Witchvox Article

Author: Eldyohr
Posted: January 24th. 2004
Times Viewed: 6,904

One does not have to look very hard to find a vehicle displaying the Darwin emblem in proud fashion, and more than a few of these vehicles belong to my fellow Wiccans. Darwin has been claimed as some sort of personal cynosure by many Pagans, largely in rebellion against the patriarchal regime of the Abrahamic religions. What is perhaps not clearly evident is that Wicca is, or rather should be, a creationist religion. The simple reason for this is that, as I will demonstrate in this paper, the evidence against evolution and for creation is so strong that almost no scientist puts stock in the now defunct theory of Darwinian evolution. Submitting to a creationist view does not entail one to hold that "God" created the universe in the Christian fashion. Rather, the Goddess has given birth to the universe, which exists as an emanation of Herself. The Goddess and the God of the Wiccan faith are the children of the Cosmic Mother, maintaining the universe in their cyclic love. Let us now explore the many evidences, which should lead us to embrace the theory of the Cosmic Goddess as the intelligent designer of our universe.

There exist two types of evolution: microcosmic and macrocosmic. Microcosmic evolution simply describes the abilities of various life forms to adapt to their environment and is accepted universally. Macrocosmic evolution proposes that life began in the "primordial soup" devoid of intelligent cause and is the source of contention between evolutionists and creationists. It is important to recognize the difference between the two as creationists do not deny microcosmic evolution.

It is not well understood that the only real evidence for or against evolution is the fossil record as every other argument is based solely on what could have been. Two evolutionists, including Darwin himself, admit this fundamental problem. Darwin asks, "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and greatest objection, which can be urged against my theory," (Darwin, 280). Even the stoic evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould writes, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodules of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, and not the evidence of fossils," (Gould, 14). The fossil record includes two constituents that do NOT mesh with evolution: 1) Stasis. Most species appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappeared; morphological change is limited and directionless. 2) Sudden appearance. In any area, a species does not rise gradually; it appears all at once and fully formed. The evidence of the fossil record, the only tangible measure of evolution, is decidedly against the theory of evolution.

The evidence of the genetic code is a problem for evolutionists. Creationists reason that there are real limitations to evolutionary change that are built into the genetic code of every living being. Changes within this structure indicate design for each major category of life. The sudden appearance of life forms, as indicated by the fossil record, suggests that the DNA code for each species is unique and strengthens the case for a supernatural intelligence as the Creatrix. The greatest problem for evolutionists is not "missing links" but an explanation for the origin of complex new systems of genetic information.

Not only was the first living cell exceedingly complex, but higher forms of life are even more complex. If the genetic information could exceed that of a volume in the Encyclopedia Britannica, the information in the human brain is greater than the Library of Congress. If it takes an intelligent cause to produce the simple first life form, no less is needed for human life. The increase in information encoded in the DNA strand requires intelligence just as surely as did the original code to produce life. Indeed, if Darwin's analogy proves anything, it shows the need for intelligent intervention to produce new life forms. The principle of uniformity leads unhesitatingly towards this conclusion. Since evolution does not allow for the creation of new life forms, and the fossil record shows that new life forms do appear, even Darwin would agree that an intelligent cause is needed to produce these new life forms.

Macro evolutionary changes demand large scale changes from one type of organism to another and evolutionists argue that this occurred gradually over a long period of time. One serious objection to this view is that all functional changes from one system to another must be simultaneous. Changing the size of a piston in a car requires simultaneous changes in the cam shaft, block, and cooling systems; otherwise the new engine will not function. Likewise, any change from one species to the next requires major changes throughout the body systems of the animal and all these changes must occur simultaneously or blood oxygenation will not go with lung development, will not match the nasal passage and throat changes, automatic breathing reflexes in the brain, thoracic musculature, etc, etc. Gradual evolution can not account for this and has been able to make no valid response.

Chemical evolutionists, and many Pagans, have held the belief that life emerged from some kind of "Primordial Ocean." The basis for this thought is the experimental work of Harold Urey and Stanley Miller. They showed that the basic building blocks of life, amino acids, can be obtained from purely chemical elements by natural laws without intelligent intervention. By passing an electrical charge through cases containing hydrogen, nitrogen, ammonia, and carbon dioxide they produced these fundamental elements of life. The theory is that shortly after the earth was cooled enough to allow it, the combination of these elements developed into DNA chains and finally into cells. This process is said to have taken billions of years. There are several serious flaws with this work and its theory. 1) These experiments involved illegitimate investigator interference. Why are certain gases, such as hydrogen, included, while other gases, such as oxygen, are not? Is this not an intelligent choice based upon the assumption of what will work together to produce the desired results? Why did they choose to pass an electrical charge through it and did they not design the holding tank? Several elements of intelligent intervention occurred. 2) Two crucial conditions are now known to have been different. Since the experiment will not work with oxygen present, it was assumed that the early earth's atmosphere had no oxygen, but this is now known to be false. That fact, in itself, is sufficient to falsify the experiment. To further this objection, chemical evolutionists admit that chemicals in the concentrations of the experiment are not found anywhere on earth. The whole primal soup theory has not a shred of evidence in its favor, though its motif as a myth is important to Pagans. 3) The experiment did not take into account earth's destructive forces, such as oxygen, which would have destroyed the whole process. The energy needed for the experiment, if provided by the sun's rays and cosmic radiation, would do severe damage to the very substances which they were supposed to jump-start. 4) Evolutionists have never been able to show any mechanism that can harness the energy to do the work of selecting amino acids and sorting out which will build each gene to develop a living organism. A battery does no good without a flashlight to harness its energy.

