Science started out as a "faith-based initiative" so to speak.

It was "religious" folk who first began to try to unravel the mysteries of the world around them. They had a great appreciation for the world and all it contained. They saw it as someone's wonderful handiwork. There were many views as to who was responsible, and in trying to study the world's mysteries they hoped to know the one behind their own existence a little better.

Science was "knowledge". Anything studied responsibly with a measure of thoroughness could be considered a "science". It was a noble pursuit carried out by those who assumed that someone was behind the existence of the universe and everything in it. By the mid 1800's things were about to change dramatically and a wedge was about to be driven between scientists and their love for their maker.

Science Takes a Dark Turn

A naturalist named Charles Darwin put a new twist on some naive theories that had been proposed by others like Lamarck. Lamarck suggested that living things could "acquire" new traits when their was a particular need. If a giraffe needed to eat leaves too high in the trees for it to reach, after so many generations the neck of the giraffe would become longer. Darwin thought Lamarck was wrong. Instead he would propose that since giraffes would be born with a range of neck lengths, nature would "select" those giraffes with longer necks to continue the species.

Darwin suggested that nature must have used this sort of process as a means of changing one sort of creature into another. He didn't know where all the new variations came from. But, he was confident that they had occurred and so his theory could be used to explain the existence of all living things, past and present.

Darwinism and the Rejection of Religion

Darwin managed to legitimize a new formulation of "spontaneous generation". This is the notion that living things can arise without external guidance, that is, only the forces and activities present in nature itself were necessary to create the diversity of life on this planet. In other words, "nature creates itself".

Darwin set science adrift in a sea of seeming autonomy.
Sadly, this illusion was both convincing and alluring.

Many thought that science had conquered religion, superstition and myth all in one simple idea. Soon a new "gospel" was being proclaimed, "We are all the products of a completely natural, and unguided process that has transformed inanimate matter into all living things". "Now 'science' has become the highest ideal and champion of the truth!" And so it seemed, at least to me as a young biology student.

Scientists were claiming things like, "Religion and faith are now only vain crutches for insecure people." "You don't need faith anymore, you've got evolution and that's all you need." "Anyone that tells you otherwise, is either naive, or a liar and an enemy of science!" As time went on once "religious" people were becoming more and more disillusioned and declaring themselves to be atheists and such. I found myself coming very close to joining them as the evolution revolution was suffocating me with it's push to abandon the glimmer of faith i still possessed in God.

Critical Thinking, Intellectual Honesty and Humility

I'm very thankful that reason and faith didn't cave in to it. About that same time I took an elective course called, "Critical Thinking". In it I learned about the many tricks of persuasion used by advertisers, news publications, politicians, PR managers, etc. to make their point and get us in their pockets. There are many ways to convince people that an apple is an orange or a tree is an ocean. You just need to know how to present it in a way that convinces and it always helps that the culprit believes the absurdity themselves or at least is skilled at acting as if they do. Some salespeople will do anything to get the "sale", even take advantage of their closest friends. It's only later that the friends realize that they bought a bill of goods. I learned that it pays to examine and understand the data and the logic behind the "presentation". To dig deeper and not believe everything people tell me regardless of their position, status, or eloquence.

A Process of Redefinition

Darwinism is no longer an interesting theory for "science". It's become an obsession, a religious fervor. A creation story that manages to convince "science" that it has forever "purified" "itself" of all religious superstitions and fairy tales. Part of the means of purification is to purge itself of terms like, "creation story" and replace it with "origins model" or "adaptation" with "micro evolution" and such. Even the term, "creature" has been thrown out in favor of "organism". A scientific society has emerged that is refereed to as, "the scientific community". Its leaders call the shots and set the standards for all the rest and decide where the money goes and to whom.

Is Intelligent Design Scientific Heresy?

People who doubt evolution are not trusted much as if they were heretics of "science". The current wild frenzy to squash "intelligent design" illustrates this with total clarity. With "intelligent design" there is real reason for alarm with the great cult of evolutionism that's taken over scientific inquiry. It's like the time my sister won a kiddy car from a car dealer and my dad was all excited and drove us kids into Baltimore City to pick it up. When we got there, they brought out a cardboard box with the top and bottom gone and a car printed on the sides. "Intelligent Design" takes us to the dealer and shows us what evolution offers, a cardboard imitation of "cutting edge science".

Can Science Move On?

We've learned allot since Darwin's days. A wonderful study called, "genetics" has emerged. We have walked on the moon and much more of the fossil record has been unearthed. Thousands of more species of plants and animals have been identified and studied. Most importantly, many problems have been exposed concerning Darwin's ideas. Many of these objections have been well founded, some have not. Nevertheless, evolutionism continues to infect more areas of "science" including psychology.

Today science has come to a crossroad. Will it blow smoke over these problems in order to cling to it's darwinian "religion free" ideal. It's certainly evident that evolution is, in a practical sense, the only road to acceptance within the "real", "genuine", "rational", "credible", "thinking", "honest", "working", "professional", ranks of science. This is unfortunate for science itself. Selfish people have dug in their heels and decided to use their political power and popularity to maintain their authority and seeming position of superiority.

Antichristian symbols from the cult of evolutionism

From Dogma to Faith

Science without faith is another word for "cult". Religious cults demand unquestioning loyalty to their leaders and punish and reject any who question them. Faith allowed science to say, "we only see part of the picture", "we have some faith in our conclusions, but we openly welcome you to shoot them down if you can so we can put our faith in ideas that are better and have more support of the facts." Without "faith", science is reduced to "dogma". The heart of productive scientific inquiry is "faith", the admission that "we can be wrong".

As an ex-evolutionist, i am glad that i took the objections to evolution seriously and began to see the frailty of the case for Darwin's theory. Now, i can see that adaptation exists in nature, but is limited. To call adaptation, "evolution", or even "micro evolution" is misleading. Adaptation is just that to me now. My faith in evolution was misplaced, i've had to reconsider.

My hope is that "science" will return to the humble and noble passion that it once was. Carl Linnaeus was to me one of the last great examples of this. He clearly saw design in nature and wasn't afraid to let his students know about it. To me, his contributions to science overshadow those of Darwin's in every respect, especially in the area of "origins".

Wayne Hollyoak