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Evolution is religion with a façade of scienceby Gregory J. RummoIt has recently come to the attention of hyperventilating liberals that schools in Missouri and more recently, Kansas will not be teaching Darwinian evolution as the core explanatory principle of biology.Bravo. While I am not in favor of excluding the teaching of Darwinian evolution in science classes, I question its preeminence as an object of veneration upon the altar of secular humanism. As a scientist with an earned B.S and M.S. in chemistry, I have studied the theory of Darwinian evolution in both college and graduate school. I believe evolution should be taught along with the account of creation so as to allow students to decide for themselves which theory better explains the origins of life on earth. I emphasize the word theory especially in the case of evolution. No one was there to observe the phenomenon despite silly arguments about micro-variations within a species often cited by desperate supporters for Darwin's model. Since science is a discipline based on observations, evolution can be nothing more than a theory. When both models for origins are debated by scientists knowledgeable in their respective fields, the creation account wins every time. Audiences come away from such debates truly astounded by the strong scientific case that can be made for special creation. Facts do have a funny way of convincing people. There is not one single, undisputed, multi-cellular fossil showing evidence of transitional forms among animal types in existence. No half-fish, half-mammal type of fossil has been unearthed in any rock strata. If evolution were true, one would expect to find thousands of such examples in sedimentary rock. A fossil of a bat appeared on the cover of Scientific American several years ago. The fossil was supposedly millions of years old, yet its skeletal structure was virtually identical to that of modern day bats. The dating methods for the age of the earth are also suspect. Scientists must make assumptions which are unfounded in many cases yielding results which are grossly in error. I read of one incident where the calcium carbonate in the shell of a living mollusk was dated by Carbon-14 and shown to be 1,000 years old. There are reliable dating methods yielding a relatively young age for the earth - less than 10,000 years. Among them are the rate of accumulation of meteoric dust on the moon's surface, the increase in the concentration of certain metals in the earth's oceans and the decay of the earth's magnetic field. The fossil remains of the so-called "ape-men" -- Piltdown Man, Nebraska Man and Neanderthal Man -- have all been satisfactorily explained; their remains being proven to be either fragments from primates, a pig in one case or a modern day skeleton of a man who suffered from arthritis. Theoretically, Darwinian evolution is also very weak. It postulates the spontaneous arrangement of the highly ordered and complex organisms we now see from inanimate chemicals in some primordial soup billions of years ago. This is a purely fictional construct otherwise known as "spontaneous generation" - a medieval fantasy debunked centuries earlier. Such a mechanism also violates the Law of Thermodynamics known as entropy which states that all systems left unto themselves tend towards a state of chaos. Open a window in a drafty room and a stack of baseball cards left on the windowsill blows all over the floor. The cards do not spontaneously alphabetize themselves in a neat pile on the shelf. Belief in evolution requires an incredible leap of faith. It is simply not science. It is a religion with a scientific façade. If you were taking a walk in the woods and you found a brand new Rolex watch, would you begin to wonder how long it took for the metal that formed the watch's case and the quartz covering the watch's face to leach from the surrounding rock and crystallize so perfectly? Of course not. Your first thought would probably be, "I wonder who lost such an expensive and elegant piece of jewelry." We humans are far more complex than a Rolex watch. Yet, those who are supposed to be the most eminent scientists among us - "The Thinkers" -- those charged with the responsibility of educating us in the disciplines of biology, chemistry and physics -- have failed to express genuine wonder about the One who created us. Instead, they spend countless hours theorizing that billions of years ago, green slime managed to sprout legs, crawl out of a swamp somewhere, rear its head, and transform itself into Homo sapiens. All under the guise of science. It's about time such fiction is challenged in the schools. DAILY RECORD August 29, 1999 (This column also appeared in THE INDEPENDENT NEWS and THE SUBURBAN TRENDS)LIVE WIRE HOMEPAGE  ![]() |
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