By Jason Carlson

This past weekend I was speaking on the Intelligent Design vs. Evolution debate. After my lecture a student approached me and asked, “Mr. Carlson, when I tried to defend Intelligent Design in my public school science class, my teacher asked me, ‘which version of Intelligent Design are you talking about?  Christian?  Native American?  Hindu?’  He went on to say to me, ‘If you want to talk about Intelligent Design, you can’t avoid having to give equal time to everybody’s story of creation. This is why it’s best to leave religion out of the science classes.’  Well, I didn’t know how to respond to this.”

This student was faced with a common response from opponents to Intelligent Design. Many who oppose the Intelligent Design position will argue that as soon as you open the door to supernatural creation, you necessarily open the door to any and every version of supernatural creation ever postulated by humanity. However, this just isn’t the case.

The reality is, in regards to the debate over whether or not Intelligent Design should be considered in our public school science classrooms, we are still dealing with the world of science, observation and experimentation. The fact of the matter is this, all people, no matter what religion or philosophy they adhere to, have access to the very same observable scientific evidence. So, whether you’re coming at it from an Atheistic perspective, Christian perspective, Native American perspective, or Hindu perspective, all of us have the same access to the observable scientific evidence. Now, with this being the case, we must ask two questions, but ask them in their appropriate environments:  1) In our public school science classrooms we should ask, “Does the scientific evidence point towards Naturalistic evolution or Intelligent Design?” And 2) Outside of our public school science classrooms we should ask, “Which religious worldview best explains the scientific evidence?”

The Intelligent Design position can be used by whatever religious worldview that wants to attach itself to it. However, those religious worldviews all have the equal challenge of explaining how their creation story best coincides with the observable scientific evidence. So, if you want to embrace a Native American creation story, you have to explain how it fits with the scientific evidence that we all equally share; the same is true for Christians, Hindus, etc… but this should be done outside of our public school science classrooms.

The point of all of this is that Intelligent Design is not about advocating one religious version of creation over another in our public schools. Intelligent Design is simply a position that points out the scientific evidence forsome Intelligent Designer found throughout the natural world. Science cannot answer the question of who or what that Intelligent Designer is, but science can lead us to the conclusion that an Intelligent Designer must have been involved. It is left to the various religions to demonstrate why their version of the creation story best fits the scientific evidence for Intelligent Design.

So, what should be taught in our public school science classrooms?  We should teach the scientific evidence for and against evolution and the scientific evidence for and against Intelligent Design. However, for those who are persuaded towards Intelligent Design, and who have the further desire to identify the Intelligence behind the Design, this is a pursuit that is rightly taken up outside of our public school science classrooms.

By Ron Carlson and Jason Carlson

The 21st century is witnessing a real cultural divide in America often defined as Red vs. Blue, Conservative vs. Liberal, Pro-Life vs. Pro-Abortion, Traditional Marriage vs. Gay-Marriage, Individual responsibility vs. Big Government control. But these are all merely symptoms of what is at the heart of the real cultural divide in America.

Underlying the debate in America is a much deeper worldview issue that divides and determines how people think and live. A worldview is your philosophy of life; it is how you perceive reality. Everyone has a worldview. Your worldview will ultimately determine your value for life, your basis of morality, your meaning and purpose, your ultimate destiny, and even how you vote.

What is this foundational issue that lies at the core of America’s cultural divide? In philosophy, there are three great questions that everyone must answer. They are the questions of Origins, Meaning and Purpose, and Ultimate Destiny after death. Today, the basic issue dividing America is over the question of Origins. Is man an accident, evolved from impersonal “pond scum” as taught in most public schools and universities or is man the unique creation of a personal and loving Creator? How you answer this question will determine everything else in life.

The Bible says, “In the beginning God created”. This was the philosophy that brought about modern science.  The founders of modern science held a Biblical worldview and believed that there was an intelligent Designer who created an intelligent, logical world that we could observe and experiment with to get logical and rational answers. They believed that a “frog turning into a prince” was a nursery fairytale.

At the end of the Nineteenth Century, a theory became popular known as Darwinian Evolution.  Secular Humanists, who declared that “God was dead” or God did not exist, found in Darwin what they believed was a scientific rationale for rejecting the Biblical Creator and thus the teachings of God’s Word, the Bible. This worldview today is taught in our major universities as the philosophy of Naturalism. Naturalism dominates most schools today and says that there is no God, there is no supernatural, and that everything can be explained merely in terms of a finite three-dimensional box of time and space.  Today evolutionary Humanists in our universities now teach and believe that “a frog turning into a prince” is Science!

