Welcome friends. Why do we believe what we believe? Somebody once said that we believe what we prefer to be true, and there is a lot of truth in that. George Wald, professor emeritus of biology at Harvard Uni said, Evolution is impossible, but he believed it. Why? Because the alternative, Creation, was unthinkable to him.
It has been said that most people believe in evolution because they believe most people believe in evolution. In the end that’s about it. The average person who believes we evolved from the primeval slime cannot, for the life of him, demonstrate why or how. Certainly believing in an evolutionary past puts no demands upon us, we can hold the view very loosely without getting very excited about it , and we can keep God at arm’s length. Usually its a product of herd instinct whereby we don’t want to appear to be out of step with a majority view. We people are a funny lot. We would resent being told we are led by the nose and yet so often we are like the person who said “I want to be different – like everyone else”.
In the clash of the two great world-views, evolution and creation, it is not to be overlooked that the evolutionists fight more amongst themselves than with creationists (probably because they think creationists are on the lunatic fringe). There are three mainstreams in evolutionary theory – the Darwinists who hold to what may be termed the traditional view of gradual change over aeons of time; The Palaeontologists who believe in rapid change (“hopeful monsters”) by mutation; and those who believe in “Directed Panspermia” (extraterrestrial civilization sent some bacteria to earth). Each of these three main theories exist because they do not believe the evidence supports the other two! The only reason they are evolutionists of one sort or another is because they do not want to go to Creationism. Niles Eldridge, palaeontologist, said We palaeontologists have said that the history of life supports the story of gradual change, all the while really knowing that it does not. The missing links are still missing! It is a marvel to me to see how money is extracted from Governments to fund trips to Mars to find the origin of life. There’s plenty of life here so why not look here? And in suggesting life came from outer space one simply has stalled on the origin of life – how did it begin out there from nothing?
We palaeontologists have said that the history of life supports the story of gradual change, all the while really knowing that it does not.
Niles Eldridge, palaeontologist
I simply do not have enough ‘faith’ to believe in evolution. It requires one of two things – either an ape gave birth to a human being or an ape turned into a human being during its lifetime. The laws of biology forbid this. It cannot answer the simplest questions – which came first, the chicken or the egg? Which came first the acorn or the oak? Which came first, male or female? Why is evolution so widely believed?
We have a ‘closed-loop’ education system. You get taught it at university and to get a teaching job in that system you have to teach it to the next generation of students. It is said that evolution is science and creation cannot get a look in because it is not scientific. But that is begging the question: if God made the world then that is the scientific position! Scientist Donald Patten wrote the tendency toward conformity is strong among the scholarly community, even though they are the first and the loudest to disdain the principle. He also said in the academic world, perhaps more than in society in general, promotions for instance, are highly dependant upon conformity.
There is also the control of media. Philip Johnson said that those in the media with the power to turn the microphone on or off decide what the world at large will hear.
There is bias and prejudice. Scientists put their pants on the same way as everyone else every morning, and are subject to whims, biases, and prejudices like everyone else. Aldous Huxley stated I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. He went on to say that one of the motives was sexual freedom. Professor Richard Lewentin candidly said, we have a prior commitment to materialism – we cannot allow a divine foot in the door!
Note the people with their protests against the Adani coal mine because of their belief the world is going to die. Why do they believe this? It is hard to doubt the sincerity of their beliefs (at least, some of them), but one wonders where and why they come by their beliefs.
If we say that we trust the authorities, those “in the know”, why do we seek a second opinion when we receive an unwelcome diagnosis from a respected doctor of medicine? Does this confirm the adage we believe what we prefer to be true because we have had our preferred view called into question and we want to hold on to what we have believed? Perhaps when things are really “on the line” we are motivated to know the truth, but until then we believe what we prefer to be true. Hopefully those times when we seek a second opinion may remind us that what we prefer to be true may not be true at all.
