Defanging the Atheist Tiger - Volume Six

Audio Lectures by Father Thomas Hopko - The Autonomous Orthodox Metropolia

Written Observation by Fr Symeon Elias  - The Autocephalous Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the U.S.A.

 "Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite." President Dwight Eisenhower's Farewell Address to the Nation, Jan. 17, 1961.

Audio Only, Mp3 streaming or download.

Mar 16, 2010

Darwin and Christianity - Part 5 In the 5th part of his series on Charles Darwin, Fr. Thomas talks about the relationship of this Darwinian Revolution and natural science in general to the issue of Orthodox Christian theology.

55:29

Father Tom's insistence that "religion" is not the proper subject and that true Christianity (which is Ancient Apostolic Christianity) is not a religion, but a means of LIFE, is absolutely correct.  The false argument of Evolution or Science in general vs religion is just that a false argument. No religion on the face of the earth has a prayer of relevance in the face of the massive anti-god tendencies of radical modern materialism. Only the Ontology produced by true Christianity gives a full picture of God's work in the world, against which modern sciences are removed from the areas of metaphysics. True Christianity and modern science meet on the field of Ontology, properly in the discussion of what is the nature of BEING. All evidence to this end is proper. Speaking of the category of "Darwinism" is like speaking of the category of  Psychologic Physiognomy or Prenology. Darwinism is that antiquated.  

Father Tom states correctly with force, that religions, even "christian religions" though using so much of the same vocabulary are or can be radically different. So using the categories "religion" vs "science" is a silliness, which can mean anything. It would be analogous with "extraneous facts & mythological confusion vs extraneous facts & mythological confusion".  What can be gained in such a debate? Father Tom is also correct to recognize that in reality there is no such "unified field" known collectively as "Science."  Science itself is a cauldron of competing ideas, which is a good thing.  The trouble arises when it becomes a competition of competing "ideologies."  And as I have said before, the politicising of science is its biggest danger.

The idea that the world is 6 to 10 thousand years old is beyond silliness. We wonder how the fundamentalist ever moved to this truncated grasp of "things as they are" when from earliest times the Holy Fathers of the Ancient church talked about eons of eons.  When the Protestant prays the Lord's Prayer and ends with the later added doxology (place in the Gospel text) "for Thine is the Kingdom and the Power and the Glory, for ever and ever. Amen" do they realize that ten thousand years is less than a nano-second in an eon? All the early prayers say unto the eons of eons and the psalmist wrote about God's mercy being from eon to eon.  

Father Tom seems to be saying that he believes that LIFE actually sprang from the primordial ooze.  However, the argument against it, on the basis of science, is simply massive. It is regularly ignored by so called "mainstream science."  "All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between major groups are characteristically lacking." This isn't a Bible thumper but the late Harvard biologist Stephen Jay Gould.  The fact is , it is characteristically lacking but it is also totally lacking.  


Listen to this simple question proving the point, was of famed Darwin defender and militant atheist evangelist Richard Dawkins.  The woman asks, "Can you give me an example of a genetic mutation or an evolutionary process which can be seen to increase the information in the genome?"  If evolution were true there should be thousands of examples, and the question should be greeted with, "Certainly there is example a and b and c and d and xxx."  But was is the answer.  Such is not only "characteristically lacking" but totally lacking. Listen carefully to Dawin's sputtering replay - after he has asked time "off camera" to regroups and try to formulate an answer. 






Michael Behe focused on five phenomena that ultimately had to be present to produce life, he deduced that the systems were simply too complex, so irreducibly complex, that no gradual, step-by-step Darwinian route could have led to their creation.  As to plant life and fossil records: water deposits in the ancient past have left millions of fossils in a vast geologic library. The writer Will Hart rightly asks about this great record, "Why do we find representative nonflowering plants from three hundred million years ago and flowering plants from one hundred million years ago still alive today but no plants showing the gradual process of mutations (from nonflowering to flowering)  that represent the intermediate species that SHOULD link the two?" We know that the complexity of the flowering plants if very, very different than that of the non-flowering plant. Where is the "transitional fossil evidence"?  These seem like simple questions that deserve evidence.  No simple question that deserve "simplistic" answers. This is the EVIDENCE, there is none.  In every single field of science purporting to confirm gradual evolution the same simple questions exist and the same evidence is not must lacking but totally missing.  The "model" Dawkins mumbles about is taught as fact, towards which there is no supporting evidence. 

