Converting the Church to Darwin

Theistic evolutionist (TE), Nathanael Yates, doesn’t think that the evolution-creation debate and the conclusions we come to on this issue matter:

• As a Christian it doesn't matter to me whether the Earth, and all that is in it, was created by a process of evolution or creation. 

• Debate around evolution and creation in the church is an interesting intellectual discussion, but doesn't concern salvation. Suggesting that it is may actually make nonbelievers who believe in evolution less receptive to Christianity.

• I don't believe that debate on this issue is likely to improve our character and relationship with God.

However, many have testified that this issue matters profoundly. In God: the Evidence, former atheist, Patrick Glynn, cautions about the persuasiveness of Darwinism in rejecting the biblical faith:

• “I embraced skepticism at an early age, when I first learned of Darwin’s theory of evolution in, of all places, Catholic grade school. It immediately occurred to me that either Darwin’s theory was true or the creation story in the Book of Genesis was true. They could not both be true, and I stood up in class and told the poor nun as much.”

In fact, many present evolutionists also testify how Darwinism weaned them from the faith of the childhood. Bruce Malone, Founder of Search for the Truth and one who returned, also testifies of the persuasiveness of Darwinian thinking:

• “Prior to graduation from college, I had not once been shown any of the scientific evidence for creation either in school or in church. Little wonder, that by the time I started my career [as a chemist], God had little relevance in my life. It wasn’t as though I had any animosity toward God or religion. It simply held no relevance to the world around me. This should be no surprise when the subject never came up in school and everything seemed to be explained without reference to a Creator.”

I’ve often observed that those who adopt a theistic evolution stance, abandon the physical world to Darwin, leaving only the spiritual world to the Bible. Consequently, the entire apologetics enterprise – this takes what we know of the physical world and uses it to validate the spiritual – is undermined. For instance Ron Choong, founder of the Academy for Christian Thought, writes:

• “Darwin suggested that there is no scientific evidence to support the existence of God. That is correct!”

Try telling that to former atheists like Anthony Flew! By abandoning this crucial evidential basis for the Christian faith, we inevitably compromise it in favor of what we regard as more certain – Darwinism! Choong writes:

• “Darwinism exposes Christianity’s weakness in keeping up with the growing scientific knowledge. We use the fruits of scientific technology and blissfully ignore its implications for a contemporary and comprehensive worldview.”
  

Marvin Olasky, Editor in Chief, World Magazine, has observed the impact of this kind of compromise on the integrity of once-Christian schools:

• Disavowal of biblical teaching about creation is particularly serious because that perspective underlies so many other positions: In dozens of once-Christian colleges a slip-sliding-away from the first three chapters of Genesis has led to abandonment of the rest of the Bible. (World Mag. October 4, 2014, 60)

Why does this slide seem to inevitably occur? I think that there are many reasons for it. Once we “spiritualize” the first three chapters of Genesis, upon which everything else rests, emptying it of any historical content, we create for ourselves a highly slippery slope upon which no one can stand.

I’ll just offer one example. If Jesus had entirely spiritualized Genesis 1-3, the TE would have been able to stand more securely. However, He understood it historically:

• "Haven't you read," he replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female,' [quoting Gen. 1:26-27] and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh'? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has joined together [quoting Gen. 2:24], let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

Genesis records the historical work of God! How does the TE answer these kinds of objections? He pleads that “We have to be humble regarding our interpretations.” In other words, we cannot have any sense of assurance about the teachings of the Bible as we can have regarding evolution.

Yates does not seem to be concerned about any of this and therefore concludes:

• As a church we should spend less time debating amongst ourselves and focus our energies on what we all desire: salvation for all.

If only this were true! Instead, for the TE, it seems that “salvation for all” is a matter of converting the church to Darwin.

