Charles Darwin is 200 years old today. Of course he has been dead for some time; a victim of a meaningless, purposeless world produced by evolution. Most educators would name Freud, Marx and Darwin as the three most influential thinkers of the past 200 years. The theories of the first two have experienced the death that was a natural product of applying their theories to real life. Darwin's theory survives and even thrives in academic institutions around the world. Yet, it survives because people live as though "it ain't so". Instead of viewing love as a cold c
chemical process that is biological only, scientists live as though love transcends biology.

Imagine going home in the evening and greeting your wife with "I don't know why I'm here except that chemical activity in the brain led me here. Oh, John Jr., you do realize you are here only because you possess a "selfish gene" that desired to propagate more selfish genes, and Johnny you do understand that you are no different than and have no more value than a toad?"

Such conversations do not occur because scientists live contradictory to their theory of origin and life.

In 1925 there was a trial in Tennessee that pitted a part time science teacher and coach against the state of Tennessee which had banned the teaching of evolution as true. The trial was actually a stage production in that the American Civil Liberties Union had been looking for a teacher who would agree to violate the law and test it in court. They actually advertised in papers looking for a willing collaborator. The leaders of Dayton Tennessee were concerned about the diminishing population and prosperity of their community when one of their leaders saw the add which generated an idea for bringing puplicity to their community. They could get a local teacher to challenge the law and then provide lawyers to defend him. When potential prosecutors were informed of the idea, they went along with it for the sake of the community. The ACLU even offered to pay for the prosecutors, as well as the defense attorneys. The case was so high profile that Clarence Darrow, one of America's best known defense attorneys agreed to defend the teacher, and former Presidenitial candidate William Jennings Bryan volunteered his services to the prosecution. The fact that Bryan hadn't practiced law in more than 30 years was not seen to be a problem. The defendant had already been assured by all involved that he would not serve time.

The argument centered on the open pursuit of truth featured by scientists and the narrow minded bigotry of religion. The classroom should be a place where opposing ideas ought to be allowed so that truth could rise above the arguments.

Today, the shoe is on the other foot, Intelligent Design theory is fighting for a right to challenge evolution which now controls our public schools and schools of higher learning.

In a previous article in this series I quoted from Richard Dawkins, the leading advocate of Darwinism today and an aggressive advocate of atheism, as saying that religion draws its conclusions from a holy book that is not open to being questioned while he as a scientist derives his conclusions from the scientific evaluation of evidence.

The disagreement between theists who believe God is the origin of life and our cosmos and people like Dawkins is not so much as a result of science vs a holy book as it is naturalism vs theism. Most Darwinians are naturalists. They begin with an assumption not science. Their assumption is that nothing exists except matter and that all things and events must be explained by natural causes. They deny that design or purpose has anything to do with our universe and our existence. Theists refuse to rule out the possibility that reality extends beyong the material and natural. Theists believe there is sufficient evidence of design and purpose in the cosmos to lead to the plausibility of God's existence. Read the holy book's record of Paul's argument in Romans chapter 1.

Currently, many biologists, astronomers and physicists agree that design makes more sense then random mutations and natural selection. Maybe in the future we can examine more closely the actual evidence offered by theists and evolutionists, but today we simply want to pay tribute to the third member of the intellectual trinity that has helped shape us. Will we live to see the death of Darwin's theory as we have Freud's and Marx's?