How did it ever happen? Darwin in the Dock

I read the following quote by the Swedish zoo-physiologist, Soren Lovtrup from his book, Darwinism: The Refutation of a Myth, New York: Croom Helm, 1987, p.422. - "I believe that one day the Darwinian myth will be ranked the greatest deceit in the history of science. ....When this happens, many people will pose the Question: "How did it ever happen?" and it got me thinking....


I became a Christian in Sept 1990 and I remember how angry I felt a few months later, when I realised I had just accepted everything I had been taught at school and college as true. What was even worse, especially in the sciences, we were only taught to question or challenge certain things in the science subjects but not others. Asking questions in history and science is why I loved these subjects so much, so why these road blocks on questions about darwinism and evolution?


According to my Daughters this is still the case in our schools today. As Prof Lovtrup said in 1987 "How did we let this happen?" What I find even more interesting is it cannot be for lack of evidence against these two ideologies just look at some of these quotes from prominent evolutionist below...

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George Wald (Nobel prize for Medicine 1967) writing in Scientific American, 191:48. May 1954 - "The Origin of life"
"When it comes to the origin of life there are only two possibilities: creation or spontaneous generation. There is no third way. Spontaneous generation was disproved one hundred years ago, but that leads us to    only one other conclusion, that of supernatural creation. We cannot accept that on philosophical grounds; therefore we choose to believe the impossible: that life arose spontaneously by chance."

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Sir Fred Hoyle (Professor of Astronomy at Cambridge University) - Hoyle on Evolution, Nature, 294[5837]:105, 12th Nov 1981.
 "The likelihood of the formation of life from inanimate matter is one to the 40 thousand naughts (zeros) after it. It is enough to bury Darwin and the whole theory of evolution. There was no primeval soup, neither on this planet nor on any other, and if the beginnings of life were not random they must therefore have been the product of purposeful intelligence."

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I have found stacks of these types of quotations by prominent evolutionists in the scientific community over the last 200 years. The general public seem totally unaware of the massive issues faced by evolution and as each day goes past we discover more and more about life and our amazing universe which stands against this ideology.


So back to the question posed by our Swedish zoo-physiologist, Soren Lovtrup "How did it ever happen? maybe I could be so bold to say that with the information we now hold in modern Science, the better question might be "Why did we let it happen?" Ignorance? Money? Pride? Ideology most certainly, if this were not the case, we would freely debate this in our classrooms and in the media.


Ideology is so powerful and in some cases can look like religion to the person watching on or listening in. The wrong ideology can also be very dangerous and result in oppression and at worst torture and death. Its partitioners and followers holding fast to that ideology with passion and faith like some religious zealot.


So the "Why" in my question can only be answered by looking at the ideology behind the resistance to greater discussion in our classrooms. As a very good friend of mine once said "Stop! Think about it"

Ignorance and lies make monkeys of us all.

Catdui's Comment - NewStatesman 25th April 2011 - "I have no religious belief and yet I am a tribal Christian" Martin Rees Astrophysicist, Astronomer Royal and Master of Trinity College, Cambridge.

I enjoyed Martin Rees article in the NewStatesmen this week "I have no religious belief and yet I am a tribal Christian" but, I am always surprised by the notion perpetuated by intelligent and respected scientists when writing these articles or similar books, the notion that they themselves have no faith (religious belief) or bias.

Everyone has a faith, belief, religion, world view or ism of some kind. To suggest otherwise is either ignorance or lies. To state the blooming obvious you will fall into one of two camps "Atheism" a set of beliefs held by Atheists "There is no God" and "Theism" is a set of beliefs held by Theists "There is a God". From each of these flow the details of one's belief i.e. Naturalist (Nature did it like this....), Christian (God did it this way......), Muslim (God did it that way), etc.

Even though Martin says in his article "But we shouldn't set up this debate as "religion V science"; instead we should strive for peaceful coexistence....." he still does not seem to recognise that his own "beliefs" and "studies" effect his view of the universe or science in general. This perpetuates the myth that study in the sciences is carried out in someway, by people with no bias, an empty mind and no life experiences to cloud their view.

I applaud Martin for his request for more critical thinking and wider debate in science however, in order to do this, we first need to be a little more honest with ourselves regarding the effect of our own beliefs on science. After all, we share the same facts and the same universe, it is how we interpret and critic this information through scientific method that matters.

I suggest a good place to start would be in the schools and universities. Let our students and scientists for that matter, ask any questions they wish regardless of its premise, which I have already postured, we all have. We should not have a situation in scientific study, as is the case in the United States at the moment, where you are not allow to challenge the current paradigm (belief), this just takes science back to the times of Galileo and others.

Science must! be open to critic. It has been stuck in one 19th century dogma for far to long without allowing any proper, open scientific critic or debate in our institutions and especially in the our media. This is the biggest threat to science and our future.

I leave you all with one of my favourite sayings "Beware the sound of one hand clapping!"

Catdui Comment - Adams Apple - April 2011