WHY REMAIN AN EVOLUTIONIST?

Even though scientists claim to be neutral truth seekers, Matti Leisola charges the scientific community with bias:

·       Methodological materialism poses as “the scientific method”—empirical, neutral, disinterested. But this isn’t the case. It is not a neutral way to observe the world. It dogmatically limits possible answers. The possibility that life has been designed is deemed out of the question. In 1999, S. C. Todd put it plainly in the journal Nature: “Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.” (“Heretic”)

Cell biologist Franklin Harold confessed the bias of many scientists against ID:

·       “We should reject, as a matter of principle, the substitution of intelligent design for the dialogue of chance and necessity” even though “we must concede that there are presently no detailed Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a variety of wishful speculations.” (Franklin Harold, “The Way of the Cell” (New York: Oxford University Press, 2001), 205.)

The late German physicist and philosopher Carl Friedrich von Weizsäcker was fair enough to admit this. “It is not by its conclusions, but by its methodological starting point that modern science excludes direct creation,” he wrote. “Our methodology would not be honest if this fact were denied.” (Carl F. von Weizsäcker, “The Relevance of Science: Creation and Cosmogony” (New York: Harper and Row, 1964), 102.)

Leisola claims that these confessions are not unusual, at least in private, among evolutionists:

·       Practically all of the hundreds of scientists I know admit in private, confidential discussions that science does not have a clue where genetic language, proteins, cell membranes, metabolic pathways, cell control systems, and the basic body plans of organisms came from.

In their more candid moments, they may even question the entire evolutionary narrative:

·       Stanford University physicist and Nobel laureate professor Robert B. Laughlin...says that “evolution by natural selection… has lately come to function more as an antitheory, called upon to cover up embarrassing experimental shortcomings and legitimize findings that are at best questionable and at worst not even wrong.” (Robert B. Laughlin, “A Different Universe” (New York: Basic Books, 2005), 168–169)

Why then do they remain within the evolution establish? Some admit that evolution remains the only safe-house where they might find a momentary relief from the demands of God.

MARKETING SPIRITUALITY

Spirituality is commonly conceived as a matter of choosing the form that feels right for us. All of the spirituality marketers understand that the consumer wants to remain in charge and have marketed their products with this in mind, even the Voodoo priestess Alourdes.

Anthropologist Karen Brown, who written about her full-body dive into Voodoo, helps us to understand the attractiveness of Voodoo and other New Age spiritualities:

·       No Haitian — certainly not Alourdes [the Voodoo priestess] — has ever asked me if I “believe” in Voodoo or if I have set aside the religious commitments and understandings that come from my childhood and culture. Alourdes’s approach is, instead, pragmatic: “You just got to try. See if it works for you.” The choice of relinquishing my worldview or adopting another in its entirety has therefore never been at issue.” (“Mama Lola: A Voodoo Priestess in Brooklyn!”)

Normally, we want to maintain our autonomy to choose what gives us what we want. Therefore, for today’s buyer, doctrine is a major turn-off. It tends to feel like coercion for those who insist on being the “captain of their own ship.”

Following Jesus is the antithesis. He taught that God and His Word had to be first in our thinking (Matthew 6:33). Coming to Jesus was a matter of surrendering all, even our patterns of voting and speaking:

·       So therefore, any one of you who does not renounce all that he has cannot be my disciple. (Luke 14:33)

This is not an attractive message. Understandably, Jesus taught that coming to Him had to be miraculous:

·       “This is why I told you that no one can come to me unless it is granted him by the Father.” (John 6:65)

What Jesus had been teaching was not humanly appealing. Even though He performed many miracles to validate His teachings, truth alone failed to be attractive enough for people to lay aside their own interests.

Consequently, the Christian faith has become less marketable. Even many who remain adjust the Faith to meet their lifestyle and then wonder why it is not working for them.

BECOMING A FAITHFUL SERVANT

The late A.W. Tozer, pastor and author of 40 books including “The Pursuit of God” and “The Knowledge of the Holy,” wrote in the 1950s that:

·       It is our belief that the evangelical movement will continue to drift further and further from the New Testament position until its leadership passes from the modern religious star to the self-effacing saint.

How do we become the “self-effacing saint?” Ordinarily, we are self-centered, rebellious, and want our own way. When my daughter was about four, the babysitter caught her going through her drawers. When she informed my daughter that she shouldn’t be opening the drawers of others, my daughter fired back, “You are the babysitter, and you have no right to tell me what to do.”

Years later, I was surprised to find that little had changed. My daughter’s daughter in a most serious tone instructed me, “Grandpa, you are not my parents, and I don’t want you to tell me what to do.”

