Part 1
In the latest episode of Darwinist obfuscation, Dr Provine is pulling out the Darwinist playbook as prescribed by Elsberry here.
| The other approach is to show that religion underlies “intelligent design”. In 2002, I gave a talk on evolution and “intelligent design” at the CSICOP Fourth World Skeptics Conference. In that one, I did show how the “intelligent design” movement was run by religious people for religious purposes. And that’s the approach of Creationism’s Trojan Horse from Press. |
Why is this tactic important to the Darwinists? Maybe it is because they know that the general public is skeptical of Darwinian evolution, but they are even more skeptical of injecting any religious belief on someone else and on science. If they are successful in branding Intelligent Design as a Christian belief then they would have successfully kill any public support for ID. This is a good tactic because it had worked before with YEC. Why bother dealing with the merits of ID and science when you can mislead the public by hiding the truth.
| Meyer presented an evidential case for the inadequacy of modern materialistic attempts to explain the origin of life and further argued that ID better explains the presence of an information-rich digital code in the cell (DNA), while Provine argued from a religious preconception about how a superintellect would do things. |
Here is the problem with their tactic, most if not all of the scholars that subscribe to the theory of Intelligent Design do not appeal to religion, the Bible or God for their support of the theory. In this summarization of the debate between Dr. Stephen Meyer and Dr. William Provine
Meyer didn’t appeal to some deity for his argument of Design. Behe, Dembski, Wells, didn’t have to appeal to deity for their case of Design. Yet Darwinists like Dr. Provine seems insistent on attaching religion to this debate.
Dr. Provine claims that Dr. Meyer is hiding his religious beliefs.
| Steve Meyer’s attempt to hide the religious underpinnings of ID theory remind me of Wendell Bird’s huge 2 volume work entitled, The Origin of Species Revisited: The Theories of Evolution and of Abrupt Appearance (Philosophical Library, 1989). |
How did Dr. Meyer hide his religious underpinnings?
| I asked Steve Meyer if he thought that humans and chimpanzees shared a common ancestor. He said no, for two reasons. He argued first that extreme similarity of DNA said nothing about a common ancestor. This means that systematics (making evolutionary trees) is a sham science since modern methods stress using DNA evidence to support tree structures. Secondly, he said, in answer to my question, that humans had God-given immortal souls, and thus could not possibly share a common ancestor with chimpanzees, also a main argument of the young-earth creationists. Thus religion plays an important role in Steve Meyer’s rejection of a common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees |
So is this what you call hiding in plain sight? Dr. Meyer is hiding his religious beliefs by saying that humans had God-given immortal souls? If Meyer was trying to hide his religious underpinnings shouldn’t he have just left that out of his response? Dr. Provine is misleading the reader by providing a false characterization of Dr. Meyer as ordained by Elsberry and NCSE’s Trojan horse.
| you need a third approach: show that the ID advocate on stage with you has been lying to his followers. Show misquote after misquote; demonstrate error after checkable error, and make the audience understand that if the ID advocate claims that the sky is blue, their next step had better be to look out the window to see for themselves. |
In this case it backed fired because Dr. Provine is the one who appeared to be caught lying.
What if we apply the same logic and reasoning that Darwinists use for their Creationism’s Trojan horse to Darwinism? What possibly could be the driving force behind Darwinism? Is it science, for which there is no empirical evidence what so ever that Darwinian evolution could have produced all the diversity of life? Or is the atheistic metaphysics of Darwinists the driving force for their distortion of science? Elsberry a staff member of NCSE has no qualms associating himself with CSICOP which promotes atheism. Barbara Forrest is a board member on New Orleans Secular Humanist Association a devout atheist. Eugenie Scott has been recognized and received awards from the American Humanist Association.
| Scott’s metaphysics As I said, Scott is indeed an atheist and materialist. So, how does she reconcile her theoretical positions with her call for a pragmatic separation of the two issues? … Scott espouses the view that there is a distinction between methodological materialism and philosophical materialism. The first corresponds to what any practicing scientist would do. We assume that the world is made of matter, and that if there is something else out there, this is simply beyond the scope and reach of the scientific method. The second position is rational, but not scientific. It points to the rational conclusion that there is only matter out there, even though we cannot prove it beyond any doubt. … One problem with Scott’s dualism is that, even though technically correct, it smacks of political correctness, or at least lacks philosophical courage. |
Is Provine any better?
| Provine’s metaphysics Not so for William Provine. His answer is clear: there is nothing out there, we die in the most definitive sense of the word, and there is no point in even asking the question of the ultimate meaning of life. Where does he get this conclusion? From the Darwinian theory of evolution by descent with modification. According to Provine, not only there is no evidence for anything beyond matter, but the whole essence of evolutionary change should tell us that it is irrational to even look for it. |
In my opinion, their dogmatic atheism clouds their perspective on science. Using their Darwinian logic it would seem that atheism is the ultimate driving force of Darwinism and not science. Maybe Dr. Provine is so insistent on inventing Dr. Meyer’s religious belief behind ID is because his atheistic belief is behind his Darwinism. This is not about science. This is about what Dr. Provine perceive as atheism’s war on religion.
