Eventually, Darwinian scientists concluded that this exquisite artifact had not been manufactured; it had evolved, starting as a primitive sun dial from prehistoric times, swept and carried along and burnished by howling winds and-
Yes, just in case you were wondering, Mr. Pat "Gee Whittakers" Boone is about to take us on a rip-roaring rendition of the so-called "watchmaker anaology" of the universe. You know, the one in which ignorant and easily impressed humans point to some pretty and/or complicated bit of science and say "Behold! God must have made it, for there is no other explanation!!"? Yeah, that one. We're going to skip ahead here, as I assume you've heard it before. It was already someone discredited before Darwin bothered dropping the 8-ton anvil that was "Origin of Species" on it.
Anybody gullible enough to believe that sappy saga? No? Well, how about one even more farfetched and absurd?
For those of you amongst the audience familiar with these family-reunion types of conversations with semi-senile, long-winded senior citizens who can't remember what day of the week it is or how old you are but insist on regaling you with the story of the time they lost the keys to the Chevy Deville: this is it. Time to politely interrupt, start coughing, and then run and hide in the bathroom.
The vast universe, operating in such dependable precision we can confidently send human beings a quarter million miles into space, all the way to the surface of the moon, and back, safely. Our earth, moving in quiet orbit around the sun, so perfectly placed that life of all kinds flourish, while just a little distance closer or farther away, and the globe would not support life at all.
...A scientific community sufficiently respected and well-endowed financially speaking to actually do its freaking work without having idiots like Boone's ancestors yelling "ye hereticks! All the world knowes that ye sun doth revolve around the earthe and that ye moone is the largest of the planetes! Burn the witches!"
And all of this just "happened." No blueprint, no design, no intelligence, no creator or creation process. Just blind chance, and something called "evolution."
Well actually a single cosmic event known as the Big Bang which created the universe as you see it (complete with a few billion other observable planets, all of which have proven to be uninhabited thus far). This was of course followed by about 3 billion years of the earth just kind of sitting there, followed by another three billion years of life (beginning with the first naturally-occuring enzymes reacting to each other in unexpected ways, forming into more complex compounds, and then finally into single-celled organisms). If you doubt this, please make sure to have your appendix removed and stop taking modern antibiotics. Circa 1922 penecilin should be fine.
So in other words, Pat Boone's analogy would actually make sense if you added one condition: the British airman inhabited a world in a parallel dimension in which giant hordes of watches littered the land, mated and reproduced with each other, and the various naturally-occuring watch parts existed in abundance, constantly combining, recombining, and falling apart based on natural laws.
As absurd, as nonsensical as this concept is[...]
I agree. It's right up there with flying machines. If God wanted us to fly, he'd have given us wings and hollow bones.
[...]it's being swallowed whole and taught to our kids by college-educated, highly intelligent professors, encouraged by the National Education Association and militantly defended by the ACLU.
You know, people like Einstein, Pasteur, Mendel, Crick, Watson, Fleming, Hawkins, and the like. A bunch of yahoos who have never contributed anything worthwhile to society.
Not one of these Ph.D.s can explain what started it all, where the mass and energy (the basic ingredients of which all things consist) began or came from. They posit a "primordial ooze," little one-celled organisms, some cataclysmic "big bang" explosion from which our unfathomable universe was created, and buy into a fantastic theory in which millions of life forms "evolved" into what we now see all around us – and apparently on only this one relatively small rock in all of space. Nowhere else.
I agree. Because as we all know, the founding principle of western scientific thought, as so neatly summarized by Descartes and Occham is this: "if we can't explain it, blame God." What is Dark Matter? The will of God. What is Dark Energy? Satan's flatullence. How do galaxies form? God does it. Is there life beyond earth? Only if God created it. Are there other universes? If there are, God will let us know.
And not one Ph.D. I've ever heard – totally aware of one of the basic laws of science, "every action creates an equal and opposite reaction" – can hope to explain what the "action" was that created the "equal and opposite reaction" we call matter.
"How did matter form?" God made it.
In his wonderful book, "Darwin's Black Box," author Michael Behe details the current "biochemical challenge to evolution."