Even at her tender age, she wanted to be autonomous. How then was Israel to become the people of God? He explained how He had taught Israel obedience:

·       “The whole commandment that I command you today you shall be careful to do, that you may live and multiply, and go in and possess the land that the LORD swore to give to your fathers…And he humbled you and let you hunger and fed you with manna, which you did not know, nor did your fathers know, that he might make you know that man does not live by bread alone, but man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD….Know then in your heart that, as a man disciplines his son, the LORD your God disciplines you. So you shall keep the commandments of the LORD your God by walking in his ways and by fearing him. For the LORD your God is bringing you into a good land, a land of brooks of water, of fountains and springs, flowing out in the valleys and hills…(Deuteronomy 8:1, 3, 5, 6-7 ESV)

For their own benefit, God had to humble Israel so that they would learn that “man lives by every word that comes from the mouth of the LORD.” However, learning this lesson requires a major seismic shift. How did God achieve this? First, they lived as slaves for hundreds of years. This oppression moved them to cry out for the only possible hope available.

When God encountered the humbled Moses after forty years as a shepherd in the desert, He explained:

·        “I have surely seen the affliction of my people who are in Egypt and have heard their cry because of their taskmasters. I know their sufferings, and I have come down to deliver them out of the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land to a good and broad land…” (Exodus 3:7-8)

Ordinarily, we do not cry out to God for help unless we have to. Had Israel been comfortable in Egypt, they never would have been willing to leave. Even after slavery, they continued to rebel against God. He therefore had to show them very clearly that their welfare depended upon their strict obedience to His words.

Even after their liberation from Egypt, Israel hungered and complained against Moses and God. Therefore, He issued them a set of instructions that they would have to carefully obey:

·       Then the LORD said to Moses, “Behold, I am about to rain bread [manna] from heaven for you, and the people shall go out and gather a day’s portion every day, that I may test them, whether they will walk in my law or not. On the sixth day, when they prepare what they bring in, it will be twice as much as they gather daily.” (Exodus 16:4-5)

However, self-willed Israel, even though they just came out of the most abject captivity, thought they knew better. God had warned them to only collect what they would eat for the day and to not save any of it. However, they disobeyed, and what they had saved became maggot infested and stunk. He also instructed Israel to not collect manna on the 7^th day, the day of rest, but instead to collect a double-portion on the sixth day. Consequently, they learned that this portion wouldn’t become maggot infested. Nevertheless, some went out to collect manna on the 7^th day and found that there was none.

In this way, their God was teaching them that their welfare depended upon exact obedience to His Word. Jesus also taught Israel, 1500 years later, that they had to live according to every Word of the Lord (Matthew 4:4).

Tragically, we still think that we know better. We pick-and-choose His teachings feel right for us. We attend church-growth seminars and, in myriad ways, glean from the words of men instead of the Words of God. We are more impressed by the teachings of the successful and the celebrity Christians than we are our Savior and His teachings. This is why the question of becoming a “self-effacing saint” will not go away.

However, the road to becoming a faithful servant is a road full of bumps. In order to become a man of God, we first have to die to self and the trust we place in our own ideas (Proverbs 3:5-7). This can only happen through affliction. King David, the man after God’s own heart, had to learn this lesson:

·       It is good for me that I was afflicted, that I might learn your statutes. The law of your mouth is better to me than thousands of gold and silver pieces. (Psalm 119:71-72, 67; Hebrews 12:5-11)

After we have been afflicted for a while, our prayer changes (1 Peter 4:1). Before all else, we seek the will and the glory of our Savior (Matthew 6:9-13) according to His Word.

VIABILITY OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION (TTOE)

A theory is only as good as its ability to account for the facts within its domain. Therefore, TTOE has to be able to explain how life came about naturalistically, without intelligence.

At the outset, it encounters serious problems. It seems that the simplest forms of life are highly complex, and require many functioning systems before their life can be possible. In “Heretic,” biochemist Matti Leisola uses the example of the simplest form of life to illustrate this problem:

• When the so-called archaebacteria were discovered, some scientists speculated that these organisms could offer a nice model for the first systems that chemical evolution had produced. But studies of these organisms have revealed fascinating metabolic systems that are far from simple. Archaebacteria are actually metabolic masters.

Leisola argues that the evolution of just the cellular materials is mathematically unthinkable:

• The simplest self-reproducing organism is so insanely complex that the amount of time needed for luck to have a fighting chance vastly exceeds the age of the whole universe.

The math presents a knock-down punch to TTOE. The problem of accounting for the simplest life forms is so monumental that Leisola points out that many scientists have despaired and have passed the buck to extraterrestrials:

• Swedish Nobel-Prize winning chemist Svante Arrhenius suggested that life’s seeds were originated somewhere else in the universe and then somehow made their way to Earth. Francis Crick is probably the best-known supporter of this idea. After realizing the enormous problems of chemical evolution, he tried to find an escape in this direction.

