EVOLUTION vs. INTELLIGENT DESIGN

The spoilers at the American Civil Liberties Union, Americans United for the Separation of Church and State (and, of course, the Anti-Defamation League), are at it again. This time they aren't ripping down the Ten Commandments, tearing down nativity scenes, or silencing school prayer or religious Christmas Carols — thanks to them, such unwholesome things are already taboo in the public school arena. Those almighty, self-appointed, guardians of our freedom of speech and religion are now intent on preventing public schools from even hinting that an "Intelligent Design" might exist! 

Why? It seems that a sneaky bunch of religious zealots on the Dover County, Pennsylvania, school board are attempting to plant seeds of heresy into the minds of their students. They would impose upon their impressionable charges, the possibility that Darwin's Origin of the Species and its derivative science, are not in fact the true Holy Scripture. They are suggesting to gullible students that there may be a viable alternative to the evolution theory — that there may have been an Intelligent Design (and, by inference, an Intelligent Designer), involved in "Creation." 

Holy smoke! If the possibility that the Universe were operating on an intelligent basis, or that life as we know it is the result of an intelligent design, the ACLU will let us know. In the mean time, their "higher intelligence" mandates that evolutionary theory is to be taken as the absolute, unquestioned, Gospel! At least that's how it's going to be in the public schools of these United States of America! Damn majority opinions and wishes!

As the high-powered lawyers at the ACLU and the ADL well know, only a select few humans are capable of intelligent design. To impute otherwise — that their just might be a Higher Intelligence (perhaps even higher than their own) — is pure sacrilege. Our betters at the ACLU, and their allied organizations, intend to make sure that this sacrilege will not be tolerated in the public schools. If the burning of heretics was still in vogue, there'd be several candidates for the stake among the Dover County school board.

According to one recent review, Barry Morrison, regional director of the Anti-Defamation League's Philadelphia office, wrote (apparently to the recalcitrant school board): "... it is both unfair and unconstitutional to try to manipulate the character of society by espousing your own religious beliefs in public schools ... The teacher's desk may not serve as a pulpit for religious doctrine."

Never mind that no public school teacher has been allowed to use his or her desk as a pulpit for religious doctrine for the better part of a century — apparently it can no longer even be acknowledged that religious doctrines exist. Even the mention of the possibility of an alternative to Darwinism is now construed as preaching religious doctrine! On the other hand, the clear implication is that it's okay for Morrison's groups' beliefs to be espoused, and that the character of society can be, will continue to be, and ought to be, manipulated through their enlightened litigious coercion.

If the American people ever fully came to realize just how cleverly and profoundly the character of their society has been manipulated these past many decades — and by whom — they would be righteously enraged. But there is little danger of that (at least in the short term), because by now literally every American is the product of an educational and mass media system long under the influence and effective control of the manipulators and their witting and unwitting agents.

The "character changes" that have been taking place in our society over the last fifty years have been profound, to say the least, but they certainly weren't the result of anybody getting a religious message through. Nor have these changes been the result of any improvement in educational standards. They were the result of a cultural agenda which has been stealthily foisted upon the American people by manipulators intent on making America into their own vision of what it should be. They have enjoyed such degrees of success, and now feel so secure in their victories (and so unassailable in their present positions of power), that their primary point organizations, as well as much of their agenda, are now virtually in open view for everybody to see.

The majority of the American people seem now to merely look on passively as they are being more and more openly manipulated — vaguely aware that they are being manipulated, yet superficially content with being over-fed, over-entertained, and often jealously protective of their own "new found freedoms" (i.e., the right to use profuse profanity in public and in the entertainment industry, access unlimited amounts of pornography, etc., etc.).

Yet, in spite of our new found freedoms and material prosperity, not one American in ten thousand feels safe except behind securely locked doors. They enjoy their cake and circuses while existing as prisoners within the walls of their apartments or suburban homes. A significant minority of the well-to-do feel even more secure behind the guarded portals of gated communities, proliferating like so many medieval citadels throughout the hinterlands. In short, by in large, the free and the brave are not nearly as safe and secure as they were before the great enlightenment of the second half of the twentieth century. Furthermore, We the People, in aggregate, have proven to be magnificently pliable putty in the hands of the social and cultural manipulators.

