Richard Dawkins and the Little Green Men

I watched Ben Stein's "Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed" today (thanks to my daughter and son-in-law's suggestion) and it was much better than I expected. I suppose I had been brainwashed by the review of the "controversy" it had generated. (Sigh . . .) In fact it was very well done.

All the Christians were open to believing in both some form of biological evolution (at least to some extent) and also in design by an intelligent Creator, while the scientests generally held that one must accept naturalism (ancient Epicureanism) and reject Christianity in order to believe in science. Of course, the science establishment doesn't speak for all working scientests, many of whom are believers, but there is not doubt that the crusading atheists hold the high ground when it comes to funding and science education and are not prepared to cede an inch of it.

I find it funny that they constantly talk about "believing" in science. I never hear of anyone talking of "believing" that 2+2=4. They talk of "knowing" it. Many atheistic science educators seem obsessed with polls measuring how many people "believe in Darwinism." This is not healthy. It bespeaks a deepseated insecurity and a mania for a certain religious point of view that they wish to impose dogmatically on all of society in the name of truth and academic freedom. It is totalitarian and inimical to free thought.

Anyway, the most eye-opening moment for me came when Stein was talking to Dawkins and asked him the question of what he would say if in the course of his scientific investigations he came to the conclusion that life could not have gotten started by accident and that it appeared to have required an intelligent designer to get it going. Would that not constitute evidence for design? Dawkins' reply was competely unexpected. Instead of hewing to the party line, he suggested the hypothesis that perhaps a highly advanced race of aliens had visited earth and dropped off some "life" that they had created in their (highly advanced) labs. Now, I think it was clear that he was not joking, although that was my first thought.

Richard Dawkins is so determined to disbelieve in God that he is willing to entertain a hypothesis that space aliens created us? Is that what it has come to? Space aliens? It reminds me of the saying (was it by Chesterton?) that when modern man ceases to believe in God, he does not for long believe in nothing, but rather is willing to believe anything. The recent Baylor study that found that religious believers (including Fundamentalist and Evangelical Christians) were less likely to be superstitious than atheists and agnostics is interesting in this regard. Christians were less likely to give credence to spiritism, astrology, etc. than the general population. Religion makes superstition less likely. Atheism does not.

But what can one say about poor Richard Dawkins? He has a hard time posing as a martyr in the train of Galileo. Here he has been given a prestigious chair at Oxford which demands nothing so hard as scientific research - all he has to do is spew out atheist propoganda full time. His books sell in the millions and he is lionized by the elite of Western culture for putting those dastardly Christians in their place. And all he has to offer us intellectually is little green men?

During the first Dark Ages it was the Church that kept the flame of reason and science alive and it appears that the Church had better gear up to do it again. The leading scientests have apparently gone mad en masse and have substituted wish fulfillment and juvenile rebellion for hard thinking and logic. Little green men - but no fairy tales. Really now!