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In Supporting Discovery Institute This Christmas Season, Please Consider All That Hangs in the Balance

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Let’s be honest. Scientists, media commentators, and clergy are fooling themselves when they reassure you it’s a perfectly plausible view that “God used evolution” to create life. At the back of their mind, they must know they’re fooling themselves. Of course, one could develop a guided form of evolution that would be compatible with theism, but the mainstream evolutionary theory adopted by Darwinian biologists today specifically excludes that option.

The arch-Darwinists see this clearly. The other day a prominent atheist biologist, Larry Moran of the University of Toronto, went over to the website of a Darwin-apologetics group, the National Center for Science Education, to chastise an NCSE spokesperson for implying a compatibility between faith and evolution.

He asked, “Really? You think it’s scientific to believe that there’s something ‘behind’ evolution even though there’s no evidence to support, or even suggest, such a claim?” And again, incredulously, “Is it the official position of NCSE that science and religion are compatible?” As far I’m aware, he received no answer.

Because there is none. Obviously there can be nobody, no intelligent being, “behind” a randomly driven material process that bears no evidence or indication of guidance or purpose. To think otherwise requires a powerful will deceive to yourself.

A wide segment of the population is not deceived. That is why, as our colleague John West demonstrated with empirical rigor in the recent study “Darwin’s Corrosive Idea,” Darwinian theory has worked so effectively as a “universal acid” on traditional ideas about God and about man’s place in the cosmos. (Download it here.)

Compare just these two findings, reported in a survey we commissioned in 2016. On one hand:

Nearly 7 in 10 atheists and more than 4 in 10 agnostics say that for them personally, unguided chemical evolution and Darwin’s mutation/natural selection mechanism have made the existence of God “less likely.”

On the other:

By contrast, 6 in 10 theists and more than 2 in 10 agnostics say the existence in nature of “many things that are exquisitely designed and highly complex” has made the existence of God “more likely” for them personally.

On the question of Darwin versus design, a great deal hangs in the balance — ultimate questions about our lives, their value and meaningfulness. That’s why today, I am asking you to support the work of Discovery Institute.

Intelligent design is not a program of apologetics. ID is, instead, a no-holds-barred search for the truth about life’s origins. That’s why it’s so powerful, and so feared. However, the scientific results it returns are crucial to any convincing, objective account of man as a creature of God.

At Evolution News, where I’m privileged to serve as editor, our contributors don’t write much about theology (unlike, interestingly, some of our atheist interlocutors). Instead, our scientists and scholars — Stephen Meyer, Douglas Axe, Ann Gauger, Paul Nelson, Jonathan Wells, John West, along with other writers for this daily news source — stick to the science. Everyone understands, however, whether you’re an evolutionist or an intelligent design advocate, what follows from a dispiriting conclusion that life was not designed.

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Please take a moment now to consider your year-end giving and hit the red button above. We deeply appreciate your gift of any amount. First of all, obviously, because you allow us to advance our work of publishing and research, to reach the world, an ever-expanding audience that needs to know the truth about science that is otherwise being withheld from them: that biology and cosmology support the case for intelligent design. That work does not happen for free.

But there’s another reason we need every token of your support — that is to keep us going in a world that is so hostile. Atheism, materialism, Darwinism — call it what you will — is a powerful force in our culture. It’s an angry god, and thanks to the media, “social” and otherwise, we feel its wrath daily. Often in very personal ways, the attacks rain down on Discovery Institute.

Your gift tells us that we have another friend out there, who supports our work, joins with it, and understands what’s at stake. Thank you, my friend!

David Klinghoffer

Senior Fellow and Editor, Evolution News
David Klinghoffer is a Senior Fellow at Discovery Institute and the editor of Evolution News & Science Today, the daily voice of Discovery Institute’s Center for Science & Culture, reporting on intelligent design, evolution, and the intersection of science and culture. Klinghoffer is also the author of six books, a former senior editor and literary editor at National Review magazine, and has written for the Los Angeles Times, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Seattle Times, Commentary, and other publications. Born in Santa Monica, California, he graduated from Brown University in 1987 with an A.B. magna cum laude in comparative literature and religious studies. David lives near Seattle, Washington, with his wife and children.

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