The Darwinian Inquisition
October 14, 2013
David Cloud, Way of Life Literature, P.O. Box 610368, Port Huron, MI 48061
866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
866-295-4143, fbns@wayoflife.org
The following is excerpted from AN UNSHAKEABLE FAITH: A CHRISTIAN APOLOGETICS COURSE.
In the days of Charles Darwin and his “bulldog” Thomas Huxley [pictured at left], science became the new religion and scientists the new priests. There was “One Catholic Apostolic Church of True Knowledge.”
Pope Huxley and his fellow bishops in the Church of Science brought back the inquisition by disallowing challenges to evolutionary theory and excommunicating those who dared to question it. Consider St. George Mivart, who was “excommunicated from the Church of Science.” He started out as an ardent evolutionist and a disciple of Huxley, but he was savaged when he had the audacity to publish a book debunking Darwinism and warning that it would destroy morality and produce despair (Desmond, Huxley, p. 455). The Huxley inquisitors had Mivart’s membership in the prestigious Athenaeum Club nixed. Mivart was shunned as a leper by the Darwinian elite, and he wasn’t even a Bible believer; he was a liberal Roman Catholic who held to theistic evolution.
Mivart was only the first victim of the Darwinian inquisition, a phenomenon that has broadened in scope and intensity in our day.
By 1995, Phillip Johnson observed:
“Darwinian theory is the creation myth of our culture. It’s the officially sponsored, government financed creation myth that the public is supported to believe in, and that creates the evolutionary scientists as the priesthood. ... So we have the priesthood of naturalism, which has great cultural authority, and of course has to protect its mystery that gives it that authority--that’s why they’re so vicious towards critics” (In the Beginning: The Creationist Controversy, PBS documentary, May 30-31, 1995).
Richard Milton, a science journalist, published a book in 1981 debunking Darwinian evolution and subsequently became the target of the Darwinian gestapo. In his review of Milton’s Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, Oxford University atheist Richard Dawkins devoted two-thirds of the review to attacking the publisher for daring to print a book criticizing Darwinism and the other third to assassinating Milton’s character. Dawkins said the book is “loony,” “stupid,” “drivel,” and referred to Milton as a “harmless fruitcake” who “needs psychiatric help” (Shattering the Myths, pp. ix, x).
Dawkins has tried to have Milton blacklisted so that his scientific writings cannot be published. He has lied about him, calling him a “secret creationist.” He was successful in having the Times Higher Educational Supplement stop publication of one of Milton’s articles.
Milton describes one group of Darwinist vigilantes who use the Internet to attack those they find guilty of promoting the heresy of Intelligent Design. They call themselves “howler monkeys.” Milton says, “The effects of the howler monkeys of the Internet are profoundly damaging to academic freedom of expression, whoever their current victim happens to be” (p. 270).
Milton observes, “There is a strong streak of intellectual arrogance and intellectual authoritarianism running through the history of Darwinism, from Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin ... through to Julian Huxley” (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, p. 277).
In 2007, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet, was denied tenure at Iowa State University in spite of his excellent record because he believes in intelligent design (“Guillermo Gonzalez, Nobel Laureates and Founders of Modern Science,” Evolution News & Views, June 5, 2007).
Dr. Frank Tipler, a distinguished professor of physics at the University of New Orleans, was persecuted after he merely admitted the possibility of intelligence in his book The Physics of Immortality. He complains that the “peer review” process is a tool to enforce Darwinian orthodoxy:
“Today, the refereeing process works primarily to enforce orthodoxy. I shall offer evidence that ‘peer’ review is not peer review: the referee is quite often not as intellectually able as the author whose work he judges. We have pygmies standing in judgment on giants” (“Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?” ISCID Archiv. June 30, 2003, p. 8, cited from Henry Morris, “Willingly Ignorant,” ICR).
Joan Margueijo also exposes the peer review system as an instrument of enforcing doctrinaire purity within the Darwinian establishment:
“As an individual you are judged by how many papers you publish, where you publish them, their quality, and how often they are subsequently cited. But more importantly, publication is part and parcel of the fact that scientists, who tend to live on grant money, are obligated to make their findings and ideas available to others. They will not get their share of funding unless they can show a solid publication record. ... Referee reports are often empty of scientific content and reflect nothing but the author's social standing, or their good or bad relations with the referee. . . . To cap it all, editors can be totally illiterate” (Faster than the Spread of Light, 2003, pp. 183, 217, 218).
