Antidote to superstition
Nonsense thrives wherever the Bible is weakened.
Editorial
One of the dominant themes of our time is the heroic struggle of the forces of science
and reason against the backwardness of ignorance and superstition. The chief villains,
those standing in the way of humanity’s glorious liberation, are said to be
those who proclaim the Bible, particularly Genesis creation, as eternal, unchanging
truth.
The play and movie Inherit the Wind, which savagely distorts the historical
reality of the 1925 Scopes ‘monkey’ trial,1
is recycled repeatedly to make sure no one misses the point of this epic ‘light
vs darkness’ myth—evolutionary science is ‘good’ and creationism
is ‘evil’. Echoing this theme, the late evolutionist (and signer of
Humanist Manifesto II) Isaac Asimov, called creationists ‘armies
of the night’.
More recently, the movie Contact reached new heights of sophistication
in anti-Christian propaganda. The heroine is an atheistic seeker of truth, who is
frustrated by those who oppose the new ‘truth’—i.e., that the
forces of evolution have thrown up intelligent life elsewhere in the universe. She
tells how she rejected Christianity when no one could answer her challenges about
such things as Cain’s wife.2
Her theologically liberal boyfriend, who eventually comes to believe her, is of
course portrayed as handsome, kind and sympathetic. The real villain is a fanatical-looking,
revivalist-type preacher, who eventually blows up innocent people to stop the march
of reason and discovery.
This sort of caricature has intimidated most Christians into keeping their heads
firmly in the sand about the vital importance of the creation/evolution issue. The
result—enormous humanist gains in the ‘culture wars’.
However, far from being the enemy of reason, the Christianity which takes the Bible
as a totally true, authoritative revelation from the Creator God has been the driving
force behind the birth of modern science. It has also been responsible for the liberation
of countless numbers of people from all manner of superstitions, harmful practices
and fears.
Compromise with evolution and long-ageism has weakened and undermined the influence
of Christianity in our culture. Therefore, it is not surprising to see an unprecedented
flourishing of all manner of crazy cults, occult practices, and bizarre superstitions,
even among the intelligentsia. This link between decades of evolutionary brainwashing
and the rise of irrational pseudo-science is confirmed by careful sociological research
in, of all places, The Skeptical Inquirer.3
The authors of the research report make it clear that they expected that freedom
from ‘the ancient myths of traditional religions’ (as they regard the
Bible) would usher in a new era of rational, reasonable thought.
Their findings showed otherwise. Conservative (or ‘traditional’ or ‘fundamentalist’)
Christians, the most likely to reject evolution, were also the most likely to reject
‘occult and pseudo-scientific notions’.
Furthermore, geographical surveys showed that in areas where such Darwin-rejecting
churches are the weakest, there is the greatest flourishing of cults, occult activity
and various forms of superstition.
The authors also state that it would be a mistake to assume that religious liberals
(e.g. those who endorse evolution, long ages, etc.) had ‘superior minds of
great rationality’; they are in fact ‘much more likely to accept the
new superstitions’. Those who declared themselves as having ‘no religion
or only nominal religion are especially likely to accept deviant, exotic alternatives
to Christianity, just as they are likely to accept Darwin’. Bible-believers
are the ones ‘who appear most virtuous according to scientific standards when
we examine the cults and pseudo-sciences proliferating in our society today.’
This makes sense, of course. Those who swallow evolutionary notions such as the
‘big bang’ (with its universe without edge or centre), frogs turning
into princes over millions of years and the like, will be more likely to accept
other superstitions as well.
Creation magazine can be a powerful tool
in your hands to help stem today’s tide of irrationality. It seeks to expose
evolutionary/long-age thinking for what it is—pseudo-science opposed not only
to the Gospel, but to reality itself.
References
- D. Menton,
Inherit the Wind: An historical analysis, Creation19(1):35–38,
1996. Return to text.
- See The Creation Answers Book, Where did Cain get his wife?, Return to text.
- Bainbridge and Stark, Superstitions: Old and New, The Skeptical
Inquirer, pp. 18–31, Summer 1980. Return to text.
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