Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
The global push to impose the molecules-to-man evolutionary mythology as the only “scientific” account of the origins of man and the universe has advanced to the point that efforts are now being made here in the United States to deny accreditation to colleges and universities that do not teach the “science” of evolution. According to the website “Evolution News and Views”:
In its Blueprint for Positive Change 2020, the Human Rights Campaign proposes that the U.S. Department of Education in the next presidential administration adopt new regulations to “Ensure Nondiscrimination Policies and Science Based Curricula Are Not Undermined by Religious Exemptions to Accreditation Standards.” The document explains:
Language regarding accreditation of religious institutions of higher education in the Higher Education Opportunity Act could be interpreted to require accrediting bodies to accredit religious institutions that discriminate or that do not meet science based curricula standards. The Department of Education should issue a regulation clarifying that this provision, which requires accreditation agencies to “respect the stated mission” of religious institutions, does not require the accreditation of religious institutions that do not meet neutral accreditation standards including nondiscrimination policies and scientific curriculum requirements. (emphasis added by “Evolution News and Views”)
If enacted, this proposal would open Pandora’s Box for new restrictions on free speech and academic freedom in the area of science. Many scientific claims have worldview implications, including scientific claims arising in the fields of cosmology, origin of life research, evolution, sexuality, medicine, human cloning, and neuroscience. As a result, science research can give rise to a host of disputed questions. Some of these questions are ethical—for example, is it moral to use fetal tissue from aborted human babies should in medical research? Other questions are factual: How much change can unguided natural selection actually produce? Are proposed materialistic explanations for the origin of the first life scientifically realistic?
It’s not hard to envision accreditors trying to impose dogmatic curriculum standards that would squelch the coverage of dissenting scientific views. Under current law, if a religious university as part of its mission decides to include dissenting scientific views about Darwinian evolution in its science curriculum, it has an additional layer of protection from punitive accreditors. If this new proposal goes into effect, that layer of protection will be eroded.
Needless to say, this proposal is not grounded in science, which is supposed to prize open debate and scrutiny, not censorship. The proposal also represents a repudiation of the principles of a free society. A free society prizes diversity of thought and seeks to achieve consensus by persuasion, not coercion.
Finally, the proposal exhibits insecurity rather than confidence. Confessional religious institutions are a small fraction of the total colleges and universities in the United States. But apparently protecting their diversity of thought is too dangerous to permit. It’s almost as if those making the proposal fear that they can’t prevail in debates over science issues if even a handful of institutions are allowed to air dissenting views. Are their own arguments that weak?
Not surprisingly, in China the suppression of dissenting views that the Biden administration and their corporate allies seek to speedily impose on the American people has gone on for almost 75 years and continues unabated. According to Asia News in Beijing:
A young teenager named Xiaoyu has had to endure standing in class for over a month, in punishment because he believes in God and because he dared to challenge his teacher who wanted to convince him not only of the theory of evolution, but also of non-existence of God.
The testimony sent to us by Fr. Stanislaus, a priest from north-eastern China, is anonymous out of respect for the young man and the teacher. But it is very significant of the campaign implemented by the United Front to curb the faith among young people. This happens not only with the ban on going to Mass for minors under 18, but also with checks and disciplinary measures among teachers and students if any of them declare themselves a believer. . .
I was surprised, but also moved when a faithful told me about his son. In class, the professor declared: “The Bible says that man was created by God, this statement is wrong. God does not exist, man evolved from apes, proof of this is Darwin’s Theory of Evolution and the fossil anthropoids ... “.
After that, the professor asks Xiaoyu and he replies: “Professor, I don’t understand. How does the Theory of Evolution prove the non-existence of God? Although humans evolved from apes, where did they [the apes] come from? How can it be proved that they were not created by God? How is the beginning of all existence? ... “
Xiaoyu and the professor argued throughout the lesson, leaving their fellow students speechless. After the class, his classmates went to ask Xiaoyu: “What happened to you, Xiaoyu? How dare you? ..."
At the next civics and politics lesson, the professor asks Xiaoyu again: “Do you understand?”
Xiaoyu replies: “No, I don’t understand.”
“Then stand up!”
At the following lesson, the professor asks again, and Xiaoyu says, “Professor, it is better for me to stand straight away.”
At the next one: “Professor, I will just stay standing.”
http://www.asianews.it/news-en/Xiaoyu,-left-standing-in-class-because-he-believes-in-God-51547.html
After almost 75 years of communist propaganda, even persecuted believers like Xiaoyu apparently accept Big Bang cosmology and “ape to man evolution” as “facts,” and struggle to retain their faith in some kind of Uncaused Cause behind the “fact” of Big Bang cosmology and microbe-to-man evolution. Unfortunately, when hypotheses as far removed from reality as Big Bang cosmology and biological evolution are assumed without proof to be true, even by “believers,” the “educators” charged with indoctrinating the rising generation do not see any need to offer a rational demonstration for their state-mandated-mythology-masquerading-as-science. They simply train their students to do what they have learned to do—“Do what you are told; don’t ask questions; accept the party line, or suffer the consequences.”
