Reasons To Believe - Spokane Chapter

July 2005 Newsletter

Table of Contents:

Chapter Meeting: Sunday July 17, 3-5 PM.

We invite you to attend our monthly meeting. A presentation is offered to the group, followed by discussion and questions, and we conclude with snacks and a little club business.

We always try to start and end our meetings right on time. If you need directions, don't be afraid to call the phone number below.

  • Date: July 17, 2005 (Sunday)
  • Time: 3 - 5 P.M.
  • Hosts: Dan and Cathy Bakken
  • Location: 13003 N. Miami Ct, Mead
  • Phone: 466-2693 (for directions, etc.)

Our Newest Apologist!

On the morning of June 12, Dan and I greeted our little girl, Yvonne Grace Bakken. That’s why there was no June newsletter or meeting – I didn’t think I would be up to it! I was right – I had to have a c-section. But we’re both doing well

Latest Poll on Evolution

These are some of the results of a nationwide Harris Poll of 1,000 U.S. adults surveyed by telephone by Harris Interactive® between June 17 and 21, 2005.

Almost two-thirds of U.S. adults (64%) agree with the basic tenet of creationism, that "human beings were created directly by God.

Other key findings include:

  • A majority of U.S. adults (54%) do not think human beings developed from earlier species, up from 46 percent in 1994.
  • Forty-nine percent of adults believe plants and animals have evolved from some other species while 45 percent do not believe that.
  • Adults are evenly divided about whether or not apes and man have a common ancestry (46 percent believe we do and 47 percent believe we do not).
  • 46 percent of adults agree that "Darwin's theory of evolution is proven by fossil discoveries," while 48 percent disagree.
  • Visit http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/050706/nyw130.html?.v=17 to read the full article.

The Catholic Church and Intelligent Design

Since 1996, when Pope John Paul II said that evolution (a term he did not define) was "more than just a hypothesis," neo-Darwinians have often said that the Catholic Church accepts evolution as compatible with faith. However, in an editorial in the July 7 New York Times written by Christoph Schönborn, the Roman Catholic cardinal archbishop of Vienna, he writes about both Pope John Paul’s and Pope Benedict’s positions on evolution and Intelligent Design.

Cardinal Schonborn comes right out and says, “Evolution in the sense of common ancestry might be true, but evolution in the neo-Darwinian sense - an unguided, unplanned process of random variation and natural selection - is not. Any system of thought that denies or seeks to explain away the overwhelming evidence for design in biology is ideology, not science.”

He backs up his assertion that the Catholic Church does not support evolution with quotes from Pope John Paul’s sermons, and with a section of the Catholic catechism, which says: "Human intelligence is surely already capable of finding a response to the question of origins. The existence of God the Creator can be known with certainty through his works, by the light of human reason." It adds: "We believe that God created the world according to his wisdom. It is not the product of any necessity whatever, nor of blind fate or chance."

Apparently, Darwinists are trying to make out the new pope, Benedict XVI, as an evolutionist, based on a sentence about common ancestry from a 2004 document of the International Theological Commission, which Benedict was head of at the time, and concluded that the Catholic Church has no problem with the notion of evolution.

Schonborn’s comments on the commission's document are interesting. Apparently, the commission cautions that the pope’s 1996 seemingly pro-evolution comments "cannot be read as a blanket approbation of all theories of evolution, including those of a neo-Darwinian provenance which explicitly deny to divine providence any truly causal role in the development of life in the universe."

Then Schonborn quotes Benedict XVI when he spoke at his installation as pope. He proclaimed: "We are not some casual and meaningless product of evolution. Each of us is the result of a thought of God. Each of us is willed, each of us is loved, each of us is necessary." This is a very anti-evolutionary statement!

Schonborn then goes on to say, “Scientific theories that try to explain away the appearance of design as the result of "chance and necessity" are not scientific at all, but, as John Paul put it, an abdication of human intelligence.”

