Thursday 19 March, 2009

UK
Science/Nature

EVOLUTION: Nothing more than a house of cards about to fall?

By Andrew Halloway

The summary of results from a national survey of beliefs on evolution, intelligent design and creationism was published in late January – and was incredibly damaging for evolution. Yet somehow, after the full survey was published this month, the news reports about it have completely different headlines!

The Comres survey, commissioned by theology think tank Theos, was reported in the national press at the time. It showed that 51% of people in the country believe the Intelligent Design theory explains life better than evolution, 32% believe in young earth creationism and only 37% accepted evolution as “beyond reasonable doubt”. Such results were astounding when you consider that evolutionists have had a free ride in almost all the media and a complete control of education for decades, and that at the same time creationism and the Intelligent Design theory have been consistently misrepresented and mocked in the media.

These same results were reported in the national press only a month ago, yet lo and behold, just a month later the Guardian and Telegraph carry articles on the same survey with the headlines ‘Four out of five Britons do not believe in creationism’ and ‘Four out of five Britons repudiate creationism’.

How can these contradictory facts be from the same survey?

It’s clear that the spin doctors have been at work on a damage-limitation exercise. The first reports on the survey were obviously not what someone wanted to hear or wanted the British public to read, so when the full details of the survey were published this month some journalists decided to find a different story to tell.

Here’s what the Telegraph had to say about the survey on January 31: “More than half of the public believe that the theory of evolution cannot explain the full complexity of life on earth, and a ‘designer’ must have lent a hand, the findings suggest. And one in three believe that God created the world within the past 10,000 years.”

Compare this with the report in the same newspaper on March 2: “Four out of five Britons do not believe in creationism, a study has found. Most prefer Charles Darwin’s evolutionism.”

The secret may be in the writers. The latest Telegraph report is strangely uncredited, but the Guardian report was written by a science correspondent, Ian Sample. Since the two articles are almost identical, they must have used the same source. Perhaps the original articles on the survey, in January, were by general news journalists with no scientific axe to grind. They were simply reporting the facts. Science writers, on the other hand, are hand-in-glove with evolutionism and so are more inclined to look deep within a report to find any results they can manipulate into the headline they want.

Sadly, this kind of smoke-and-mirrors propaganda by evolutionists is nothing new as they try to conceal the evidence against evolution from the general public while at the same time smearing creationists and Intelligent Design scientists. Opponents of evolution have had to deal with this for many years.

And just so you don’t think that, as an anti-evolutionist, I am spinning my own story here, let me now quote something else of interest, direct from the full Comres report itself where, on pages 18-19, it gives an example of one of the people surveyed:

“[The] son, who at 25 has just completed a masters degree, believes that the complexity of life on earth can only be explained by Intelligent Design. He believes there is a God or higher power of some sort, though is unwilling to be drawn on whether that is the God his grandmother believes in or some other force. Evolution, he says, is still just a theory that is waiting to be proved or disproved by the evidence. It doesn’t offer a serious challenge to the question of ultimate purpose in life, and does not contradict his view that humans have unique value and significance. He thinks science challenges religious faith, but is happy to live with this tension and remains open-minded about how evolutionary theory and Christianity relate to each other. Unlike his father, he thinks children should be introduced to Intelligent Design in school.”

And then on page 102:

“Despite the decrease of religious practice in the UK and the recent media coverage of issues of science and faith [i.e. the completely biased programming in favour of evolution], there is still a core of people who hold to Young Earth Creationism. However, interestingly, the youngest generations and highest educated people show inclinations towards believing in Intelligent Design. Could this be a pointer towards the dominant trend of tomorrow?”

The inserted explanation in brackets is my own. But that aside, do you see what this means? Leading atheist Richard Dawkins, when he commented on the originally reported results of the survey, said the British public were “pig-ignorant” for failing to appreciate evolution. He and other atheist writers constantly mock opponents of evolution as uneducated and unintelligent.

But the comments I have just quoted from this extensive new survey expose that lie. Highly educated young people with masters degrees are seeing the logic of Intelligent Design – the unavoidable conclusion that life is so complex and bears so many hallmarks of design that it must have been designed.

Dawkins can rant all he wants, and the scientific establishment can close all their doors to scientists who disagree with evolution, but all that is doing is making the next generation of up-and-coming scientists suspicious. Once they discover the woeful facts about evolution for themselves, the house of cards that has been held up with sticking plaster will come crashing down.

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