Yet the manipulators are never satisfied. In fact, they appear determined to overplay their hand until there is a serious backlash — even among a cowed and deluded people ruled by the dupes of the manipulators. Such a backlash is almost certainly in the cards because, in spite of all the cake and circuses, affluence and conspicuous consumption, the numbers of disenfranchised, disillusioned, insecure, and downright worried and angry, continue to increase. After all, there are limits to everything, and similar scenarios have been played out repeatedly throughout recorded history.

Now Pridger isn't much of a religious zealot, but he does like to imagine that there is a Higher Power — yes, perhaps even a Higher Intelligence — at work in the Universe. And, though Pridger is a died-in-the wool skeptic, he nonetheless firmly believes that the ACLU, ADL, and a few secular scientists and progressive college professors (and the social and cultural manipulators behind them), are NOT the last word in human wisdom and intelligence. In fact, Pridger believes that, if they are the closest thing to a Higher Intelligence that we have (as they themselves obviously believe), we're in a lot worse trouble than even Pridger now imagines.

Evolutionary theory does nothing to refute Creationism, it rather seems to increasingly affirm it in increasingly complex and revealing scientific terms. As for the creation story related in the Bible, the ancient writers of Genesis can perhaps be excused for their great lack of modern scientific data with which to impress today's readers. The only substantial disagreement is whether or not we refer to the causes behind creation, and all subsequent development, as Intelligent (i.e., the work of God), or merely a meaningless chain of events without definable source, cause, or purpose.

In the end, we really don't know (except as a matter of faith among the faithful), because as humans, in spite of all of our intelligence and arrogance, we have been blessed (or cursed), with some formidable limitations.

The real issue is whether the majority opinion prevails under what is still billed as a democratic system of government, or whether a few self-appointed geniuses may force their opinions on the majority, depriving the majority of the right to freely express themselves in the public arena.

Pridger would like to think that there is a Higher Law than those that successive generations of university trained lawyers have been able to foist upon mankind and incorporate into the machinery of government. He'd like to think that the founders of this great nation were not the self-serving criminals the agents of the manipulators delight in portraying — that the American Declaration of Independence is still a valid and binding document, and that the rights supposedly protected by the Constitution and its Bill of Rights (which gained their legitimacy from that Declaration), were actually intended to protect and guarantee what our nation's founders asserted were our God-given rights.

In all Pridger's ignorance, he believes that, even if Darwin's theory of natural selection, and the survival of the fittest, were 100% correct, it would constitute further evidence of a miraculous, ongoing, Intelligent Design. The evolutionary processes of growth and development, could just as easily be the living manifestation of a still unfolding Divine Creation, as an imaginary throw of cosmic dice by a nothing from nowhere.

Pridger himself puts a considerable amount of credence in evolutionary theory, but we have clearly not yet received the last word. Ongoing scientific investigation still leaves plenty of unanswered questions. In fact, every answered question begets many more unanswered questions that themselves become the focus of ongoing scientific investigation in their turn. The famously acknowledged "missing link" is actually a whole lot of missing links. Pridger has the sneaking suspicion that there are whole chains still missing. Perhaps there are many separate chains which our scientists are fumbling with, struggling to put them together as a single unbroken chain. Perhaps there were multiple so-called "creations" and/or biological evolutionary epochs.  In other words, we don't know it all yet, and we are unlikely to ever know it all.

Admittedly, Pridger doesn't know much of anything in the realms of science or religion. But there is one thing of which he is fairly certain. That is that the ACLU and ADL, and their many allied groups, do not have monopoly on interpretive thinking, and do not possess the right to dictate to the American people in the manner they insist on doing — through coercive litigation and the threats of it. Nobody has elected them to interpret the first Amendment, or anything else. "They" ought to mind their own business — which is supposed to be the business of addressing the many instances of "real" injustice and abuses of human rights.

Even Pridger supports the ACLU, at least in principle, when it comes to fighting against such things as the USA Patriot Act, or defending the downtrodden against actual oppression. But Pridger would never extend any actual support, because the ACLU spends most of its time and money acting as spoiler, or the agents of spoilers — such as suing school districts because an overly sensitive atheist has been offended by a word, phrase, or act, that demonstrates that his opinions are not yet universal.

