Evangelizing For Darwin: Dr. John West Reads From Stockholm Syndrome Christianity

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[00:00:12] Dr. John West: Why do so many Evangelical Christians evangelize for Darwin? Stay tuned. This is John West. I’m vice president of Discovery Institute and managing Director of its center for Science and Culture, which I co founded with with Steve meyer back in 1996. I have a new book out titled Stockholm Syndrome why Christian Leaders Are Failing and what We Can Do About It. My book isn’t just focused on science, but the misuse of science is certainly a key theme. I cover how science has been misused in such areas as sex, race, Covid and yes, debates over Darwin and intelligent design.

Chapter two of my book is titled Secularist Science Today. I want to read you a section from that chapter subtitled Evangelizing for Darwin. This section discusses why evangelicals like scientist Francis Collins seem so eager to defend Darwin and criticize those who think biology supplies evidence of intelligent design.

Evangelizing for Darwin why has Francis Collins been so insistent in trying to convince his fellow Christians to embrace Darwin? Why not simply accept the differences of opinion among Christians and focus more on reaching agnostics and atheists for Christ?

Or why not simply focus on the positive role Christianity has played in the origin and development of science?

I think I understand why. For Christians who place a high value on cultural acceptance, the Darwin holdouts in their midst are a continuing embarrassment. Being confused for one of them can taint your reputation or derail your career. So it’s far better to delegitimize them by never sharing a platform or engaging in debate with them, no matter what their credentials or how thoughtful their arguments.

I know the mindset and I’ve known a lot of fellow evangelical academics who think this way and see a fellow traveler in Collins, Francis Collins Interest in neutralizing Christians who raise scientific critiques of unguided evolution reaches back many years.

Pete Wenner, a political appointee in the George W. Bush administration, reported that he and Bush speechwriter Michael Gerson had met Collins for lunch at the White House to strategize about what they called prominent Christians who were denying evolution, which we knew was anti science and we believed was discrediting to the Christian witness.

Thus was born Collins years long crusade to delegitimize fellow Christian Scientists, scholars and laypeople skeptical of Darwinian evolution or supportive of Intelligent design and biology.

In the forward to one book, Collins denounced Christians who questioned Darwinian evolution for peddling lies and promoting anti scientific thinking.

In the endorsement of another book, Collins gravely warned that intelligent design is not only bad science but is potentially threatening. In other Deeper ways to America’s future.

As part of his efforts, Collins expressed a desire to bring together leading scientists, theologians and pastors in order to develop what he called a new theology.

That led to his founding of the BioLogos foundation with physicist Carl Giberson and biologist Darrell Falk. The primary goal of the foundation wasn’t to witness to atheists or defend Christianity against scientific materialists. It was to change the minds of evangelical Christians who refused to get with the program and embrace Darwinian evolution.

The creation of BioLogos was part of a multi year initiative by the John Templeton foundation, which spent more than $20 million between 1996 and 2010 on projects that promoted theistic evolution as a major part of their mission. Starting in 2009, BioLogos convened a series of closed door gatherings of key evangelical Christian pastors, theologians, journalists and other opinion makers as part of its agenda to promote dialogue, which had been one of Collins stated goals.

But the range of scientific voices permitted at the meetings was sharply limited. Leading scientists and philosophers of science who were critical of neo Darwinism or supportive of intelligent design and biology were excluded.

Why? If Collins and other scientists had dialogued with scientists who held opposing viewpoints, wouldn’t that have benefited the cause of truth, exposing lazy or poorly considered arguments and evidence on either side of the discussion?

But instead of fostering open discussion of this kind, they went out of their way to quash any such opportunities.

Unfortunately, the effort to exclude critics of theistic evolution from the conversation was aided by many other leading evangelicals.

Tim Keller was probably the most influential evangelical Presbyterian minister in the United States at the time. The founding pastor of Redeemer Presbyterian Church in New York City, Keller was a beloved mentor to many evangelical leaders.

By all accounts, he was gracious, kind, and gave generously of his time to others. In the late 1990s, my wife and I had the opportunity to visit his church in Manhattan. Joining more than a thousand people for worship on a Sunday morning in the heart of one of America’s most important cities was inspiring.

Keller served as a minister in the theologically conservative Presbyterian Church in America. His denomination was on record as critical of Darwinian evolution.

Yet Keller was perhaps the person most responsible for giving Collins a one sided platform to promote theistic evolution among evangelical leaders.

The private meetings BioLogos put on to influence evangelical opinion makers were hosted by Tim Keller, and Keller’s glowing endorsement of BioLogos appeared prominently for many years on the BioLogos website.

Keller could have told Collins that he would only host the gatherings if Collins agreed to support real dialogue by including at least some Christian Scientists who disagreed with his view. But he didn’t. Keller wasn’t even willing to host a similar gathering that would bring evangelical opinion makers together to hear credible scientist who disagreed with Darwinian evolution. In late 2010, I invited him to do just that. I had identified a foundation willing to fund the event, and the center for Science and Culture, which I helped direct, would have handled all the logistics. I told Keller in my letter that we are happy to schedule a meeting at a time and place that works for your schedule.

