William A. Dembski Quotes

This quotation is important and memorable for several reasons. First, the Congressman is one of the relatively few highly educated Americans who believe in the literal interpretation of the Bible. Most Christians and Jews do not interpret the ancient scripture literally. Most Christian and Jewish religious organizations, including the Roman Catholic Church, have no problem at all with evolution and the big bang theory. As a matter of fact, the scientist who developed the mathematics to explain the big bang was a Catholic Priest. Even some religious people who do not believe that that evolution is not an accurate interpretation, rarely claim that the Earth is only 9,000 years old. It is actually over 13 Billion years old. An anti-scientific view of the world is certainly within an American’s right, but the fact that this congressman was assigned by The Republican Party leadership to be a Member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology given his belief structure is amazing, If the earth were only 9,000 years old, there is no way the global positioning satellites could tell us where we are, our nuclear arsenal would be unstable and dangerous, radiation medicine would not help anyone get well just for a few examples. A second noteworthy aspect is that the Congressman is not just stating that the millions of scientists and science teachers are wrong—in error. He accuses each and every one of them of acting as agents of Satan and that their motivation in studying and doing science is to undermine his and others faith in God and that none of them has any belief in or desire for a personal Savior. It is rare that this type of un-American behavior is found in a member of Congress who claims that any person who disagrees with his religions views or has different Biblical interpretations is an agent from Hell. The founding fathers created the First Amendment to cope with and even tolerate the few who had the extreme and unrealistic views of this Congressmen.

Actually no school teaches that. What they did teach when covering Evolution was that some modern apes (chimpanzees and bonobos) and humans were both descended from a common ancestor. The Congressman was at that point an evangelical Christian fundamentalist, Later, DeLay was convicted and sentenced to jail for money laundering and illegally spending and raising campaign funds. He was also reprimanded by the House Ethics Committee for unethical methods of fund raising for other earlier actions.

The school board had been pressured by religious fundamentalists throughout the state of Georgia to affix these stickers ({586989}) to all textbooks as there were no textbooks that met curricular standards that did not teach evolution. As soon as they started this practice, a suit was filed in the Federal District Court which ordered the stickers to be removed.

This quotation is very interesting in the light of the so called “intelligent design” opponents of evolution. Darwin himself was by no means an atheist but he did not see the “hand of God in everything about him”. He did not maintain that a God could not have a hand in setting the laws of evolution which then produced all the species. However, the modern proponents of “intelligent design” insist that the evolutionary mechanism is so complex that God must have a role in the processes themselves. There are atheist evolutionists and evolutionists who believe that there was a God or prime mover setting the laws of science in motion, but all so called intelligent design enthusiasts are religious and believe that God is involved in the process. They reject the scientific method and their assertions are not subject to scientific proof or falsification. They are not scientists in contrast to the scientists who believe there was a God or prime mover initiating the process.

This is an important quotation for several reasons. First, it demonstrates the extreme diversity of religion in America. To Swaggart, Evolution is a “Satanic Theory”. However, to most American religious leaders, Evolution, per se, is not problematic. The Roman Catholic Church has no trouble with Evolution; Catholic Universities teach Evolution as a basic part of their science curricula. Jews have no theological problems with Evolution. None of the main-line Protestant Churches have any theological opposition to Evolution per se. Yet there are other Protestant denominations who find that Evolution is in contradiction to a literal interpretation of the Bible and hence do not accept it. Second, it shows the extreme level of vituperation and disrespect that is given differing points of view by some of the extreme fundamentalists who do not have the traditional American religious tolerance for differing belief structures. Here Swaggart accuses the hundreds of millions of Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, Buddhist and other clerics and laypeople who see Evolution as a well-established explanation of much of science, of being not only atheists but atheists in league with the Devil. A third factor is that this quotation is an example of a Minister telling people what is or is not science and scientifically demonstrated. If a scientist without any religious training of study were ever to render judgments on theology, most of us would laugh and see it as ridiculous. However when a cleric like Swaggert, untutored and ignorant of even basic science, makes scientific pronouncements, he (and many other fundamentalists) find that reasonable.