In 1997, Dr. Lynn Margulis and Dr. Dorion Sagan, both evolutionists with impeccable scientific credentials, made the following admission:
“More and more, like the monasteries of the Middle Ages, today’s universities and professional societies guard their knowledge. Collusively, the university biology curriculum, the textbook publishers, the National Science Foundation review committees, the Graduate Record examiners, and the various microbiological, evolutionary, and zoological societies map out domains of the known and knowable; they distinguish required from forbidden knowledge, subtly punishing the trespassers with rejection and oblivion; they award the faithful liturgists by granting degrees and dispersing funds and fellowships. Universities and academies ... determine who is permitted to know and just what it is that he or she may know. Biology, botany, zoology, biochemistry, and microbiology departments within U.S. universities determine access to knowledge about life, dispensing it at high prices in peculiar parcels called credit hours. ... If an individual with ambition to study nature rejects neo-Darwinist biology in today’s ambience, he becomes a threat to his own means of livelihood” (Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution, 1997, pp. 236, 279).
Dr. Hannes Alfven made the same complaint. Since he disagreed from the Darwinian establishment’s commitment to the big bang theory, his papers were turned down in spite of his impressive scientific credentials (“Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist,” American Scientist, May-June 1988, p. 250).
The Darwinian inquisition has largely shut creationists out of the public school/scientific establishment. Dr. Henry Morris described this extreme bias:
“It is not that creationist scientists have not published in their own scientific fields. For example, before coming to ICR, Dr. Duane Gish had published at least 25 articles on biochemistry in secular science journals, Dr. Ken Cumming over 18 articles in biology, and Dr. Larry Vardiman at least 10 articles in atmospheric physics. My own publications in engineering include five books and 20 articles. One of the books, Applied Hydraulics in Engineering, has been continuously in print since 1963 and has been used as a textbook in scores of universities.
“But none of us can get a scientific article promoting creationism published in the secular journals, whether technical journals or popular magazines such as Reader's Digest or National Geographic. In fact, very few religious magazines will accept an article on creationism, especially one that promotes six-day creation and a global Flood.
“On one occasion, a member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists was able to get an invitation for me to speak at their convention, with an agreement that the Society would publish the paper in its journal. When they saw my paper, however, they quickly reneged, even though the article had no religious material in it at all, only science. It was later published by ICR as the small book, The Scientific Case for Creation” (Morris, “Bigotry in Science,” Institute for Creation Research, n.d.).
Countless other examples could be given. In fact, entire books have been written to document the Darwinian inquisition.
In Darwin Day in America, John Day devotes a chapter to this entitled “Banned in Burlington.”
In the video documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein examines the persecution of scientists and professors who dare to question Darwinism or to promote even the slightest evidence for intelligent design.
In Slaughter of the Dissidents (Southworth, WA: Leafcutter Press, 2008), Jerry Bergman (Ph.D. in human biology from Columbia Pacific University and Ph.D. in measurement and evaluation from Wayne State University) tells the “shocking truth about killing the careers of Darwin doubters.” In the Introduction, John Eidsmoe says: “In this fascinating book, Dr. Jerry Bergman--himself a victim--chronicles the history of modern religious persecution in America. A highly respected, credentialed, and published professor, he was denied tenure--and subsequently fired--admittedly because of his creationist beliefs and writings. Dr. Bergman describes numerous other cases, often concealing names to protect those who do not wish to risk losing their current positions (a common means of persecuting those with minority views)” (p. xv).
Dr. Bergman testifies:
“[A] factor that moved me to the creationist side was the underhanded, often totally unethical techniques that evolutionists typically used to suppress dissonant ideas, primarily creationism. Rarely did they carefully and objectively examine the facts, but usually focused on suppression of creationists, denial of their degrees, denial of their tenure, ad hominem attacks, and in general, irrational attacks on their person. In short, their response in general was totally unscientific and one that reeks of intolerance, even hatred” (Persuaded by the Evidence, chapter 4).