Pridger would also be sympathetic to the Anti-Defamation League, if it were really acting against "real" instances of un-addressed anti-Semitic "crimes." But their purpose seems more to exploit and magnify past crimes while and over-milking the legacy of the Holocaust — and a crusade to prove that anti-Semitism is a disease that can only be cured in America by separating the American people and their nation from any official, semi-official, or even totally unofficial, association with the Christian religion. Their war cry of "Never forgive, and never forget!" is the antithesis of the Christian doctrine of "forgiveness" and universal brotherly love. Yet the ADL prefers to use Nazi Germany and Hitler are an example of what "Christians" are historically about.

No miniscule minority (indeed, nobody!), has a right (God-given, self-appointed, or naturally selected), to impose their belief system on the majority (or even upon any other minority), even if that majority is adjudged by such minority not to be the result of an Intelligent Design. But that's exactly what the ACLU and ADL, et al, are doing in the Dover case and innumerable others. And they do it while insisting that they are doing exactly the opposite! They claim to be preventing others from forcing their belief systems on others.

These self-appointed, and extraordinarily well funded, "watch-dog" groups claim to be protecting minorities from tyranny of the majority. But they are actually imposing their own minority social and anti-religious views and agenda on the majority, to the extent that there has developed a tyranny of a minority over the majority. The sad part is that they have been getting away with it for well over half a century — and a significant percentage of the majority has been either brainwashed or rendered effectively brain dead in the process.

Now Jesus would probably say, "Forgive them, for they know not what they do." Pridger, as a Christian individual, would say the same thing. But that does not lessen the imperative that "We the People" (as the constitutionally enfranchised majority — Christian and non-Christian alike), not only possess the right, but a solemn duty, to stand up against them and reassert the rightful prerogatives of the majority in what is still officially billed as a democratic system.

If this is not done, and soon — if a significant number of American people do not stand up and cry "Enough! and make it stick — history will inevitably repeat itself in the fullness of time, and the blood of innocents may again be spilled on a Biblical scale.

Unfortunately, sufficient numbers of right-minded people will probably not stand up before it is too late, because we are no longer anything like a strong, unified, and well educated people — least of all, are we a truly religious people. We have been divided, sub-divided, and psychologically conquered and morally cowed. The truly enlightened, and truly religious, exist only in isolated obscurity, and are easily shouted down and made to appear ridiculous by well organized pressure groups if they ever raise a voice. And too few have sufficient courage to voice and act on their convictions, for government itself has effectively become an active enforcement agent of the manipulators — and the government has become excruciatingly large, intimidating, and downright dangerous.

Our American "democracy" has seen its two centuries. Our core national vigor has been spent and dissipated. The American people, in spite of small scattered pockets of coherence, are a people debauched, perhaps beyond redemption. Today some of our remaining national vigor is being spent "patriotically" fighting for freedom and democracy in Iraq, but true liberty has waned to the vanishing point in America, with license and creature comforts now standing in its stead. And here we stand in micro-regulated bondage celebrating our freedom and liberty as if they were not lost.

A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves largesse...from the public treasury... The average age of the world's greatest civilizations has been 200 years... from bondage to spiritual faith; from spiritual faith to great courage; from courage to liberty; from liberty to abundance; from abundance to complacency; from complacency to apathy; from apathy to dependency; from dependency back again into bondage. -Alexander Tyler, 1750 

What is really scary is that in the fullness of time there is always a reckoning in societies and nations where righteousness of national purpose has failed and the founding culture overturned. Additionally, there are some very disconcerting parallels between the state of affairs in America today and that of Germany at the turn of the last century. There is a social upheaval of volcanic proportions waiting in the wings. It will likely be set off when Americans — now so complacent, overfed, and over-entertained — awaken after some major future crises and find themselves (not merely shocked and outraged, as in the case of 9/11, but) hungry, disillusioned, and fearful.

Lamentably, the twenty-first century portends to be bloodier, and much more chaotic, than the last. The world, by the intentional "intelligent design" of whoever it is that now rules us, is much more interdependent and vulnerable than it was at the turn of the last century. A "world war," at the beginning of the last century, was totally unnecessary. But the United States was then internally strong enough to "intervene," make it a true, unlimited, world war, and come out on top. The same was true for the Second World War. But that internal strength, both economic and cultural (in spite of rhetoric to the contrary), today stands severely compromised. America, in spite of its superpower status, is not the economically independent powerhouse that it was only sixty years ago.

