Chapter 1
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of scholarly wisdom, it was the age of scholarly foolishness. It was the epoch of unheralded scientific progress, it was the epoch of scientific dogma. It was the season of scientific light, the season of scientific darkness. There was an explanation for the origin of species, including the theory of common descent, and there were those who rejected it. This period was like recent periods in that some of the noisiest scientific authorities insisted on evolution being wholly accepted, for good or for evil, and not being subjected to comparisons from competing theories.
There was a king with an australopithecine jawbone and a queen with a pseudogene identical to a chimp's sitting on the throne of natural science. And there was a lowly scholar with evidence of extremely complex cell systems on the lower throne of intelligent design.
It was the year of our Lord two thousand and eleven. Spiritual revelations had been conceded to humans throughout history that God created mankind. Mr. Darwin had recently attained his two-hundredth birthday, a birthday heralded by the sublime announcement of a half fish and half tetrapod fossil named Tiktaalik discovered in the Canadian tundra. Even though Darwin had been laid to rest over 200 years ago, evolutionists rapped out their message, just as they had done this very year last past. Mere messages in the evolutionary order of events have lately come to the people from a congress of evolutionary scientists, messages which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the variety of the religious brood.
Intelligent design, less favoured on the whole as to matters scientific than its evolutionary sister, rolled with exceeding smoothness downhill, making arguments for intelligence and advancing it. Under the guidance of her overlords at the National Center for Science Education, evolutionism entertained herself with such “humane” achievements as sentencing ID to have its hands cut off, its work deemed unscientific, and its publications burned because it had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of royal evolutionists which passed by in review. It is likely enough that, rooted in the dark hallways of university natural science departments, there was growing resentment, discussion of when ID was to be put to death. ID was a movement already marked by the National Center for Science Education as unscientific, a movement to be brought low and sawn in two, to be placed into a sack and a knife thrust into it. It is likely enough that in the rough houses adjacent to universities, IDers there were sheltered from the evolutionary dogmatism of that very day, relegated to the pseudoscience mire by their punitive overlords. But those IDers, though they worked unceasingly, worked silently, and the evolutionary establishment did not hear them as they went about with muffled tread. Rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be traitorous.
In science, there was scarcely any mention of the evidence for design, just much evolutionary boasting. Mention of daring predictions of fossil finds, biological homologies, and genetic information, took place in science rooms every night. Meanwhile university scholars rejecting common descent were cautioned not to come out with their views before gaining tenure. The university IDer in the dark was an evolutionist Kool-Aid drinker in the light, but, being once recognised and challenged by his fellow faculty members, was shot out the university doors and forced to go away. University departments are waylaid by evolutionists who wish to shoot ID dead. Not wanting evolution to get shot dead itself by the religious community, and recognizing their failure to demonstrate macroevolutionary processes with certainty, they called on the magnificent potentate, Judge John E. Jones III to stand and rule on their main competitor, Intelligent Design.
Evolutionists in Dover fought battles with the ID, and the majesty of the law fired blistering questions, loaded with lawyer’s tricks and leading questions. Prosecutors snipped off pieces of the bacteria flagellum and argued that it was still functional. Meanwhile, university natural science departments went in search of contraband ID, as evolutionists fired accusations at the IDers, and IDers defended their views against the mob, and nobody outside of the scientific establishment thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, evocations of Judge Jones’ ruling, ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; fueling long rows of accusations of ID as being re-packaged creationism, a mere scientific chimera. They ended the career of a faculty IDer on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, rejecting ID papers by the dozen, and now burning Signature in the Cell at the door of the National Center for Science Education; to-day, attacking the credentials of anyone who supports ID, and tomorrow preaching that it is not scientific to believe that there is evidence of intelligent design in nature.
All these attacks, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the year of our Lord two thousand and eleven. And now the evolutionists work unheeded; with the large jaws of scientific and judicial dogma, they carry their appointed dominance with a high hand. Thus in the year two thousand and eleven did they conduct their greatnesses, proposing that myriads of creatures big and small evolved from a common ancestor along Darwin’s evolutionary tree of life that lay before them.