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Let the World Go to the Dogs as Long as I am Right

The historian Arnold Toynbee declared that great civilizations are destroyed from within. No surprise! We see indications of this all around us. Here is one small indication from the Center for Disease Control:

• There are currently about 110 million people in the U.S. living with a sexually-transmitted disease (STD)… According to the CDC, up to 20 million new STD infections occur every year — these include hepatitis B, HIV, syphilis, gonorrhea, HPV, and chlamydia. Half of these new infections are among young people between the ages of 15 and 24. So the prevalence among young people is quite high.  

Some of these diseases will result in irreversible damage and infertility. Clearly, STDs have become epidemic, but where is the outcry? Why isn’t the Western media raising the alarm against these exploding dangers, especially in light of the very evident failures of “safe-sex education” interventions?

We are so concerned about providing our youth with ample food, education and healthcare but remain silent as they destroy themselves sexually. Why? It seems that we are stubbornly committed to sexual freedom, but does sexual freedom equate with sexual satisfaction? Not at all: 

• In the mid 1970’s Redbook Magazine published a ‘Sexual Pleasure Survey’, showing the preferences of 100,000 women. This survey concluded that "sexual satisfaction is related significantly to religious belief." If the media have successfully ‘brain-washed’ you your immediate thought following on from this statement is that religious people must, of course, enjoy sex less than irreligious people; right? Wrong: "With notable consistency, the greater the intensity of a woman’s religious convictions, the likelier she is to be highly satisfied with the sexual pleasure of the marriage. . . Strongly religious women seem to be more responsive [and] more likely than the nonreligious to be orgasmic every time she engages in sex." (Tim & Beverly La Haye - The Act of Marriage, p9.) 

• American Christian Councillors Tim and Beverly La Haye undertook a survey of mainly Christian couples (3,377 people - 1,705 women and 1,672 men), which indicated, in line with the Redbook Survey, that "Christians maintain a higher enjoyment level in the intimacy of their love life than the population in general." (P210). The La Hay’s Survey showed that, generally speaking, Christian couples enjoyed sex more than couples with any other religious beliefs: "The women in our survey reported a 10 percent higher degree of sexual enjoyment, greater frequency of lovemaking experiences per month, and a more active part in [sex] than their "strongly religious" counterparts [in the REDBOOK Survey], likewise scoring much higher in these same areas than the average "non-religious" woman in the REDBOOK Survey." (P211). 

Former atheist, Patrick Glynn, adds:

• A 1978 study found that church attendance predicted marital satisfaction better than any other single variable. Couples in long-lasting marriages who were surveyed in another study listed religion as one of the most important “prescriptions” of a happy marriage. (God: The Evidence, 64)

However, it is so hard to admit that we have been wrong and that those we have disdained – our “mortal enemies” - have been right. It is a loss-of-face that few can sustain. Let our families, our children and our civilization rot as long as we are right!

Bradley Monton: The Hated Atheist and ID Sympathizer

Many hate atheist professor of philosophy, Bradley Monton, author of Seeking God in Science: An Atheist Defends Intelligent Design, and even want to see him fired. He explains:

• The degree to which I have been attacked is actually pretty ludicrous. I gave a public lecture on intelligent design here at the University of Colorado, and a number of the school’s biology professors demanded that I be fired.

Perhaps such intolerance should become grounds for their own firing. However, in this present politically correct climate, this is not likely.  Instead, PC enables intolerance of a different nature. Monton explains that:

• Some atheists exhibit a fundamentalism that prevents them from even imagining that someone reasonable, rational and intelligent could hold views different from their own.

• I find the arguments of the opponents of ID too emotionally driven and not as intellectually robust as one would hope. I get upset with my fellow atheists who present bad arguments against intelligent design and then expect everyone to believe that they have somehow resolved the debate with these bad arguments.

No wonder he is hated by the PC crowd! This brings to mind the many dogmatic, atheistic assertions that evolution is a proven fact, beyond discussion, or that the multiverse is an adequate explanation for the fine-tuning of the cosmos. Meanwhile, Monton maintains that the theories of:

• Infinite universes are insufficient when it comes to explaining away the apparent design of our own universe.

