Too much caffeine sucks...

Yup, those Monster drinks are killer. I drank one on my way to Lawrence to listen to Jones lecture. I figured I'd be so fired up afterwards about the content of his presentation that I'd need to sit down and rant a while. I find that writing clears my mind.

So here I sit, jacked up ready to vent, but Jones didn't give me much to rant about. He merely stated that he wasn't an activist judge.

Hmmm.... what to do. Can't sleep...

...so, I guess I'll comment on one thing that really irks me about this case. Jones declared in his 139-page decision that the Intelligent Design Movement is “religiously motivated”. ID is no more religiously motivated than Darwinism.

Intelligent Design certainly has religious ~implications~, but no more so than Darwinian evolution. Why you ask?? Well, let me tell you...

Darwinists are quick to point out that many of the vocal supporters of the Intelligent Design movement are Christians and that ID supports their faith beliefs.

Yet, let’s take a look at the the vocal movers and shakers pushing Darwinian evolution and doing everything in their power to make a mockery of the Intelligent Design movement.

First on deck we have Eugenie Scott, from the National Center for Science Education...

"NCSE is a nonprofit, tax-exempt membership organization working to defend the teaching of evolution against sectarian attack. We are a nationally-recognized clearinghouse for information and advice to keep evolution in the science classroom and "scientific creationism" out.

Sounds a bit militant, but whatever. Personally, I don’t support biblical creation or any other religious agenda being forced on the science classroom. Separation of church and state is a good thing for many, many reasons. But, for Eugenie, I think there is a bit more going on here.

She's a "Notable Signer" of the Humanist Manifest III, which makes broad theological claims that "humans are...the result of unguided evolutionary change. Humanists recognize nature as self-existing.”

So, she is an atheist and a humanist, which means that Darwinism supports her philosophical position that there is no God, and that “nature is self-existing”. After reading her biography, I see that she has received some interesting awards:

“...the Isaac Asimov Science Award from the American Humanist Association, the First Amendment Award from the Playboy Foundation, the James Randi Award from the Skeptic Society.”

Neato...can’t imagine why they are so fond of her science.

Shoot, she even commented in one interview:

"I have found that the most effective allies for evolution are people of the faith community. One clergyman with a backward collar is worth two biologists at a school board meeting any day!"

Meaning that if she can convert a preacher to accepting darwinian evolution, she can get him to convert his entire flock. Interesting that she used the words “backward collar”. I wonder if those poor clergyman know what she is up to.

Or how about Barbara Forrest? Barbara was a witness for the plaintiff at the Dover trial, and she wrote the anti-ID book, Creationism’s Trojan Horse.

She serves on the Board of Directors of the New Orleans Secular Humanist Association. They describe themselves as “an affiliate of American Atheists, and members of the Atheist Alliance International”.

NOSHA is also an affiliate of the Council for Secular Humanism which it describes as “North America’s leading organization for non-religious people.” And NOSHA’s links page boasts “the Secular Web,” who's mission is:

...to defend and promote metaphysical naturalism, the view that our natural world is all that there is, a closed system in no need of an explanation and sufficient unto itself.”

Sounds darn near like the Christian creeds.

Then we have leading evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, author of The God Delusion, who made the infamous admission that, “Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist.” Dawkins clearly rejects God and believes the universe is a singularly random and meaningless place which arose without the aid of a designer. BTW, Dawkins will be speaking at KU October 16th. That should be a treat.

Let’s peruse a few other comments made by ardent evolutionists...

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfil many of its extravagant promise of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

[Professor Richard Lewontin, “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review, January 9, 1997, p. 31.]

Sounds like ‘ol Prof. Lewontin has his own “prior” commitment, yet all we ever hear from “mainstream science” is that those who don’t swallow the entire theory of evolution have a “prior” commitment to a supernatural God and Biblical creation. Sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.

Steven Weinberg when he was addressing the “Freedom From Religion Foundation“ said...

“I personally feel that the teaching of modern science is corrosive to religious belief, and I’m all for that!” he said. The hope that science would liberate people from religion, he went on, is “one of the things that in fact has driven me in my life.” If science helps bring about the end of religion, he concluded, “it would be the most important contribution science could make.”

[Weinberg’s comments were reported in “Free People from superstition,” Freethought Today, April 2000]

Francis Crick and James Watson (double-helix structure of DNA), freely admit that anti-religious motivations drove their scientific work. “ I went into science because of these religious reasons, there’s no doubt about that,” Crick said in an interview. “I asked myself what were the two things that appear inexplicable and are used to support religious beliefs.” He decided the two things that support religion were “the difference between living and nonliving things, and the phenomenon of consciousness.” He then focused his research specifically at demonstrating a naturalistic view of both.

Religion is just so many “myths from the past,” Watson added during the same interview. The discovery of the double helix, he said, gives “grounds for thinking that the powers held traditionally to be the exclusive property of the gods might one day be ours.”

Then we have Michael Ruse who states that:

[Evolution is]“…a full-fledged alternative to Christianity…Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.” [Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians. National Post (May 13, 2000). pB-3. Ruse makes the same argument in his most recent book, Mystery of Mysteries: Is Evolution a Social Construction?]

Ruse is absolutely right!! Evolution is a religion.

And, of course, we have our dear Professor PZ Myers at the University of MN who never misses a chance to diss Christians or anyone else who doesn’t agree with his “science”. It only take a few minutes to scan through some of the entries at his blogsite, Pharyngula, to see that the guy has a bit of a beef with Christianity and religion in general.

Last month I stumbled across one of his posts in which he was reviewing this article and the following chart:



The first words he typed regarding the chart were, “My first thought was, "Good, now how can we get those numbers higher?"

But, I still hold out hope for PZ. Why, just the other day he was supporting references to God in the Veggie Tales cartoons which have now hit network television. How very "tolerant" of him. Evidently, NBC is is trying to censor the word “God” in the popular kid’s show.

Then again, there was the time when he suggested that everyone sign a petition in order to get the Bible banned from being sold at Walmart. LOL...

Let me give you the straight scoop here. I've got nothing against humanists or atheists, personally. To each his own, but let’s not try to pretend that those mentioned above and many other scientists have a prior commitment to purely naturalistic evolutionary beginnings, and a strong aversion to anything that might represent the possibility of a Designer. Due to their philosophical outlook, they are not about to let a "Divine Foot in the door.”

I could not care less whether scientists are Atheist, Agnostic, Christian, Muslim, Jewish, Hindu, Sun worshippers, or whatever. BUT, I do care when the "religiously motivated" card is used unfairly.

Okay, now that I have all that off my chest, I feel much better. Venting is so exuberating...