Chariot’s Of The God’s?
George Burnside
Millions are saying. “Were here, aren’t we? Then we must have evolved by accident and chance.”
Others today, in increasing numbers are saying, “We’re here, aren’t we? Then we must be the descendants of spacemen who visited this planet long ago.”
And still others are saying, “We’re here, aren’t we? Then God must have created us.”
You may have heard the story of the man in New York City who was always walking around snapping his fingers. Someone asked him why he did it. “Oh,” he said, “it’s to keep the lions away.
“But there haven’t been any lions in New York City for many, many years.” To which he replied, with a hint of triumph in his voice, “Effective, isn’t it?”
Are any of us guilty of reasoning just as illogical? Do we spin impossible theories about our origins-and then point to the fact that we are here as proof that we are right?
Do we really believe that, given enough time, anything can happen? Do we really believe that if you give a monkey a typewriter and enough carloads of paper-and a long enough life-he could write a dictionary?
Do we really believe that a single cell, in some primeval ocean needed only time and chance to produce a living, breathing, intelligent man?
If I should tell you that a frog in an instant of time, could turn into a prince, you’d say it was a fairy story. But if I should tell you that a frog, in three hundred million years, could turn into a prince-would you say it was science?
Have we been telling fairy stories and becoming increasingly uncomfortable with them?
Dr. Carl Sagan, of Cornell University, has estimated that the chance of life itself evolving on just one planet-for instance, this earth would be roughly one chance in ten followed by two billion zeros. Do you understand that number? Neither do I. But I am told it would fill six thousand 190-page books just to write out those two billion zeros!
Do we still believe it happened?
Have we been snapping our fingers, satisfied that our theories work? Have look for the logic-or lack of it in our reasoning?
Almost everybody, it seems, believes in evolution. Why? Because they are told that everybody believes it. And almost everybody thinks the earth is very, very old. For the same reason. They are told that’s what everybody thinks.
Neanderthal Man, as you probably know, was discovered more than a century ago in a cave in the Neanderthal Valley near Dusseldorf, Germany. He was thought to be a semi-erect brutish sub-human. But it turned out that the man had simply been crippled with arthritis. It is claimed now that he lived somewhere between 25,000 and 100,000 years ago. And it is said that if he were dressed in a business suit, walking down one of our city streets, he would probably attract no special attention.
Anthropologists thought they had it all figured out. Man, they supposed, had descended through an apelike ancestor, Austrolopithecus, allegedly about two million years ago, and then through a near-man ancestor, Peking Man, claimed to have been about a half million years old, and then Neanderthal Man, still younger.
But then Richard Leakey upset the apple cart by discovering a skull even more modern than Peking Man in a deposit that is supposed to be nearly three million years old. And just how can modern man have descended from an ancestor much younger than he is? Can a child be born before its parent?
Dr. Louis Bounoure, Director of Research at the National Center of Scientific Research in France, calls evolution “a fairy tale for grown-ups.” Could he be right?
Indications are that evolution is slipping in the popularity ratings. Says John A. Keel, an alert observer of trends, “Today a very quiet revolution is taking place among scientists. The theory of evolution is losing ground, and new versions of the concept of cosmic creation are springing up. Man is too complex and too different to have simply sprung from a puddle of chemicals enervated by random light-process.” And he adds. “The process of creation is not a continuing one, much to the annoyance of the evolutionists. New species are not appearing on a large scale. Lightning bolts are no longer lashing at pools of ammonia.”
Is that a valid observation? Others, too, have noticed the unrest among scientists. John Weldon writes, “The frustration in the scientific community over the ‘big bang’ theory, and other ideas that have come and gone, is so intense that we find, here and there, a sheepish resort to a ‘creator’. Science News recently ran an article breathlessly propounding the ‘certain very special propensities without which we could not exist’ in the universe, and concluding that it seemed as if the universe knew we were coming. Though the article wistfully specified that the creation by-God theory would solve all the problems, this is not likely to be regarded as a breakthrough. And why not a breakthrough? He says, “Given the present unpopularity of God in scientific circles, most scientists approach nature and the universe from an evolutionary angle.”
