Churches Celebrate Evolution

Now, Religion in the News, a report and comment on religious trends and events being covered by the media.This week’s item is from the Chicago Tribune.com February 11, 2006, with a headline:Churches to Mark Darwin’s Birthday.The following are excerpts:Nearly 450 Christian churches around the country plan to celebrate the 197^th birthday of Charles Darwin on Sunday, with programs and sermons intended to emphasize that his theory of biological evolution is compatible with faith, and that Christians have no need to choose between religion and science.It’s to demonstrate by Christian leaders and members of the clergy that you don’t have to make that choice, you can have both, said Michael Zimmerman, Dean of the College of Letters and Sciences at the University of Wisconsin Oshkosh, who organized the event.The event grew out of Zimmerman’s The Clergy Letter Project, another effort to dispel the perception among many Christians that faith and evolution are mutually exclusive.Since its inception in 2004, the project has drawn ten thousand Christian clerics to sign a letter that concludes: We urge school board members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution as a core component of human knowledge.We ask that science remain science and religion remain religion, two very different but complimentary forms of truth.Zimmerman said the letter project and the Sunday event are designed to educate Americans about two things:The first part was to demonstrate to the American public that the shrill, fundamentalist voices that were demanding that people had to choose between religion and science were simply wrong, he said.The second part was to demonstrate that those fundamentalist leaders that keep standing up and shouting that you can’t accept modern science were not speaking for the majority of Christian leaders in this country.

Tom:

Dave, I have something else that Gary didn’t read.This is more of the article we didn’t have time for, but this pastor says he believes that in the great tradition of the church, science is one more way that God reveals God’s self and God’s will for us.I think to ignore scientific findings and theories is simply unfaithful, this pastor says.He ends it with:I find deep spirituality in the truths of evolution.Now, I have a question.

Dave:

Are you trying to get me angry, Tom?

Tom:

Hey, wait a minute!For all these 400 and Christian churches, you wonder if they all kind of sang, Happy Birthday to Charles Darwin.Because if they did, that would be, probably the only worth while thing that took place in this.This is absurd!

Dave:

Well, Tom, you don’t have to choose between modern science and Christianity.

Tom:

Amen.

Dave:

Of course, but what are we talking about, modern science?We don’t have time, Tom, I wish we could, we really need to spend some time on this.You need to do a series on evolution, because evolution is not scientific.I was just with a scientist, who is also a Christian, and because of what was going on in Kansas not too long ago---

Tom:

This is the design debates?

Dave:

Yes, he and a friend were called, almost urgently, to come to Harvard to debate with two professors there, to debate evolution.And he said, now this was his view, but he said it was rather embarrassing, because they just ripped these so-called evolutionists apart.After the debate students were even almost jeering this scientist, well, they are all scientists, but jeering the evolutionists, and students were crowding around them, but nobody was around the professors, and they had invited them to dinner, it said before, at the Harvard club, but they took off and didn’t pay them for their airfare, and would not release the video of the debate.So, obviously, they must have felt that they lost.It is not scientific.

Tom:

Give our listeners an example.They say, Okay, you’re saying that and this is what happened and so on, but what?

Dave:

Okay, mathematically, we don’t have to talk about fossils, the mathematics.Richard Dawkins, who is one of the world’s leading evolutionists, in his book, The Blind Watchmaker, he says, The nucleus of every cell, not the cell, just the nucleus of every cell, has a digitally organized data base with information content larger in volume than the 30-volume set of the Encyclopedia Britannica.Now, you tell me how you are going to get all those letters lined up in the right order, and if one of them is out of order, the whole thing won’t work---come on!DNA is information.Einstein himself said, Matter cannot arrange itself into information.You’ve got the whole instruction manual, how to construct a body with trillion of cells, and to operate the nano chemical machinery!Look, there is not a paper that has ever been written by an evolutionist, no classes taught on it about evolution at the molecular level.You can’t even get started.They don’t know what energy is.Now, everything is made of energy, you can’t even tell me what energy is, now you’re going to tell me how it evolved and you are getting way down the line.There is nothing on the evolution of plants.All the flowers, and plants and melons and berries---come on!--- they all came from a common source, and so forth!But Tom, look, let’s go from the biblical standpoint---we’re about out of time.We’re talking from a scientific standpoint, it is not scientific.It’s in the Bible!Wait a minute!Jesus believed in Adam and Eve, he talked about them, then Jesus couldn’t be God!You have Adam mentioned 30 times in ten books of the Bible!You pull Adam out of there, you’ve destroyed everything, you’ve punched so many holes in the Bible.What was Adam?Well, you remember, Cardinal O’Connor, St. Patrick’s Cathedral, the Cardinal of New York, he said Adam and Eve were a couple of anthropoid apes---that God did use evolution, that’s what these guys are saying, these are theistic evolutionists---Well, God used evolution.Most inefficient, brutal, you had to kill and kill and kill, and the survival of the fittest, and they are dying off, but finally, out of it we come with something, and God did that?No.But anyway, they were anthropoid apes, so you’ve got a long line of critters who are evolving and dying, evolving and dying, before you got to Adam?But Romans Chapter 5, verse 10, says, By one man sin entered into the world and death by sin!Tom, there are irreconcilable differences between the Bible and evolution.It will not work from that standpoint, and these people are jumping on the bandwagon with this?

Tom:

These people, Dave, we just quoted, 10,000 Christian clerics signed a letter saying, We urge school members to preserve the integrity of the science curriculum.And we believe in science and its integrity, okay, by affirming the teaching of the theory of evolution.There is where it goes, right down the tube!

Dave:

Tom, let me remind the listeners of what the Scopes Trial was about.The Scopes Trial was, because this was at that time a country founded on Christian principles, at least, I’m not saying they were all Christians, and they taught the Bible in public schools and they did not teach evolution.So, the Scopes Trial was all about, Hey, look, you can’t just teach the Bible, you’ve got to at least give science a chance too.They’ve got to give both views, okay.Now, you know it was a phony trial and phony evidence.But anyway, they won, and then what happened?O, now we are going to teach science only and you can’t have this creationism in there, not even as a theory.Tom, they are afraid to discuss it, because they do not have a leg to stand on, and I wish we could talk more about this.But anyway, so that’s the situation today---You can’t bring this in---O, that’s not science, that’s religion.Wait a minute, I’ll give you many scientific reasons for creation.The whole universe cries, Design!You can’t have design without a designer.Tom, I could quote you many top scientists, who are not even Christians who said, You can’t escape Design!