Evolution

Alabama Supreme Court Chief Justice-elect Roy Moore appeared on City On A Hill Radio to lash out at marriage equality and the theory of evolution, warning that they undermine the Constitution. Moore, who has argued that same-sex marriage leads to divine punishment and will “destroy this country,” maintained that the Founding Fathers “would be up in arms” over President Obama’s endorsement of marriage equality as it will “destroy the very foundation” of America.

What we’re doing in this country is—if Washington and Jefferson and Madison, name one, if they were alive today would be up in arms. None of them, federalists or antifederalists, never believed that it would come to this. Those that were for big government like Hamilton, Washington, Adams would never have believed that our courts would be doing what they’re doing today, that people would be trying to change the definition of marriage. We don’t take a moment just to stop and clear our eyes and our ears and think: what is happening when a President of the United States can get up and say we need to redefine marriage? You know, when they do that they are attempting to destroy the very foundation on which this country was built.

Moore also denied the theory of evolution and said it was warping people’s understanding of the Constitution by covering up its Biblical precepts. “Evolution has so distorted our way of thinking,” Moore said, “we know we were created but they say we evolved from whatever, something out of the ocean, you’ve got to understand that evolution affects your mental processes.” He explained that evolution makes people think that they are “smarter” than their predecessors while the Constitution shows that “human nature doesn’t change.”

Barbara Moore: Judge Moore I want to ask you, as you read the United States Constitution you can see that biblical concepts and precepts are within that Constitution, everything from separation of powers because of the sinful nature of man, and I would think that any Bible believing Christian would feel that when they look at our United States Constitution, wouldn’t you say?

Roy Moore: I think they don’t and I think there’s a reason they don’t and I think the reason like you see it maybe because you’ve studied a little bit but I think it’s not evident to those who have lost the knowledge of God. What I mean to say by that is you know we started by teaching history at the beginning of the program and it’s like going to football games and seeing who wins and who loses and going to football games and forgetting the rules. If you know the rules it makes the game more interesting because you know there is some way they get to the end of the game and win or lose and you got to go by the rules. We’re not going by the rules because we don’t think the rules matter anymore.

Evolution has so distorted our way of thinking. It’s not just about where we came from. Of course, we know we were created but they say we evolved from whatever, something out of the ocean, you’ve got to understand that evolution affects your mental processes. When you think you have evolved then you think you’re better than those who have gone before you. If you’re better than those who have gone before you then you won’t make the same mistakes, you won’t think the same way, you know better, you’re smarter. The point is, human nature doesn’t change and human nature is what the Constitution sought to restrain.

During yesterday's program when Bryan Fischer was warning that electing a "spiritually-compromised" Mormon like Mitt Romney would weaken and endanger America, he was restating his theory that liberals and the media are now going to start attacking Romney's faith, claiming that if the media thinks that the beliefs of Evangelicals are odd, then "what Mormons believe is in coo-coo land."

That somehow sent him off on a tangent about science, during which he declared that he didn't believe in global warming or evolution because he is "committed to science."  And since "evolution is completely irrational and scientifically bankrupt," the "most logical thing in the world" is to believe that God created the universe:

Sadly, Fischer never got around to explaining how the theory of evolution is even remotely related to the laws of thermodynamics or how the latter undermines the former, as he eventually got back and track and returned to his anti-Mormon diatribe.

On Monday, Janet Parshall hosted David Barton to use Martin Luther King Jr. Day as an opportunity for Barton to spew his right-wing reading of U.S. history and the Constitution. While Barton does not have degrees in history or law, he claimed that the theory of evolution was responsible for the Supreme Court’s ruling in Everson v. Board of Education, which found that the First Amendment’s Establishment Clause applies to the states because it was incorporated by the Fourteenth Amendment — because it led to legal positivism.

As Barton explains, law students who learned about the theory of evolution, which he objects to since he believes the Founders settled “the entire debate on creation and evolution” and opposed the theory, consequently believed that the Constitution should evolve, and in turn made the Establishment Clause apply to the states. Barton has consistently opposed the Supreme Court’s definition of the Establishment Clause and its application to states and localities, even going as so far to tell Jon Stewart that he believes cities can even implement Sharia law, although he later denied saying it.

Barton: This may sound weird but it was the theory of evolution, we think it’s a science debate it is not, if you apply the theory of evolution to law you say, ‘wait a minute we can’t be bound by a two hundred year old document, we’ve evolved past that, what we need to have is an evolving document that meets the needs of society today and who best to evolve the document but judges, they’re the ones who deal with the law,’ so we got into this thing of what’s called legal positivism or evolutionary law, living constitution, and we started teaching that in the law schools in the 1920s. Take kids in the law schools in the 20s and, get this, they’re now in legal practice in the ’30s and now in the ’40s they’re adults with twenty years under their belt and they get appointed to the US Supreme Court and so in ’47 they simply implemented what they’ve been taught in law school twenty-five years earlier.

