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The fingerprints of God are never too far away
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Kevin McGhee is a senior pastor at Bethany Community Church in Laurel and a 1978 graduate of the United States Naval Academy.
Close-minded. Accept their view by faith without questioning. Hostile. Angry. Willing to punish those who disagree — these are all charges that have been frequently laid at people of many faiths who believe that Charles Darwin got it wrong.
Ever since Baltimore's own famous cynic, H.L. Mencken, pilloried William Jennings Bryan during what has become known as the “Scopes Monkey trial, those who oppose Darwinian evolution often have been caricatured as unintelligent and intolerant.
Bryan, a former presidential candidate, opposed evolution after visiting Germany where he heard from those who would evolve into the Nazi party espousing eugenics - applying Darwinian principles to promote “the survival of the fittest” through the elimination of the disabled and the “inferior.”
Bryan thought Darwin's views were inherently flawed and culturally dangerous. While it would be unfair to blame Darwin for the deeds of Hitler, it is equally unfair to paint opponents of evolution as uneducated hicks.
A new documentary that will hit theaters this week, Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, starring Ben Stein, seeks to put the shoe on the other foot. The movie documents academic intolerance by those who hold evolution to be scientific fact rather than questionable theory. I have not yet seen the movie.
However, if its allegations prove true, that highly qualified people are being denied tenure or harassed in other ways because they choose to question the dominant pro-evolution view, then surely there will be tragic consequences for students in institutions where narrow-mindedness prevails.
Science and theology should not be seen as competitors, but rather as colleagues in pursuit of the common goal of truth. So, hopefully with a touch of humor, let me highlight a few of the reasons why people of faith - and many who are agnostic -have major problems with evolution as it is currently taught.
Let's start with my dog. Patches is half Jack Russell Terrier and half Beagle - a JackaBee. No one denies you can take two different breeds of dog and mix them to make a superior animal - Patches considers himself to be superior to all other dogs and most humans. However, it is a stretch to conclude from this “micro-evolution” that Darwinian evolution is true. Two dogs produce more dogs - not monkeys.
Over the last 50 years, many fossils have been discovered that have been touted as providing “further proof” of evolution. What is not described with each of these new headlines is that fossils of “transitional life forms” are very rare in the fossil record. Rather than science seeking “the missing link” that proves evolution, there are literally thousands of gaps in the fossil record which have no satisfactory explanation. Most evolutionists are quick to point out that humans and lower animals (like pigs) share 95% of the same DNA. But, Happy Meal toys and artificial hearts could share similar ratios in their component elements. Is it not plausible that an intelligent designer can use common building blocks to assemble very different forms?
In the cornerstone of evolutionary theory, Darwin suggested that, in biology, life has moved from chaos to complexity. Our life experiences suggest that things don't really work that way. Newton's Second Law of Thermodynamics famously states that the natural tendency of the universe is away from order and toward chaos, rather than the other way around. If I drive my 1991 Honda into a swamp and leave it there for 50 years - or 50 million years - does anyone think that what will emerge is a Mercedes?
Does such a concept really ring true - from the goo to the zoo to you? From time immemorial, reasonable people have seen in one another the very image of God. The next time you hold a newborn baby, look very, very carefully at her tiny fingers; and then ask yourself, what kind of an engineer could design something so perfect? I have dear and brilliant friends who spend their days looking through both telescopes and microscopes, and what they see are not the products of random selection or cosmic chance, but the fingerprints of God.
Kevin McGhee is a senior pastor at Bethany Community Church in Laurel and a 1978 graduate of the United States Naval Academy. He can be reached at kmcghee@baltimoreexaminer.com.
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Examiner Reader said:
I find it odd that Evolutionists cannot accept that others may not agree. Adaptation does not change species. The analogy of a Honda is a good analogy. Every model of any make of car will have some similarities to others. It's because of it's same origin. So the fact that different species share a common characteristic leads one to believe there is a common origin, a Creator. Why would he need to change his design? Adaptation is acceptable, evolution of species is not.
