Answer by John Mackay
The new biology teacher asked on the first day of term, who in the class believes in creation? A young Welsh final year High School science student (name withheld) was the only one to raise her hand. The teacher told her loudly she would never get anywhere in biology with such silly beliefs, so she may as well sit in the back corner and do nothing all year and that’s where she was forced to sit – all year!
Our Tasmanian representative Craig Hawkins (MSc) was told in the first day of his University course; “Anybody here who believes in creation had better keep their beliefs to themselves.”
Geology student Ian McDonald raised his hand in a first-year university course and asked about the evidence for Noah’s flood. The lecturer stated “If you are going to ask stupid questions like that – take an arts course!”
At the personal level – the author of this answer (John Mackay) was told in his first year of University Geology that “We are not going to study any such nonsense as catastrophic flood-based geology.”
I am sure that you too can detect a certain attitude here that does not allow questions about creation, nor challenges to evolution and might rightly be labelled conspiratorial? The usual retort from educators who are challenged about this, is that “all scientists” accept evolution and there are no real scientists who believe creation, so why should we tolerate superstition in the science classroom.
However, it goes deeper than that. The USA Science Teachers Journal published the following: “Scientists refrain from considering Gods actions in their work. Instead they use observation, experimentation, … logical arguments … heuristics, and healthy skepticism to produce scientific knowledge. … Scientific theories are therefore explanations about aspects of nature without reference to God.”1
Did you catch it? Any time someone tells us a scientific explanation cannot include any reference to God, they have just made a reference to God. What they have said is that in science, the only explanations ‘allowed’ are those that can be classified as atheistic (there is no God) or agnostic (we don’t know if there is a God or not, so we won’t even go there). ‘In the beginning God … ’, cannot even make it to first base, and you are rarely allowed to ever ask a question about it either.
This attitude was expressed very strongly by a geology professor at one university where I was doing a debate when he stressed: “Science accepts no authority – no human authority and no biblical authority!” The weakness in his position is easily shown by simply asking, “And by what authority do you say that?” So why do scientists allow such definitions to be propagated? Simply because they want their human authority to be paramount. They want no higher authority than the right of a scientist to perpetually change his mind about everything, unchallenged by any mere mortals, or a greater God.
Yet the ultimate problem, whether it be physics chemistry or biology or any of the related “para- sciences” such as psychology, political science, etc. is the attitude behind the Science Teachers’ definition above, which has in reality been endowed upon science by Charles Darwin’s chief mentor Charles Lyell, whose aim was to “free the science from Moses”2 It is undeniable that Lyell had an agenda and he and his colleagues conspired most vigorously to remove any Mosaic influence particularly concerning the catastrophism of Noah’s flood. In my first week of University Geology we were introduced to Lyell as the great father of modern Geological thought who made it unnecessary to consider ‘catastrophic nonsense such as the Flood.’
Lyell succeeded by subtly and simply replacing biblical concepts rather than by openly attacking them. Charles Darwin recognised this when he wrote about Lyell in a letter to his son George in 1873: “Lyell is most firmly convinced that he has shaken the faith in the Deluge etc far more efficiently by never having said a word against the Bible, than if he had acted otherwise.” 3 The term Deluge refers to Noah’s Flood – the worldwide catastrophe sent as judgement by the Creator God on man’s evil behaviour during the days Noah lived on earth. (Genesis 6-9). Lyell is undeniably the one responsible for my Queensland Univeristy Geology course starting with such an anti-catastrophic statement, followed by our lecturer introducing us to the ‘bible of geology’ written by Charles Lyell.
But Lyell wrote more than 150 years ago, so what’s this got to do with modern science which now uses global catastrophes to wipe out dinosaurs etc. and has provably seen the folly of Lyellian anti- catastrophism. Simply that Lyell’s most successful coup was not his anti-catastrophism, but his giving all scientists a way to see the world which can be summarised as “the present is the key to the past,” in which the events in man’s current phase of history are the ‘top way of seeing things’. Otherwise known as uniformitarianism, every scientist is trained to think this way, rarely told it is an assumption and almost never given any alternatives.
So how does uniformitarianism bypass Biblical thinking? Simply because the biblical record reveals a world history in which the past is so very different from today, that the present could never be the total key to the past. One example: Adam was created for a world which had no death, no kill or be killed. The first planet had neither rain, deformities sickness, or struggle etc. The modern scientist assumes that if it happens now, it has always been a vital factor and one of the keys to understanding Darwin’s ‘death is the norm – struggle and fight to survive’ are biological history. But despite the theistic evolutionists duplicity with the world, the Biblical view and the Lyellian world history are mutually exclusive!
Lyell’s uniformitarianism also excludes the use of historic references, human or biblical, as a valid data base. This is easily seen in the current climate change debate, where most scientists and climate change activists assume that only the last 50 years or so of authorised, scientist-collected, computerised data observed by this generation is relevant. Any comments on climate based of history, e.g. from ancient Rome or even fossil ‘climate’ evidence that contradict the politically correct taxable concept that modern industrialised man has caused the climate to change are rarely considered, and usually brutally rejected or ignored.
Lyell’s influence has gone beyond Darwin to all subsequent modern science There was, and now is, definitely a conspiracy to remove the God of the Bible from having any influence in scientific thinking – particularly the first five books of Moses. Darwin, Lyell and all their present day followers were, and are, not just rejecting God’s power as Creator, but rejecting His power and authority as judge over all mankind.
The reason we at Creation Research can sometimes be so unpopular has nothing to do with the data we use. It has to do with which authority the scientific community wants to rule over man; the Creator God or evolved man! The conflict is between the modern scientist who insists his pragmatic authority is the only consideration, therefore we can never know any fixed truth, vs the Creator God who has the right and the power to insist His Revealed Word is the absolute authority in all matters it speaks on.
So, is there a conspiracy? Yes!
Are most people who spread the pro-evolution line aware of it? No!
Why not? Run a quick check on who studies the history of scientific thinking as part of their science degree? Almost no one. It’s much easier that way. It guarantees that most leaders in the field never even know they are propagating a religious anti-Christian world view so they can vigorously plead their innocence to a charge they really are guilty of.
REFERENCES
- The Science Teacher, Nov 2003, p34.
- Letter to George Scrope, 14 June 1830, in Lyell 1881, Life, Letters and Journals of Sir Charles Lyell, Bart. I:268-271. John Murray, London, 1881. ( published by his sister) Also quoted in Introduction to reprint of Principles of Geology 1830 by Charles Lyell. Uni Chicago Press, 1990, page [xvii]
- Charles Darwin, Letter to his son George H Darwin, 21 Oct 1873.
For more details on the influence of Lyell and uniformitarian thinking on Charles Darwin see the Creation Research article Charles Darwin: the Descent of a Man. PDF here.
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