For it is with your heart that you believe,
and it is with your mouth that you confess you are atheist.
As Darwin says, “Anyone who trusts in methodological naturalism
will never be put to shame.”, because there is no morality.
For there is big difference between Jew and Gentile the same
Lord of Evolution has made some over the others.
“Everyone who calls on the name of Atheism will be nihilist.”
How, then, can they call on the one they have not believed in?
And how can they believe unless they be brainwash by other Atheist.
And how can they be brainwash unless it is force down their throat.
And how can it be force down their throat unless it is disguise
under the name of science.
As it is written, “How beautiful are the blind leading the blind”
— Atheist Manifesto 1:1-7
Atheism’s Trojan Horse Part 2
According to Barbara Forrest ID is guilty by association with Creationism, here are some of her reasoning. In her book Creationism’s Trojan Horse
| Chronological History of the Wedge By 1995, Johnson’s mission had crystallized, and he had a loyal contingent of like-minded people to help carry it out. …in which he positioned himself as a “theistic realist” against “methodological naturalism”: First, here is a definition of MN [methodological naturalism], followed by a contrasting definition of my own position, which I label “theistic realism” (TR). . . . 1. A methodological naturalist defines science as the search for the best naturalistic theories. … 2. A theistic realist assumes that the universe and all its creatures were brought into existence for a purpose by God. Theistic realists expect this “fact” of creation to have empirical, observable consequences that are different from the consequences one would observe if the universe were the product of nonrational causes Now that ID’s metaphysical terrain was clearly mapped, Johnson and his allies needed a formal strategy for executing their mission. |
Let’s contrast this with Barbara Forrest’s metaphysical terrain.
| Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism I shall use “methodological naturalism” and “philosophical naturalism” to mean what Paul Kurtz defines them to mean in the first and second senses, respectively: First, naturalism is committed to a methodological principle within the context of scientific inquiry; i.e., all hypotheses and events are to be explained and tested by reference to natural causes and events. To introduce a supernatural or transcendental cause within science is to depart from naturalistic explanations. On this ground, to invoke an intelligent designer or creator is inadmissible…. There is a second meaning of naturalism, which is as a generalized description of the universe. According to the naturalists, nature is best accounted for by reference to material principles, i.e., by mass and energy and physical-chemical properties as encountered in diverse contexts of inquiry. This is a non-reductive naturalism, for although nature is physical-chemical at root, we need to deal with natural processes on various levels of observation and complexity: electrons and molecules, cells and organisms, flowers and trees, psychological cognition and perception, social institutions, and culture… |
Her metaphysical atheism guides her adherence to naturalism. Since atheism is at odds with Christianity, she is compelled to oppose what she perceives as a Christian agenda. Her staunch belief in atheism has precluded her from accepting any evidence against her naturalistic Darwinian belief. It matters not to her that the signatories she pointed to in her book do not speculate, or is it necessary to speculate about a creator in ID. She sees ID as a threat that weakens her case in atheism. Here is how Paul Kurtz, her philosophical soul mate, put it in his book Forbidden Fruit.
| “To ground ethics in God only pushes skepticism one step backward and does not advance the argument … for the God of orthodox theism is no longer believable to the scientific humanist” |
This is the reason she has to link Christian theism with ID. ID threatens her believe of atheistic naturalism. She like the members of NCSE needs to conjure up an enemy that she can attack and what better enemy than the old Christian theism.
Barbara Forrest’s attack on ID is also center around the idea of guilt by association.
| A Conversation With Barbara Forrest Wedge advocates like Johnson and Michael Behe say they reject young-Earth creationism, yet many young-Earthers seem to have endorsed the Wedge strategy. What is going on here? … There is a marriage of convenience between young-Earth creationists (YECs) and ID creationists. The fundamentalist YECs insist on the literal interpretation of Genesis, which includes the view that Earth is only 6,000-10,000 years old. … But the strategy and arguments ID proponents use are the same ones the YECs have always used. ID terminology is somewhat more scientifically sophisticated and religiously sanitized, but not so much that YECs cannot recognize its true identity as creationism. |
So what is she saying? Although Johnson and Behe publicly reject YEC, but secretly behind closed doors these insidious Creationists know the code that each other are using? ID is just YEC in scientific jargon? This is more evidence that she is trying to conjure up a theistic enemy to attack in order to protect her atheistic naturalism.