When Keller’s assistant eventually responded, she indicated that as much as Tim would like to do this, we have looked and don’t see a way that he could fit it in for at least the next couple of years.

This was essentially a brush off, despite the assistant adding that the idea does appeal to him, so maybe at a later time something could work out.

I had not limited the invitation to a specific time period. He could have named any time he liked, however far into the future.

Instead, Keller participated in another private gathering for BioLogos. Keller wasn’t the only prominent evangelical to assist Collins in his effort to silence debate over Darwinism among Christians.

Evangelical scholar Michael Cromartie was vice president of the influential Ethics and Public Policy center in Washington, DC.

Starting in 1999, he organized a series of private gatherings for journalists to hear from leading voices in the faith community.

The idea was to help journalists better understand people of faith so their reporting would be accurate and not filled with caricatures.

When covering science and faith issues related to evolution, however, Cromartie only invited speakers who were proponents of theistic evolution.

I knew Cromartie personally, and we were on friendly terms for many years. After he invited the first theistic evolutionist to talk about evolution and intelligent design at one of his private meetings, I privately urged him to consider another event where actual proponents of intelligent design could speak for themselves. After all, if the goal was to disabuse journalists of their stereotypes, what better way than to allow them to hear directly from people they otherwise wouldn’t talk to?

At the time of our conversation, Mike told me that unfortunately, they wouldn’t be covering the issue of evolution again for the foreseeable future because he had to do the topics that the journalists wanted, and they could only do the evolution issue so many times.

Imagine my surprise when, less than a year later, Mike held another one of his meetings with journalists and the session largely focused on evolution again. This time the speaker was none other than Francis Collins himself.

A few years Later, Cromartie went a step further and accepted funding from the BioLogos foundation to bring a series of theistic evolution proponents to his private meetings with journalists. To my knowledge, Mike never tried to include a divergent point of view in in any of these sessions.

Mike was a good and decent man who did fine work in many areas. Tragically, he later died of cancer. I think, however, he shows how even otherwise fair minded people can be roped into embracing Stockholm syndrome Christianity but it wasn’t just individual evangelicals who helped marginalize anyone who dissented from theistic evolution. It was also evangelical institutions.

The Council for Christian Colleges and Universities is the organization representing many evangelical colleges and universities. In 2010, they held the International Forum on Christian Higher Education in Atlanta, Georgia, attracting over a thousand attendees. They invited Francis Collins to address the forum to promote theistic evolution and attack intelligent design.

No one was invited to present a different view.

Christianity Today has long been considered the flagship magazine for evangelical Christians, in part because it was originally founded by iconic evangelist Billy Graham. The magazine used to regularly cover critical scientific voices in the Darwin debate, but post Collins, it has largely embraced theistic evolution.

The same is true of InterVarsity Press, or IVP, one of the top evangelical Christian book publishers. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it published many books critical of Darwin and supportive of intelligent design, most notably the bestseller Darwin on Trial by Law professor Philip Johnson and the Design Revolution by mathematician William Dembsky. But Once Collins and BioLogos came on the scene, IVP pretty much shut the door to anything other than theistic evolution. This isn’t mere supposition. In an unguarded moment, one IVP editor told a prospective author that the publishing house was no longer interested in works from scholars who questioned neo Darwinism or favored intelligent design. Indeed, the editor baldly stated in an email that to reject neo Darwinism is to reject the modern synthesis, and I’m not interested in apologetic works that oppose this synthesis.

Another staff person at IVP later assured me that this editor had misspoken, but no more books favorable to intelligent design were forthcoming.

The modern theistic evolutionist rationale for excluding scientific views critical of Darwinism from faith evolution discussions seems to be that Darwinian theory constitutes the consensus view of science, and questioning that consensus view supposedly demonstrates that one is anti science.

But this way of thinking betrays a strikingly unsophisticated understanding of science.

The more you know about the history of the scientific enterprise, the more skeptical you are likely to be about equating the current consensus view of science with science itself. Science is a wonderful human enterprise, but scientists can be just as blinded by their prejudices as anyone else.

Far from being anti science, dissenting views in the scientific community help science thrive by counteracting groupthink and sparking debates that can lead to fresh discoveries. It’s not too much to say that today’s dissenting opinion in science may well turn into tomorrow’s scientific consensus.

So what is truly anti science is to claim that the consensus view of evolutionary theory is all that matters, or that anyone who dissents from modern evolutionary orthodoxy is guilty of opposing science.

Before theologians and pastors decide to reinvent their theology in order to make it consistent with undirected Darwinism, they first ought to make sure that undirected Darwinism is true. But that can’t be done by listening only to the so called consensus view. It also requires hearing the views of reasoned dissenters from the consensus.

Well, that’s my selection for my book. I hope you enjoyed it, or I hope it at least piqued your interest. Find out more about my book, Stockholm Syndrome Christianity at Amazon or other major booksellers. You can also go to the book’s website, StockHolmsyndroMechri Christianity.com that’s StockHolmsyndroMechi Christianity.com for ID the future. This is John West. Thanks for listening.

Visit us at idthefuture.com and intelligentdesign.org this program is copyright Discovery Institute and recorded by its center for Science and Culture.