CT article: Darwinists, not Christians, stonewalling the facts

http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2005/004/19.112.html

Many of the arguments presented by this article have been already
discussed in previous ASA exchanges. However, I would like to hear if
anyone has anything new to say in response to this article.

Some issues in particular:
1. "But is there really so little evidence for biblical miracles, and so
much for naturalistic evolution?" Charles Colson seems to be confusing
atheistic evolution (a philosophical position) with scientific theory of
evolution. My question here is how should we succinctly (given the space
limitation of an online article) clarify belief in biblical miracles
should not be contrasted against belief in naturalistic evolution?

2. "So who's really rolling back the Enlightenment? Those who invite us
to follow the evidence wherever it leads-or those demanding that we
ignore it? The folks who want both evolution and Intelligent Design
taught in school, with all their strengths and weaknesses-or those who
attempt to silence any opposition?" How should we respond to this
rhetorical argument?

3. Does anyone know what exactly convinced the former atheist Antony
Flew of theism? In an interview, he did refer to "intelligent design",
but did he mean ID as advocated by the Johnson/Dembski/Behe, or was he
referring to the more traditional teleological argument (i.e. argument
from design, dating back to William Paley)

.................................................
Christianity Today, April 2005

Verdict that Demands Evidence
It is Darwinists, not Christians, who are stonewalling the facts.
Charles Colson with Anne Morse | posted 03/28/2005 10:00 a.m.

It was one of the first-and angriest-post-election hissy fits: In The
New York Times, Garry Wills credited White House political adviser Karl
Rove for getting millions of religious conservatives (whom he compared
to Muslim jihadists) to the polls and sneered, "Can a nation which
believes more fervently in the Virgin Birth than in evolution still be
called an enlightened nation?"

It's an interesting question, considering the iron grip evolutionists
have had over our educational institutions for a century. And at first
glance, it seems odd that Americans-among the best-educated, most
technologically advanced people in the world-would choose miraculous
stories over scientific ones.

But is there really so little evidence for biblical miracles, and so
much for naturalistic evolution?

As historian Paul Johnson notes, Christianity is a historical religion
that deals in facts and events. Among those facts is that Jesus, the Son
of God, was born of a virgin, in a specific time and place. Johnson
cites the mounting archaeological discoveries that have almost
universally supported the biblical accounts. And the life of Jesus, he
notes, is better authenticated than most other figures of antiquity,
like Aristotle and Julius Caesar. As Johnson puts it, "It is not now the
men of faith; it is the skeptics who have reason to fear the course of
discovery."

All well and good, but Darwinism, at least, has been empirically proven,
right?

Wrong. Sure, there's evidence that evolution takes place within a
species-but the fossil record has not yielded evidence of one species
becoming another, as Darwin confidently predicted. This lack of evidence
has not gone unnoticed by sociologist Rodney Stark. Stark calls himself
neither an evolutionist nor an advocate of Intelligent Design; instead,
he says, he is merely a scholar pursuing the evidence where it leads. In
For the Glory of God (Princeton University Press, 2003), Stark offers
startling evidence that Darwinists have covered up mounting flaws in
their theory. He concludes that the battle over evolution is hardly a
case of "heroic" scientists fighting off the persecution of religious
fanatics. Instead, from the start, evolution "has primarily been an
attack on religion by militant atheists who wrap themselves in the
mantle of science in an effort to refute all religious claims concerning
a creator-an effort that has also often attempted to suppress all
scientific criticisms of Darwin's work."

Committed Darwinists continue this strategy today. For example, nine
years ago biochemist Michael Behe published Darwin's Black Box (Free
Press, 1996). Behe argued that complex structures like proteins cannot
be assembled piecemeal, with gradual improvement of function. Instead,
like a mousetrap, all the parts-catch, spring, hammer, and so forth-must
be assembled simultaneously, or the protein doesn't work.

Behe's thesis faced a challenge from the nation's leading expert on cell
structure, Dr. Russell Doolittle at the University of California-San
Diego. Doolittle cited a study on bloodletting in the journal Cell that
supposedly disproved Behe's argument. Behe immediately read the
article-and found that the study proved just the opposite: It supported
his theory. Behe confronted Doolittle, who privately acknowledged that
he was wrong-but declined to make a public retraction.

So who's really rolling back the Enlightenment? Those who invite us to
follow the evidence wherever it leads-or those demanding that we ignore
it? The folks who want both evolution and Intelligent Design taught in
school, with all their strengths and weaknesses-or those who attempt to
silence any opposition?

The evidence for Intelligent Design has become so persuasive that the
81-year old British philosopher Anthony Flew, a lifelong atheist who
once debated C. S. Lewis over the existence of God, recently admitted
that a creator-God must exist.

In the final analysis, any objective observer must conclude that belief
in either the biblical or the naturalistic worldview demands faith. The
issue is not science versus faith, but science (evolution) versus
science (Intelligent Design), and of faith versus faith regarding how
the universe and life came to be.

So to return to Garry Wills's question-are we so unenlightened to reject
Darwin in favor of Christian doctrine?

I practiced law for many years, dreaming every lawyer's dream to take a
great case into the Supreme Court. This is the case I'd most like to
argue: pitting the common consensus against the Darwinist establishment.
Copyright C 2005 Christianity Today. Click for reprint information.
April 2005, Vol. 49, No. 4, Page 112
Received on Mon Mar 28 16:36:58 2005