Evidence is lacking for evolutionary origin, but there is positive evidence for intelligent design. Keep in mind that intelligent design does NOT mean God; in point of fact, we see it as the realm of the Creatrix. The kind of evidence that indicates intelligent causes of life is called specified complexity. Since we know that complex messages always come from an intelligent source, it remains only to see whether a cell contains an intelligent message. A chunk of quartz has complexity, but not specificity. A chain of polypeptides is complex, but lacks a message. Only a living cell has both specificity and complexity and communicates a clear message. That message is unraveled as our DNA molds us into our individual (physical) selves. Therefore, a living cell calls for intelligent design. What could explain the sudden appearance of life and also provide for the informational organization of living matter? If we apply the principle of uniformity, the only cause we know to routinely do this kind of work is intelligence. The cell represents, in many cases, irreducible complexity that can not be accounted for by the small incremental changes proposed by evolution. Darwin admitted, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possible have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break is down," (Origin of Species, 154). Darwin unwittingly predicted his theory's future demise. Michael Behe's book, Darwin's Black Box, provides resounding evidence that cells and life could not have evolved without intelligent design. He states in his book, "No one at Harvard University, no one at the National Institute of Health, no member of the Academy of Sciences, no Nobel Prize Winner - no one at all can give a detailed account of how the cilium, or vision, or blood clotting, or any complex biochemical process might have developed in a Darwinian fashion." Other examples of irreducible complexity that Behe points out include aspects of DNA reduplication, electron transport, photosynthesis, etc, etc.

It is also a false premise among many that the universe has always been. Strong evidence exists to show a definite beginning, pointing almost exclusively to the Big Bang. Again, subscribing to the Big Bang theory is perfectly compatible for Wiccans who hold that the Cosmic Goddess gave birth to the universe. Traditionally cosmic evolutionists have held that the universe has always existed based on the first law of thermodynamics, which states that energy can not be created or destroyed. Creationists hold this law to mean that the actual amount of energy in the universe remains constant. In other words, the energy inherent in the universe emanates from the Cosmic Goddess, fulfilling the first law of thermodynamics. Furthermore, belief in an eternal universe breaks the principle of causality. Even the great skeptic, David Hume, states, "I never asserted so absurd a proposition as that anything might arise without a cause," (Hume, 1:187). Though he himself is not a theist, Robert Jastrow, founder and former director of NASA's Goddard Institute for Space Studies, has summarized evidence for the creation of the universe in his book God and the Astronomers. Perhaps the most significant piece of evidence is the second law of thermodynamics, which states that the amount of usable energy in the universe is decreasing. This law shows that an eternal universe would have run out of usable energy or reached a state of total disorder, and since it has not, it must have had a beginning. Keeping the first two laws of thermodynamics in mind, consider the following. If the overall amount of energy in the universe stays constant, but we are running out of usable energy, then what we started with was not an infinite amount, which means that the universe must be finite, which implies creation. It now appears that all galaxies are moving outward, as if from a point of origin, and that all things were expanding faster in the past than they are now. When an astronomer looks through a telescope out into space, he is actually looking into the past. For more information, read Timothy Ferris' The Whole Shebang. Current astronomy indicates that the universe was expanding much more rapidly in the past than it is now, which lends further support to the idea of the big bang. Another line of evidence that the universe began is the cosmic radiation background. This radiation has been found to come from everywhere. Robert Jastrow asserts, "No explanation other than the Big Bang has been formed for the fireball radiation. The clincher, which has convinced almost the last doubting Thomas, is that the radiation discovery by Penzias and Wilson has exactly the same pattern of wavelengths expected from the light and heat produced in a great explosion."

I have systematically presented the evidence against evolution as it currently stands in the scientific community. The purpose of such a paper is to help Wiccans realize the truth about our universe; it was created by the Cosmic Goddess. To be a creationist does not imply belief in God. The fashionable symbol of Darwin, which decorates the vehicles of so many Pagans, is the relic of a broken philosophy. The Cosmic Goddess gave birth to the universe, which manifested itself as the Big Bang. This process produced our universe and the twin deities of the Goddess and the God, who maintain the universe through their cyclic love. The Goddess created this beautiful earth for Her children and it contains all the evidence of Her creation within. As Her children, we should embrace Her as Creatrix and stop clinging to the defunct philosophy of evolution. She created the earth from Her body and our very souls are made from the same ether. Our whole purpose in life is to realize the divine potentiality within us that we might rejoin the Goddess in the infinite. May we all find our way up the Tree of Life and back into the arms of the Goddess who calls to us. Blessed Be.

D.Hume, The Letters of David Hume, Vol I
C. Darwin, Origin of Species
R. Jastrow, "A Scientist Caught Between Two Faiths," __God and the Astronomers

Note: Many of the arguments put forth can be found directly out of the Baker Encyclopedia of Christian Apologetics by Norman L Geisler.

Ashtaroth

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Eldyohr

Location: Sterling, Virginia

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Bio: I am a full time nursing student at Old Dominion University for the US Navy. I currently live in Virginia Beach with my wife and two daughters. I have been a practicing Wiccan for a few years and do not adhere to a specific path or form of Wicca. I prefer instead to blend modern forms of Wicca with components of ritual magic, qabalah, philosophy, and personal experience. My current focus is on answering the difficult philosophical questions, which I believe threaten to undermine Wicca's stance as a valid religion.

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