News Snippets From All Beats

Ben Stein’s film “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” set for release April 18, is not a case made for the creation of man, or even for intelligent design. Its focus is the persecution educators and scientists are subjected to for challenging the theory of evolution. The film is the result of interviews conducted over a period of two years with more than 150 educators and scientists who doubt the theory is an explanation for the origin of life. The film also contains interviews with leading proponents of the theory that include Richard Dawkins. As the title of the film implies, rigorous and open examination of the evidence used to support natural selection is considered unacceptable, and in many instances it brings retaliation and ruined careers.

Nevertheless, the number of scientists who have weighed the evidence and found it wanting, and are willing to go public, continues to grow. Since 2001, over 700 scientists have singed the “Scientific Dissent from Darwinism” list proclaiming they are “skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.”¹

As the Darwinian Evolution unravels under scientific scrutiny, Walt Ruloff, Executive Producer of “Expelled,” observes that the only thing holding it together is “politics”.² In the world of research grants, text book publishers, and careers that’s easy to appreciate, but there is another aspect of Darwinian Evolution that has become a gigantic leap of blind faith exhibiting something on the order of a religious adherence. And that places the theory where it belongs, and where it is most easily dispatched. Take for example how it is addressed in this section from the feature article “Immediate Man” running on The Bible Beats; which shows various ways the Bible defeats the theory:

Evolving Inanimate Objects: A Standard the Theory Cannot Meet

The foregoing verse [Gen. 1:26] presenting the creation of man as man is not an anomaly. There are no less than eight verses in the first two chapters of Genesis that demand immediate man in order to be intelligible to the text (i.e. Gen. 1:26, 27; 2:3, 7, 8, 15, 16), and if only one of them should be chosen for memories sake it would have to be this one:

And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul (Gen 2:7).

At one time, and in one instance, man was fully formed up to his nostrils before he had any life in him at all-no living cells struggling for survival, no grotesque mutating and mindless devouring as protoplasm. God completely formed him out to the dust of the ground and then breathed into him the breath of life, and by miraculous means man became a living soul; not an intermediate soul, not half a soul, but a living human soul in its entirety starting life in the image of God. The scriptures give us an unmistakable assurance of a straight forward and literal account of creation for fowl, animals, and man; and they may even provide us with something more.³

The article does provide more by use of unique illustrations, and seemingly unrelated characters like Jonah, to show God’s creation of mankind is a literal account in Genesis. The treatment is both good study for the faithful, and particularly useful to dispel the idea that the Bible is harmonious with evolution as the mechanism God used in creating life.

Notes:

^1. Troy Anderson, “Ben Stein Makes His Case for Doubting Darwin,” Daily News, April 5, 2008.

^2. Ibid.

^3. David Dansker, “Immediate Man,” The Bible Beats.com, February 16, 2008.