Originally published in CBN News
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Modern scientists have force-fed the theory of evolution on Americans for decades, leaving the impression it is settled science. But that is hardly the case, as many brilliant minds have criticised and questioned the theory, including David Berlinski, a self-described “secular Jew.”
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Berlinski is an author, academic and a world-renowned expert on the history of science and the philosophy of mathematics. A senior fellow of the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, he is also a notable critic of evolution, arguing that the popular Darwinian theory is not only void of scientific proof but also incapable of explaining the innate worth and value of human beings.
The credibility of evolution, he says, should be fundamentally questioned at every turn as in the case of any other prominent theory.
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“You’ve got evolutionary biologists who say things like, ‘evolution is as assured as the law of gravity,’ but you never hear a physicist saying ‘the theory of gravity is as assured as evolution. Why is that?” Berlinski asked Ben Shapiro in a recent interview at the Daily Wire.
“Well, in a nutshell, my suggestion is that, by the standards of the serious sciences — mathematics and physics (including special and general relativity, quantum mechanics, quantum field theory) — there is simply no point of comparison.”
Berlinski called evolution “vague, incoherent, unarticulated, imprecise” and a theory that “doesn’t exist in any rigorous form”.
Evolutionary theory is a “series of folktales” that “doesn’t answer any deep questions”, he added.
When it comes to the deepest question of all — the origin of life — despite classing himself as a “secular Jew”, Berlinski admitted that intelligent design theory “certainly should have a seat at the table”.
Intelligent design posits that the defining features of the universe and of life on earth are aptly explained by a higher being of infinite intelligence. It is, therefore, a view held by many Bible-believing Christians, who assert that this intelligent being is, in fact, the Christian God.
Indeed, the Seattle-based think thank at which Berlinski is a fellow, the Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture, is a major proponent of intelligent design as a legitimate theory through which the creation of the universe can be explained.
Intelligent Design is a “serious idea” that “at first blush seems to confront the facts successfully,” Berlinski admitted. “Biological structures do appear as if they were not only intelligently designed but brilliantly designed.. you take a look at any biological system and the level of complexity is so daunting as to be indescribable.”
As biological complexity pertains to the theory of evolution, Berlinski highlighted that Oxford University was opening up a new institute “for the Mathematical Study of Evolutionary Dynamics.”
“It begins with the admission that they don’t have a mathematical theory of evolutionary dynamics, “Berlinski explained. “150 years after Darwin, that seems to me a striking admission.”
He continued: “These are the kind of anecdotes you come across in evolutionary thinking again and again: ‘the theory is perfect, it’s irrefragable, it can’t be corrected, it’s a summit of human achievement, but we’re gonna go right back to the beginning and see if we can make it better.’”
“How come you guys didn’t think of that 100 years ago?” Berlinski laughed. “If it doesn’t exist yet, how can you say the theory is as good as general relativity?”
The academic also touched on the vast influence that evolutionary theory has garnered across our education systems and global media.
“You must remember that evolutionary thought is supported by an immense and powerful lobby. It’s not only a scientific agenda, but it’s a political agenda,” he said. “He who controls education in terms of evolutionary theory has a very powerful advantage.”
Berlinski added that he was shocked by how the “evolutionary biologists have co-opted the media worldwide into acting as an extended propaganda arm for Darwinian theory.”
Additionally, the mathematician argued that evolutionary theory simply cannot explain the essential features of human nature, such as the inexplicable capacity to love one another.
The author went on to suggest that the idea that “reproductive success” alone can explain the “panorama of human moral decisions, emotional decisions and commitments” is “abysmally primitive.”
“The full grandeur of human life is certainly far bigger, far greater, far more significant in scope than anything that can be explained in terms of the vagrant male desire to [have sex],” Berlinski implored.
He also urged that it was “a great mistake to overlook original sin,” as a core tenet of human nature.
“Dr. [Samuel] Johnson was asked for a defence of the doctrine of original sin by his biographer, and he said ‘concerning original sin, the inquiry is not necessary because men are so avowedly and confessedly corrupt, that all the laws of heaven and earth are unable to prevent them from the commission of their crimes,’” Berlinski recited.
“I think that’s something that should be remembered, especially for anyone paying attention to the 20th century.”
Berlinksi was also keen to assess the ways in which evolution has been harnessed and hijacked by some of history’s most evil men — including Hitler himself.
“Don’t forget, the Nazis were great admirers of evolutionary theory,” he explained. “They adapted it to their own purposes, but there was a clear connecting link between what Darwin was saying in the 19th century and what Himmler was declaring in the 20th century.”
“[The Nazi’s] believed in evolution very sincerely, they just happened to believe that evolution culminated in the master race.”
“What gave the Nazis that sense of entitlement that they were allowed to exterminate other people?” Berlinski asked. “They never said it was a whim. They said they needed to kill the Jews because they are parasitical of the body politic…the imperatives of a purified biology demand their elimination. That’s what they said.”
Berlinski added that those ideas were present in German thinking for decades prior to the rise of Naziism — it was a relentless evolution of evil that culminated in the cruel genocide of millions that would not have stopped with at the elimination of the Jewish race. “First, they got rid of the mentally ill, the infirm, the crippled, then they went onto the Jews and they would have kept going on. They were going to continue with the Slavs, and then when they were finished with the Slavs, the SS wanted to start on the Germans,” Berlinski said.
Of the Nazi desire for a biologically superior race, Berlinski noted that “the German people themselves” would have been whittled down through a process of elimination by desirable biological characteristics.
“At the end of the process, only the SS would remain,” he said. “That was the real goal of the Nazi state.”
l disgree with Dr Berlinsky only on one aspect, and that is on the title of his article: Darwin’s ideas about the development of organic life, is no longer a theory – it has been downgraded to the status of hypothesis because of its many inadequacies.
Assie Van der Westhuizen (Phd-Geology).