Today, a systemic breakdown of the new international economic order almost mandates global war — or at least wide-spread global suffering on a scale never before seen or imagined. And this time around, the United States homeland, having aggressively and thoroughly undermined its every natural national advantage (except for its more lethal war-making capabilities), will not be spared, in spite of the new Department of Homeland Security.

Of course, Pridger hopes he is just being overly pessimistic, cynical, and melodramatic, but only time will tell. In any case, things don't look good from his vulnerable little sanctuary in the former land of the free and home of the brave. In the mean time, the enemies of the republic continue their assault from within, making a mockery of our national charter and what was once our avowed national character.

There are a few Americans with guts left. It is hoped that the Dover County school board manages to prevail in its fight to maintain that the words "Intelligent Design" are just as constitutionally acceptable as the words "natural selection."

If they fail, it will be further evidence that the great American experiment has failed miserably, and that government of the people, by the people, and for the people, has indeed perished from this earth — though few have as yet noticed. They will probably fail. No large battery of highly trained and well funded legal minds have materialized to take up their cause, and the Supreme Court itself is under the majority ownership of the opposition.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN vs. Random Chance

Of course, Pridger isn't a doctor of divinity, nor does he have a law degree, but he can't figure why evolution itself, if it is true, might not be considered an ongoing creative process — nor why such an amazingly complex process might not be logically considered the result of some mysterious intelligent design. But not being privy to all the mysteries, Pridger must admit that the lawyers at the ACLU probably know a lot more about such things than he or anybody else (with the exception of a few scientists perhaps). He believes they (i.e., the ACLU, et al.), have an "intelligent design" of their own in mind, conceived, and evolving in practice, to increase their own influence and standing. This said, however, Pridger has a sneaking suspicion that the intellectual prowess and wisdom levels at the ACLU, and like-minded organizations, are slightly over-rated.

Not that Pridger is a Creationist or anything. Only well talented, skilled, or properly trained people can create things. All else — all the things that have made Darwin, Pridger, and the ACLU possible — just happens through natural, random, processes, and there can be nothing in the least intelligent about them. It's like a big nothing from nowhere, probably possessed of little more than a law degree, cast a hundred billion dice and managed to come up successively with snake eyes, seven, eleven, and boxcars, etc. — all as the result of random chance. Men, on the other hand, experiment carefully, and manage to come up with answers to the puzzles of creation.

Americans are being seduced by the promoters of the doctrines of random chance. The casino industry, as one of the nation's few growth industries, is ample evidence of that. The time was when government frowned on industries expressly designed to bilk the masses of their hard-earned cash. The federal government itself, however, finally became such an industry. Naturally, state governments followed suit.

Soon we had a literal rebirth of freedom in the United States, and states began to realize that legalized gambling was a wonderful means by which to bilk the public of more of their hard-earned income without having to raise sales and income tax levels to the point that might provoke popular rebellion. The lottery and the gambling casino actually caused people to voluntarily and enthusiastically part with their money and provide more tax revenues. As for those who didn't like it, there is no obligation to purchase a lottery ticket, or darken the grand portals of a casino. They have the freedom to pass up the chance (or wonderful opportunity), to become filthy rich, if that's what they desire.

The doctrine of random chance (for riches), became as American as mom's apple pie once was. Tens of millions of Americans flock to casinos every day now to try their luck. Random Chance has become a god, but behind Random Chance, lurks the "intelligent design" of clever manipulators. That particular intelligent design insures that growing numbers of Americans bring their money to the casinos and leave without it. Of course, a few hit it lucky and are thus eager to return with more gaming money. The luck of a few, of course, magnified out of all proportion by ad men, encourage the hopes of the many who never strike it rich, but who bring their money in anyway.

Pridger isn't against legalized gambling, any more than he's against teaching evolution and biological natural selection in the public schools. He does take a jaundiced view of the aggressing manner with which our national culture has been cheapened and the national economy itself transformed into a casino-like organism. A casino is one thing — a national government operated on a casino syndicate model is quite another. The casino model is one of intentional deception, made attractive by the vigorous propaganda of false hope.

