An “Unbalanced” View of Earth!

Vice President Al Gore’s book Earth in the Balance (a 1992 best-seller) is being re-released on April 22nd, the 30th anniversary of “Earth Day.” Putting aside the opinion of many people who think the U.S. Vice President is an extremist when it comes to environmental matters, we are most alarmed by the book’s promotion of evolution.

Here are some blatant evolutionary passages from Earth in the Balance:

“It cannot be accidental, one is tempted to conclude, that the percentage of salt in our bloodstream is roughly the same as the percentage of salt in the oceans of the world. The long and intricate process by which evolution helped to shape the complex interrelationship of all living and nonliving things may be explicable in purely scientific terms, but the simple fact of the living world and our place on it evokes awe, wonder, a sense of mystery—a spiritual response when one reflects on its deeper meaning.” (p. 264)

With all due respect to the office of the Vice Presidency, this is nonsense.

Mr. Gore unfortunately features this unscientific theme elsewhere in the book:

“Human beings are made up mostly of water, in roughly the same percentage as water is to the surface of the earth. Our tissues and membranes, our brains and hearts, our sweat and tears—all reflect the same recipe for life, in which efficient use is made of those ingredients available on the surface of the earth …”

“But above all we are oxygen (61 percent) and hydrogen (10 percent), fused together in the unique molecular combination known as water, which makes up 71 percent of the human body. So when environmentalists assert that we are, after all, part of the earth, it is no mere rhetorical flourish. Our blood even contains roughly the same percentage of salt as the ocean, where the first life forms evolved. They eventually brought onto the land a self-contained store of the sea water to which we are still connected chemically and biologically. Little wonder, then, that water carries such great spiritual significance in most religions, from the water of Christian baptism to Hinduism’s sacred water of life.” (pp. 99-100)

Mr. Gore writes of human evolution in the following sections of his book:

“Human evolution, of course, is responsible for our very long period of childhood, during much of which we are almost completely dependent on our parents. As Ashley Montagu first pointed out decades ago, evolution encouraged the development of larger and larger human brains, but our origins in the primate family placed a limit on the ability of the birth canal to accommodate babies with ever-larger heads. Nature’s solution was to encourage an extremely long period of dependence on the nurturing parent during infancy and childhood, allowing both mind and body to continue developing in an almost gestational way long after birth.” (p. 229)

“The major global cooling period that gradually took place more than 5 million years ago corresponds with the appearance of the first hominids, called australopithecines. It happened because—in the view of many scientists—at least one species of tree-dwelling ape was able to adapt to the disappearance of its forest habitat by learning to forage on the ground and walk on two legs, leaving hands—which had evolved to grasp tree limbs—free to hold and carry food and objects, some of which later became tools.” (p. 63)

“The new discoveries relating the emergence of Homo sapiens to global climate changes have solved one of the mysteries in the human story by providing, at least in ecological terms, the missing link in the history of evolution.” (p. 63)

Vice-president Gore’s uncritical acceptance of evolutionary speculation on human origins, and the fact that he can hold such opinions and be welcomed as a member of an evangelical church, is a sad reflection of the church’s apathy in the face of the “evolutionization” of our culture.

The Ashley Montagu idea which he enthusiastically endorses is an example of evolutionary storytelling, pure and simple. What about the idea that australopithecines, like the famous “Lucy,” walked upright? For years, there have been leading anatomists (and evolutionists, like Charles Oxnard) who insist that the australopithecine anatomy was not consistent with habitual upright walking as in humans. This has been recently confirmed by CAT scans on the canals housing the organ of balance. (See the AiG video Ape or Image.) Marvin Lubenow’s classic work Bones of Contention is also a wealth of information debunking the whole notion of “human evolution”.

When we get to see this new edition of Earth in the Balance, it will be interesting to see if these unscientific passages have been omitted or revised.

As Ken Ham reports in the May edition of AiG’s US “Answers Update” newsletter, the evolutionary views embraced by politicians, educators, judges, etc. will affect their decisions on many vital issues, including abortion. If a politician believes that human beings are just animals in a struggle for survival, then that legislator doesn’t see it as wrong to allow a woman to abort her baby (which, after all, is just an animal developing in her womb). We get rid of unwanted animals like dogs and cats, so why not unwanted babies?

What you believe about where you come from (evolution or creation) will affect your whole worldview. If our leaders would accept God’s Word as true from the beginning, legislation could be passed to reform nations—including protecting the unborn.