Monton was recently asked, in an interview conducted by Salvo Magazine, what type of evidence would lead him to fully embrace intelligent design. He responded:

• Now, if it is found that [a non-material] mind plays a role in our brain processes alone, that by itself wouldn’t make me believe in God, though it would certainly make me more open to the idea. But if we were to discover that mind is interviewing in other places in the world besides our brain processes, then that would pretty much be the smoking gun. (Salvo Supplement, Fall 2013, 50)

Monton wants evidence that a non-material mind is interacting with a material, neurally wired brain, and I think that such evidence is available.

The late neuroscientist, Wilder Penfield, was a dualist. He found evidence for the brain-mind distinction. He would electrically stimulate the brain but noted that there were responses that seemed to be extra-physical:

• Penfield would stimulate electrically the proper motor cortex of the conscious patents and challenge them to keep one hand from moving when the current was applied. The patient would seize this hand with the other hand and struggle to hold it still. Thus one hand under the control of the electrical current and the other hand under the control of the patient’s mind fought against each other. Penfield risked the explanation that the patient had not only a physical brain that was stimulated to action but also a nonphysical reality that interacted with the brain. (Dinesh D’Souza, Life After Death: The Evidence, 108)

Penfield found that his patients could distinguish between responses that had been electrically stimulated from those self-stimulated:

• Invariably the patient would respond, by saying, “I didn’t do that. You did…No matter how much Penfield probed the cerebral cortex, he said, “There is no place…where electrical stimulation will cause a patient to believe or to decide.” That’s because those functions originate in the conscious self, not the brain. A lot of subsequent research has validated this. When Roger Sperry and his team studied the differences between the brain’s right and left hemispheres, they discovered the mind has a causal power independent of the brain’s activities. This led Sperry to conclude materialism and false. (J.P. Moreland, interviewed by Lee Strobel, Case for the Creator, 258)

If the brain is entirely a physical entity, we should expect that every type of mental activity could be stimulated, but this isn’t the case. While researchers have been able to stimulate a vast array of neural reactions, they haven’t been able to stimulate thoughts or beliefs.

Also, the very notion of freewill contradicts strict materialism. It affirms the fact that our choices aren’t totally determined by chemical-electrical responses, suggesting that there must be another reality present in order to explain it

The freewill problem is so daunting for the materialist - one who believes that everything is matter and energy. His narrow worldview leaves no room for freewill, something self-initiated, and therefore, many opt to deny its reality. Biologist E.O. Wilson writes:

• The hidden preparation of mental activity gives the illusion of free will.

Illusion? If freewill is an illusion, we are merely dialoguing with sophisticated but morally non-responsible bio-chemical machines. (Jokingly, I tell such people that I don’t talk to machines – a reasonable choice, I think!)

Materialism requires the denial of dualism – the mind-brain distinction. It also requires the denial of near-death-experiences (NDEs), which strongly suggest the existence of a body-independent mind.

Raymond Moody published Life after Life in 1975 based upon 150 interviews with people who had claimed NDEs. Cardiologist and assistant professor at Emory University School of Medicine, Michael Sabom, had been highly skeptical. However,

• Over a five year period he interviewed and compiled data on 116 persons who had had a close brush with death. Of these, 71 reported one form or another of near-death experience…Sabom conducted extended interviews with the ten who had detailed recollections, either of resuscitations or surgery. The results were astonishing. In every case, the accounts jibed with standard medical procedures; moreover, where medical records were available, the records of the procedures and the accounts of the patients perfectly matched. In all of these cases, [unconscious] patients observed details that they could not possibly have observed from their physical vantage point. (Patrick Glynn, God: The Evidence, 103-104)

Materialism also denies the testimonies of many indigenous cultures who have claimed extra-body experiences.

Our sense of having an unchanging personal identity, despite that fact that almost all of our molecules are replaced every several years, and our bodies undergo vast changes over the years, seems to suggest that we also possess something unchanging – a non-material soul. Even if we suddenly loose both of our legs, we still regard ourselves as the same person.

Meanwhile, it seems that a mind-brain distinction would best explain all of the above evidences.