Are Conservatives Descended From Apes?

(Written August 13, 2015)

for The Bold Pursuit

When liberal reporters decide to make conservatives look like monkeys in the eyes of the public, they often question them about their religious beliefs, and in particular, their beliefs about evolution.  Conservative politicians get much of their support from evangelical Christians, and many of those Christians take literally the Bible’s account of creation, an account that contradicts Darwin’s theory of evolution.

According to a large segment of that population, the world began about six thousand years ago, and on the sixth day of creation, God made Adam, after which He made Eve from one of Adam’s ribs, just as the Bible says.

This account seems so preposterous to many liberals that anyone who takes it literally is viewed as an anti-science buffoon, and therefore unfit to hold public office.

Even many Christians aver that the Biblical account is only symbolic, not a physical truth, but a spiritual one, and irrelevant to public policy.

My book, The God Paradigm, has little or nothing to do with politics, but I have sent copies of it to conservative figures such as Sarah Palin and Scott Walker, among others, because it offers all Christians a context in which to answer certain “gotcha” questions, including those involving evolution.

I believe firmly in the scientific method, but not in scientists who have adopted the unscientific view called by such names as natural materialism.  Natural materialism is not science.  It is a philosophy, but it governs much of current scientific thinking.  That philosophy holds that nothing exists except material things, and that everything in nature can be explained by other things in nature.  It dismisses any need for God.

There is plenty of evidence that natural materialism is not only wrong, it is illogical and unscientific.  One of the many arguments against natural materialism is the phenomenon we call “inward consciousness.”  Not only does nothing in science explain its existence, nothing in science can even define it.  It is, however, our direct experience of the spiritual dimension of reality, a dimension of much higher proportions than the physical.

Many other evidences of the spiritual realm abound, and they abound in the scientific literature.  Materialist scientists either ignore, or fail to recognize the significance of that large body of evidence.

For example, it is well known that the universe is so finely tuned to support life and technological civilization that were its parameters to differ by only an unimaginably tiny fraction, the universe would either suddenly collapse or evaporate into a subatomic mist.

In order to explain that fact, scientists had to imagine what the Bible already tells us, a context much larger than our universe.  The difference is that natural materialism describes a larger physical realm, to explain why our one universe among vast numbers of them can be a fluke which supports life.  This only kicks the can down the road, however, since it leaves open the question of why the multi-universe can support life.

If the Bible seems to be a strange explanation for life and reality, science has even stranger explanations.  The science of quantum physics is rife with controversial explanations of experimental results that seem to make no sense in physical terms, but make very good sense in spiritual terms.  Indeed, the Bible’s second verse concerns creation in terms that sound very much like quantum physics. 

“And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.”  (Genesis 1:2)

Quantum physics, according to some scientists, describes reality in terms of a formless condition which has no specific reality until perceived by a conscious mind.

My purpose here, however, is not to support or refute the Biblical account, but rather, to reassure any and all conservatives that they need not respond in summary form to “gotcha” questions which carry so many convoluted implications.  Instead, they might refer to the fact that there are many profound questions which science cannot answer, such as, why is there something instead of nothing?

For Christian politicians, the response I suggest goes something like this.  “Here are my religious beliefs as they relate to my political philosophy.  I believe that all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.  Also, I believe that Congress should make no law respecting an establishment of religion, nor prohibiting the free exercise thereof.”

Perhaps a liberal reporter might not recognize where those words come from.

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