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. It was the age of scholarly wisdom, it was the age of scholarly foolishness. It was the epoch of unheralded scientific progress, it was the epoch of scientific dogma. It was the season of scientific light, the season of scientific darkness. There was an explanation for the origin of species, including the theory of common descent, and there were those who rejected it. This period was like recent periods in that some of the noisiest scientific authorities insisted on evolution being wholly accepted, for good or for evil, and not being subjected to comparisons from competing theories.
There was a king with an australopithecine jawbone and a queen with a pseudogene identical to a chimp's sitting on the throne of natural science. And there was a lowly scholar with evidence of extremely complex cell systems on the lower throne of intelligent design.
It was the year of our Lord two thousand and eleven. Spiritual revelations had been conceded to humans throughout history that God created mankind. Mr. Darwin had recently attained his two-hundredth birthday, a birthday heralded by the sublime announcement of a half fish and half tetrapod fossil named Tiktaalik discovered in the Canadian tundra. Even though Darwin had been laid to rest over 200 years ago, evolutionists rapped out their message, just as they had done this very year last past. Mere messages in the evolutionary order of events have lately come to the people from a congress of evolutionary scientists, messages which, strange to relate, have proved more important to the human race than any communications yet received through any of the variety of the religious brood.
Intelligent design, less favoured on the whole as to matters scientific than its evolutionary sister, rolled with exceeding smoothness downhill, making arguments for intelligence and advancing it. Under the guidance of her overlords at the National Center for Science Education, evolutionism entertained herself with such “humane” achievements as sentencing ID to have its hands cut off, its work deemed unscientific, and its publications burned because it had not kneeled down in the rain to do honour to a dirty procession of royal evolutionists which passed by in review. It is likely enough that, rooted in the dark hallways of university natural science departments, there was growing resentment, discussion of when ID was to be put to death. ID was a movement already marked by the National Center for Science Education as unscientific, a movement to be brought low and sawn in two, to be placed into a sack and a knife thrust into it. It is likely enough that in the rough houses adjacent to universities, IDers there were sheltered from the evolutionary dogmatism of that very day, relegated to the pseudoscience mire by their punitive overlords. But those IDers, though they worked unceasingly, worked silently, and the evolutionary establishment did not hear them as they went about with muffled tread. Rather, forasmuch as to entertain any suspicion that they were awake, was to be traitorous.
In science, there was scarcely any mention of the evidence for design, just much evolutionary boasting. Mention of daring predictions of fossil finds, biological homologies, and genetic information, took place in science rooms every night. Meanwhile university scholars rejecting common descent were cautioned not to come out with their views before gaining tenure. The university IDer in the dark was an evolutionist Kool-Aid drinker in the light, but, being once recognised and challenged by his fellow faculty members, was shot out the university doors and forced to go away. University departments are waylaid by evolutionists who wish to shoot ID dead. Not wanting evolution to get shot dead itself by the religious community, and recognizing their failure to demonstrate macroevolutionary processes with certainty, they called on the magnificent potentate, Judge John E. Jones III to stand and rule on their main competitor, Intelligent Design.
Evolutionists in Dover fought battles with the ID, and the majesty of the law fired blistering questions, loaded with lawyer’s tricks and leading questions. Prosecutors snipped off pieces of the bacteria flagellum and argued that it was still functional. Meanwhile, university natural science departments went in search of contraband ID, as evolutionists fired accusations at the IDers, and IDers defended their views against the mob, and nobody outside of the scientific establishment thought any of these occurrences much out of the common way. In the midst of them, evocations of Judge Jones’ ruling, ever worse than useless, was in constant requisition; fueling long rows of accusations of ID as being re-packaged creationism, a mere scientific chimera. They ended the career of a faculty IDer on Saturday who had been taken on Tuesday; now, rejecting ID papers by the dozen, and now burning Signature in the Cell at the door of the National Center for Science Education; to-day, attacking the credentials of anyone who supports ID, and tomorrow preaching that it is not scientific to believe that there is evidence of intelligent design in nature.
All these attacks, and a thousand like them, came to pass in and close upon the year of our Lord two thousand and eleven. And now the evolutionists work unheeded; with the large jaws of scientific and judicial dogma, they carry their appointed dominance with a high hand. Thus in the year two thousand and eleven did they conduct their greatnesses, proposing that myriads of creatures big and small evolved from a common ancestor along Darwin’s evolutionary tree of life that lay before them.
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