In studying 19th and 20th Century philosophy, it is interesting that Secular Humanists never once disproved the existence of God.  What they did was simply define God out of existence by creating a definition of reality (Naturalism) that was so small that God did not fit. They said, “If I cannot put God in a test tube or an algebraic formula, then God does not exist.”  They never disproved God; they simply defined God out of existence by limiting themselves a priori to a finite, naturalistic, materialistic worldview. Thus, a “frog turning into a prince” became out of necessity, no longer a nursery fairytale, but logical and rational to the evolutionary Humanist.

Once you declare, as the basis of truth, that a “frog turning into a prince” is science, you are then free to throw out all logical and rational thought. Consequently, truth and morality are pushed aside into the realm of the subjective and relative, since “accidents evolved from pond scum” have no absolutes.  Today this Naturalistic worldview is being reflected in our schools, courts, political ideology, and contemporary culture.

The real cultural divide in America comes down to this: is man an animal evolved from “pond scum” or is man a unique Creation of God? How you answer this question will determine all of the other questions and issues of life!

by Jason Carlson and Ron Carlson

In the past two weeks the debate over the teaching of Intelligent Design theory in our nation’s schools has intensified.  President Bush has weighed in, supporting academic freedom and the right of students to examine competing theories on the origin of life.  Numerous television news programs have featured stories on the debate over Intelligent Design.  Even the most recent issue of TIME magazine features the debate prominently on its cover titled, “Evolution Wars”.

In the midst of all of this attention and debate over the role of Intelligent Design theory in our nation’s classrooms, the critics of Intelligent Design continue to assert that Intelligent Design theory is unscientific, is nothing more than a faith position, and therefore should not be taught in our nation’s schools.  In our article from last week we responded to these charges and highlighted a number of the flaws in the arguments of Intelligent Design’s critics.  However, as a follow-up this week, we would like to further explore this idea that faith does not belong in the classroom.

We find it very curious that the Secularist critics of Intelligent Design continue to assert that “faith does not belong in the classroom”, while at the same time claiming that only the theory of naturalistic evolution provides a truly credible, “scientific” explanation for life’s origins.  We find this curious because the theory of naturalistic evolution is packed full of faith propositions.  In fact, the vast majority of the theory of evolution has no scientific evidence to support it, but rather is almost totally assumed by faith.  Let’s examine some of the more glaring examples of faith disguised as science in the theory of naturalistic evolution:

First, naturalistic evolution claims that in the beginning there was nothing, just a vast, empty void of darkness.  And then suddenly, miraculously (oops… there’s that tricky faith), there was a huge explosion, which evolutionists call the “big bang”.  Out of this “big bang”, where nothingness exploded, sprang all of the elements, all of the matter, all of the physical stuff that would eventually lead to the entire cosmos and even to life on Earth.

Now, this idea of the “big bang” raises some legitimate questions:  How does nothing explode?  How does nothing produce all of the elements and physical material in the universe?  How does nothing lead to something, anything, let alone the immense complexity that we see displayed in our universe?  The naturalistic evolutionists have no answers for these questions.  They simply assume, by faith, that somehow the “big bang” took place.

A second example of the faith of naturalistic evolutionists is found in regards to the origin of life on Earth.  The theory of naturalistic evolution states that sometime around 4 billion years ago there was a primordial, inorganic soup of nauseous chemicals bubbling away here on planet Earth.  While this primordial stew was simmering, suddenly these non-living chemicals combined to miraculously (oops… faith again) form the first living single cell.  This original living single cell eventually multiplied, grew fins, crawled out of the sea, swung through the trees, started walking upright, and is now reading this article.

However, once again, this claim that non-living matter spontaneously generated life raises some serious questions:  How does non-living matter ever turn into living matter?  How do inorganic chemicals turn into life?  Didn’t Louis Pasteur and others disprove the notion of spontaneous generation roughly 150 years ago?  The naturalistic evolutionists have no answers for these questions.  They simply assume, by faith, that somehow, contrary to all known laws of science that spontaneous generation occurred to create the first living single cell.

A third example of the faith of naturalistic evolutionists is found in regards to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, also known as the problem of Entropy.  The theory of naturalistic evolution declares that life has progressively evolved to greater and greater levels of organization and complexity.  However, the problem with this idea is that it runs totally contrary to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics, a proven law of science, which says that all things run down from a state of organization and complexity to states of disorganization and chaos.

