Their Temples of Reason

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It is usually no fun when people play the race card, but when evolutionists do it, the results can be highly entertaining, at least after a few million years.

My brother Gordon is Senior Fellow of Natural History at New St. Andrews. He was recently engaged to teach a one-off course in microbiology at the University of Idaho, which drew this protest, and then this one.

There is a kind of evolutionist who insists that his theory can only be falsified with rabbit fossils in the precambrian, and then rests easily in the full assurance that anything with a rabbit fossil in it can’t be precambrian by definition. This method works swell for them, and so they try to use a similar approach to journal articles, terminal degrees, and teaching slots. Creationists are clearly not equipped to be in the proximity of any of those things — for are they not all cornpones? — and so whenever they see a creationist they chase him out promptly, and then use his strange absence as an argument. His absence is an argument, and his presence is an outrage. What my net don’t catch ain’t fish, and if it does catch one on accident, we can always throw it back immediately and pretend it didn’t happen.

The second protest, the one from P.Z. Myers, was the more flamboyant of the two. This post, coming from someone who is simply unwilling to engage an adversary straight on, supplies multiple opportunities for our continued diversion, provided we wish to go down that road. What is it with evolutionists and dates? For example, and this is just a suggestion, we could talk about how many NSA faculty have terminal degrees in 2014 instead of 2007. And where do these degrees come from? Do they fall out of the unaccredited sky onto our uneducated heads, or do we get them from places that Myers acknowledges as temples of reason?

But let us not get distracted. I mentioned the race card. In the course of his screed, Myers said this: “That’s right. The University of Idaho has just hired a young earth creationist, biblical literalist, and racist evangelical Christian to teach microbiology.”
Racist? Got that? My brother is a racist because he is related by blood to someone who thinks that race-based slavery should have been ended peacefully, instead of with a monster war. What is it with these guys and their monster wars?

Since Myers was kind enough to bring up the question of race in a discussion of evolution, let us see how it goes for us, and how quickly it gets there. Gordon and I are both young earth creationists, which means that we believe that all the races of men are cousins, branching out from one another at the Tower of Babel no earlier than 4400 years ago. In evolutionary terms, that’s a nanosecond. “And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation” (Acts 17:26).

Myers, in the meantime, thinks that all of us are blood related to the lesser simians, and the biological odds are that some of us are significantly closer to the trunk of that particular family tree than others are. It is only out of politeness we will not enquire too closely as to what Darwin and all those Smart Guys thought about this subject — but I think it safe to say that they were the ones who produced the prayer book that the Grand Kleagle Wizard uses for his evening devotions.

Look. If I were an evolutionist, I would make a serious attempt to avoid talking about race at all for another couple hundred years. And if I had to talk about it, I most certainly would not have the effrontery to accuse creationists of racism. Fremdschämen is the word the Germans have for getting embarrassed on behalf of somebody else who does not know to be embarrassed for himself — as what happens when an evolutionist chides other people about racism.

The equality of the races before God is a creationist doctrine. We were not endowed by a blind, impersonal process with certain inalienable rights. Right? Those who claim to be following reason need to work a little harder at following out the premises their arguments.

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Brian Josiah Alldredge
Brian Josiah Alldredge
9 years ago

Shouldn’t that be “harder” in the last sentence?

Roy
Roy
9 years ago

Call a spade a spade.

Seth B.
Seth B.
9 years ago

The most infuriating thing about the second article was they kept saying Gordon Wilson was the racist who said rape victims should marry their rapists. Ugh. Stupid people. DOUG is the one said those things, not Gordon. ;)

(I meant that as a joke but Mr. Wilson if you want to delete this comment feel free.)

Dan lim
Dan lim
9 years ago

(A quote from “The Descent of Man”, in a chapter called “The Races of Man.”, in which Darwin wrote: “At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilised races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes, as Professor Schaaffhausen has remarked, will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilised state as we may hope, than the Caucasian and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as… Read more »

jay niemeyer
jay niemeyer
9 years ago

““The Declaration of Independence dogmatically bases all rights on the fact that God created all men equal; and it is right; for if they were not created equal, they were certainly evolved unequal. There is no basis for democracy except in a dogma about the divine origin of man.”

Chesterton

Andrew Lohr
9 years ago

Dan lim’s quote is from chapter 6, ‘On the affinities and genealogies of man.’

brian
brian
9 years ago

Pastor Wilson hope all is well, hope you had a nice Easter. Can you understand that some of us struggle with “Creationism” because there seems to be a great deal of evidence, from multiple disciplines that seem to support the validity of the Theory of Evolution? by the way if your brother is willing to teach the curriculum as stated by institution (sorry for the poor wording). He should be allowed to teach and hold what ever beliefs that may be contrary to the institution. I think it would be interesting to teach a comparative “worldview” class where differing concepts… Read more »

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
9 years ago

Rushdoony on the equality of the races before God: “The white man has behind him centuries of Christian culture and the discipline and the selective breeding this faith requires… The Negro is a product of a radically different past, and his [genetic] heredity has been governed by radically different considerations. Unequal yoking plainly means mixed marriages between believers and unbelievers is clearly forbidden. But Deuteronomy 22:10 not only forbids unequal yoking by inference, and as a case law, but also unequal yoking generally. This means that an unequal marriage between believers or between unbelievers is wrong… The burden of the… Read more »

