The Epistolizer

Despite differing perches along the political spectrum, in separate segments on the 8/29/11 edition of The O'Reilly Factor, Juan Williams, Bernard Goldberg, and Kinky Friedman each made snide comments against candidates for the Presidency that did not embrace evolution as part of their respective individual worldviews.

Each of these spokesmen for the secularist perspective (though Williams made a fuss over his Episcopalianism which has been one of contemporary Christianity's most spineless forms) insinuated that one's position regarding origins somehow represents an intellectual deficiency if one does not enthusiastically embrace Darwinism. Perhaps we should take a moment to examine how this might impact a politician's political philosophy.

Often ultrasecularists assure we dimwitted rubes that religion has no bearing on the nuts and bolts issues voters really care about as the nation edges closer to financial ruination and social collapse. These days, one is as likely to hear this from certain varieties of grassroots conservatism as you are from ACLU types.

Even if evolution was true, what bearing does Rick Perry, Michelle Eichmann, or Sarah Patin believing the world was created six thousand years ago have on the proverbial price of tea in China? Given the worthlessness of the US dollar, such an example is no longer as merely rhetorical as it once was.

On the national level, it's not like a singular figure would be able to reverse the inertia of an entrenched technocratic bureaucracy steeped in scientism.

If a more creationist approach to science held sway in the jurisdictions where the aforementioned politicians enjoy a constituency, who are elites to criticize the prevailing conceptual framework?

After all, aren't these the same multiculturalists that dare anyone to criticize the adherents of a particular unmentioned religion who have a penchant for flying jetliners into skyscrapers and to strap sticks of dynamite to their chests.

Those thinking, to paraphrase Bernard Goldberg, that is is ignorant to believe that dinosaurs and human beings might have shared the earth at the same time apparently also believe that how the world came into existence impacts other areas of existence. That is a notion that they share with the Christian that actually just comes at the question from the opposite direction.

Since those wanting to shut God out or at least hold Him at bay in one's approach to one of life's most fundamental questions on what is constantly tauted as cable's most highly rated news program, perhaps we should examine these assumptions a little more closely.

Those holding to evolution believe everything is in a constant state of flux and change. There are no unaltering realities or lasting principles.

For example, Congress shall make no law abridging the free exercise of religion or speech, or the right to bear arms shall not be infringed. Those might have been alright in the 1700's, but those provisions aren't meant for today since we have progressed so far beyond them, the evolutionary collectivist would argue.

Rights are not something we are endowed with by our Creator as individuals made in his image. Rather these protections are statutory provisions that can be extended and contracted for the benefit of the elite ruling any given society.

The contrasting perspective holds that every detail in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis are to be taken literally. Such an assumption produces a number of worldview implications.

For example, the theist holding to the Genesis account generally believes that the individual is created in the image of God. This doctrine is taught in Genesis 1:26.

As such, the individual possesses an innate dignity and worth. The person is not some random conglomeration of cells to be manipulated, reconfigured, and even obliterated for no valid reason. Thus, those principles viewed as outdated and obsolete are often the only things that prevent us from being obliterated by those so deluded that they can remake the entire world in their own warped image.

By Frederick Meekins