Basically, Cardinal Schonborn has come out and said in so many words that neo-Darwinism is wrong and intelligent design is right, and that this conclusion is drawn not from faith, but from the evidence. It could even be that the cardinal got the new Pope’s approval to write this editorial.

Despite what many fundamental Christians may think about the Catholic Church in other matters, the largest Christian denomination is coming down on the side of ID, and that’s nothing to sneeze at. The cardinal’s title for his editorial says it all: “Finding Design in Nature”.

A Most Unscientific Response to ID

Last year, a book was published called Why Intelligent Design Fails: A Scientific Critique of the New Creationism, edited by Matt Young and Tanner Edis, published last year by Rutgers University Press. This book claims that intelligent design is made up of “grandiose claims without merit” and “a scientific mistake”. Thirteen different authors argue against intelligent design in fields such as biology, paleontology, cosmology and archaeology.

In the latest issue of Origins, this book was reviewed by Cornelius Hunter, intelligent design advocate, and author of Darwin’s God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil.

Mr. Hunter reviews Why Intelligent Design Fails, and says that “much of the criticism… does not seem fatal to ID”. For example, one author, Ian Musgrave, argues against the “poster child” of intelligent design, the bacterial flagellum. Musgrave agrees that the flagellum is irreducibly complex and therefore did not evolve gradually, but he argues that it could have evolved indirectly – its components existed elsewhere in the cell and could have been co-opted for use in the flagellum. This argument has been used against the bacterial flagellum before. However, ID advocates counter with the information that at least half of the flagellum’s parts are unique to this motor only. Besides, the problem of getting parts that were ‘evolved’ for different purposes to fit together well enough to move a cell at 10,000 RPM and higher simply, as Hunter says, “shifted the complexity problem upstream”.

Some authors acknowledge the low probability of evolution actually producing advanced life. Taner Edis writes, “it appears incredible that mere chance and necessity could give rise to intelligence”. Matt Young says that the evolution of complexity on earth “is no doubt improbable”. However, in Young’s attempt to counter this statement, he says, “we cannot rule out the possibility that there are other universes besides our own; and these too must be included in [ID’s probability] calculation”.

Another author in the volume, Victor Stenger, argues for the same point – that the universe’s fine tuning could simply be the luck of the draw, because there are many universes, and we just happen to live in the right one. Cornelius Hunter correctly evaluates this argument against intelligent design. “To dispose of the problems that ID grapples with, they call for faith in unknown, unprovable and unfalsifiable conjectures of other worlds. Given all the potential universes, with all their galaxies, anything becomes probable. No longer do we need theories that are likely, they merely need to be not physically impossible.”

Hunter’s review can be read online at http://www.grisda.org/origins/58037.pdf

Who We Are and What We Do: Your Local Reasons To Believe Chapter

We're here to answer your questions and help local Christians and churches get more answers about science and the bible issues.

  • We offer trained apologists and bring in national speakers to speak at local churches and other events to share these exciting discoveries.
  • We build alliances with churches, ministries, and groups to share the Reasons to Believe message.
  • We help Christians overcome their fear of science and equip them to use it as an effective tool in spreading the Gospel.
  • We reach out to skeptics and non-believers with gentleness and respect, encouraging them to evaluate their worldviews.

Contact Information:

For more information about the Reasons To Believe Spokane Chapter, contact:

  • Phone: Dan Bakken (509) 466-2693
  • Email:

  • Web Page: www.reasons.org/chapters/spokane

  • Newsletter Editor: Cathy Bakken, cgbakken@yahoo.com

Resources To Know About:

www.reasons.org: Many useful documents are available, as well as their daily new "reason to believe" from the latest scientific research.

Reasons' Web Store: Buy the books you read about here! http://store.reasons.org/

Reasons Institute: RTB's online distance learning program. Take college-level apologetics courses. Contact RTB for information at 626-335-1480.

Reasons To Believe television show: Thursday mornings, 3:00 A.M. Pacific time on TBN. An archive of recent shows is at www.reasons.org.

Creation Update Web Radio Show: http://www.oneplace.com/ministries/creation_update/Archives.asp.