In which he also brings up the watchmaker's arguement, only with much more style and scientific cover material. Again, while Behe can attempt to mount challenges to pure Darwinistic evolution based on biochemisty (including some rather embarassingly disatrous canards he attempted to hide behind until he was made the laughinstock of the scientific community), but the fundamental problem remains. Arguing from ignorance is not solid science, nor philosophy. Example:
I come in Monday morning and there is a red coffee mug on my desk. "How did this get here?" I wonder, looking at the mug. I've never seen it before. It's not mine. I'm usually the last person to leave the office. I distinctly remember locking the door before leaving Friday night. The only possible explanation?
THE GHOST OF MY LONG-DEAD GRANDFATHER MUST HAVE PUT IT THERE!!!!
Hey, it's been known to happen. I suspect him in the dissappearance of the DVD remote as well.
As true science has developed and modern technology is ever more able to peer deeply into the whirling universe of subatomic particles, the concept that life marched forward, mutation by mutation, from "simple" cell to complex organism has been knocked into the proverbial cocked hat.
Well, maybe it was proverbial back when cocked hats were in fashion (c. 1775), but I'm not sure that still applies today.
The more powerful and probing our microscopes become, the more diverse and dizzyingly complicated the simplest building blocks become; each is a tiny pulsing universe in itself!
Besides, if you look closely into an electron microscope, you can see miniature angles assembling complex organisms from raw materials. It's true!
Consider this. In 1925, in the infamous Scopes "Monkey Trial," ACLU attorney Clarence Darrow took the position that it was bigotry to teach just one view of human origins!
Well considering the fact that at the time the Dayton, TN legal statues made it illegal to teach anything other than classic 7-day creationism, you can sort of see his point.
He was defending the right of the science teacher to offer the theory of evolution as an alternative to the long-accepted account of creation. And now, that same ACLU is instituting lawsuits all over America wherever anybody dares to offer Intelligent Design or any other alternative to the theory of evolution! What blatant hypocrisy!
They supported Evolution when it was legal and continue to support it today, no matter what crackpot religious theory lab-coated reverends come up with to challenge it. Freakin' hycoprites!
Likewise, I fully demand the ACLU defend my right to teach the less well-known (but equally valid) "flood theory" to explain the appearance of rainbows after thunderstorms. If they don't support my challenge to the commonly-accepted (but highly atheistic) "color spectrum" theory of rainbows, they're nothing but a bunch of lying two-faced cowards!
Here's one more pertinent consideration, never reported by the most devoted Darwinian: Charles Darwin's own statements, especially as he approached his own demise. Earlier in his life, he openly acknowledged "the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe … as the result of blind chance or necessity." His subsequent disciples evidently dismiss that thought. Doesn't fit the "theory."
Because as we all know, Darwin was like Jesus. If he changed his mind about something, that immediately invalidates everything he ever did or said on a particular subject.
But in a fascinating book, John Myers' "Voices from the Edge of Eternity," we find the detailed personal account of Lady Hope, of Northfield, England, who visited the aging scientist often at his bedside during his last days. It's too long to recount well here, but she tells of the Bible he was reading constantly and of the worship services that took place regularly in the summerhouse in his garden[...]
"Blah, blah yoink, wadda Darwin was very religious honk, honk, booga, recanted on his deathbed, snook wizz kerbunk!"
Because...
1) Lady Hope is a liar
2) Even Creationists accept that Lady Hope's tales were highly fictionalized, and perhaps even made up out of whole cloth (some 33 YEARS after Darwin's death),
3) Darwin's recantation would not change a single thing. If Einstein recanted the theory of relativity on his death bed, it would not make a jot of difference, except insofar as his biographers would be concerned.
Charles Darwin may have birthed flawed theories, but in this case he proved prophetic.
Now, Dr. Jonathan Wells states flatly, "I think in 50 years, Darwinian evolution will be gone from the science curriculum. People will look back on it and ask how anyone could, in their right mind, have believed this, because it's so implausible when you look at the evidence."
The only thing that bugs me about the sentence is that I will have to wait 50 years to burst out laughing and sending Dr. Jonathan Wells taunting e-mails. Although by he will no doubt be dead by then, and I'll be busy trying to get it on with the hospital staff.
But 50 years could be enough to destroy the faith of two generations of our young, enough to replace it with a bankrupt false religion. Will we have the courage, the gumption, to make sure that doesn't happen?
Yes ladies and gentlemen. This is Pat Boone. Please, stay way from the horrors of rock and roll, for the good of your soul!
