Macroevolution

Every now and then, Perry Mann writes an interesting freethought article. Below he points out the failures of Paul Kuharich III’s criticism of secularism.

Source: http://www.huntingtonnews.net/columns/060706-mann-comment.html

MANN TALK: Macroevolution

Perry Mann huntingtonnews.net | 07.06.2006

Hinton, WV (Special to HNN) – I [Perry Mann] search for a journalistic subject as a hawk scans the landscape for a mouse. This week I have a mouse. Paul Kuharich III of Huntington, WV has written a letter to the editor and excerpts from the letter are my mouse.

“The choice between religion and secularism, however, is an illusion. Secularism is merely another belief taken on faith, just as atheism is a belief taken on faith: unprovable, undisprovable, and every bit as opinionated as the most Bible-thumping sermon.

“Atheists and secularists often base their worldview on macroevolution, and there is no more opinionated, unscientific, religious belief than macroevolution. They try to keep valid criticism of it out of classrooms, bring pressure to bear on teachers and professors who don’t toe the macroevolutionist line, and refuse to publish valid criticisms of macroevolution in their so-called ‘scientific’ journals. The media helps out by not questioning unscientific assertions regarding ‘millions of years’ dating estimates and constantly accepting the false line that macroevolution is ‘the central organizing principle of science.’” There you have the full scope of the conspiracy to denigrate Creationism and inculcate children with evolution.

Kuharich asserts that “there is no more opinionated, unscientific, religious belief than macroevolution.” It’s difficult for one to include in so few words so many inaccuracies and fallacies. He uses macroevolution instead of microevolution or just evolution, because not even the most dogmatic creationist can deny microevolution. Barnyards are full of examples of it: a cow that gives three gallons of milk a day is the bred descendant of a beast that gave a pint or so and the chicken that lays an egg a day is the bred descendant of a bird that probably laid eggs twice a year. The wolf has by microevolution evolved into hundreds of breeds from attack dogs to lap dogs. And within my lifetime, potato beetles have become immune to insecticides through microevolution.

Mr. Kuharich’s problem with macroevolution is that it refutes the belief that God created every species from viruses to dinosaurs, including, of course, Adam and Eve, in a week 8 thousand years ago and that since then there have been no new species but only microevolutionary changes in the species God created eight millennia ago. He cannot abide the theory that all life originated a billion or so years ago and evolved from a common ancestor over millions of years. As Richard Dawkins observes in “The Ancestor’s Tale, A Pilgrimage to the Dawn of Evolution”: “There are those who think Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection explains microevolution, but is in principle impotent to explain macroevolution, which consequently needs an extra ingredient---in extreme cases a divine extra ingredient.”

Dawkins also writes this: “I have never seen any good reason to doubt the following proposition: macroevolution is lots of little bits of microevolution joined end to end over geological time, and detected by fossils instead of genetic sampling.”

Kuharich says secularism is a belief based on faith. Not so. Faith is an implausible hypothesis irrationally held. Secular belief is a plausible hypothesis rationally held. There is no god or church or holy hierarchy or divinely revealed truth associated with secularism. The foundations of its beliefs are conscience, science, reason, imagination, knowledge and intuition. The religionists, knowing how weak is the basis of their faith and how substantial is the scientific basis of secularism, seek to weaken secularism not by reason and facts but by disparaging its theories and those who believe them. How can anyone who has read Darwin’s The Origin of Species with an open mind characterize it as opinionated, unscientific and religious? Or a better question is how many creationists have read The Origin of Species?

Kuharich is disturbed because, as he sees it, atheists and secularists “try to keep valid criticism of it out of classrooms, bring employment pressures to bear on teachers and professors who don’t toe the macroevolutionist line, and refuse to publish valid criticisms of macroevolution in their so-called ‘scientific’ journals.”

I doubt that there is in this land a court in which an atheist judge presides. Yet, the courts of the land have without exception banned the teaching of Creationism in schools on the ground that it is tantamount to teaching religion and thus violates the First Amendment, but no court has ever banned the teaching of evolution on the ground that it is the teaching of religion. The reason is that evolution or macroevolution is not a belief based on faith but is based upon reasoned opinion, scientific fact and mountains of evidence.

The basic text to prove Creationism is found in the first two chapters of Genesis, comprised of two pages of very large print in my Bible. My copy of Darwin’s “The Origin of Species and The Descent of Man” comprises exactly 1000 pages of very small print, 75 pages of which are index. The difference in the number of pages between Genesis and Darwin is not offset by the allegation that the former is God’s word and the latter is man’s word. At least, it is not to secularists.

The burden of proof that there is a God is on those who believe there is, a burden that to secularists appears to be a Sisyphean task. There is no burden on secularists because there is no probative evidence that there is a God in the sense that He or She or It is in the image of man or woman or whatever. And that that entity hears prays, answers them, suspends nature’s laws, creates miracles and keeps books on the good and the bad one does as evidence to be considered on Judgment Day.

Perry Mann is a former teacher, a lawyer, a former prosecuting attorney of Summers County and a regular columnist for the Nicholas Chronicle in Summersville and Huntington News Network. Born in Charleston, WV, in 1921, he lives in Hinton.