Signs of a New Openness to the Traditional Doctrine of Creation in Europe
Without supernatural Faith, Hope, and Charity, the nightmarish convergence between the educational policies of the United States government and those of communist China could easily drive one to despair. However, within the community of Catholic intellectuals, one can glimpse some signs of a new openness to the traditional doctrine of creation, as reflected in a review of Pamela Acker’s new book on vaccination by a well-known author and contributor to the Italian journal The International Van Thuan Observer. Author Stefano Fontana writes:
“Vaccination: A Catholic Perspective” is the title of a short book by Pamela Arcker published by the Kolbe Center for the Study on Creation (www.kolbercenter.org). The author has a master’s degree in biology from the Catholic University of America, has been a longtime teacher of natural sciences, and has participated in genome research at Washington University in St. Louis and on vaccines.
We are offering a brief presentation of this concise and informative booklet recently published in December 2020, because it projects a particular perspective quite different from those now in vogue, and can be useful in the current discussion on vaccination. Our Observatory does not deal directly with these issues. However, since vaccination also takes on – especially these days – political significance, we take the liberty of bringing this to your attention.
Ms Acker is anti-vaccination and addresses the various aspects of the problem with precision and documentary support. She analyzes the history of vaccination and its biological dimension, focusing on the problems that may arise from it, and explaining that having antibodies through the vaccine does not mean becoming immune. She then illustrates the limits of vaccination: the immunity induced by vaccination is temporary, and in some cases vaccination is ineffective,
Of considerable interest is the chapter on vaccination in the evolutionary paradigm, the framework of which, according to the author, underlies current vaccination policies. Are vaccines safe? That is the title of a subsequent chapter. In this regard, the author is very skeptical and believes that vaccination weakens the immunity of the population.
The issue of the morality of vaccination is then addressed. In addition to the problem of the cells of aborted fetuses used in the production of the vaccine, the author examines the concept of herd immunity, according to which it would be necessary to vaccinate in order to guarantee the most fragile members of the population, and points out some weaknesses in such an approach.
Finally, ample space is dedicated to vaccination as a response to Coronavirus. The latter belongs to the SARS-CoV-2 for which – says Ms Arcker – it has not proven possible to find a vaccine over the last 17 years. The author warns against vaccines made and approved too quickly.
The last part of the booklet is dedicated to what to do, and we would refer you to it.
As mentioned above, our Observatory does not delve into this specific issue in its own right. Nonetheless, we do bring this book to your attention because we found it interesting and do believe it can be useful in the discussion now underway. Especially interesting is the global perspective from which the author analyzes the vaccination, namely that of Creation. For this reason we offer below the closing words of Ms. Acker’s book:
“God’s works are wonderful beyond our imagining, and the human body is undoubtedly one of His greatest works. With that in mind, I would like to conclude this brief study of vaccination by acknowledging how little we really understand about the working of the divinely-designed immune system and how salutary it would be for mankind if medical researches devoted less time to developing vaccines and more time to studying natural immunity. We should learn how to optimized this marvelous system, instead of trying to tinker with it or bypass it in ways that compromise the health of the whole body for the sake of gaining a dubious advantage in the fight against a specific infectious disease.
When scientific and medical researchers approach the immune system within the Creation-Providence framework, they will no longer presume that the immune system is the product of millions of years of random mutation and natural selection, but a system intentionally fashioned by the Creator to keep the human body in a state of good health. Abandonment of the evolutionary hypothesis will allow researchers to discard the bankrupt notion of the body as a collection of disparate parts that are somewhat defective and must be modified to achieve their proper function, and to search for the causes of illness in dietary, genetic, physiological, spiritual, or environmental factors.
This, in turn, will focus their attention on trying to discover much more thoroughly how the divinely-designed immune system actually works so that medical practitioners can help to optimize its God-given efficiency rather than bypassing it in ways that seriously weaken the whole system. When this paradigm shift happens, we will see a dramatic recovery of health on a national and global scale”.
While we welcome this review and its recognition of the link between questionable vaccination practices and an acceptance of the microbe-to-man evolutionary paradigm, all too many Catholic academics continue to heap scorn upon our efforts to defend the traditional doctrine of creation and its accompanying metaphysical principles. The good news is that we are receiving more and more emails from young adult Catholics all over the world who are taking it upon themselves to weigh our arguments in defense of the traditional doctrine of creation in the balance with the arguments for theistic evolution or progressive creation and concluding for themselves that the traditional doctrine of creation is indeed the truth—and the foundation of the entire Catholic Faith.
Yours in Christ through the Immaculata in union with St. Joseph,
Hugh Owen
