Samuel Blumenfeld -- Evolution vs. Intelligent Design

EVOLUTION vs. INTELLIGENT DESIGN

By Samuel Blumenfeld

August 9, 2005

NewsWithViews.com

Back in 1987, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down a 1981 Louisiana law which mandated a balanced treatment in teaching evolution and creation in the public schools. The Court decided that the intent of the law �was clearly to advance the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind,� and therefore violated the First Amendment�s prohibition on a government establishment of religion. In other words, the Court adopted the atheist position that creation is a religious myth.

In speaking for the majority, Justice William J. Brennan wrote: �The legislative history documents that the act�s primary purpose was to change the science curriculum of public schools in order to provide an advantage to a particular religious doctrine that rejects the factual basis of evolution in its entirety.�

Of course, no one bothered to remind the learned Justice that some of the world�s greatest scientists were and are devout Christians and, that it is atheism which is destroying true science, not religion. Also, Justice Brennan seemed to be totally unaware that an �establishment of religion� meant a state-sanctioned church, such as they have in England with the Anglican Church, which is the official Church of England. Belief in God is not an establishment of religion. Belief in a supernatural being who created mankind is not an establishment of religion.

Also, there is no factual basis to evolution. The fossil record shows no intermediary forms of species development. No scientist has been able to mate a monkey and a human being and get something in between.

But home-schoolers, although not affected by what the Court forces on government schools, should know how to refute the Fairy Tale called the Theory of Evolution. Justice Brennan called it fact, which simply indicates the depth of his ignorance.

First, what exactly is the Theory of Evolution? For the answer, we must go to the source: Charles Darwin�s The Origin of Species, published in 1859. Darwin claimed that the thousands of different species of animals, insects, and plants that exist on earth were not the works of a Divine Creator who made each specie in its present immutable form, as described in Genesis, but are the products of a very long natural process of development from simpler organic forms to more complex organisms.

Thus, according to Darwin, species continue to change or �evolve,� through a process of natural selection in which nature�s harsh conditions permit only the fittest to survive in more adaptable forms. But a funny thing happened on the way to the 20th century. The elite fittest are not having enough children to see that their tribe increases, while the so-called unfittest all over the globe are having kids like crazy.

Darwin also believed that all life originated from a single source�a kind of primeval slime in which the first living organisms formed spontaneously out of non-living matter through a random process�by accident.

The first false idea in the theory is that non-organic matter can transform itself into organic matter. Pasteur proved that this was impossible. Second, the enormous complexity of organic matter precludes accidental creation. There had to be a designer. There is now a whole scientific school devoted to the design theory. William A. Dembski�s book, Intelligent Design, published in 1999, is the pioneering work that bridges science with theology. Dembski writes:

�Intelligent design is three things: a scientific research program that investigates the effects of intelligent causes; an intellectual movement that challenges Darwinism and its naturalistic legacy; and a way of understanding divine action�.It was Darwin�s expulsion of design from biology that made possible the triumph of naturalism in Western culture. So, too, it will be intelligent design�s restatement of design within biology that will be the undoing of naturalism in Western culture.�

Dembski proves that design is �empirically detectable,� because we can observe it all around us. The birth of a child is a miracle of design. The habits of your household cat is a miracle of design. All cats do the same things. These are the inherited characteristics of the species. The idea that accident could create such complex behavior passed on to successive generations simply doesn�t make sense. The complexity of design proves the existence of God. Dembski writes:

�Indeed within theism divine action is the most basic mode of causation since any other mode of causation involves creatures which themselves were created in a divine act. Intelligent design thus becomes a unifying framework for understanding both divine and human agency and illuminates several long-standing philosophical problems about the nature of reality and our knowledge of it.�

Intelligent design is certainly proven by the fact that every living organism lives through a programmed cycle of birth, growth, and finally death. That very specific program is contained in the tiniest embryo at the time of conception. The embryo of a cow probably does not look any different from the embryo of a human being. But each has been programmed differently: one creates a cow, the other a human being. In the case of the latter, that tiny embryo contains an incredibly complex biological program that causes the individual to be born, pass through infancy and childhood, develop into maturity, middle-age, old age, and finally death, a process that takes sometimes as much as a hundred years. How can an accident plan what is going to happen 100 years after it has happened?

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But since intelligent design infers the existence of a designer�God�it is likely that evolutionists will resist any change in their views, since the acknowledgment of the existence of God is too nightmarish for them to contemplate.

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Samuel L. Blumenfeld is the author of eight books on education, including �Is Public Education Necessary?� and �The Whole Language/OBE Fraud,� published by The Paradigm Company, 208-322-4440. His reading instruction program, �Alpha-Phonics,� is available by writing The Tutoring Company, P.O. Box 540111, Waltham, MA 02454-0111.

E-Mail: slblu@netway.com

Websites: www.alpha-phonics.com and
www.howtotutor.com

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