"For us in the scientific community, I remind you that when we find an idea that's not tenable, that doesn't work, that doesn't fly, that doesn't hold water, whatever idiom you'd like to embrace, we'd throw it away. We are delighted."
These are the words of evolutionist of Bill Nye during a debate with creationist Ken Ham on February 4, 2014. His assertion is that scientists like him never hold to theories that are not supported by evidence. Concerning the theory of evolution, Nye claimed that he would gladly reject it if there were any evidence to disprove it. After listing several categories of such evidence, he said, "Bring out any of those things, and you would change me immediately."
Evolutionists like Bill Nye often make such claims about scientific evidence, but are they really open-minded, unbiased, and objective? Would Bill Nye change immediately if undeniable evidence surfaced that proved his belief in Darwinian evolution to be wrong? Would he and other scientists be delighted?
A situation that tests these claims has unfolded recently at California State University Northridge (CSUN). Mark Armitage, an electron microscope technician in the biology department, was fired from the university after presenting evidence from a certain dinosaur fossil that cannot fit into the timeframe required by the theory of evolution. Armitage discovered a large fossil from a triceratops horn during a dig at the Hell Creek Formation in Montana, and he found that the fossil contained soft tissue. The presence of this soft tissue proves that the horn cannot be more than a few thousand years old rather than 65 million years old as the theory of evolution requires. If the horn were millions of years old, then all of the original tissue from the living dinosaur would have been replaced by hard minerals. After Armitage published his findings and discussed them with students, the university fired him. Armitage is suing the university, and court documents state that one university official shouted at him, "We are not going to tolerate your religion in this department!"
The lofty ideals of the scientific community suggested by Bill Nye were absent in the biology department at CSUN, which is unfortunately typical among evolutionists. Armitage's discovery is just one of many that destroys the theory of evolution, but the mainstream scientific community continues to maintain this theory as a fact. Evolutionists are not delighted with these discoveries, but instead they seek to suppress them. They do not change immediately when faced with evidence to the contrary, but instead they remain stubbornly committed to an untenable theory.
One prominent evolutionary biologist, Richard Lewontin, was surprisingly honest in explaining the truth about evolutionists' view of evidence, and it is quite different from the usual assertions of evolutionists like Bill Nye. In 1997, Lewontin wrote in The New York Review:
Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.
In other words, Lewontin admits that before evolutionists accept evidence or draw conclusions, their first priority is to deny God. Any evidence that refutes the godless theory of evolution and supports the biblical account of creation must be rejected by evolutionists. Despite the claims of Bill Nye and others like him, they are not delighted, and they do not immediately change.
Dear Christians, we must be on guard against men whose first priority is to deny God. This is not just about the theory of evolution versus the Bible's account of creation. This is about any information that comes from men who are determined above all to eliminate God from the thinking of men. Beware of such men, for they are prominent in places of influence (educational institutions, government, news media, entertainment media, etc.). Follow the instruction of Colossians 2:8, which says, "See to it that no one takes you captive through philosophy and empty deception, according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary principles of the world, rather than according to Christ." Indeed, we must avoid the arguments of what is falsely called "knowledge" by those who deny the most important truth of all, which is God Himself (1Tim. 6:20; Heb. 11:6).
Stacey E. Durham