Some leading evolutionists are upset by the AP-GIF survey.
A new Associated Press-GIF poll is raising concerns among some evolutionists. According to the survey, while only 4% of Americans doubt smoking causes cancer and only 6% question the relationship of mental illness to a medical condition in the brain, Americans are far more skeptical about issues such as evolution, the Big Bang, and global warming.
About 40% of the nation’s citizens apparently have serious doubts about global warming and evolution, and 51% question the Big Bang theory. These figures have upset some of the country’s leading scientists who claim global warming, evolution and the Big Bang are “settled scientific facts.”
Randy Schekman, a 2013 Nobel Prize winner in medicine from the U. of California, Berkeley complained, “Science ignorance is pervasive in our society, and these attitudes are reinforced when some of our leaders are openly antagonistic to established facts.”
According to Anthony Leiserowitz of the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, science has a weaker hold on beliefs than do religion and politics. When it comes to politics, Republicans tend to have less confidence in evolution, the Big Bang, the age of the Earth and climate change than do Democrats. People with a stronger belief in God and are active evangelical Christians have greater doubts over scientific concepts which they see as contradicting their faith.
“When you are putting up facts against faith, facts can’t argue against faith,” said 2012 Nobel Prize winning biochemistry professor Robert Lefkowitz of Duke U. “It makes sense now that science would have made no headway because faith is untestable.”
However, theistic evolutionists still insist evolution and the Big Bang are compatible with belief in God. Darrel Falk, a biology professor at Point Loma Nazarene U. said, “The story of the cosmos and the Big Bang of creation is not inconsistent with the message of Genesis 1, and there is much profound biblical scholarship to demonstrate this.”
Mr. Lefkowitz complains that there are concerted campaigns to discredit scientific fact with certain political, business and religious groups speaking out against scientific “truths” such as evolution. Yet, doesn’t the evolutionist scientific establishment dominate the airwaves, the science magazines, public and many private college classrooms, and government high schools and museums? With this dominance, why hasn’t it been able to convince more of the public that the so-called truths and facts of evolution are really as truthful and factual as it wants us to believe? Although it is true that the biblical account of the creation of the earth and universe is not testable via the scientific method, neither evolution nor the Big Bang is either. That is why evolution and the Big Bang are still officially called theories.
As for Mr. Falk suggesting there is considerable profound biblical scholarship to support such notions as the Big Bang, we need to know what kind of biblical scholarship he is talking about. If he is talking about the liberal historical critical method of interpreting the Bible in which scholars can assume the Bible writers were capable of making errors and often used symbolic language in stating what sound like facts, then, of course, we can read anything we want to into Scripture. However, the traditional historical grammar method of biblical interpretation attempts to understand what the human authors of the Bible intended to say only from the text itself. Using this method, “And God said, ‘Let there be…’ “ when referring to the creation of heavenly bodies does not leave any room for a naturalistic Big Bang.
It comes down to faith. Do we want to place our faith in the often erroneous opinions of scientists or do we want our faith firmly planted in the Word of the God who was there when the universe and life began because He created it? “Blessed rather are those who hear the word of God and obey it” (Luke 11:28). Every Christian “must hold firmly to the trustworthy message as it has been taught, so that he can encourage others by sound doctrine and refute those who oppose it” (Titus 1:9). A crucial reason God’s words are given us is that they “are written that you may believe that Jesus is the Messiah, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name“ (John 20:31).
Reference: Seth Borenstein and Jennifer Agiesta, “AP-GfK Poll: Big Bang a big question for most Americans,” Associated Press
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QUESTION OF THE DAY
What was the reason Pluto was demoted as a planet?
Dozens of trans-Neptunian objects (TNO’s) like Pluto have now been discovered beyond the orbit of Neptune which are of a similar size to Pluto. So, the International Astronomical Union decided it made more sense to demote Pluto than to reclassify all the other TNO’s as planets.
Source: Jason Lisle, “The Solar System: Pluto,” Acts and Facts (April, 2014).
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