"Those Ignorant, Stupid, Insane, Wicked Creationists" by Bert Thompson, Ph.D.

http://apologeticspress.org/APContent.aspx?category=9&article=161

"Those Ignorant, Stupid, Insane, Wicked Creationists"

by	Bert Thompson, Ph.D.

The attack is on. It’s not the first time. And if history teaches us anything, it will not be the last. Evolutionists are mad. But they do not intend to just “get angry”; they intend to “get even.” The walls of their Neo-Darwinian Jericho are crumbling around them. They know it. They’ve known it for a long, long time. The problem is, now other people are figuring it out as well. A lot of other people! The time to act has come. Take off the gloves. Get down. Get mean. Get dirty. Win—at all cost!

Creationism has been making far too much headway, in far too many places—with far too much favorable publicity. Sound the battle call. Rally the troops. Call out the reserves. Enlist the allies. Engage the enemy. Press forward. Refuse to retreat!

What enemy? The late Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard referred to that enemy as the “militant fundamentalists who label themselves with the oxymoron ‘scientific creationists,’ and try to sneak their Genesis literalism into high school classrooms under the guise of scientific dissent.” Dr. Gould complained: “I’m used to their rhetoric, their dishonest mis-and half-quotations, their constant repetition of ‘useful’ arguments that even they must recognize as nonsense.” Yet, he explained to his fellow evolutionists, “our struggle with these ideologues is political, not intellectual.” And last, he said he refused to engage in dialog with creationists, but rather chose instead to deal with “our allies among people committed to reason and honorable argument”—a description that, from Gould’s vantage point, apparently would exclude creationists by definition (1987, 8[1]:64, emp. added).

And it gets worse. Richard Dawkins, the enraged evolutionist of Oxford University, put it this way: “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that)” [1989, p. 3, emp. added].

Now comes John Rennie, the editor of Scientific American, to enter the fray. In the July 2002 issue, Mr. Rennie penned an article titled “15 Answers to Creationist Nonsense” in which he caricatured creationism, while feebly attempting to bolster the increasingly faltering theory of organic evolution. Joining Mr. Rennie is Thomas Hayden, a staff writer for U.S. News & World Report who authored the cover story of the magazine’s July 29, 2002 issue (“A Theory Evolves”)—a feature plainly intended to “strike back” at creationists, as Hayden made clear when he echoed the evolutionists’ party line: “The evidence against evolution amounts to little more than ‘I can’t imagine it.’ That’s not evidence. That’s just giving up” (133[4]:50).

Well, gentlemen, I have news for you. We are not giving up! You have thrown down the gauntlet; we will not hesitate to pick it up. You have drawn the line in the sand; we will not shrink from crossing it. Your bullying tactics and name calling may intimidate some and impress others. It accomplishes neither with us. We know what you are trying to do, and we know why you are trying to do it. We know about your “hidden agenda.”

Your compatriot, geneticist Richard Lewontin of Harvard, let it slip in his 1997 review of Carl Sagan’s posthumously published book, Billions and Billions, when he admitted that evolutionists “have a prior commitment, a commitment to naturalism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door” (1997, p. 31, emp. added).

Just as we thought all along! You must find a way—organic evolution—to rid yourself of that “Divine Foot in the door.” Nice to see you finally admit it. Well, once again, gentlemen, I have news for you. God’s foot is in the door, whether you like it or not—all your attempts to prevent it notwithstanding. And there is nothing you can say or do to stop it, because neither He, nor we, will be going “quietly into the night.” Not now. Not ever. Yes, the attack is on. But we are at the vanguard of that attack. You are losing the battle—and you will lose the war! Truth always triumphs over error.

REFERENCES

Dawkins, Richard (1989), “Book Review” (of Donald Johanson and Maitland Edey’s Blueprint), The New York Times, section 7, April 9.

Gould, Stephen J. (1987), “Darwinism Defined: The Difference Between Fact and Theory,” Discover, 8[1]:64-65,68-70, January.

Hayden, Thomas (2002), “A Theory Evolves,” U.S. News & World Report, 133[4]:42-50, July 29.

Lewontin, Richard (1997), “Billions and Billions of Demons,” The New York Review, January 9.

[NOTE: Our responses to both U.S. News & World Report and Scientific American in this issue of Reason & Revelation are the abbreviated versions. To view or download the complete, uncut versions, please click here for the U.S. News & World Report refutation, or click here for the Scientific American rebuttal.] — Bert Thompson