One of the sessions at the recent Values Voter Summit featured a showing of a new half-hour video produced by the American Family Association called “Divorcing God: Secularism and the Republic.” (Back in the summer it was being promoted as "Divorcing God: Secularism, Sexual Anarchy, and the Future of the Republic.") The video features an array of Religious Right leaders and academics, whose argument can be summarized this way:  America, whose greatness is decaying because the country has turned its back on the God who inspired the founding fathers, is doomed if it continues to allow secularists to push religion into the closet.  It's time for Christians to fight back.

And just to be clear, the God in “one nation under God” isn’t any old generic God, but the same Christian God who made western civilization possible.  It’s familiar to anyone who has followed the Religious Right’s “Christian nation” rhetoric, filled with founders’ quotes about religion and  attacks on the Supreme Court’s rulings on church-state separation.

Among the stars of the video is Princeton University’s Robert George, the Religious Right’s favorite intellectual. George, a leader of the National Organization for Marriage, is one of the authors of the Manhattan Declaration, whose signers fancy themselves potential martyrs for opposing abortion and LGBT equality in America. Others include Brad Dacus, president of the Pacific Justice Institute; Michael Farris, homeschooling advocate and chancellor of Patrick Henry College; and Matthew Spalding, of the Heritage Foundation. The founders clearly believed that God punishes nations, says Dacus, and when countries allow their societies to become amoral, there’s a price to be paid, not just by those individuals but society as a whole.  The video suggests that the current fight between secularists and those who want to preserve the country’s divine foundation is the last stand for the future of freedom on planet earth.

Another DVD being handed out at the Values Voter Summit hit similar themes about the importance of the nation’s foundation on biblical principles.  It features a 2010 “State of the Nation” speech delivered by Ken Ham of Answers in Genesis at the Creation Museum in Kentucky.  Ham argues that the nation is threatened by the teaching of evolution and by the Supreme Court. “There really is no such thing as separation of church and state,” says Ham, who warns that “Christianity in this nation is becoming outlawed more and more in various quarters.”  Ham blames the decline more on church leaders than on secularists.  The Bible is the “absolute authority,” he says, but too many Christians have undermined the authority of scripture by compromising on the truth of the 6,000 year-old earth and great flood described in Genesis.  And that means quoting the Bible in policy debates on abortion and gay marriage has lost its effectiveness.

Meanwhile, French scholar Denis Lacorne has just published Religion in America: A Political History (Columbia University Press, 2011), in which he examines two competing narratives about American identity.  One derives from the secular values of the Enlightenment and reflects a desire to preserve liberty by freeing it from the power of an established church.  The second ties American identity to the Puritans and Protestantism.  These two narratives are reflected in competing notions of church-state separation evident today in our politics and on our Supreme Court.  At a presentation at the Brookings Institution in Washington, D.C. this week, Lacorne suggested that what he calls the neopuritan narrative was developed in the first half of the 19^th century by historians who wanted to resurrect the influence of the Puritans, who he says were generally ignored by the founding fathers in their debates over religious liberty and whether or not to make the Constitution an explicitly Christian document.  (They chose not to.)

The theory of evolution was a central topic in Bryan Fischer's speech to the Values Voter Summit, where he argued that the presidential candidates should reject evolution. "I submit to you that not a single one of our unalienable rights will be safe," Fischer said, "in the hands of a president who believes that we evolved from slime and that we are the descendents of apes and baboons." Fischer called the separation of church and state "mythical" and argued that a result of secular government and the theory of evolution result in mass murder like in Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Maoist China.

Watch:

Florida Lt. Governor Jennifer Carroll addressed Ralph Reed’s Faith and Freedom Coalition’s pre-debate gathering in Florida yesterday, where she went on the attack against the media, scientists, blasphemers, secular Americans and all those who don’t fit into her idea of a “righteous government.” We made a compilation of her speech’s most remarkable moments, but the whole speech, courtesy of the Associated Press, is worth watching:

You know the Bible says faith is believing in what is not seen, today unfortunately many in the media would like nothing better to ridicule Christians: they promote 'The Da Vinci Code,' they place doubt in the public’s mind that Christ was not risen and they condemn the 'Passion of Christ,' yet they sensationalize stories that call for the end of prayer in school and removing the name of God from our country’s pledge. Ladies and gentlemen, these are very sad times when we allow the minority to poison the minds of the majority. This is exactly what dictators and socialist rulers did.

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Man does not have all the answers, some of our political leaders bow down to scientists and let them have the stage to push their evolution, but there’s nothing, nothing a scientist can make, that is exactly like what God creates.

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Trust Him to give you the strength to fight back against those who want to take God out of our country. Trust Him to give you the wisdom to speak out against injustice and blasphemy of His name. Trust God to guide your path to bring about a righteous government. …

Ladies and gentlemen, Christianity is in a fight and it is one of the greatest trials we have seen in modern times. Without a doubt, America and her people are in grave need of prayer, divine guidance, protection, to have good, solid Christians to step up and lead this country on a proper moral path. I firmly believe that if we magnify God, our problems will be minimized.

