Resources - President's Desk Archives
December 19, 2006
Why an Award from the National Association of Biology Teachers is Not an Honor for Bible-minded Christian
by David Noebel
An Open Letter to Donald Cronkite
by David Noebel
Dr. Donald Cronkite
Hope College
Holland, MI 49423
Dear Dr. Cronkite:
I see in the News from Hope College (December 2006) that you received "national recognition from the National Association of Biology Teachers." I nearly said "congratulations" but then I remembered writing a book on the subject of Secular Humanism (Mind Siege) and finding NABT to be a hardcore secular humanist organization not at all friendly to anything that smacks of creationism or the Bible. Does this bother you?
Some years ago I wrote another professor at Hope about biological evolution and although he said he would get back with me he never did. I'm hoping
my contacting you will result in something more productive.
A number of years ago the curator of geology at the Field
Museum of Natural History in Chicago (
in the museum's journal entitled "Conflicts Between Darwinism and Paleontology"
in which he stated that the 250,000 species of plants and animals recorded
and deposited in museums throughout the world did not support the gradual
unfolding hoped for by Darwin.
Shortly after that declaration a senior paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History (Colin Patterson) said he didn't know of any real evidence of evolutionary transitions either among living or fossilized organisms.
If this is the record of the past and the fossil record doesn't support the Darwinian position what is it about evolution that has convinced you it is true? And if the old saw "the present is the key to the past" is still accepted please explain to me what in the present proves evolution. I am looking at a quote that says, "There has never been a case established where a living organism was observed to change into a basically different organism with different structures. No observed mutation has ever been demonstrated to be more beneficial to the overall population out in nature." Is this gentleman wrong? Have you observed said organism becoming something different and more beneficial? If so, would you please let me know?
The late L. Harrison Matthews wrote in the introduction of the 1971 edition of Darwin's Origin of Species, "The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation - both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither up to the present has been capable of proof." Has something been discovered since 1971 to scientifically prove Darwin's theory? If so, I would certainly be interested in studying it carefully.
I notice that the former noted evolutionist George Gaylord Simpson called the sudden appearance of many types of complex life forms in the Cambrian rocks the "major mystery of the history of life." Didn't Darwin himself say in Origins that if we can't find any predecessor fossils to the Cambrian fossils his theory need not be taken seriously? Have you found the answer to Simpson's "mystery"? To Darwin's dilemma? If so, I would give it my utmost attention.
I research and write in the areas of theology, philosophy (my degree at Hope was in philosophy), ethics and history and I've been dying to ask the following question of someone, anyone who would give me a cogent response. The 20th century was the greatest century of death by government in the history of mankind. At the basis of the three "isms" that caused most of the destruction was Darwinian evolution. In other words, Communism, Nazism and Fascism were grounded in Darwin. Joseph Stalin, Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini were all rabid evolutionists. Their followers were fanatical evolutionists and preaching "survival of the fittest" (see Richard Weikart's From Darwin to Hitler: Evolutionary Ethics, Eugenics, and Racism in Germany, e.g.). Why would anyone (including yourself) find it such an honor to continue to propagate such a theory of death and destruction? And since you specialize, according to the NFHC article, in "human values" please dissect this for me, but do it slowly and in language a non-specialist can understand. Thank you.
And Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, too,
Sincerely in Christ,
David Noebel '57
Summit Ministries