Games Some People Play

Richard Dickerson, an authority in chemical evolution and a professing theist, has said:

‘Science, fundamentally, is a game. It is a game with one overriding and defining rule.  Rule No. 1: Let us see how far and to what extent we can explain the behaviour of the physical and material universe in terms of purely physical and material causes, without invoking the supernatural.’¹

Thus, evolutionary ‘science’ is not necessarily a search for truth, as we used to be told, but a game in which scientists try to find naturalistic causes, even for the origin of the universe and all in it.

Evolution is science, and creation is religion, so only evolution should be taught in schools.

At the conclusion of a creation/evolution debate in which I participated some years ago, a professor in the audience said, in effect: ‘You may well be right; special creation is probably the truth and evolution is wrong.  Nevertheless, evolution is science, and creation is religion, so only evolution should be taught in schools.’  Not every  evolutionist is as frank, but this really is the game they play.

A second rule seems to be that the end justifies the means.  In Stephen Jay Gould’s book, The Mismeasure of Man, that noted evolutionary author argues that the social and political bias of an author (Gould himself has admitted being a Marxist) could have an effect on his scientific results.  Commenting on this, another evolutionary Marxist at Harvard University, Dr Richard Lewontin, has (no doubt subconsciously) suggested this second rule of the evolutionists’ game plan:

‘Scientists, like others, sometimes tell deliberate lies, because they believe that small lies can serve big truths.’²

Alternatives ‘outlawed’

Even though scientists never cite any real scientific evidence for evolution, doctrinaire evolutionists insist there is such evidence, because any alternative is outlawed by the rules.

‘In other words, it’s natural selection or a Creator.  There is no middle ground.  This is why prominent Darwinists like G.G. Simpson and Stephen Jay Gould, who are not secretive about their hostility to religion, cling so vehemently to natural selection.  To do otherwise would be to admit the probability that there is design in nature—and hence a Designer.’³

A third rule of this game of evolutionary science seems to be to insist that all scientists, by definition, are evolutionists.  Even though thousands of creationists with post-graduate degrees in science are pursuing careers in science, these are commonly ignored or ridiculed or even denied status as scientists by the evolutionary establishment.  The game plan is that, no matter what scientific credentials they have, scientists cannot be creationists without forfeiting their status as scientists.

In fact, many think it would be better not to let creationists become scientists at all.  When I was an engineering department chairman at Virginia Tech, I asked the biology professor in charge of the doctoral program in that department whether a creationist student could get a Ph.D. degree in his department.  The answer was ‘No!’  No matter how outstanding his grades or dissertation or even his knowledge of evolutionary theory, if he did not believe in evolution, he could not get the degree.

This commitment to the rules of the game has been expressed starkly by two university professors:

‘… as a matter of fact, creationism should be discriminated against. … No advocate of such propaganda should be trusted to teach science classes or administer science programs anywhere or under any circumstances.  Moreover, if any are now doing so, they should be dismissed.’⁴

That opinion, by an Iowa State University engineering professor, was published by the main US organization dedicated to fighting creationism—an organization whose establishment was funded by the Carnegie Foundation. 

Fail creationists

Another Iowa professor said any professor (lecturer) should have the right to ‘fail any student in his class, no matter what the grade record indicates’ if that professor discovers the student is a creationist.⁵  Furthermore, the student’s department should have the right of ‘retracting grades and possibly even degrees’ if the student becomes a creationist later.⁵

Famous Christian scholar, C.S. Lewis, who had long supported the idea of theistic evolution, changed his mind just before he died, and said:

‘I wish I were younger.  What inclines me now to think you may be right in regarding it [evolution] as the central and radical lie in the whole web of falsehood that now governs our lives is not so much your arguments against it as the fanatical and twisted attitudes of its defenders.’⁶

This is, indeed, quite a game some people are playing!

References

1. Dickerson, R.E., The Game of Science, Perspectives on Science and Faith44:137, June 1992.

2. Lewontin, R.C., The Inferiority Complex, New York Review of Books, 22 October 1981, p. 13.

3. Johnston, G.S., The Genesis Controversy, Crisis, p. 17, May 1989.

4. Patterson, J.W., Do scientists and scholars discriminate unfairly against creationists?  Journal of the National Center for Science Education, p. 19, Fall (Autumn) 1984.

5. Frazier, K., Competence and Controversy, Skeptical Inquirer8:2–5, Fall (Autumn) 1983.

6. Lewis, C.S., Private letter (1951) to Captain Bernard Acworth, one of the founders of the Evolution Protest Movement (England). Cited by evolutionist Ronald Numbers in his book, The Creationists, University of California Press, California, p. 153, 1992.

Reprinted and condensed by permission fromActs and Facts, Institute for CreationResearch, San Diego, California.