• Rick Perry is on a bit of a pledge-signing binge lately.
• Bryan Fischer debunks evolution in four easy steps.
• I think the fact that IWF is upset about this is itself proof that "we have reached the point of insanity."
• Note to Frank Turek: that is not actually the definition of bigotry. In fact, the definition you give is, ironically, kind of the definition of ignorance.
• The Eagle Forum has released its candidate questionnaire [PDF].
• It seems that any government official who thinks nonreligious views should be equally recognized "should be removed from office."

Michele Bachmann regularly speaks about her work in Minnesota to advance homeschooling and charter schools, and she even co-founded a Christian-themed charter school that helped launch her political career. According to the New York Times, “state and local school officials warned the school that it was at risk of losing its charter” for running afoul of code, and Bachmann ultimately had her “children enrolled in private Christian schools.”

Her mentor John Eidsmoe in God & Caesar details the case against public schools that may have influenced Bachmann’s early activism in education issues. Eidsmoe discusses the supposed dangers of the public education system throughout God & Caesar, saying, “The power to educate is the power to control though and shape personality. The power to educate is the power to brainwash.” He even said that America’s stalwart public school system is reminiscent of Nazi Germany, warning “exclusive state control of education is a blueprint for tyranny” (p. 143).

Eidsmoe laments that instead of promoting Christianity, public schools endorse “secular humanism.” He writes that ever since public schools embraced secular humanism, children have been “brainwashed” into supporting evolution, sex education, and moral relativism instead of creationism and conservative Christian teachings.

He calls on Christians to “voice our objections when we see government funds or government facilities being used to promote humanism” (p. 139), since he believes that secular humanism was created by the devil: “When Lucifer rebelled against God, he declared, ‘I will be like the Most High’ (Isaiah 14:14). And, having fallen from heaven, he seduced Eve with the same temptation: ‘Ye shall be as gods’ (Genesis 3:5). The modern humanists offer man the same promise” (p. 132).

Eidsmoe explains the reasons why Christians should challenge the public school system:

As we have seen, Scripture gives parents the right and duty to educate their children. Traditionally, parents have fulfilled this duty with help from the church or synagogue. Within the last century and a half, however, the state has gradually usurped this function. As long as the public schools taught nominally Christian values to their children, many Christians did not object to the state taking over education. Within the past few decades, however, and particularly within the past few years, more and more parents have become concerned that the public schools may be teaching values to their children that place them at odds with their parents.

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The Christian parent who believes in special creation may find his children brainwashed by evolutionists. The parent may believe that the source of values is God and his revealed Word, but the child may learn from his teacher that values are relative and that we must discover them for ourselves. The parent may believe that sex is to be confined to marriage, but the school health teacher may teach that premarital sex is okay “if you really care about each other.”

Yes, parents can combat much of this by carefully instructing their children at home, and they should be careful to do so. But why should parents have to support a school system that teaches alien values or compete with the state for their children’s allegiance, perhaps for their children’s very souls? (p. 123)

Wendy Wright may be out of a job at Concerned Women for America. Once President and CEO of the powerful Religious Right organization, she appears to have been eclipsed by the new CEO Penny Young Nance. Now, Wright has been completely removed from CWA’s leadership page and her bio was taken down (you can still see her cached page). In fact, she is listed as “Past President, Concerned Women for America” on this new social conservative petition opposing government social services programs.

An outspoken opponent of evolution science, reproductive freedom and LGBT rights, Wright had a long career marshalling the Religious Right.

She was a frequent visitor to the White House during the Bush administration, although wasn’t a fan of the Obama administration’s attempts to bring progressive and conservative groups together to reduce the need for abortion (she claims there is never a “need” for abortion). On LGBT rights issues, Wright lobbied hard against hate crimes laws, the repeal of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell and the Employment Non-Discrimination Act. She flatly dismissed a comprehensive study that showed the fitness of gay and lesbian parents and said that she and her allies were victims of discrimination from “homosexual activists,” while doubting the existence of any discriminatory laws in the US. In 2008, Wright blasted Hallmark for allegedly trying to “destroy the family” by supposedly pushing “homosexual messages.”

“There is no evidence of evolution from one species to another,” she told evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins, arguing that there is no substantiation for evolutionary theory. Wright also argued that evolution science was responsible for “horrific abuses against human beings.”

Wright even contends that environmental protection efforts are devastating for humanity, arguing in the Resisting the Green Dragon series: “the policies that environmental groups and even these evangelical groups got behind were ones that would consign the poorest people around the world to grinding poverty, to disease, to premature death.” During the debate over health care reform, Wright claimed that the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act violated all of the Ten Commandments and mocked the law’s plans to combat racism in the health care sector.

We’ll miss you Wendy! Although I have a feeling you won’t be gone for long…