It might be interesting to follow her logic here and apply it to her belief system. She is an atheistic secular humanist by her definition of MN&PN. Using her logic of connecting YEC to ID, it seems reasonable to draw a connection between what Barbara Forrest believe and what atheists like Paul Kurtz believe.
| Humanist Manifesto II we can discover no divine purpose or providence for the human species. While there is much that we do not know, humans are responsible for what we are or will become. No deity will save us; we must save ourselves. |
This is not a criticism of Forrest or Kurtz’s belief. I am just trying to point out with this dogmatic commitment to their atheistic belief. It is not surprising that they are unable to see the distinction between ID and Creationism.
What else do humanists believe?
| The Secular Humanist Prospect: In Historical Perspective The third factor that emerged to challenge freethought and the secular movement was the near-total collapse of Marxism. For a good part of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, Marxist-humanist ideals had influenced intellectuals; with Marxism’s eclipse, anticlericalism and indeed any open criticism of religion have all but disappeared. |
So for the secular humanist Marxism is good because it was anticlerical. Marxism also brought us communism and totalitarianism of the Soviet Union and Mao’s China, where the belief of those who disagree with them are evil. Evil must be eradicated to the tune of 61 million in the Soviet and 35 Million in China. What is the purpose of this contrast? It illustrate the extreme in the mindset of a secular humanist like Barbara Forrest and Paul Kurtz that although Marxism brought about the murder of over 96 million people, it is a good thing because it is anticlerical. Now put this back in light of their opposition to ID, Barbara Forrest must be rabid over the prospect that ID might be sympathetic to Creationism. This must be the real reason behind Barbara Forrest’s attack on ID. Applying Forrest’s logic her Creationism’s Trojan Horse is really Atheism’s Trojan Horse.
Atheism’s Trojan Horse Part 3
Atheism’s Trojan Horse Revealed by Fellow Darwinist
This interview from The Boston Globe with Michael Ruse caught my attention.
The reporter comments:
| Ruse elaborates on a theme he has been developing in a career dating back to the 1960s: Evolution is controversial in large part, he theorizes, because its supporters have often presented it as the basis for self-sufficient philosophies of progress and materialism, which invariably wind up in competition with religion. While scientists and creationists often square off over the scientific evidence for evolution, the source of the ongoing dispute is deeper. ”This is not just a fight about dinosaurs or gaps in the fossil record,” says Ruse, speaking from his home in Florida. ”This is a fight about different worldviews.” … Virtually every prominent Darwinian in recent decades has eschewed social Darwinism, and most believe that evolution itself, while responsible for the increased complexity of organic forms over time, cannot be regarded as a linear process driving toward a particular endpoint. But Ruse asserts that popular contemporary biologists like Edward O. Wilson and Richard Dawkins have also exacerbated the divisions between evolutionists and creationists by directly challenging the validity of religious belief – Dawkins by repeatedly declaring his atheism (”faith,” he once wrote, ”is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate”), and Wilson by describing his ”search for objective reality” as a replacement for religious seeking. … To be sure, Ruse acknowledges, some biologists are religious, while a significant portion of religious believers are willing to accept the concept of evolution at least to some extent. |
This is affirmation of the Atheism’s Trojan Horse by a fellow Darwinists. There is much more behind the agenda of the attack on ID. People like Barbara Forrest, Eugenie Scott, Wesley Elsberry of the NCSE, William Provine, Massimo Pigliucci, Richard Dawkins and their likes, are less concerned with science and more interested in promoting their atheistic agenda. They see ID as friendly to religion and there are Creationists who support ID. This is alarming to the atheistic Darwinists. ID is now equated to the virus and it is becoming more virulent, drastic measures must be use to eradicate it. Atheists circle their wagons and deny there is any controversy in Darwinian evolution, squelch any avenue for ID to express dissent from schools and journals, then the killer blow is to misrepresent ID as Creationism.
This last deceptive attack is an appeal to the public’s fair play and our value for freedom. They know that Americans while inclined to religion, we also value our freedom of choice. We don’t want to impose our religion on others. Atheism’s Trojan Horse has no such sense of fairness and freedom. These atheistic Darwinians have no qualms to impose their atheistic believe on the unsuspecting masses. Their effort is to label ID as a particular brand of Creationism, the YEC like Ken Hovind to ridicule ID and present it as some absurd Creationism to the public. This is in the hopes of diminishing the publics support and kill ID by political proxy.
Last Modified: 3/4/2006