So now lets get really seriously ridiculous about this. If someone at the ACLU or ADL were to update the story of Creation for the benefit of Christians, it might go something like this:

The Day Before GENESIS

Before the Beginning there was absolutely nothing anywhere or — in others words — nothing nowhere. But, alas! In spite of this nothingness nowhere, on its reverse side there was something somewhere (we might refer to it as the "hint" of things to come) — we cannot say exactly where, because no frame of reference existed at that time. Obviously, however, "nothing nowhere" must have been a fraud, because something had been hiding behind it all along — somewhere. (Thus fraud is a perfectly natural phenomenon, and the rightful condition under which mankind and the Universe must exist.) But there was nobody around to care about such things as at that time. So there "it" reposed, bigger bigger than a bushel of loaded dice, and (lamentably), nobody has yet been sued, or otherwise prosecuted, in the matter.

This "something," in fact, was a great void, and this great void had apparently been an oversight, or perhaps the "original fraud," of nothingness. Even worse, the great void was filled to overflowing with stupidity, a living game of chance we generously personify here as Random Chance.

So, what did Random Chance do? It stood up, and cast a loaded die into the void, of course! And, Whamo! A snake eye!

The great void shook itself off and vomited up time and space, and the pre-universal time clock was set into motion like an overly inflated roulette wheel. With infinite quantities of both time and space locked up within the great void, pressure was bound to build. We cannot say why, exactly, for there are still some mysteries to pre-Universal history that not even WE can explain. But, given both the time and space to do so, the die popped with a really Big Bang. Thus our Universe came into being out of nothing except an imaginary die in the imaginary hands of Random Chance.

All was chaos, of course, but in time the laws of physics began exerting their force in bringing order to that chaos. Just who or what made the laws of physics relevant and binding is still the subject of debate — it was probably "Nothing Himself," but since it was a law, and so very cleaver, it was undoubtedly the original spark of nothingness that eventually evolved into the embryo of intelligence that eventually became the ACLU.

An indeterminate length of time later — with Random Chance unceasingly outdoing itself — there came to be the Solar System and the Earth, with creatures that (in the post-Genesis era), eventually referred to themselves "mankind." In time, religion evolved, and with it lawmakers and lawbreakers. From these lawmaker-breakers evolved lawyers. And then the ACLU evolved to correct the errors of religion and the original lawmakers.

Had the original chroniclers not said that God created the heavens and the earth, and the beasts of the field? — and that man had been created in God's own image, and woman from Adam's rib?

These things were patently untrue, of course. And no wonder! Not one of the writers of Genesis possessed a university degree. Nary a one was a scientist nor lawyer! In fact they didn't even have journalism degress.

Genesis had failed to even mention the Big Bang, and erroneously attributed all of creation to the Divine and Intelligent Design of God. And have not scientists looked beyond the Big Bang and determined that there was nothing at all behind it? Was not the Big Bang just a random, explosive, act of nature?

Didn't Darwin advance the theory of evolution to the satisfaction of modern scientific thought? — proving, of course, that man was not the result of creation, or an Intelligent Design, but the result of natural selection?

But people still believed in God even after science had proven that Genesis and the Bible had failed to mention all the scientific data that is now available — thus the majority of the people continue in error and must be corrected.

Thank Nature, and natural selection! for delivering us into the enlightened influences of the ACLU! Amen!

WE'RE STILL IN THE MIDST OF MONKEY TRIALS!

Pridger finds it quite amazing that eighty years after the famous Scopes "monkey" trial of 1925, that we still have a problem in our public schools when it comes to teaching the natural sciences. Incredibly, the conflict is still between those who believe evolution science is the last word in how we got to where we are today (i.e., the gospel truth), and those who believe that God planted Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden as his crowning act of Creation on a certain day in time, some several thousand years ago (as related in the Gospels).

The question is, perhaps, whether the idea of an Intelligent Design is more or less "monkey-like" than the idea of one long, straight, unbroken chain of life with no Ultimate cause. Or whether any such long unbroken chain (or any number of chains, for that matter), could be the result of an Intelligent Design at work rather than an unplanned random progression that just happened to favor some creatures and leaves others behind — stuck, so to speak, in one of our earlier states of development. Shouldn't the teaching in our public schools reflect a broader range of possibilities than a single scientific hypothesis which is admittedly full of holes and missing links?