William Dembski adds:
“As Michael Behe pointed out in an interview with the Harvard Political Review for a biologist to question Darwinism endangers one’s career. ‘There’s good reason to be afraid. Even if you’re not fired from your job, you will easily be passed over for promotions. I would strongly advise graduate students who are skeptical of Darwinian theory not to make their views known.’ ... Doubting Darwinian orthodoxy is comparable to opposing the party line of a Stalinist regime. ... Overzealous critics of intelligent design regard it as their moral duty to keep biology free from intelligent design, even if that means taking extreme measures. I’ve known such critics to contact design theorists’ employers and notify them of the ‘heretics’ in their midst. Once ‘outed,’ the design theorists themselves get harassed and harangued with e-mails. Next, the press does a story mentioning their unsavory intelligent design associations. (The day one such story appeared, a close friend and colleague of mine mentioned in the story was dismissed from his research position at a prestigious molecular biology laboratory. He had worked in that lab for ten years. ... Welcome to the inquisition” (The Design Revolution, pp. 304, 305).
Walt Brown, who has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT, describes the way that evolutionists have controlled the scientific fields since the day of Thomas Huxley. He uses the field of geology as an example:
“Professors in the new and growing field of geology were primarily selected from those who supported the anti-catastrophe principle. These professors did not advance students who espoused catastrophes. An advocate of a global flood was branded a ‘biblical literalist’ or ‘fuzzy thinker’--not worthy of an academic degree. Geology professors also influenced, through the peer review process, what papers could be published. Textbooks soon reflected their orthodoxy, so few students became ‘fuzzy thinkers.’ This practice continues to this day, because a major criterion for selecting professors is the number of their publications” (In the Beginning, p. 253).
Consider Dr. Caroline Crocker, a cell-biologist and full-time visiting faculty member at George Mason University. After she showed several slides about intelligent design in a class on cells, she was reprimanded, pulled from lecture duties, and her contract was not renewed the following semester. She testified: “Students are not allowed to question Darwinism. There are universities where they poll students on what they believe and single them out.”
Some Darwinists have even hinted at or openly called for the imprisonment of creationists.
“Richard Dawkins has written that anyone who denies evolution is either ‘ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked--but I’d rather not consider that’) (New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p. 34). It isn’t a big step from calling someone wicked to taking forceful measures to put an end to their wickedness. John Maddox, the editor of Nature, has written in his journal that ‘it may not be long before the practice of religion must be regarded as anti-science’ (‘Defending Science Against Anti-Science,’ Nature, 368, 185). In his recent book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, philosopher Daniel Dennett compares religious believers--90 percent of the population--to wild animals who may have to be caged, and he says that parents should be prevented (presumably by coercion) from misinforming their children about the truth of evolution, which is so evident to him” (Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, chapter 11).
Pope Huxley and his fellow bishops in the Church of Science brought back the inquisition by disallowing challenges to evolutionary theory and excommunicating those who dared to question it. Consider St. George Mivart, who was “excommunicated from the Church of Science.” He started out as an ardent evolutionist and a disciple of Huxley, but he was savaged when he had the audacity to publish a book debunking Darwinism and warning that it would destroy morality and produce despair (Desmond, Huxley, p. 455). The Huxley inquisitors had Mivart’s membership in the prestigious Athenaeum Club nixed. Mivart was shunned as a leper by the Darwinian elite, and he wasn’t even a Bible believer; he was a liberal Roman Catholic who held to theistic evolution.
Mivart was only the first victim of the Darwinian inquisition, a phenomenon that has broadened in scope and intensity in our day.
By 1995, Phillip Johnson observed:
“Darwinian theory is the creation myth of our culture. It’s the officially sponsored, government financed creation myth that the public is supported to believe in, and that creates the evolutionary scientists as the priesthood. ... So we have the priesthood of naturalism, which has great cultural authority, and of course has to protect its mystery that gives it that authority--that’s why they’re so vicious towards critics” (In the Beginning: The Creationist Controversy, PBS documentary, May 30-31, 1995).
Richard Milton, a science journalist, published a book in 1981 debunking Darwinian evolution and subsequently became the target of the Darwinian gestapo. In his review of Milton’s Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, Oxford University atheist Richard Dawkins devoted two-thirds of the review to attacking the publisher for daring to print a book criticizing Darwinism and the other third to assassinating Milton’s character. Dawkins said the book is “loony,” “stupid,” “drivel,” and referred to Milton as a “harmless fruitcake” who “needs psychiatric help” (Shattering the Myths, pp. ix, x).
Dawkins has tried to have Milton blacklisted so that his scientific writings cannot be published. He has lied about him, calling him a “secret creationist.” He was successful in having the Times Higher Educational Supplement stop publication of one of Milton’s articles.
Milton describes one group of Darwinist vigilantes who use the Internet to attack those they find guilty of promoting the heresy of Intelligent Design. They call themselves “howler monkeys.” Milton says, “The effects of the howler monkeys of the Internet are profoundly damaging to academic freedom of expression, whoever their current victim happens to be” (p. 270).
