Intelligent design, which has been touted as
a crucial link between science and theology, is a theory of
creation first espoused in the 1980s. Contrary to Darwinism,
its premise is that nature displays abundant evidence of
design by an "intelligent agent" rather than by
undirected natural causes.
This approach also will be included in this
year's science curriculum throughout Ohio, whose educational
standards committee has voted to include more than just
Darwin's theory of evolution in the state's classrooms.
Intelligent design is just as scientific as
what Darwinists claim for their own treatment of evolution.
That's still not good enough for those who fear that
intelligent design implies a designer and hence -- God. But
that leaves us with the impression that science requires
either atheism or agnosticism
Yet Darwinism has become an orthodoxy,
complete with devout adherents who believe in its tenets with
religious fervor. You can hardly blame them. They must rely on
faith just like those whom they ridicule for embracing
creationism.
And faith is not just a prerequisite for
Darwinian evolution, but cosmology as a whole. Take, for
example, the Big Bang -- that event cosmologists tell us
happened 14 billion years in the universe's distant past, when
everything that exists supposedly got its start. Nobody really
knows what happened.
Well, almost nobody.
God admonished Job in the Old Testament book
that bears his name, "Where were you when I laid the
foundations of the earth? Tell me, if you have
understanding" (Job 38:4).
In an April 26 Wall Street Journal
article, science editor Sharon Begley reported that some
cosmologists have given up on the Big Bang. Instead, they
propose a "bouncing universe" that started from
"a random blip [that] got things rolling, creating an
infinitesimal bit of space-time from nothingness."
When creationists quote Genesis 1:1,
"In the beginning, God created the heavens and the
earth," and explain God created the universe ex nihilo
(from nothing), they are branded as religious fanatics. But
when cosmologists postulate the universe began "from
nothingness," it's somehow deemed "science."
Ahem.
Brian Fahling, senior policy adviser for the
American Family Association, explains: "The theory of
evolution has far too long been shielded from critical
examination. The tired old tactic of shrieking
'fundamentalist' or 'creationist' every time a question about
evolution arises is wearing thin. Dissenting voices in the
scientific and academic communities are increasing in number
despite tremendous institutional pressure to conform to the
orthodoxy of philosophic naturalism."
The 16th-century scientist Francis Bacon
wrote, "A little science estranges a man from God. A lot
of science brings him back."
Science students in the public schools
deserve the same opportunity for free and critical thinking in
their studies of the origin of the cosmos. They should be
taught "a lot of science."
Gregory Rummo belongs to
Madison Avenue Baptist Church in Paterson. He is the author of
"The View
From the Grass Roots," published by American Book
Publishing. You may e-mail him
at TheRecordReligion@northjersey.com
RELIGION
THROUGHOUT
OHIO AND in one Georgia school district this year, children
will