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Examiner Reader said:
According to the Bible, Christians should respect governments (Romans 13:2), but what about Gods Kingdom? Psalms 146:3,4 suggests no lasting relief from human government(ANY human government including this one) and 1 John 5:19 explains who really controls earth's variety of governments! Is the one who authored this article cheerleading for God or for Satan? ...hard to tell. I notice that Jesus and his followers did not "cheerlead" for the government of their day. In fact, Satan offered Jesus "all the kingdoms of the world" (Matt 4:8-10) which he promptly turned down, emphasizing the need to look to God's Kingdom for relief of mankinds problems.
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vjack said:
Not excited about the current crop of candidates? Have you not been exposed to the mainstream American media over the past couple months? Look at the excitement Obama is generating and the legions of new voters coming out to support him! I agree that support for McCain has been lukewarm on the Republican side, but how can anyone be blamed for not wanting a third Bush term?
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Examiner Reader said:
Thank you Pastor McGhee, great article!
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Perry Hall Resident said:
My only problem with Atheists is a true Atheist can prove beyond the shadow of a doubt with their infinite wisdom there is no God. I have not met one yet. Thank you please drive through.
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Examiner Reader said:
Bravo Pastor McGhee, and thank you Examiner.
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Jimmy said:
Using entropy as proof of a designer misses an important point. Entropy assumes a reasonable smooth process that is not interrupted nor acted upon. Since natural selection acts as a filter or external force to this entropy, it serves to short-circuit it. Any random changes that would create a less stable or optimal arrangement would naturally be selected out, leaving only viable changes. Having said that, evolution must then assume that conditions for life must have become supercritical, so that life would start faster than natural selection would kill it.
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Katherine Harms said:
As a first-time reader of the Examiner, I am delighted to read Kevin McGhee's piece. Few media outlets give time or space to intelligent discussion of the subject of evolution. This well-written piece points out several questions that the theory of evolution does not answer. It is a "theory" still, we should all remember, not a law. That means that a real scientist will always be looking for the truth and ready to recognize when truth debunks any part of the theory. As a matter of fact, real scientists have junked numerous scientific theories which could not stand up after the facts were known. For my part, I think there is a great divide between accepting the way DNA works and denying God's creative act as the origin of living things. I give God credit and thanks for creating life, and creating me, and creating DNA. Thank you, Kevin McGhee, for contributing to intelligent discourse on a challenging subject.
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Bruce P said:
Why isn't this in the letters to the editor page? This is opinion and poorly thought out at that! Mr McGhee's dogma isn't news, it has been unchanged for more than 2000 years.
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Scott W said:
Thomas Byrne said: 'Newtons second law of thermo dynamics'? Thermodynamics was discovered 200 years after Newton. You might find the following interesting: “The thermodynamicist immediately clarifies the latter question by pointing out that the Second Law classically refers to isolated systems which exchange neither energy nor matter with the environment; biological systems are open, and exchange both energy and matter. The explanation, however, is not completely satisfying, because it still leaves open the problem of how or why the ordering process has arisen (an apparent lowering of the entropy), and a number of scientists have wrestled with this issue. Bertalanffy (1968) called the relation between irreversible thermodynamics and information theory one of the most fundamental unsolved problems in biology.” [C. J. Smith (evolutionist), Biosystems 1:259 (1975)] You see, evolutionists themselves understand that the 2nd law is "one of the most fundamental unsolved problems
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glassonionr said:
Can evolutionist offer proof of God's inexistence?
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Bart Stratton said:
ID proponents argue that evolution fails as a moral system. It's not a moral system it's a scientific theory. Liberalism, the idea that government is limited in power and people have inalienable rights, is a moral system. Comparing DNA to the components in Happy Meals and Artificial hearts is a false analogy. Happy meals don't make more happy meals. They're inanimate. There is clear evidence of evolution, for example the Asian bird flu has evolved to infect humans. The fossil record provides support for evolution. Young Earthers can only explain fossils by arguing for a deceitful creator who made the earth with, "the appearance of age". This raises deep questions about the deceitful nature of God. Intelligent design means that God ceases to be "the God of Natural Law (science)", a belief our country was founded on. If God does not follow the laws of his own creation, we have chaos and caprice. ID wants to replace the order of nature with the chaos of superstition.