Milton observes, “There is a strong streak of intellectual arrogance and intellectual authoritarianism running through the history of Darwinism, from Thomas Huxley and Charles Darwin ... through to Julian Huxley” (Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, p. 277).
In 2007, astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez, author of The Privileged Planet, was denied tenure at Iowa State University in spite of his excellent record because he believes in intelligent design (“Guillermo Gonzalez, Nobel Laureates and Founders of Modern Science,” Evolution News & Views, June 5, 2007).
Dr. Frank Tipler, a distinguished professor of physics at the University of New Orleans, was persecuted after he merely admitted the possibility of intelligence in his book The Physics of Immortality. He complains that the “peer review” process is a tool to enforce Darwinian orthodoxy:
“Today, the refereeing process works primarily to enforce orthodoxy. I shall offer evidence that ‘peer’ review is not peer review: the referee is quite often not as intellectually able as the author whose work he judges. We have pygmies standing in judgment on giants” (“Refereed Journals: Do They Insure Quality or Enforce Orthodoxy?” ISCID Archiv. June 30, 2003, p. 8, cited from Henry Morris, “Willingly Ignorant,” ICR).
Joan Margueijo also exposes the peer review system as an instrument of enforcing doctrinaire purity within the Darwinian establishment:
“As an individual you are judged by how many papers you publish, where you publish them, their quality, and how often they are subsequently cited. But more importantly, publication is part and parcel of the fact that scientists, who tend to live on grant money, are obligated to make their findings and ideas available to others. They will not get their share of funding unless they can show a solid publication record. ... Referee reports are often empty of scientific content and reflect nothing but the author's social standing, or their good or bad relations with the referee. . . . To cap it all, editors can be totally illiterate” (Faster than the Spread of Light, 2003, pp. 183, 217, 218).
In 1997, Dr. Lynn Margulis and Dr. Dorion Sagan, both evolutionists with impeccable scientific credentials, made the following admission:
“More and more, like the monasteries of the Middle Ages, today’s universities and professional societies guard their knowledge. Collusively, the university biology curriculum, the textbook publishers, the National Science Foundation review committees, the Graduate Record examiners, and the various microbiological, evolutionary, and zoological societies map out domains of the known and knowable; they distinguish required from forbidden knowledge, subtly punishing the trespassers with rejection and oblivion; they award the faithful liturgists by granting degrees and dispersing funds and fellowships. Universities and academies ... determine who is permitted to know and just what it is that he or she may know. Biology, botany, zoology, biochemistry, and microbiology departments within U.S. universities determine access to knowledge about life, dispensing it at high prices in peculiar parcels called credit hours. ... If an individual with ambition to study nature rejects neo-Darwinist biology in today’s ambience, he becomes a threat to his own means of livelihood” (Lynn Margulis and Dorion Sagan, Slanted Truths: Essays on Gaia, Symbiosis, and Evolution, 1997, pp. 236, 279).
Dr. Hannes Alfven made the same complaint. Since he disagreed from the Darwinian establishment’s commitment to the big bang theory, his papers were turned down in spite of his impressive scientific credentials (“Memoirs of a Dissident Scientist,” American Scientist, May-June 1988, p. 250).
The Darwinian inquisition has largely shut creationists out of the public school/scientific establishment. Dr. Henry Morris described this extreme bias:
“It is not that creationist scientists have not published in their own scientific fields. For example, before coming to ICR, Dr. Duane Gish had published at least 25 articles on biochemistry in secular science journals, Dr. Ken Cumming over 18 articles in biology, and Dr. Larry Vardiman at least 10 articles in atmospheric physics. My own publications in engineering include five books and 20 articles. One of the books, Applied Hydraulics in Engineering, has been continuously in print since 1963 and has been used as a textbook in scores of universities.
“But none of us can get a scientific article promoting creationism published in the secular journals, whether technical journals or popular magazines such as Reader's Digest or National Geographic. In fact, very few religious magazines will accept an article on creationism, especially one that promotes six-day creation and a global Flood.
“On one occasion, a member of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists was able to get an invitation for me to speak at their convention, with an agreement that the Society would publish the paper in its journal. When they saw my paper, however, they quickly reneged, even though the article had no religious material in it at all, only science. It was later published by ICR as the small book, The Scientific Case for Creation” (Morris, “Bigotry in Science,” Institute for Creation Research, n.d.).
