Bias, Suppression, and Intimidation in the Science Lab

Drug companies do not have to report on all of the evidence or experimentation regarding new drugs they want to market. This means that they can merely report on the one positive test out of the 50 negative trials. However, this kind of biased, unbalanced reporting can be used to “prove” the value of any drug!

Is this same bias endemic to other areas of the scientific enterprise? Evidently! Foundations and governmental bodies pour millions, even billions, into research universities, not to find the truth, but to prove evolution. Meanwhile, I am not aware of any such money funding studies to prove ID or creationism.

What will be the inevitable result of such an imbalance in experimentation? Researchers will inevitably “find” what they are looking for!

However, it is not even as simple as this profound imbalance. Intimidation has also become the standard in suppressing unwanted findings. Bruce Malone gives one example of what happened when someone contradicted the establishment orthodoxy pertaining to the dating of the dinosaurs:

·       Mark Armitage, the discoverer of the osteocytes in the triceratops horn, and instructor at a microscopy lab at California State University… showed his students the material. They returned to their Earth science departments excited to share the inconsistency of these finds (which contradicted the evolutionary teaching they were being taught) with their geology, anthropology, and paleontology professors. The result – Armitage was fired from his job within days of his paper being published in July 2013. This was in spite of years of stellar performance and excellent reviews setting up and running the university’s microscopy lab. (Brilliant, 23)

Many such incidents suggest that such repression of divergent voices is standard operating procedure – enough to make even the most gullible suspect of what is currently marketed.

Start with Denying Adam; End by Denying God

My Response to a Theistic Evolutionist:

Based upon the Bible’s own testimony regarding the historicity of Adam and Eve, responsible interpretation must conclude that they actually existed. However, many theistic evolutionists (TEs) deny their historicity, while claiming that they merely interpret the Bible differently. However, their “interpretation” is Darwin-driven as one TE readily admits.

In “Saving Darwin: How to be a Christian and an Evolutionist,” The TE and former co-head of Biologos, Karl Giberson, writes that you can comfortably marry both Jesus and Darwin. However, I appreciate the fact that he admits that there is a price:

• “Acid is an appropriate metaphor for the erosion of my fundamentalism, as I slowly lost confidence in the Genesis story of creation and the scientific creationism that placed this ancient story within the framework of modern science. Dennett’s universal acid [his theory of evolution] dissolved Adam and Eve; it ate through the Garden of Eden; it destroyed the historicity of the events of creation week. It etched holes in those parts of Christianity connected to the stories—the fall, “Christ as the second Adam,” the origins of sin, and nearly everything else that I counted sacred.” (9-10)

Nevertheless, Giberson assures his readers that the acid stops there and will not go any further. Perhaps he really meant this. However, Darwin’s acid knows no limits, and our compromise with the text of the Bible opens the door to even more compromise – a slippery slope. Consequently, a few years later, Giberson wrote that the OT God is a

• “tyrannical anthropomorphic deity,” who “commanded the Jews to go on genocidal rampages…but who believes in this [OT] deity any more, besides those same fundamentalists who think the earth is 10,000 years old? Modern theology has moved past this view of God.” 

The TE will inevitably move “past this view of God” – the God whom Jesus accepted as His Father! I appreciate the fact that Giberson had been transparent about its implications. However, most TEs will not be so, and will insist that they have just as high a regard for Scripture as the creationist.

This is the very thing that Jesus had warned about:
 

• “No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other.” (Matthew 6:24)

Devotion to Darwin will inevitably undermine our devotion to Jesus.

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.

·      

Peter Enns, Inerrancy, and the Re-Interpretation of Scripture

The doctrine of Inerrancy – the teaching that the Bible is entirely God-breathed and therefore entirely trustworthy – is more than a doctrine. It’s a radical re-orientation towards God and the entirety of life. It removes us from the throne and allows God to remain there. Consequently, this doctrine changes everything, placing us in submission to God’s revelations. Peter Enns, former professor at Westminster Theological Seminary, laments how this approach to Scripture impacts our creationist beliefs:

• The big impasse for evangelicals is that accepting evolution requires them to rethink how they read their Bible, specifically the story of Adam and Eve.

Rather than to ask the Christian – Enns calls us “evangelicals” – to reject the Scriptures, he calls upon us to interpret them differently:

• Maybe the way in which evangelical read the Bible and conceive of its authority is the problem in the evangelical system that needs to be rethought, rather than being the non-negotiable hill to stand and die on for addressing every issue that comes down the road? This isn’t about evangelicals accepting or rejecting the Bible. It’s about thinking self-critically about how they read it and their approach to biblical authority.

However, it seems that Enns is demanding more than just a reinterpretation. Although he charges that we read our Bible blindly, instead of “self-critically,” he also charges that we attach too much divine authority to the Bible, suggesting that it isn’t entirely God’s word.

Okay, let’s look “self-critically” at the implications of having a Bible that is not completely divinely authoritative. What then do we believe? If the Bible isn’t entirely authoritative because it is not entirely God-breathed, then who is to decide what we take from the Bible? We are! Who then becomes the deciding factor – the #1 authority? Ultimately, we decide with the help of the “experts” or what feels socially or professionally comfortable.

Once we take this step, we invariably pick-and-choose what verses seem reasonable, work-for-us, and are politically correct. This seems to be inevitable with the shift of authority away from the Scriptures and onto us.

Dialogue with some “progressive Christians!” You will find that their faith is virtually indistinguishable from the university community. Consequently, they will vote for gay marriage and regard those who don’t believe in macro-evolution as sub-Cretan. With this one shift regarding the authority of the Bible comes a shift in everything else we believe in.

For them, the Bible has become little more than the New York Times. They both say many trustworthy things, but ultimately, the choice is ours – what to accept and what to reject. Why then even bother with the Bible? Why meditate on it both day and night as we are instructed to do (Psalm 1)? We can find good ideas in many other places – ideas that are at least up-to-date!

Is the Bible just a book of good ideas, or is it the Word of God? If it is the latter, we have to treat it as such! However, Enns believes this is a problem:

• The problem, though, is that the evangelical view of the Bible as God’s inerrant authority for the church is its ground floor raison d’etre. Evangelicalism exists, at least intellectually, to defend and promote this view.

To not regard the Bible as entirely God-breathed puts us at the controls, where we become creator and concoct an entirely different religion. For many years, I unwittingly attempted to do this. I had been convinced that many biblical teachings were simply beneath the dignity of God, like the teaching that we are to submit to the authorities (Romans 13). I had been a radical, and this just didn’t accord with my intellectual baggage.

However, over the years, God has humbled me and my regard for my own thinking and proclivities. Admittedly, not all of the teachings of Scripture are now agreeable or even sensible to me. However, these “problems” are no longer proof that the Bible isn’t fully God-breathed. Instead, they represent challenges to deepen my understanding into God’s ways.

Perhaps Enns thinks too much of his own thinking and too little of God’s. He concludes:

• To ask evangelicals to do a critical self-assessment of how they read the Bible is in effect to ask them to assess the entire system.

He is right about that! But of course, Enns has already completed this “critical self-assessment.”