Evolution in Action - Part 3
by Michael Fishwick
Yet again the logical consequences of an evolutionary philosophy of life was brought into sharp focus during recent events. Professor Richard Dawkins, who holds Oxford University's Charles Simonyi Chair in the Public Understanding of Science, was reported by LifeSite News (www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/nov/06112103.html) to have remarked that the Nazi eugenics program "may not be bad". Dawkins, author of the highly publicized book, 'The God Delusion', is not the first evolutionary scientist to have made such a claim. LifeSite reported back in June 2004 that Professor Rolf Winau, Director of the Center for Humanities and Health Sciences at Charite Medical School in Berlin, had urged IVF doctors to reappraise Nazi eugenics (www.lifesite.net/ldn/2004/jun/04062806.html ).
A recent conference at the Salk Institute for Biological Studies in La Jolla, California received publicity in the New York Times (www.nytimes.com/2006/11/21/science/21belief.html). According to the New York Times report the conference was likened by one participant to a "den of vipers". That's a fairly strong metaphor to describe fellow scientists, but a selective sample and highlighting of quotes from the article reveals why emotions were running so high.
Maybe the pivotal moment came when Steven Weinberg, a Nobel laureate in physics, warned that "the world needs to wake up from its long nightmare of religious belief,"......Or perhaps the turning point occurred at a more solemn moment, when Neil deGrasse Tyson, director of the Hayden Planetarium in New York City and an adviser to the Bush administration on space exploration, hushed the audience with heartbreaking photographs of newborns misshapen by birth defects - testimony, he suggested, that blind nature, not an intelligent overseer, is in control.......Carolyn Porco, a senior research scientist at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo., called, half in jest, for the establishment of an alternative church, with Dr. Tyson, whose powerful celebration of scientific discovery had the force and cadence of a good sermon, as its first minister...."We should let the success of the religious formula guide us," Dr. Porco said. "Let's teach our children from a very young age about the story of the universe and its incredible richness and beauty. It is already so much more glorious and awesome - and even comforting - than anything offered by any scripture or God concept I know".......Dr. Weinberg, who famously wrote toward the end of his 1977 book on cosmology, "The First Three Minutes," that 'the more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it also seems pointless,' went a step further: "Anything that we scientists can do to weaken the hold of religion should be done and may in the end be our greatest contribution to civilization".......That was just the kind of accommodating attitude that drove Dr. Dawkins up the wall. "I am utterly fed up with the respect that we - all of us, including the secular among us - are brainwashed into bestowing on religion," he said. "Children are systematically taught that there is a higher kind of knowledge which comes from faith, which comes from revelation, which comes from scripture, which comes from tradition, and that it is the equal if not the superior of knowledge that comes from real evidence." By the third day, the arguments had become so heated that Dr. Konner was reminded of "a den of vipers." "With a few notable exceptions," he said, "the viewpoints have run the gamut from A to B. Should we bash religion with a crowbar or only with a baseball bat?"
Meanwhile Fox News, November 22nd 2006, carried a live interview with the father of one of the victims of the Columbine school massacre in 1996. In a previous interview he had blamed the cause of the shootings squarely upon a nihilistic attitude towards life that comes from an evolutionary conception that there's no purpose in a chance existence. Jonathan Sarfati reports the story in Creation-Evolution headlines (www.creationsafaris.com/crev200611.htm ) as follows:
Evolutionism Fomented Columbine Disaster, Father Says. 11/22/2006
Brian Rohrbough, father of one of the students killed in the Columbine school shooting in 1999, spoke on CBS News "free speech" segment October 2 after the recent Amish school shooting. Tonight (Nov. 22) on Fox News, the Bill O'Reilly show replayed an interview he had with Rohrbough about that CBS speech that led to a firestorm of reaction in the media and on the web. It was taped last month on his Talking Points of October 6. O'Reilly titled it, "CBS News allows conservative point of view and all hell breaks loose." He especially had taken issue with a poor choice of words Katie Couric had used on her blog, "We knew when we decided to put on this segment that a lot of people would disagree with it. We also knew some might even find it repugnant." Bill countered that he found nothing at all hateful in the father's short, impassioned yet sincere statement.What was so repugnant? One thing was that Rohrbough had tied the massacre to the teaching of evolution. In Media Matters Oct. 17, Erik Boehlert called these "fringe comments." With little sympathy for the bereaved father or his right of free speech, he said, "Rohrbough proceeded to uncork a radical-right sermon about how godless liberals were running the country by, among other misdeeds, teaching evolution in the classroom." O'Reilly asked Rohrbough specifically about that reference to evolution, in which he had stated,
"This country is in a moral free-fall. For over two generations, the public school system has taught in a moral vacuum, expelling God from the school and from the government, replacing him with evolution, where the strong kill the weak, without moral consequences and life has no inherent value".
The popular TV host appeared doubtful that evolution could have been a motive for the crime. Rohrbough, however, backed up the claim without a flinch. He told O'Reilly that evolution is implicated because it "gives the right to exterminate the weak." Even more startling, he claimed that tapes made by the boys before they went on the shooting rampage clearly state that they were plotting their act because of evolution. That was evidenced further by the fact that Klebold wore a T-shirt on the fateful day proclaiming "Natural Selection." Rohrbough was frustrated that this evidence has not been released. "Evolution was the basis for the attack on Columbine," he told O'Reilly; "They said it themselves. Unfortunately, the sheriff's department won't release the tape." Why won't they release the tape? Possibly because it is vulgar and filled with foul language; maybe because they fear emotional trauma to the families. Or, perhaps it is considered too "politically incorrect" to link such an evil deed to evolution, lest the image of Saint Darwin be dishonored. Here's a cause for concerned citizens to get involved and demand that the truth come out. Darwinists may claim till the mutant cows come home that evolution is merely a scientific theory with no moral strings attached, but students know how to connect the dots to nihilism.
Week in, and week out, the media abounds with stories reflecting how the modern world holds the sanctity and purpose of human life to be of little or no value. Doctors in Britain have just been officially warned that they face prosecution and prison sentences if they refuse to starve and dehydrate patients to death. (www.lifesite.net/ldn/2006/nov/06112102.html ) The errors of Communist Russia have indeed spread and implanted themselves across the world as foretold by Our Lady at Fatima. It is becoming increasingly difficult to identify any government, East or West, that is not hell-bent on establishing a Christ-less New Order. Mark Wyatt documents in his blog (www.veritas-catholic.blogspot.com) how the Godless East German State indoctrinated its children with evolutionary fairytales in order to tow the Party Line. Exactly the same philosophical indoctrination is found in our own schools, colleges, universities, television and other media. Is it any wonder that the Moral Order and its standards of conduct are rejected by so many who have been trained to believe that life has no ultimate purpose other than Natural Selection?