The wonders of modern science are truly mind-boggling, and certainly deserve our awe and respect. What would the learned of only two centuries ago think of modern telecommunications, computer technologies, and medical sciences? It's pretty difficult for Pridger to fathom even now that the billions of radio, TV, and microwave, signals present in every cubic inch of space around our planet can have all the things that everybody watches and listens to daily as a matter of course — and how millions of people can communicate from any place on the globe to any other place on the globe, or even outer space, with a little battery powered cell phone without the signals getting all mixed up in transit? 

These awesome technologies have become our everyday tools and entertainment mediums. Pridger doesn't understand how it all works, but does allow that it has all come about through processes of Intelligent Design on a human scale.

Yet, in spite of these amazing things, Pridger suspects that mankind, in all his scientific genius, is still quite a long way from universal knowledge. Other technologies may exist which are as baffling or undreamed of today as our telecommunications would have been to our distant forefathers. Perhaps spiritual resources and whole undreamed of realms of cosmic tools, and the mechanics of psychic phenomenon discovered. Perhaps the "technology" of the soul of man will eventually be laid bare to scientific scrutiny.

Today we may be as ignorant and unaware of some signals passing before our faces as still existent stone-aged tribes living in isolation are of the invisible radio and TV signals showering all about their heads, shoulders, and grass huts.

Actually the problem we see in the modern day monkey trial runs considerably deeper than the setting of science curricula in public schools, and it isn't strictly a religion vs. science problem. It's very much a political animal. It boils down to "Who runs the country and sets the agenda in the land of the free and home of the brave? Is it the majority, or a small, but powerful and well funded, coalition of minorities?"

Remember, the lawyers at the ACLU, and the thought police at the ADL are not preaching scientific knowledge. They are preaching abandonment of our national character, and repudiation of the very principle that there can be such a thing as "God-given rights." Official acknowledgement of God-given rights, you know, constitutes a religious component of our government, and that (I'm sure the ACLU would agree), constitutes an official endorsement of a specific religion — one that believe in God.

The waters are considerably muddled in the evolution vs. intelligent design debate, by both religionists and secularists. The confusion of battle tends to do that — to polarized embittered and embattled forces — forces possessed of belief systems they believe to be mutually exclusive. Too many forget that the battle is merely a small part of a larger war.

It's part of a cultural war which Christian Americans, as the numerical majority, are losing hands down. The core issue, as Pridger sees it, boils down to the question, is pure government (aided and abetted by the ACLU and their allied groups) the closest thing to a Supreme Being we will be allowed to officially acknowledge, or does God still reign above all nations? Can the people, with their government as guarantor, rest assured that their God-given rights will be protected, or will the doctrine of inalienable, God-given, rights die upon the contrived altar of separation of church and state (leaving us with pure tyranny on the march, with no acknowledged Higher Law to mitigate its powers)?

Pridger, neither strictly religionist nor secularist, brings another perspective to the evolution vs. Intelligent Design debate. What, for instance, if evolution itself is the result and process of "intelligent design?" Perhaps we are still in the seventh day of Creation. Could both evolutionists and Creationists be right? Isn't evolution merely an ongoing process of growth and development? Isn't growth and development a creative process?

In this creative, evolutionary, process, the only disagreement would be wither it is the result of an intelligent design of a Higher Power, or merely a random succession of happy happenstance that somehow falls randomly into position and works. The purpose of scientific investigation, in either case, would remain the same — that is, to provide a better understanding of natural processes and just how things do work.

The powerful forces intent on removing any and every expression that can be interpreted as "religious" from the nation's public arena and education system apparently really do not care about science, education, or religion. From Pridger's point of view, they appear to be nothing but spoilers who make a profession out of exploiting divisions in society for their own ends, usually under the cloaks of some sort of progressive altruism.

Already the religious majority has been brow beaten into a state of mostly passive submission to the will of a well funded minority able to raise the stakes higher than the table owner can bear through threats of litigation. When it comes to such things as prayer in school, the posting of the Ten Commandments, or nativity Christmas displays on public property, the majority has to realize that, not only do they not rule, but they no longer possess a significant voice at all on such matters. Now the spoilers are telling us, in effect, "There will be no indirect hint of religious thought injected into any public school curriculum!"