Is that the trouble? Is creation unpopular not because it is unreasonable, but because God is unpopular? Are scientists afraid that God, if He were recognized, might make some demands, might make some moral choices necessary? Do they want to keep God as far away as possible?
Another thing. Do evolutionists really believe in evolution? Or are some of them sticking with the evolution bandwagon simply because they don’t want to believe that God created the earth as He says He did?
Listen to these startling words from Dr. George Wald, Harvard biologist, winner of the Nobel Prize. Several years ago he stated: “One only has to contemplate the magnitude of this task to concede that the spontaneous generation of a living organism is impossible. Yet here we are-as a result I believe, of spontaneous generation.”
What kind of reasoning is that from a Nobel Prize winner? But a year earlier Dr. Wald had stated what evidently was the real problem: “The reasonable view was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a philosophical necessity. Most modern biologists, having viewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation are left with nothing.”
The outstanding biologist D. H. Watson once spoke of the theory of evolution as “a theory universally accepted not because it can be proved by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.” And John Weldon, commenting on Watson’s statement, says, “In other words, if I face the alternative of believing a scientific impossibility or believing in the more sensible alternative of a supernatural creator, as a good, rational scientist, I choose to believe in a scientific impossibility!”
Do you see the dilemma? Creation or evolution. One or the other. No third position. Nothing else to believe.
But now that has changed. Erich Von Daniken, who captured the imagination of millions with his Chariots of the God’s? has provided a third position. Something else to believe if you don’t want to believe in either creation or evolution. Millions of people are finding an exciting alternative in the theory that we are descended from unidentified spacemen who visited our planet in the distant pash There isn’t a shred of proof for it, of course, but after all, we’re here. So it must have happened.
And Von Daniken’s theory, besides being exciting, has something else going for it. Like evolution, it makes no moral demands. It leaves the, life-style untouched. That appeals to the human heart!
Am I assuming too much? I don’t think so. Listen: to this amazing admission from the atheist Aldous Huxley, who has destroyed the faith of so many, “I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; Consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.” Quoted by Michael Green in Runaway World, Inter-Varsity Press, 1968:
Watch the trend, in the days ahead. Personally I expect to see many people changing bandwagons, more and more people forsaking evolution and signing on with Van Daniken. His high altitude speculations appeal to a restless, space-minded generation. They are sensational. They offer no visible threat. They demand nothing of anybody. Why bother to ask if they are true? We’re here, aren’t we?
The famed space scientist Wernher van Braun reacts in a much different way to the fact that we are here. He said recently, “I just can’t envision this whole universe coming into being without something like divine will.”
And he continued, “The natural laws of the universe are so precise that we have no difficulty building a spaceship to fly to the moon and can time the flight with the precision of a fraction of a second. These laws must have been set by somebody.” The National Enquirer, February 10, 1976.
King David reacted in a similar way when he contemplated his own existence: “I will praise thee: for I am fearfully and wonderfully made.” Psalm 139:14.
The prophet Isaiah said: “Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things.” Isaiah 40:26.
The apostle John said of Jesus, “He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not.” John 1:10.
David had no thought that our world evolved through long ages. He said simply, “By the word of the Lord were the heavens made; and all the host of them by the breath of his mouth. He spoke, and it was done; he commanded, and it stood fast.”‘ Psalm 33:6, 9.
The very first words of the Bible are so clear that a child can easily understand them: “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” Genesis 1:1.
I can’t help but think that God knew all about Darwin and Van Daniken when in His last call to men, He included these urgent words: “Worship him that made heaven and earth.” Revelation 14:7.
Again from Wernher van Braun in his recent interview: “Science and religion are not antagonists. On the contrary, they are sisters. While science tries to learn more about the creation, religion tries to better understand the Creator. Through science, man tries to harness the forces of nature around him, while through religion he tries to harness the forces of nature within him.”
The forces of nature within us. Trying to harness them. But most of the time not wanting to harness them. Hasn’t that been our trouble all along? Have, we had a problem of the intellect? Or only a problem of the heart?