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Examiner Reader said:
McGhee writes "I have dear and brilliant friends who spend their days looking through both telescopes and microscopes, and what they see are not the products of random selection or cosmic chance, but the fingerprints of God." Of course McGhee's friends don't "see" "the fingerprints of God". The "fingerprints" they "see" are in their imaginations!! It's important to be able to tell the difference between imagination and reality which is one of the advantages of being able to think clearly. Otherwise ancient and primitive thought-forms obscure one's understanding of reality and various miraculous spirit-like creatures or gods contaminate one's view.
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Hazak said:
Atheists are so annoyingly arrogant...I think that if they considered the fact that, by dissing those who believe in ID, they are also dissing Muslims, they would be a considerably more careful with their words. The only reason they take shots at Judeo Christians, is because they know we won't hit back. And now they're all whinning like a bunch of lil cheerleaders because Ben Stein put together a solid documentary exposing their baseless arrogance. Had it been doen with a home video camera and a $2,000 budget, they wouldnt care. They hate that this was done with excellence and that their fraud is exposed!
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Examiner Reader said:
Cars don't evolve, they're not biological. A living thing in a swamp for 50 million years would evolve.
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Indie said:
Why is everyone so hung up with evolution VS creationism? I believe in both evolution and God. It seems obvious, based on the scientific evidence that human beings evolved from a lower life form. But it also seems obvious to me that there is something greater. So what if we are highly evolved monkeys? It doesn't mean that God doesn't exist. Actually, it gives me more reason to believe that God exists. Life is intelligent. When I studied Biology in undergrad, I remember reading about a white moth that in a matter of decades, changed its color to gray. It adapted to the environment as factories giving off smoke were built during the time of the industrial revolution. There are countless examples of evolution but I don't think science will ever be able to understand the miracle of life. What gives creatures the WILL to live, to learn, to survive, to evolve? There is something greater that underlies everything and that, I believe is God and cannot be explained by science.
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Examiner Reader said:
To 9:41: The athiest that says he does not have a religion or a faith is either ignorant of his own belief system or just stupid. You just made a statement as if there were empherical data to back up your statement. Either prove your statment, or admit that your belief system and worldview requires more faith than the theists'. And to the guy that didn't think that the Honda evolving into the Mercedes was "relevant to the discussion", THAT IS EXACTLY THE DISCUSSION". You can't explain it so therefore it is not relevant. Don't feel bad though, because the fossil record can't vouchsafe for your theory either!
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Examiner Reader said:
God does not exist. What is there to argue about?
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Examiner Reader said:
how is this a news article?
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Examiner Reader said:
It seems like there is overwhelming evidence that evolution, as a theory, is a logical way to understand the field of biology. Whereas I don't see any evidence to indicate an alternate theory. Shouldn't the burden be on theologians to provide real evidence of why creatures are the way they are, why they adapted to their environments and why there are striking similarities in similar species. I hardly think the analogy of a Honda evolving into a luxury car is relevant to the discussion, and actually confirms what many people think of the creationist agenda: It is an ill conceived and poorly thought out crusade to encourage people believe to 2+2=5.
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Conscious Reader said:
One thing that this article fails to mention, when referencing Hitler, is he was an avid Christian. He even had the church meeting with him regularly, as they supported his views on exterminating Jews. The church never once excommunicated a Nazi war criminal, because doing so would amount to admiting that they were in on it. I can almost gauge with 100% accuracy, that the next major war or "9/11" will be because of religion. The belief in a god, an Allah, a Jehovah, a Yaweh, something. I doubt, very seriously, it will be because a bunch of hyper educated atheist, set out to destroy the world, or turn it into a fascist theocracy...
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Examiner Reader said:
Excellent, thank you. My mother used to tell the scientist, who believed in evolution, at the high school where she taught, to make her a blade of grass, only you can not start with anything in your hands, you have to make it from scratch. Be brave, stand up for the truth, God wants you to.
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Thomas Byrne said:
'Newtons second law of thermo dynamics'? Thermodynamics was discovered 200 years after Newton. 'The next time you hold a newborn baby, look very, very carefully at her tiny fingers; and then ask yourself, what kind of an engineer could design something so perfect?' That's presuming the hands aren't deformed or they have hands at all. Next time you look at a usless appendix or get a hernia ask yourself, 'what kind of designer could've designed THAT.' I think Kevin McGhee really needs to do at least some scientific research before critisizing it.
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Former Skeptic said:
Bravo Bravo Bravo!
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