Most of our public schools have been teaching evolutionary theory for more than a century — and, of course, it is taught as accepted scientific fact rather than theory. Fundamentalist Christians, of course, have never been fond of this. But evolutionary science is taught anyway, whether they like it or not — and most of their children are required to attend those schools whether they like it or not.

Prayer has been banned. The Ten Commandments are banned. All religious expression in the classroom has been banned. Nativity scenes and religious Christmas carols have been banned. But the spoilers still aren't satisfied. They don't want to allow that there could possibly have been an intelligent design, or "Intelligent Designer," behind the wonders with which we are confronted.

Creationism hasn't been taught in our public schools for a century or more. Nor can Creation Science, or Scientific Creationism be mentioned lest some atheist parent be offended and outraged. Such things can't be mentioned because of their obvious religious connotation. So some religious minded people decided that maybe they could use the term "Intelligent Design." That would seem to sound secular and inoffensive enough. But it outrages the spoilers who have appointed themselves as the epitome of intelligent interpretation of all things religious, scientific, and political.

The fact that we still have a serious problem here is itself evidence that the theory of evolution may have some serious flaws — at least we haven't evolved very far since 1925. Back in 1925, the United States could boast of being one of the most literate nations on earth. Today we have a generally acknowledged education crises on our hands.

Ironically, the advent of increasing numbers of "functionally illiterate" high school graduates is not the result of religious fundamentalists having too much to say in matters of education. In fact, the opposite seems the case. Our educational establishment has been firmly under the control of progressive intellectuals for well over a century, and the federal government, with its brick and mortar separation of church and state, has had a progressively direct role in making our public school system what it has become. There's nothing at all to brag about here. In fact, the history of federal involvement in public education, and its Department of Education, also seems to be the history of the decline of educational excellence in our public school system.

The fact is, evolution seems to be a two way street. When the wrong classes of people take on the roll of political and educational leadership, the evolutionary processes become processes of social regression. We can clearly observe this in America today, where political and social institutions supposedly conceived to advance the human condition actually hasten decay and retrogression, while calling it progress.

Pridger doesn't claim to know just how God went about Creation. He merely suspects that Creation, which has obviously included epochs of incredible destruction and regeneration, is an on-going affair, and that humankind is probably just another transitory experiment in the endless cosmic progression. Intelligent design? It appears somewhat obvious to Pridger that humans are not the epitome of intelligence in the Universe, and that somewhere out there there is an Intelligence that surpasses the combined intellect of all the earth's lawyers and scientists combined a hundred billion times over. Of course, Pridger may be wrong. Maybe the lawyers at the ACLU and like-minded organizations do have a monopoly on intelligence. Maybe intelligent design is strictly the prerogative of establishment educated scientists and computer programmers.

In any case, Pridger also suspects that the spoilers have too high an opinion of themselves.

In the mean time, we have our petty squabbles about who will rule in what is supposed to be a democratic society — the largely ignorant majority, or a few intellectually puffed up spoilers who know they know better than the majority.

The conflict between creationists and evolutionists is superficial from Pridger's perspective. Those who prefer to let the Bible be the last word in all things are just as deserving of their opinion as those who believe that Darwin's theory explains it all.

As long as evolution continues, Creation is still an on-going natural process the way Pridge sees it. But what creationists call Creationism, Creation Science, or Scientific Creationism, is not "science" within the conventional meaning of the term. Creationists may call their beliefs science if they like, but scientists may be excused for rejecting the notion. The concept of Creationism is one thing, and scientific investigation is quite another.

Once again we must remind ourselves to define our terms and hold to accepted meanings. If we succumb to "slippery meanings" and Orwellian double talk, we've muddled all meaningful frames of reference. As Ezra Pound once observed, when the word is betrayed, all else is lost. A new word is always preferable to changing the universally understood meanings of common words. One graphic instance of this is the present controversy over the meaning of "marriage." Mankind has known what marriage is since the dawn of language and human civilization. Dictionaries have defined it, and there was no question as to its meaning until recently. Today, however, an attempt is being made to change the meaning of the word marriage to accommodate an aberrant, but increasingly politically powerful, minority. The result is muddled thinking — something that is, or ought to be, abhorrent to the scientific mind.   