This quotation is a good example of what a substantial number of Americans believe and the classic errors they make in acting on their views. The vast majority of the religions in America have no conflict with evolution. To them evolution is the method that God chose to create the life on earth. Some fundamentalists take the Old Testament versions of the creation of the earth and man (there are 2 of them that conflict) literally by which they conclude that the earth is 6,000 years old or so. In reality, the earth is over 10 Billlion years old but the scientific evidence that proves this as well as evolution via natural selection is almost always not known to them. It is not as if they have studied it an rejected evolution. Almost all have never studied it. As a result they think that the word “Theory” means an unproven hypothesis which is the lay, non scientific meaning of the word. But in science, a theory is large set of related proven laws or principles, that has been tested over and over again and for which there has NEVER been a counterexample proven. A theory does not explain everything in the area and additional hypotheses are constantly being tested and if they stand up are added to the theory. And there are areas that are not explained by a theory, and these may or may not be in the future, but no theory does or can explain everything. Brattin, who sadly has never been educated about the science of biology, believes that it is a scientific theory is a “belief structure” like a religion. However, to qualify as part of an established scientific theory the statements must have been subjected to demonstrative proof, usually by many different scientists typically using many different methods. And these results must be replicated over and over again. No religion can be proved the way a scientific theory can be and that should not surprise anyone as religion is in the domain of faith where science has not the methodology to validate or invalidate people’s religious beliefs. Likewise, religion has not the methodology to prove or disprove science not should it be expected to. Many scientists are religious and many are not. Many religious people are scientists and many are not. They have little to do with each other.

After only 25 years—1998—this material was in the schoolbooks of every industrial democracy in the world with the exception of the United States. At that time a substantial minority of the school children from the South, Kansas, and Oklahoma, had their books censored and were not able to study evolution as a result of protestant fundamentalist objections to teaching anything which contradicts the Bible. It was uncertain what would happen in the years to 2023—the 50 years cited in the quotation. The material is being taught in China, India, Thailand, Korea, and many developing nations where there ideological obstacles have been in the Islamic nations, but not Turkey which is with the other industrial democracies. So in the 25 yeas, the majority of the school children of the world find the material “commonplace” in their schools and books.

The Science Guy

Some parents of the school district wanted the teachers to include the views of those who opposed evolution—the so called “creationists” and “intelligent designers”—in the science classes as a “compromise.” Most scientists and science teachers do not regard this as a reasonable compromise and no one has explained the reason better than Dickson.

There are many scientists who disagree with Johnson’s very unusual logic. They point out that it is certainly possible that God initially did not have had humans in minds, and when they evolved, decided that they were worthy of salvation history and then interfered to the extent of a virgin birth. Others would point out that just because man cannot exactly foresee the exact future pattern of evolution, does not men that a Supreme Being could not have initiated the mechanism that he/she knew would result in salvation history. The Pope and the Catholic Church see no inconsistency between Darwinism and the salvation history. Then there are those non-Christians who do not believe that God ever did introduce salvation and there are many more of them than there are Christians. Then, it is possible that God just set things in motion and had more important things then micromanaging evolution on our one planet in a universe of billions of billions. Last there are those who do not believe that there is or has been a God. Of course there is the possibility that Johnson is right, and religiously he may be, but that is not subject to scientific analysis.

She had just defeated the previous board chairwoman, Linda Holloway,who had voted with the majority the previous year to revise the standards so that evolution would not be included. See Linda Holloway {603677}.

Ms. Holloway had led the majority of the board that had voted to revise the education standards of Kansas to exclude evolution. She was defeated in the Republican primary election afterward. See Sue Gamble {602752}

Watchtower Bible and Tract Society of New York

of the Intelligent Design strategists