However, extraterrestrials offer no solution whatsoever. Instead, this “solution” is just a matter of passing the same problem on to a different location.

Leisola’s assessment of the unlikelihood of finding a naturalistic explanation is shared by others. James Tour was listed in “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” by Thomson Reuters in 2014, and named “Scientist of the Year” by R& D Magazine. Yet, he claims that science has no idea how life emerged from non-life:

• We have no idea how the molecules that compose living systems could have been devised such that they would work in concert to fulfill biology’s functions. We have no idea how the basic set of molecules, carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids and proteins were made and how they could have coupled in proper sequences, and then transformed into the ordered assemblies until there was the construction of a complex biological system, and eventually to that first cell. Nobody has any idea on how this was done when using our commonly understood mechanisms of chemical science. Those that say that they understand are generally wholly uninformed regarding chemical synthesis. Those that say, “Oh this is well worked out,” they know nothing—nothing—about chemical synthesis—nothing. … From a synthetic chemical perspective, neither I nor any of my colleagues can fathom a prebiotic molecular route to construction of a complex system. We cannot even figure out the prebiotic routes to the basic building blocks of life: carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. Chemists are collectively bewildered. Hence I say that no chemist understands prebiotic synthesis of the requisite building blocks, let alone assembly into a complex system. That’s how clueless we are. I have asked all of my colleagues—National Academy members, Nobel Prize winners—I sit with them in offices. Nobody understands this. So if your professors say it’s all worked out, if your teachers say it’s all worked out, they don’t know what they’re talking about. (James Tour, “The Origin of Life: An Inside Story—2016 Lectures,” The Pascal Lectures on Christianity and the University, accessed Oct. 18, 2017, https:// youtu.be/_zQXgJ-dXM4? t = 3m6s)

TTOE seems to have reached a dead end. Why then does it survive in the face of many such dead ends? Leisola offers his analysis:

• There seems to be only one explanation for this stubborn refusal to register all of the contrary evidence. We are dealing with a conviction deeply rooted in a worldview. This explains how a physics professor in a major Finnish newspaper can say the following with a straight face: “The question of the origin of life from the viewpoint of nanotechnology is almost without content. There is no qualitative difference between life and non-life.”

Hmm? Life does so many things that non-life cannot do like reproduction, respiration, digestion, repair, locomotion, waste removal, defense, and receiving and acting upon sensory data. To deny these very obvious differences is a matter of flagrant denial.

HUMAN NATURE AND CHOICE

Many would say that happiness, or at least peace-of-mind, is what life should be about. However, increasingly, these are seen as a product of our ability to make unencumbered choices, the freedom to pursue our own desires. However, others would advise that our choices have to be guided by our shared human nature.

Against the notion that there is a human nature, some argue that we are entirely malleable. Communists had argued that our nature is so malleable that they could create the new man and conform him to their ideal of a “workers’ paradise.” The late psychologist Eric Fromm had stated:

·       Marx did not believe, as do many contemporary sociologists and psychologists, that there is no such thing as the nature of man; that man at birth is like a blank sheet of paper, on which the culture writes its text. https://www.marxists.org/archive/fromm/works/1961/man/ch04.htm

However, historian Robert Royal contradicted this idealistic claim:

·       The materialist view of the person – combined with the notion that humans, as material beings, can be reshaped into the New Man of the Communist dream merely by a change of their social conditions, a view still widespread today – is a falsehood that inevitably leads to awful consequences… By most credible estimates, Communist countries killed about a hundred million people in the twentieth century. (The God that did not Fail, 247)

It should be clear that we do have a nature as a fish has a nature. We can’t leave our goldfish out on the porch to dry; nor can they thrive on chocolate milkshakes. Instead, they must be nurtured according to their nature and needs.

When we take care of anything according to its nature, it functions well. If we oil and grease our cars, as required, they will function better than if we had not. However, I wouldn’t want anyone to grease me. Instead, I would insist upon being treated according to my nature, with respect and caring.

In contrast to this, some insist that it should all be about individual choice, and that we are what we decide to be. The sky is the limit. However, it seems that our nature requires us to live within the confines of the limitations set by our nature. Just try playing a game of chess without rules. It will become meaningless and boring. Instead, we need the rules with their limitations. We are like the goldfish in water. In this environmental limitation, they will best maximize their freedom and welfare.

We too thrive best with the limitations that have been determined by our nature. When we don’t live according to our nature, we are like a man who thinks too of much his car and drives it into a lake, thinking that it will navigate well there.