Science is not religion, nor religion science. But there is nothing in science that betrays pure religion (as opposed to fundamentalist dogmatism) — unless one gets the terms mixed up and thinking becomes muddled. Science is man's investigation into the nature of things. It seeks irrefutable answers to the questions we have about the world around us. To confuse it with religion is like confusing the word love with sex or marriage with homosexual bonding or cohabitation. From a non-fundamentalist religious perspective, science seeks answers to the riddles of Divine Creation — basically, how "God makes things tick."  The religious scientist merely adds a dynamic which the non-religious choose not to consider — at least until they've managed get God under a microscope. To the atheistic scientist, the natural world is challenging enough without any religious dimension or consideration. But the platform upon which scientific research is conducted is, and ought to be, identical to both the religious and non-religious investigator alike.

Creationists are fond of saying "evolution is not fact." They're right, of course. It's a broad theoretical premise, partly born out by scientific observation, but not the last word in human knowledge of biological development. The "science" of biological evolution is fraught with probable error. Pridger, in all his ignorance, sees a lot of holes in the tapestry of the evolutionary progression currently taught as the last word in natural law. There isn't just one "missing link," there are an indeterminate number of missing links. In all probability, there are probably segments of several distinct chains that are being mistakenly hitched together in an attempt to make a whole. This doesn't invalidate the science, it merely means we haven't yet discovered all the answers. Perhaps we'll never discover even a significant fraction of them.

Another irony in the controversy of evolution vs. intelligent design is the fact that the more scientists discover of the complexities of biological systems (of genes, DNA, and such things), the more they are beginning to resemble the man-made complexities of computer sciences. As science delves ever deeper into the fundamental building blocks of life itself, and into such things as nano and gene technology, the more biological systems are seen to work, at least superficially, as man-made creations — as if somebody had miraculously figured it all out and put it all together.

Nano technology, of course, involves the basic building blocks of elements. Scientists are looking toward combining these building blocks with living cells, and thus make "living machines" as they might be termed. Something like little animals with programmable memories and tasks to perform, including self-replication, or reproduction. When man has mastered this task, he will have proven that he is somewhat god-like himself.

The scientific mind tends to be somewhat arrogant. Some people believe man is the only creature in the Universe capable of intelligent design. Complex man-made creations and technologies, like the natural biological systems of nature, are continually evolving. This is evolution fact, not theory. How does this evolutionary process proceed? It proceeds and develops through "intelligent design," of course.

Mankind is pretty small in spite of possessing at least an earthly monopoly on ego. As broad as our intellectual horizons are, our vantage point is a mere grain of sand on a vast beach, and the distant areas of the Universe upon which we fix our great telescopes are little more than the dark background of the interior of a much larger grain of sand on an even more vast beach. The Big Bang was a little pop in a much bigger space (you can take Pridger's word on that!). And there are undoubtedly other little pops going on out there. The "Universal Life Truth" is far beyond the comprehensive abilities of man. Not even the imagination is capable of taking in much more than the merest glimpse of the infinite possibilities of it All.

As for a glimpse of the Ultimate All — well, dream on... None of the masters of the highest "mysteries" (so far as Pridger is aware), have adequately explained anything without leaving a mysteriously inconclusive "tail" on their explanations. Metaphysicians have worked every subject to death and done no better. What we think of as our Universe is, in its turn, a grain of dust in a dust storm. And what lies beyond the dust storm? God only knows! And the nature of God is as mysterious now as when man first imagined Him. The laws of physics, as we know them, are probably little more than an insignificant footnote in the book of God's statutes.

Pridger calls this indefinable and unimaginable "Universal Living Truth" — this apparently, or obviously, "Intelligent Design," and the Designer without and within — God. A simple word that encompasses All — the known, the unknown, and the Unknowable. Others can call it beans, potatoes, or nature. It all depends upon how one defines his terms.

So, where does Christianity come into play in this grand scheme? The way Pridger sees it, Jesus has been attributed with authoring, or at least reiterating, a few pretty good rules to live by. Forget all the magic, mysticism, and mumbo-jumbo — to live by His teachings is to be Christian. Those rules are encapsulated in all simplicity in the Golden Rule — a rule, by the way, that seems (quite coincidentally), to have been handed down to all the world's major religions.

Is America a Christian nation? Unfortunately, no. But Pridger believes it was intended to be a Christian nation, and should have been one. Will it ever become a Christian nation? No. Certainly not as long as the ACLU and ADL have anything to say about it.

John Q. Pridger