Matt
Matt
9 years ago

5000 years is a blip, but then the 200,000 years that evolutionists propose for the age of homo sapiens barely registers on the evolutionary timescale as well. There’s also the matter that intelligent humans can and do subvert evolutionary processes all the time. I agree though that this is something that must be explained rather than handwaved away, and there seems to be no better explanation than divergent evolution for the differences between populations that manifest in things like IQ scores. The other thing is that the modern doctrine of racial equality is a mash-up of total equality (races are… Read more »

Rob
Rob
9 years ago

Jill, Rushdoony was racist, based on that quote. Full stop. However, pointing to Deuteronomy shows a ignorance of the purpose of the Law and the role of Israel in the Near East at the time of the Exodus. You’re right that the prohibition against intermarriage was about preserving purity, but it was the purity of a faith community, not a racial community. Moses married outside the tribe, and was not castigated for it, and some Egyptians were folded into the community as they exited Egypt. All that Deuteronomy is God’s consistent desire to have His people be a separate and… Read more »

Robert
Robert
9 years ago

Jill, a woman with a Ph.D should think long and herd before marrying a man with a GED. She would have a hard time respecting him as needed. 

Megan Okimoto
Megan Okimoto
9 years ago

Going after Doug Wilson is a bit weird. Going after Gordon is completely laughable. This should cause some head scratching among onlookers. Still miss my neighbors…

St. Lee
9 years ago

“Fremdschämen is the word the Germans have for getting embarrassed on behalf of somebody else who does not know to be embarrassed for himself”

My wife also has a word for that effect. She calls it Karaoke.

Jon Swerens
9 years ago

And because these brilliant university perfessors are logical and follow the science where’er it leads, that means they are all either nihilistic suicide-pacting Kevorkians or strident to-the-conception pro-lifers.

Wait, they’re not? They’re just following the moral herd? Well, now I’m confused.

Eric Stampher
Eric Stampher
9 years ago

Hi Jill & Rob — may I propose you are not reading Rushdoony accurately — that quote included. Could you take a moment to pick it apart please: what concept there is racist?

Eric Stampher
Eric Stampher
9 years ago

I know that Rush respected and felt enriched by aspects of every culture. While I agree that his exposition of Deut. is mistaken, it was not based on finding inferiority inherent in anyone’s race — just their history.

Eric Stampher
Eric Stampher
9 years ago

Precisely because he loved evolved culture, Rush did not want any diluted (so to speak) by intermarriage. He did not want the law to encourage or endorse the “breakdown” of black culture, for example. He thought putting a hedge around it and all other cultures was part of the Deut message. Wrong. But not racist.

Wrong because Deuteronomy is about faith in Jesus only.

Not racist, though, because he held all races as races equal. That he saw white historical advantages did not mean white deserved those over any other race.

Jaquan
Jaquan
9 years ago

In many places in the world, when biracial marriages occur, one side is totally subsumed by the other. This is particularly true when ethnic languages are widely spoken. The way it is.

Jill Smith
Jill Smith
9 years ago

Robert, I wanted to go a bit off topic because I was intrigued by what you said–and I did understand its relevance to the central issue. Do you think that in order for there to be submission to the husband’s authority, a woman needs to respect his intelligence as superior to her own? I can see that it would make it easier, but compatibility helps every relationship (which of course is the point you were making). I have often wondered about this. Does the Christian woman submit to her husband because God demands it, or because she has selected a… Read more »

Robert
Robert
9 years ago

There is no intellectual submission. Intellect is a part of your brain. All godly submission is spiritual. I guarantee you, in some ways, you are smarter than your husband. From your posts, it is clear you respect your husband, anyway. Since, God commanded wives to submit to their husbands and respect them,He will give the means for a really smart academically woman who married the mechanic to respect and submit to her husband. She would find the respect and submission easier if she sees his intelligence as worthy of her respect. I don’t think a man’s intelligence necessarily needs to… Read more »

Robert
Robert
9 years ago

I am about to go to bed. If you want, I can develop this some more, later.

Gabriel Rench
Gabriel Rench
9 years ago

Jill biblical submission has nothing to do with inferiority or who is more talented, etc… It is like Christ and the church.

Pseudonym
Pseudonym
9 years ago

the biological odds are that some of us are significantly closer to the trunk of that particular family tree than others are

No. Everyone alive today has a common set of hominid ancestors, so we are all just as close to the “trunk” of the simian family tree as any other person. Like most young-earth creationists, you don’t even understand evolution or biology well enough to criticize them accurately.

St. Lee
9 years ago

Is it your argument then, Pseudonym, that evolution stopped dead in its tracks at the advent of the first “modern” man?

timothy
timothy
9 years ago

@Pseudonym

Since you do understand the science of evolution and the science of biology, please answer the following:

1. What is the average rate of speciation?
2. How many mutations, on average, are required per speciation?
3. Even if it can be demonstrated that speciation has occurred then what is the evidence that the various mechanisms are sufficient enough to make a creator unnecessary?

If you do not know, then, “I don’t know” is a good answer. No links please, just numbers.

Thank you for your time.

katecho
katecho
9 years ago

Pseudonym wrote: “Everyone alive today has a common set of hominid ancestors, so we are all just as close to the “trunk” of the simian family tree as any other person. Like most young-earth creationists, you don’t even understand evolution or biology well enough to criticize them accurately.” Citation needed. Pseudonym seems to be suffering from an acute case of political correctness, rather than reasoning from the premises of evolution theory itself. The tree diagrams they show in government schools have differentiated branches of varying lengths. Some branches even explode into their own new family of species branches (“adaptive radiation”)… Read more »

katecho
katecho
9 years ago

My link above doesn’t seem to have worked. Try this one.