A month or two ago I added the daily message from Answers in Genesis to my RSS aggregator. I wanted to stay up on what the leaders of young-earth creationism are talking about, what their arguments are, and explore gaps in my own knowledge. I haven't commented on any of the daily messages yet because I don't intend to be a daily counter-AiG.
Today's message comes from Ken Ham himself. First he derides some of the major scientific achievements of 2005. In fact he doesn't even specifiy what they were (such as sequencing and analysis of the chimpanzee genome, and sequencing and reconstruction of the 1918 influenza virus), but summarizes them in a general apologetic way. Then he moves on to Richard Dawkins.
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The main point of the message is that evolution leads to a dismal, bleak outlook on life. To support this thesis, he quotes an interview with Dawkins.What should be eye-opening for everyone who reads his responses are the real-life consequences that occur when people believe in molecules-to-man evolution. And these beliefs are being taught to tens of millions of young people in public schools virtually every day.
Q: “The idea of evolution and natural selection makes some people feel that everything is meaningless—people’s individual lives and life in general.”
A: (Dawkins): “If it’s true that it causes people to feel despair, that’s tough. … If it’s true, it’s true, and you’d better live with it.”
Q: “What do you see as the problem with a terminally ill cancer patient believing in an afterlife?”
A: “No problem at all … If I could have a word with a would-be-suicide bomber who thinks he’s going to paradise, … I would say, ‘Don’t imagine for one second you’re going to paradise … You’re going to rot in the ground.’”
Q: “Is atheism the logical extension of believing evolution?”
A: “… My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.”
As alluded to earlier, Richard Dawkins even said that the reason parents want to adopt children could be understood in terms of a “genetic mistake”:
You could think of it [i.e., accepting a child that is not biologically yours] as a kind of genetic mistake, in that human adults have strong parental instincts which make them long for a child. If they can’t have a child of their own, they can then satisfy those parental instincts by adopting a child.
At least Dawkins is honest about his beliefs!
Man, what cold and heartless guy that Dr. Dawkins is. Hmmm, but I'm not sure Ham has been honest about Dawkins. Let's look at the full answers in the order listed above.
1. If it’s true that it causes people to feel despair, that’s tough. It’s still the truth. The universe doesn’t owe us condolence or consolation; it doesn’t owe us a nice warm feeling inside. If it’s true, it’s true, and you'd better live with it.
However, I don’t think it should make one feel depressed. I don’t feel depressed. I feel elated. My book, "Unweaving the Rainbow," is an attempt to elevate science to the level of poetry and to show how one can be—in a funny sort of way—rather spiritual about science. Not in a supernatural sense, but there are uplifting mysteries to be solved. The contemplation of the size and scale of the universe, of the depth of geological time, of the complexity of life--these all, to me, have an inspirational quality. It makes my life worthwhile to study them.
2. Oh, no problem at all. I would never wish to disabuse or disillusion somebody who believed that. I care about what’s true for myself, but I don’t want to go around telling people who are afraid of dying that their hopes are unreal.
If I could have a word with a would-be suicide bomber or plane hijacker who thinks he’s going to paradise, I would like to disabuse him. I wouldn’t say to him, "Don’t you see what you’re doing is wrong?" I would say, "Don’t imagine for one second you’re going to paradise. You’re not. You’re going to rot in the ground."
3. They clearly can’t be irrevocably linked because a very large number of theologians believe in evolution. In fact, any respectable theologian of the Catholic or Anglican or any other sensible church believes in evolution. Similarly, a very large number of evolutionary scientists are also religious. My personal feeling is that understanding evolution led me to atheism.
For the last one, we also have to look at the question since it was not provided above.
4. How would you respond to people who say the most interesting or worthwhile aspect of human beings is behavior that natural selection would not promote? I'm thinking of behavior like adopting children who aren't family members, voluntary celibacy, or people deciding to spend their whole life praying.
Adopting children that are not your own or a close relative's is an interesting question. Why do not just humans, but other species, do what on the face of it is the wrong thing to do from a selfish gene point of view? Cuckoos play upon this and actually engineer it so that other species raise [baby cuckoos]. This is a mistake on the part of the foster parents, which have been "forced" to adopt the cuckoos.
So that’s sort of a wild analogy to adopting children, in this case ones who are not your own species.
By the way, I would hate this to be taken as any sort of suggestion that adoptive parents don’t love their adopted children; of course they do. But you could think of it as a kind of genetic mistake, in that human adults have strong parental instincts which make them long for a child. If they can’t have a child of their own, they can then satisfy those parental instincts by adopting a child.
In the same way, we have sexual instincts; we long for sex and it doesn’t matter that we use contraception. That’s, as it were, separating the natural function of sex, which is reproduction. But we still enjoy sex in the same way that we enjoy being a parent even if it is not our own child that we’re looking after.
Overall, I don't think Dawkins' answers have quite the bleak outlook that Ham was going for. Furthermore, strictly speaking, Dawkins separates his metaphysical outlook from science. And nevermind the fact that students in public schools are not taught anything about what Dawkins thinks. (I hadn't even heard of him until my senior year in college!). But hey, Ham's got to rally the troops.
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