WorldNetDaily: Smithsonian in uproar over intelligent-design article

Specifically, Richard Sternberg, managing editor of Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, a peer-reviewed journal published at the Smithsonian Institution, is in trouble with his colleagues and supervisors after he approved for publication this essay questioning key tenets of macro-evolution. He's had the chairman of the Department of Zoology call his supervisor to ask whether he's some kind of religious nut, he's locked out of his own office, and he now has to report to a known political enemy of his. As if the Smithsonian Institution has any business interfering with Dr. Stenberg's editorship of the Proceedings in the first place! Nor is Stenberg taking this lying down. He has complained formally to the Office of Special Counsel, claiming discrimination against him for his alleged religious views--because he'd be the first to admit that he is not firm in any religious belief, as I am.

The article at issue points out a glaring flaw in evolution: that no Darwinist has yet explained how brand-new forms come into being for natural selection even to act upon. In short, where does a dog's nose and ears come from? Essay after essay asserts that the Darwinian paradigm simply doesn't say. Stephen C. Meyer, the author of the review article, carefully weighs the evidence--he should have been a law clerk at the Supreme Court, that's how good this is--and concludes that the appearance of radically new life forms would take far more time than even the most ardent old-earth geologist is willing to stake his reputation on allowing. So if these forms did not appear by chance, because not enough time has passed, where did they come from? Answer: some intelligent Designer put them there.

And that has caused Dr. Meyer, and now Dr. Stenberg by association, to be accused, essentially, of obscurantism--the deliberate suppression of scientific truth in support of religion. But I suggest that the real obscurantists are the evolutionists--because the evidence is now against them. And that in turn means that this debate was never about evidence, scientific or any other kind. It was about the "de-mystification"--or, if you like, the de-Christianization--of society.

Before you had Darwin, you had Joseph Lagrange, who cooperated with men like Robespierre to change the calendar to one having thirty-six weeks of ten days each, a schedule that significantly reduced worker productivity, which is why Napoleon Bonaparte abandoned that calendar in 1806. Then along came Darwin, who deliberately set out to destroy Christianity by driving a permanent wedge between church and laboratory. (The Catholic Church hadn't helped themselves by their treatment of Galileo, of course.) The trouble is that Darwin proposed things that could never have happened even in billions of years--and attempts since then to "establish" the mechanisms he proposed have all been exposed as frauds. The notion that novel genes, proteins, and gross body forms can appear out of nothing and by chance is the last piece of bunco to fall. Einstein had to admit that our universe had a definite beginning (and therefore an Initiator to set it in motion). Ernst Haeckel and the concocters of Piltdown and Peking Man and Archeopteryx all turned out to be con artists. And now we see increasing evidence that the earth is young--very young. Add to it that no paleontologist has ever found an intact Fossil Column in the order stated on most high-school biology laboratory walls ("Cannibals Often Invite Devout Catholic Priests To Join Casseroles, Tuna or Quail").

And has the world so soon forgotten that even Ayn Rand once said to her then-protege (and illicit lover), Nathaniel Branden, "After all, the theory of evolution is only an hypothesis"? I quote in greater context:

With regard to science, this led to an odd kind of scientific conservatism, a suspicion of novelty, an indifference — this is only a slight exaggeration — to anything more recent than the work of Sir Isaac Newton. I remember being astonished to hear her say one day, "After all, the theory of evolution is only a hypothesis." I asked her, "You mean you seriously doubt that more complex life forms — including humans — evolved from less complex life forms?" She shrugged and responded, "I'm really not prepared to say," or words to that effect. I do not mean to imply that she wanted to substitute for the theory of evolution the religious belief that we are all God's creation; but there was definitely something about the concept of evolution that made her uncomfortable.

And I don't mean to imply that about Ayn Rand, either. She probably would have preferred the "directed panspermia" theory of Crick and Orgel to anything remotely supportive of the Bible--and the thought of an Intelligent Designer would, I am convinced, have filled her with dread.

The point here is that evolution is far less well supported than at any time since Darwin came back from his famous voyage. And when museum curators have to resort, in their defense of evolution, to such petty office politicking as we now see at the Smithsonian Institution, that's an almost sure sign of a theory about to collapse of its own weight.

UPDATE: Here is an article debunking Archaeopteryx lithographica and a host of replies, some disputing the fraud call, others clarifying certain issues that the article raises.