Of course, this is absurd. However, many are making absurd choices that violate their nature. For example, many are experimenting with radical forms of family and sexuality like open marriages and polyamory. In contradiction to such choices, Karla Dial has reported on the findings of the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society - a team of authors working in the fields of anthropology, economics and psychology:

·       Though polygamy has existed throughout history — and is still accepted in some pockets of the world — it doesn’t benefit children, women, individuals or cultures the way married monogamous relationships do. According to the study, monogamy yields four primary benefits:

o   It reduces crime.

o   Monogamy leads to gender equality.

o   Monogamy reduces household conflict.

o   Monogamy improves children’s well-being through greater paternal investment.

When we violate our nature, costs are inevitable. The American College of Pediatricians has released a paper entitled, “Gender Ideology Harms Children,” in which they have concluded:

·       “According to the DSM-V, as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.

·       Conditioning children into believing a lifetime of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex is normal and healthy is child abuse.” (SalvoMag.com, 2016, 6)

Does sex-change ever help? Walt Heyer, in his 2006 book “Trading my Sorrows,” writes about his troubled experiences as a transsexual. The following was culled from his interview with LifeSiteNews.com:

·       Heyer was a little boy growing up in California in the mid 1940s, interested in cowboys, cars and steel guitars when one day, his grandmother fancied that he wanted to be a girl. She naively made for him a purple chiffon evening dress that he would wear when he visited her. According to Walt, donning that purple chiffon dress triggered something that put him on a 35 year long path that led through a dark valley of “torment, disillusionment, regret, and sorrow.” His gender identity confusion led him into alcoholism, drug addiction, and attempted suicide…

Is Heyer’s experience representative of many others’? Evidently! A long-term follow-up study of transsexual persons undergoing sex reassignment surgery in Sweden found:

·       Persons with transsexualism, after sex reassignment, have considerably higher risks for mortality, suicidal behaviour, and psychiatric morbidity than the general population. Our findings suggest that sex reassignment, although alleviating gender dysphoria, may not suffice as treatment for transsexualism, and should inspire improved psychiatric and somatic care after sex reassignment for this patient group.

A Report of the National Transgender Discrimination Survey says:

·       A staggering 41% of transgenders surveyed report they have attempted suicide and that those who have medically transitioned and surgically transitioned have higher rates of attempted suicide than the general population. Transgenders have higher rate of HIV infections. They are more prone to heavy drinking and the use of drugs. They have high rates of homelessness, unemployment and extreme poverty, even more so in the more difficult economic times of the last 5 years.

Perhaps even more damning were the findings of a study originating in Scotland (2017):

·       A new study reveals that virtually all transgender students are self-harming in Scotland. The pro-gay “Stonewall” school report for Scotland with the University of Cambridge shows 96 percent of the country’s transgender youth engage in self-destructive behavior, including cutting themselves. The report also found “incredibly high levels” of mental health issues in transgenders.

·       Besides 96 percent of trans students attempting self-harm, 60 percent of homosexuals also self-harm, the survey found. While 40 percent of Scottish trans pupils have tried to commit suicide, a quarter of homosexuals have, too. https://www.lifesitenews.com/news/96-of-transgender-youth-engage-in-self-harm-study

Choice has its limitations, especially when it violates our human nature. This raises the question, “What additionally can we learn about our nature that might help us to better nurture it?” According to the Huffington Post, God

·       …is getting accolades from mental health specialists who say they are finding that a belief in God plays a positive role in the treatment of anxiety and depression, The Washington Times, reports. University of Toronto psychologists reported last year that “believing in God can help block anxiety and minimize stress,' their research showcasing 'distinct brain differences' between believers and nonbelievers. A new study released Wednesday by Rush University Medical Center in Chicago took the idea a step further. In patients diagnosed with clinical depression, 'belief in a concerned God can improve response to medical treatment,' said the new research, which has been published in the Journal of Clinical Psychology.

These findings do not reflect something new, but the author goes on to question why: “Why do people believe? Because it's true? Or because it's good for them?”

Why not both? Clearly, there are benefits. My faith in Jesus is the assurance that I have value even when I don’t feel valued. He’s the confidence that even if I fail and the world rejects me, I am still beloved by Him, who will take my failures and turn them into gold. He is the guarantee that even when I feel ashamed and guilty that I am cleansed and free from stain.

Is it also true? The answer is extensive, so I will merely conclude with the words of Jesus:

·       “Ask, and it will be given to you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For everyone who asks receives, and the one who seeks finds, and to the one who knocks it will be opened.” (Matthew 7:7-8)

But do we really what to know if it’s true or do we value our own choices too much?