Darwinism has been disproved on the level of fossil evidence, chemical evidence, DNA evidence and a host of other disciplines.  If Darwin was not the "material foundation" of a massive "philosophical/political movement" that of secular humanism, the facts would be exposed and the mythology seen for what it is.  Will Hart, "The public is not generally well informed about the scientific problems associated with Darwin's theory of evolution.  And while the average person is aware that there is a war going on between creationists and evolutionists, that is seen as a rear-guard action, an old battle between science and religion over matters that the Scope trial settled more than a generation ago."  You see, Hart is saying that the false category of "religion vs evolution" is a smoke screen and misses the point. This lack of "transitional" fossil evidence, and the developmental impossibility in D.N.A., chemistry to life etc, etc. is the shame and exposes clearly the Evolutionist's mythology.  But facts do not stand in the way of ideology, so the facts are dismissed by the academic establishment as "the God of the Gaps" as if the evolutionist's lack of EVIDENCE is the result of the beliefs of the "religious"!  A proposition that is simply preposterous.  Again Will Hart, "Geneticists have long known that the vast majority of mutations are either neutral or negative.  In other words, mutations are usually mistakes, failures of the DNA to accurately copy information.  It would appear that this is not a very reliable primary mechanism and it needs to be, because natural selection is obviously not a dynamic force that could drive the kinds of changes that the evolutionists attribute to the theory."  In fact the EVIDENCE says that mutations would trend toward the extinction of the DNA strain rather than increase its odds of survival. David Lewis writes, "Based on research assembled as Darwin began to dominate scientific thought at the turn of the twentieth century, and also upon more recent archaeological discoveries, 'The Mysterious Origins of Man' exposes a 'knowledge filter' within the scientific establishment, a bias that favors accepted dogma while rejecting evidence that does not support conventional theory." (i.e. evolution) The Mysterious Origins of Man, a NBC documentary that aired in February of 1996.

The anomalous evidence is simply overwhelming. There is no area of the research where the anomalous data hasn't become the majority data, yet it is simply pushed aside.  I would suggest to Father Tom that he read, "The Neanderthals: Of Skeletons, Scientists, and Scandals'" by physical anthropologists Erik Trinkaus and Pat Shipman 1994; Forbidden History, edited by J. Douglas Kenyon; Forbidden Archeology by Richard L Thompson and Michael A Cremo; The Hidden History of the Human Race, by the same authors (the full version of the previous condensed book - if the interest is deep) and Human Devolution, a Vedic Alternative to Darwin's Theory.  The Academy would have loved to destroy Michael Cremo's foundations, but they have not been able to. 


Michael Cremo's work on Forbidden Archeology was presented in 1994 at the World Archaeological Congress in New Delhi, India.  He presented a paper at Kentucky State University Institute for Liberal Studies Sixth Annual Conference on Science and Culture. He lectured on the subject at the Institute of Study of Theoretical Questions of the Russian Academy of Sciences; in Liege, Belgium, and at the XXth International Congress of History of Science. He addressed students and faculty of archeology, anthropology, and biology at the University of Amsterdam, the Free University of Amsterdam, the University of Leiden, the University of Groningen, the University of Utrecht, and the University of Nijmegen in the Netherlands, Catholic University in Louvain and the University of Ghent in Belgium. Also presented papers on Forbidden Archeology in Hungry, including the Eotvos Loran Science University in Budapest, the University of Szeged, and the University of Eger, also at the fourth World Archaeological Congress in Cap Town, South Africa, plus universities in England, Poland, Hungary, and the U.S. including City University of London, the University of Warsaw, the University of Delaware, the University of Maryland, and Cornell University. Lectures also at the University of Oklahoma School of Geology and Geophysics. Also at the Royal Institution of Great Britain - probably the oldest science society in the world.  Actually Dr Cremo's lectures would take pages to cover. He refutes Darwinism, AND the modern models of Anthropology, Archeology, Biology, DNA and other disciplines that purport to "prove" Evolution.  Cremo states, and the EVIDENCE is clear that "Although Darwinist scientists present a united front to the public, proclaiming loudly that the evolution of humans from apelike ancestors is an established fact, they have not found the actual evolutionary path. But if the path has not been found, how can they assert, except as a matter of faith, that the evolution of humans from apelike ancestors actually did occur?"  So far to my knowledge no one has laid a hand on Cremo's findings, or refuted his multi-discipline refutation of Darwinism.  However, the "establishment" has made a lot of noise propping up the proponents of "Intelligent Design" and "Creationism" as easy targets, though "Intelligent Design" is proving to be not as easy a target as they first thought.  In my opinion that is a smoke screen to keep from dealing with the death blow Thompson, Cremo and others have given the paradigm of the evolutionists.

Father Tom's scriptural definition of "religion" is absolutely correct.  I would like to add to the scripture he quoted, the 58th Chapter of Isaiah. This chapter should be mandatory reading with explications before any Orthodox Christian is allowed to fast. (yes I said allowed to fast.) There is little I've witnessed of religious hypocrisy that rivals Lent in the Orthodox Internet world as many thousands seeks ways to circumvent the impact of the fast and commiserates about the deprivation. The ONLY thing that can properly be called religion is "service to others."  Spirituality - not true religion. Fasting - not true religion. Religious philosophies - not true religion  - this list is very long, I won't bore you.  