Countless other examples could be given. In fact, entire books have been written to document the Darwinian inquisition.
In Darwin Day in America, John Day devotes a chapter to this entitled “Banned in Burlington.”
In the video documentary Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Ben Stein examines the persecution of scientists and professors who dare to question Darwinism or to promote even the slightest evidence for intelligent design.
In Slaughter of the Dissidents (Southworth, WA: Leafcutter Press, 2008), Jerry Bergman (Ph.D. in human biology from Columbia Pacific University and Ph.D. in measurement and evaluation from Wayne State University) tells the “shocking truth about killing the careers of Darwin doubters.” In the Introduction, John Eidsmoe says: “In this fascinating book, Dr. Jerry Bergman--himself a victim--chronicles the history of modern religious persecution in America. A highly respected, credentialed, and published professor, he was denied tenure--and subsequently fired--admittedly because of his creationist beliefs and writings. Dr. Bergman describes numerous other cases, often concealing names to protect those who do not wish to risk losing their current positions (a common means of persecuting those with minority views)” (p. xv).
Dr. Bergman testifies:
“[A] factor that moved me to the creationist side was the underhanded, often totally unethical techniques that evolutionists typically used to suppress dissonant ideas, primarily creationism. Rarely did they carefully and objectively examine the facts, but usually focused on suppression of creationists, denial of their degrees, denial of their tenure, ad hominem attacks, and in general, irrational attacks on their person. In short, their response in general was totally unscientific and one that reeks of intolerance, even hatred” (Persuaded by the Evidence, chapter 4).
William Dembski adds:
“As Michael Behe pointed out in an interview with the Harvard Political Review for a biologist to question Darwinism endangers one’s career. ‘There’s good reason to be afraid. Even if you’re not fired from your job, you will easily be passed over for promotions. I would strongly advise graduate students who are skeptical of Darwinian theory not to make their views known.’ ... Doubting Darwinian orthodoxy is comparable to opposing the party line of a Stalinist regime. ... Overzealous critics of intelligent design regard it as their moral duty to keep biology free from intelligent design, even if that means taking extreme measures. I’ve known such critics to contact design theorists’ employers and notify them of the ‘heretics’ in their midst. Once ‘outed,’ the design theorists themselves get harassed and harangued with e-mails. Next, the press does a story mentioning their unsavory intelligent design associations. (The day one such story appeared, a close friend and colleague of mine mentioned in the story was dismissed from his research position at a prestigious molecular biology laboratory. He had worked in that lab for ten years. ... Welcome to the inquisition” (The Design Revolution, pp. 304, 305).
Walt Brown, who has a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from MIT, describes the way that evolutionists have controlled the scientific fields since the day of Thomas Huxley. He uses the field of geology as an example:
“Professors in the new and growing field of geology were primarily selected from those who supported the anti-catastrophe principle. These professors did not advance students who espoused catastrophes. An advocate of a global flood was branded a ‘biblical literalist’ or ‘fuzzy thinker’--not worthy of an academic degree. Geology professors also influenced, through the peer review process, what papers could be published. Textbooks soon reflected their orthodoxy, so few students became ‘fuzzy thinkers.’ This practice continues to this day, because a major criterion for selecting professors is the number of their publications” (In the Beginning, p. 253).
Consider Dr. Caroline Crocker, a cell-biologist and full-time visiting faculty member at George Mason University. After she showed several slides about intelligent design in a class on cells, she was reprimanded, pulled from lecture duties, and her contract was not renewed the following semester. She testified: “Students are not allowed to question Darwinism. There are universities where they poll students on what they believe and single them out.”
Some Darwinists have even hinted at or openly called for the imprisonment of creationists.
“Richard Dawkins has written that anyone who denies evolution is either ‘ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked--but I’d rather not consider that’) (New York Times, April 9, 1989, sec. 7, p. 34). It isn’t a big step from calling someone wicked to taking forceful measures to put an end to their wickedness. John Maddox, the editor of Nature, has written in his journal that ‘it may not be long before the practice of religion must be regarded as anti-science’ (‘Defending Science Against Anti-Science,’ Nature, 368, 185). In his recent book Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, philosopher Daniel Dennett compares religious believers--90 percent of the population--to wild animals who may have to be caged, and he says that parents should be prevented (presumably by coercion) from misinforming their children about the truth of evolution, which is so evident to him” (Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, chapter 11).
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