|
Please patronize our advertisers. They make The Valley American possible.
|
|
Local church tackles evolution, more
by Bill Dolack
Waynesboro—What came first, the chicken or the egg?
Well, for those attending the Truth Project at Community Fellowship Church of the Nazarene (CFC) the answer’s pretty clear: the chicken.
The Christian worldview seminar—broken up into 12 one-hour DVD “tours”—takes participants through multiple aspects of life, including philosophy, history, theology, and evolution.
And it is evolution that impacts many Christians the most.
“Each lesson discusses in great detail the relevance and importance of living the Christian worldview in daily life,” according to the Truth Project (TTP) website.
George Diggins, heading up the class at CFC, explains the importance of understanding the Christian worldview in relation to evolution.
“Evolution destroys any foundation for a standard of ethics or morality,” he says. “It’s all about survival of the fittest. If you take Darwinism to its logical conclusion, we should eliminate the weak and sick in society.”
Intelligent design—the belief that the complexity of life and the universe teaches that there was an intelligent cause, that it did not come about through natural selection over billions of years—views the cosmos from a different viewpoint.
“Carl Sagan told us that the cosmos always existed,” says Diggins. “Science shows that is not possible because an expanding universe, after an eternity has passed, should have run out of energy and be a dead, cold universe by now, according to the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics.”
Diggins notes that creationists and evolutionists have the same set of facts to work with but, because most evolutionists deny God, they interpret that data in a different manner and come up with the wrong answer.
In fact, Time magazine said “Paleontology (the study of fossils) is much like politics: passions run high, and it’s easy to draw very different conclusions from the same set of facts.” The Truth Project shows Christians how to see the truth about the origins of life through a Christian worldview.
“The physical evidence supports the creationist’s view,” Diggins says. And one example the Truth project uses is the common chicken egg.
The egg’s shell has about 10,000 pores through which the developing chick breathes and eliminates waste. This occurs through two blood vessels which connect the chick to the membrane that forms inside the shell.
As the chick grows, it becomes too large to survive with the amount of air coming through the porous shell. On the 19th day, the chick uses its “egg tooth”—a small, sharp object that protrudes from the beak—to access the air sac which provides six hours of air… enough time for the chick to break a small hole through the shell for breathing. Then, on the 21st day, the chick breaks out of its shell.
If evolution is true, how did the chick access the air sac before it developed an egg tooth? How did the chick survive before the air sac evolved? How did it get air and release waste products before the porous shell came along?
The complexity of living creatures offers thousands and thousands of similar predicaments for evolution touters.
Many believe it takes more faith to believe in evolution than it does to believe in creation. Evolutionists accept by faith that transitional fossils from one species to another exist, even though none have been discovered. Evolutionists accept by faith the circular dating responses peddled by close-minded scientists with an agenda—dating a fossil by the rock strata in which it is found, and dating the strata by the fossils found in it.
Yet the very same evolutionists have worked diligently for years to degrade creationism as nothing more than superstition.
“There was a day, not that long ago, when evolution was excluded from the classroom,” notes Ricky Cain, a former pastor living in Waynesboro. “Today it is the other way around. I think, as long as there is a scientific basis for the ‘theory,’ it should be taught. All significant human origin theories should be taught: evolution, creation, intelligent design, and so on. Why not? What are people afraid of… that the children may actually think for themselves? When is it ever right in a classroom to tell only one side of a debate?”
The one-sided debate was recently highlighted in the dramatic documentary film Expelled by author and comedian Ben Stein. The film showcases how evolution is taught in schools as if it is the only plausible scientific explanation of the creation and development of life. Debate over creation is suppressed.
“To pretend that this debate is over is as outrageous as pretending that the ‘global warming’ debate is over,” according to Cain. “President Obama has said that it is time that science is elevated back to its rightful place in our society. I am not sure of the context in which he was speaking, but let’s hope he is serious about that across the board. Real scientists do not close off debate. They welcome it as an essential part of the scientific process.”
So far, that debate is still only something to fight for, as Stein well knows. Recently chosen to be the 2009 commencement speaker at the University of Vermont, he withdrew his name after a small number of evolutionists complained to the school that Stein’s beliefs were “affronts to the basic tenets of the academy.”
Stein responded by calling the accusations “a wildly unfair characterization.”
“I am far more pro-science than the Darwinists,” Stein said in an e-mail to the Burlington Free Press. “I want all scientific inquiry to happen — not just what the ruling clique calls science.”
The battle over academic freedom will have life altering consequences. “Evolution destroys any foundation for a standard of ethics or morality,” says Diggins. “Some of the greatest evil in history has been perpetrated by those with godless thinking. Without God there are no rules – anything goes.”
[For more information on the Truth Project, visit www.TheTruthProject.org]
Comments? Email us at letters@thevalleyamerican.com.
© 2008 The Valley American
|
|
|
