for by the late professor Karl Popper is irrefutable. To be strictly scientific, the theory of evolution really demands the presence of scientific observers millions of years before such intelligent beings had evolved! The truth is that evolutionists arrive at their conclusions by speculative extrapolation. It is because they insist that the evolution process is imperceptibly slow that they require their multi-million year time scale, for which there is no actual empirical evidence.

 

Third

, faced by observable data, presuppositions are active in assessing the nature and origins of the phenomena concerned. So when Richard Dawkins insists that facts are evaluated by ‘reason’ rather than ‘faith’ (as he assumes is the case with creationists), he is misrepresenting the debate. In opposing the creationist stance, he is voicing his own atheistic presuppositions, incorporating them into a dubious scientific methodology. Since a bona fide scientist who happens also to believe in creation is no less concerned with testable data than any other scientist, the disagreement is not about ‘reason versus faith’ but ‘faith versus faith’ and ‘reason versus reason’. In short, evolutionary scientific thinking is every bit faith-driven as creationist scientific thinking.

 

Instead of giving me a reasoned response to these points, Oxford-based Dr Dawkins could only attempt to discredit me by communicating with my doctoral thesis publisher - Oxford University Press - that I thought as I did.

 

Clearly, this is the behaviour of an intelligent, cool-headed, objective scientist! As is now obvious from his books and TV documentaries, Richard Dawkins’ fanatical anti-creationism is driven by an atheistic rather than a strictly scientific agenda.

 

Whatever fuming objections irrational Richard Dawkins raises against biblical creationism, his neo-Darwinianism requires a greater leap of faith than ever a creationist demands. Belief in intelligent design coexists consistently and comfortably with observable phenomena. Thus when King David wrote, ‘Marvellous are your works’ (Ps. 139: 14), he was probably thinking of creation in general as well as the human body in particular - ‘a world within a world’. As far as the psalmist was concerned, it was self-evident that ‘The heavens declare the glory of God’ (Ps. 19: 1) and that ‘The earth is the Lord’s’ (Ps. 24: 1). Like Moses in Genesis, David never argues for God’s existence and creative activity. He assumes and asserts them. His limited awareness of the design and function of the body in the wider context of an ordered universe was sufficient to affirm the reality of God. Thus atheism has to yield to the ‘argument from design’ for God’s existence (known as the teleological argument from Gk. telos = ‘end’ or ‘purpose’; see Paul’s use of this in Romans 1: 20).

 

This argument is well illustrated by an amusing incident. The German mathematician Athanasius Kircher used it to confound and convert an atheistic friend. After he acquired a new astronomical globe, the professor showed it to his friend who admired it. On asking where it came from, the atheist was told - tongue-in-cheek - that it ‘arrived by mere chance’. “That is impossible. Stop joking and tell me.” The professor wisely responded: “I am surprised you insist that small globe must have a maker but that the world and the galaxies represented by the globe exist without the design and order of a creator!”

 

Indeed, God is to His creation as the playwright is to the play, and the composer is to the concerto. Thus David would dismiss both atheism and evolution (without advocating a compromised ‘theistic evolution’ view maintained by some Christian thinkers today). The world and the body are products of divine intelligence and power, not a cosmic accident. The scientist Lord Kelvin said that, “The atheistic idea is so nonsensical that I cannot put it into words.” In connection with the Darwinian theory, Dr Ambrose Fleming said that, “Evolution is baseless and quite incredible.” Even Charles Darwin himself stated that no empirical evidence is available to prove the evolution of one species into another. He even admitted that “to suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances ... could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” As the style of Professor Richard Dawkins’ popular polemic against Christian creationism makes very clear, ‘evolutionism’ is actually more ‘religious’ than scientific, being based on speculation rather than evidence. Thus Dr Albert Fleishmann declared: “The theory of evolution suffers from grave defects which are more and more apparent as time advances. It can no longer square with practical scientific knowledge.”

 

While much media discussion and public misinformation has yet to catch up with the latest research, many modern scientists would concur with the King of Israel: “I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Note, made not evolved! For further information on this complex subject, see relevant studies by A. J. Monty White, What About Origins? (1978), M. Bowden, The Rise of the Evolution Fraud (1982) and Science vs. Evolution (1991), Richard Milton, The Facts of Life (1992) and John Blanchard, Does God believe in Atheists? (2000). Remarkably, the 1956 Everyman edition of Darwin’s Origin of Species was published with an anti-evolutionary introduction by Professor W. R. Thompson! Dr Graham Everest of the University of East Anglia stated that the theory of evolution ‘lacks hard evidence, experiment and, most crucially, rigour in argument’ (Eastern Daily Press, 9 July 1998).

 

Dr Alan C. Clifford

Norwich Reformed Church

www.nrchurch.co.nr