I applaud Father Tom's call to become familiar with the science. However, that familiarity should be as a "skeptical fact finder" rather than as an adherent to the theory. IF science were not political (and it has always been in the last three hundred years) the temptation to skew findings to fit the political need would not be pervasive. But as the great scandal of manipulated data in the so-called "global warming facts"  have proved, not even the most prestigious academic bodies are to be trusted. We have the record of NASA sitting on evidence for THREE YEARS that disproved Global Warming. They did not share the information tax payers had paid for, because they were frightened of running afoul of the scientific/political establishment and losing funding.  They released the evidence only after the Obama administration gutted NASA's budget and halted the space program. 

I'm old enough to remember the near total confounding of anthropology (literally anthropology made a joke) and human psychology following the lead, vis a vis the Gentle Tusaday People. I have copies of old articles in Parabola, Science, National Geographics from that period that are simply laughable. For a decade and a half this hoax dominated all anthropological and a great deal of "natural science" literature. It provided the mythology that the "peace generation" the "hippies" the "anti-war pacifists," and the back to nature fanatics, needed to prove that all human ills were the result of "development."  That development included technological development, and the development of the concept of "sin and guilt." If you are not familiar with this hoax and the duping of the majority of "science" via the hoax, it is well worth finding the old articles and reading them.  The Gentle Tusaday People proved that scientists can create an idealized primitive man, in the images of their own egoes, just as the 19th source critics created a Jesus according to theirs. 

And in these foolish things there is a driving arrogance that seeks to silence all dissent, that laughs at competing and contrary data.  To Wit: 

When the ability to manipulate D.N.A. was first discovered and there was a huge fear that this manipulation of the "building blocks" of life might have terrible consequences. The top geneticist testified before congress (I witnessed it). The hearing was about licensing the right to manipulate D.N.A. The scientists were there to stop congress from enacting tougher "isolation/contamination" laws for their laboratories. Legislation was being composed that would have done just that.

The Senator asked, "Dr (I won't name him) what assurances do we have that some of these purposely mutated D.N.A. strains won't escape into nature, into the environment and wreck havoc with existing species?" 

The scientist answer mockingly saying, "Well, these processes are accomplished in only the most secure level three laboratories, the likelihood of a manipulated strain escaping into nature is extremely, extremely remote." 

The Senator pressed, "But humour me. If a strain did escape what would be the potential consequences? After all we are talking about the genetic code of humanity itself." The scientist answered, this time more dismissively and mockingly as if the question was beyond ignorant. "Well, senator, you see. The manipulation of D.N.A. is something that we've learned to do in the laboratory. It is a highly sophisticated process. There is no recombination of D.N.A. in nature or else the species we presently have with us would be far less stable." 

The Senator, "I'm hearing you right when you say that recombination of D.N.A. in nature is not a possibility."  

The scientist, "That is correct, the recombination of D.N.A. does not occur in nature. This recombination is something we have managed to do through a very sophisticated process." 

 I said under my breath, but loud enough that some others heard me, "Idiot!"

Well, it seems that in a few years there was the discovery of "retroviruses" whose means of creating disease (and the most deadly and dangerous for humans) was/is via the "recombination of D.N.A. in nature." The most deadly threats humanity faces is a pandemic caused by "recombination of D.N.A. in nature." This recombination of D.N.A. is the motus operendi of deadly viruses. As it turns out ninety percent of the science is now about the recombination of D.N.A. in nature and 99.99999 percent of the time it weakens or destroys the organism whose D.N.A. is altered. I'm allowing that one-millionth of one percent chance - just to humor the evolutionists, yet there is not one shred of evidence allowing even that.  It never strengthens the species. Since that arrogance before congress we have endured the AIDS epidemic, a retrovirus, and the sudden collapse of 80 % of the world's Honey Bee Population. These are not small things.  

The only intelligent course vis a vis science (every discipline and level of science) is very healthy scepticism.  The only reaction to science that make sense to me is constant fact finding, strident monitoring of all things concerning "science and even where science crosses paths with advanced technologies." It is OUR job to look at the ethical and moral (the health of mankind) ramifications of the discoveries of "science." We must keep a healthy skepticism, because "natural science" is as fallen, is as corrupt as the humans who pursue it. And in a real way, no scientist ever wants to admit, he operates inside the "ignorant culturalism" of his "era."  Each succeeding generation of scientists believe that they have a grasp on the nature of BEING, they arrogate to themselves this mythology so that they may operate. But so far NO generation has actually achieved this understanding. On any given day, science is manipulating matter, energy, biology in what could be catastrophic ways. This is the nature of science today. They are "manufacturing" on the nano-level. Most people read that sentence with absolute bliss that is simply born of ignorance. Yes, not only do we need to know about the science, but we need to interject mankind's primacy in concept the of BEING, the health of mankind demands it and always has to be the central part of the conversation.