Here again, the naturalistic evolutionist must face some important questions:  How can evolution defy this basic law of science?  Why is it that evolution is the one exception to the rule of the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?  Where else have we ever seen any proof of natural processes defying the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics?  The naturalistic evolutionists have no satisfactory answers for these questions.  They simply assume, by faith, that somehow evolution was able to overcome the problem of Entropy and the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.

We could go on and on listing the faith propositions found in the theory of naturalistic evolution.  The point of all of this is that the Secularist critics of Intelligent Design are simply being dishonest when they claim that the theory of evolution is a purely “scientific” explanation for the origin of life.  Naturalistic evolution is full of faith propositions.  Thus, if the Secularists of the world want to prohibit the teaching of Intelligent Design from our nation’s classrooms, they must find other grounds than simply continuing to claim that it is invalid because it is a “faith position”.  Naturalistic evolution is every bit as much of a faith position as is Intelligent Design.

Therefore, let us offer a suggestion, either we keep faith out of the classroom altogether, prohibiting the teaching of naturalistic evolution and Intelligent Design, or we allow students the academic freedom to equally analyze and critique these competing faith positions on the origin of life.  If naturalistic evolution is as scientific as the Secularists claim, they’ll have nothing to worry about.

by Jason Carlson and Ron Carlson

This past week President Bush declared his support for the theory of Intelligent Design. President Bush, along with 50% of Americans, believes that the theory of Intelligent Design should be taught side-by-side with the theory of Evolution in our nation’s schools. While this was an absolutely intelligent declaration by President Bush, his comments drew nothing but anger and ridicule from the Secularists of the world.

The Secularists of the world cannot tolerate the possibility of a Creator-God (because once you admit there is a Creator, then you become morally responsible to the Creator); and they will do anything and everything to remove the option of a Creator-God from the table. There are a number of primary strategies employed by the Secularists to dismiss the option of Divine intervention and the theory of Intelligent Design as an explanation for the origin of life.

The first strategy the Secularists have used to dismiss the option of a Creator-God and the theory of Intelligent Design is to redefine the historical meaning of science. When it comes to the question of the origin of life, Secularists have redefined “science” to equal “naturalistic evolution”. In framing the debate in these terms, the Secularists have ruled out the possibility of God a priori, stating that only naturalistic explanations will be considered “scientific”. As a result of this, Secularists cling to the theory of naturalistic evolution as the only “scientific” explanation for life, in spite of facts such as: the failure of naturalistic evolution to account for the origin of life from non-living matter, or the failure of naturalistic evolution to account for natural selection’s demonstrable inability to produce any new genetic information, or the failure of naturalistic evolution to explain immense complexities like the single cell, the eye, or the ear (the problem of irreducible complexity). In spite of all of these problems and more, the Secular advocates of naturalistic evolution maintain that they alone are looking at the question of origins “scientifically”.

The second strategy often employed by the Secularists, in the debate over the place of Intelligent Design theory in our nation’s schools, is to attack the position of Intelligent Design with false labels. So, when you listen to Secular commentators or read their editorials, you will often hear Intelligent Design ridiculed as “pseudo-science”, “Creationism 2.0”,  “Creationism’s modern stepchild”, “faith disguised as science”, or “flat-earth science”. All of these labels are used with the purpose of flippantly dismissing Intelligent Design from the table of options without ever seriously addressing the arguments and claims of Intelligent Design. These ad hominem attacks only serve to reveal the philosophical bias the Secularists have against any theory for the origin of life that doesn’t rely solely on Naturalistic explanations.

Finally, a third strategy used by the Secularists to write off Intelligent Design is the tactic of stating that Intelligent Design is a philosophical or faith position and therefore does not belong in the realm of scientific debate and inquiry. This strategy contains the same flaws of the two false strategy’s mentioned above, but includes the additional flaw of failing to recognize the philosophical nature of their own, Secularist position. Secularism and its theory of naturalistic evolution are just as much of a philosophical or faith position as is Intelligent Design. No matter how “scientific” Secularists claim naturalistic evolution to be, the fact remains that when we are dealing with the question of origins, we are dealing with philosophical propositions. Science is based on observation and experimentation; and since nobody was around to observe the origin of life, and since it has not and cannot be replicated in experimentation, we are therefore dealing in the realm of philosophical speculation, not science.

Thus, the real questions should be, which philosophical position has more scientific evidence to support it and do students in science classes have the academic freedom to analyze and critique the pros and cons of any theory of origins that claims to be true?  This is where Intelligent Design theory and the theory of naturalistic evolution should be evaluated on the same terms… which is exactly what 50% of Americans believe and what President Bush called for this week.