July 2009

Can You Spell T-a-i-l-w-i-n-d?

Early this month as we celebrated our Nation's birth, many of us wondered: Will our children and grandchildren enjoy the same blessings of liberty and the free exercise of religion that have been treasured hallmarks of this nation since its founding? Though we are not the first generation to face this question, the rising tide of secularism increases our concern. That is why the opening paragraph of Marvin Olasky's recent cover story for World magazine instantly arrested my attention:

Sometimes it seems that an atheistic tsunami has hit. Anti-Christian books land high on bestseller lists. Polls purportedly show a decline in belief. Newsweek this spring had one of its traditional Easter cover stories on "The Decline and Fall of Christian America." Whenever the conventional wisdom points in a particular direction, it's good practice to ask: What if the opposite is true?¹

In answer to his own question, Olasky provides his readers with a perceptive, carefully reasoned, and surprisingly encouraging analysis of the state of belief in the U. S. and backs it up with convincing evidence that "Christianity in America is not dying, but instead getting its second wind — or maybe its sixth." Is Olasky simply whistling in the dark? Hardly! Various headwinds — some new — are today resisting militant atheism. One is intelligent design.

This summer's ID polls show surprising movement

In the US: According to a June 30 News Release from the Discovery Institute, when Zogby pollsters asked 1,053 likely voters if life developed "through an unguided process of random mutations and natural selection" (a standard definition of Darwinism), only 33 percent of respondents agreed, while 52 percent agreed that "the development of life was guided by intelligent design."
Following up, Bob Ellis hit the nail on the head in the July 1st Dakota Voice: "That [poll result] has to really stink for the committed evolutionist. . . After 150 years of rapturous embrace by the 'scientific' community, decades of one-sided promotion in the public education system, uniform adherence from movie and television media, and still most of the American people just aren't buying the contention that this incredibly beautiful and fantastically complex universe we see around us just happened to end up this way without an intelligent designer."
In "Post-Christian" England: In its July-August newsletter, the American Scientific Affiliation reports stunning results from a poll of Brits on the subject of origins. Commissioned by the John Templeton Foundation and the Theos think-tank, the poll "probe[d] respondents from multiple angles, exploring not only what they believed but how consistently they believed it and whether it correlated with their other beliefs." The results, summarized in the ASA newsletter, are breathtaking: "In a multigenerational family, grandma believes in young earth creationism, mom and dad accept evolution (she in its theistic form, he in its atheistic guise), and the 25-year-old-university-grad son believes in Intelligent Design, thinking human origins are best explained by 'a combination of science and the intervention of a higher power.'" The report concludes, "the youngest generations and highest educated people show inclinations toward believing in Intelligent Design."

We suspect that the books, lectures and debates of such scholars as Oxford's Dr. John Lennox and University of Warwick's Dr. Steve Fuller (both of whom many Americans met in the documentary, Expelled!) have been important drivers in this revolution among young British college graduates.

Some other drivers

Initially, most Design of Life sales were through our own web site. Soon we added Amazon as a second online outlet. Now the Intercollegiate Studies Institute (ISI) via University of Chicago Press is selling the book in the big box stores. And even though overall book industry retail sales are down, ISI sales of DoL now stand at 1,864 copies. Amazon, where sales exceed 1,000 copies, now posts over 90 reader reviews of DoL, including this one entitled "Profound":

What made me want to read The Design of Life is the fact that Darwin's anniversary is this year, and people are going to start talking about what they heard in class or read in popular magazines about the subject. I wanted a more thorough investigation and the most recent facts in one book and its authors with backgrounds in mathematics, molecular and cell biology gave me just that. This book exposes in detail the huge holes in evolution theory. More details about every aspect than I anticipated, and for the better.

Opponents to the book have organized to post at least one negative review per month because they know that most visitors to a book's reviews will read the newest reviews first. If you have read DoL, please consider posting a positive review on Amazon. It needn't be long or comprehensive.

Gathering steam

The DoL web site metrics program indicates discrete visits to the site are running almost 3200 per week. Add to that the number of people from around the world who make reading visits to DoL at Google Books, where they can read up to 80 percent of it, and we are talking significant exposure!

More significant still, though DoL was published as a trade book, some of the universities calling for examination copies are following with initial orders for use as course texts. The Franklin Classical School in Franklin, TN which used the book as a fund raising tool last year will use it in an Honors Biology Class in the coming school year.

Feet to the fire

Published jointly with ISI, FTE's most recent book, How to Be an Intellectually Fulfilled Atheist (Or Not) is contributing to the understanding of the origins question, and to the growing recognition of its critical importance. This watershed issue matters because uncontested materialistic Darwinism in science education serves many Darwinists first and foremost as a sufficiently respectable strategy for advancing atheism². Intelligent design is an "exasperating" foil, and that is why it arouses such opposition and vitriol.

Stemming the tide in science education

Almost two decades ago powerful science educators introduced a new rallying cry to guide science education, "Science education for all Americans." Today the National Center for Science Education is insisting that every student should be indoctrinated in the ideology of Darwinism so he or she will enter adult life as a philosophical materialist. With a large war chest, they are enjoying considerable success. The title of a new book by two young scientists says it all: Unscientific America: How Scientific Illiteracy Threatens Our Future. The authors are horrified by "a distressingly large number of Americans [who] refuse to accept either the fact or the theory of evolution, the scientifically undisputed explanation of the origin of our species and the diversity of life on earth" (p. 3) [emphasis ours]. Note that these authors define scientific illiteracy not in terms of understanding Darwin's theory but in terms of accepting it. Scientific literacy is a matter of understanding, not acceptance. Readers of DoL come to understand Darwin's theory and why they should not accept it.

Yes, the Darwinists are increasing their opposition to ID and are pulling out all the stops in their celebrations of Darwin world-wide in this bicentennial year of his birth. "The evolution wars," declare the authors in Unscientific America, "need you to write a check to the leading defender of evolution in the country, the Oakland, California-based National Center for Science Education" (p.174).

As we all know, wars are costly, and so is the "evolution war." We urgently need your help to continue this war. Giving to FTE has dropped precipitously just when this Year of Darwin cries out for even more aggressive marketing of DoL, including radio interviews of the authors. We have a golden opportunity as attention and interest in the debate on origins intensifies. We urge you to help us to capitalize on this historic moment. Thank you for your faithful and generous support. At stake are the hearts and minds of our young people.

Because He Lives,

Jon Buell
President

P.S. Why not scroll to the very bottom and forward this letter to a good friend?

¹ The Sixth Wind?, World Magazine, June 20, 2009
² You may recall the renowned atheist Richard Dawkins' famous assertion that "Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist" (because he provided a materialistic explanation for design in living systems). But in fact, there is no greater problem for the atheist than the glaring question Darwin failed to address or even touch on: the origin of life (which is the topic of How to Be). Neither Dawkins, nor anyone else has met the challenge of explaining the origin of the first living cell, and thus have no real grounds upon which to claim intellectual fulfillment.

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