The Pendragon's Hall

Far from the news of war and presidential runs, a new issue has again moved to the forefront: the age-old question of origins. On Memorial Day, the Christian ministry Answers in Genesis launched its long-anticipated creation museum. So far as the gleeful Pendragon can ascertain, the opening went off without a hitch. Yet there has been fury over this from day one. Over a month ago, in the first Republican presidential debate, three men--Tom Tancredo, Mike Huckabee and Sam Brownback (all candidates going nowhere) dared to say they did not believe in evolution. Instant uproar from academia: These men want to lead the United States but they don't believe in evolution?! Preposterous?!! Given that the current theory of evolution did not originate until 1859, and only became widespread in the United States much later, one wonders how the country survived at all. When the helpful Pendragon dared to note that belief in origins, one way or another, was a private belief (however important to one personally) that should not be dragged into a political arena, I was told that people who don't believe in evolution are guilty of crimes against humanity. Look at George Bush after all--he has destroyed the world. Fine--let's really look at evolution's track record then, shall we? Darwin's disciples sent people to Australia with lists of wildlife that included the aborigines with instructions on how to hunt them, how to kill them, how to skin them and then how to mount them for inclusion in England's museums as "the missing link" between apes and man. The Tasmanian aborigines were wiped out by this crusade. Social Darwinism was used to justify the continuance of segregation in this country. Meanwhile, Hitler's philosopher of racism was based firmly on the ideal that one race had evolved ahead of all the other ones and needed to wipe them out--"survival of the fittest." Marx wanted to dedicate his book to Darwin and look at the bloody worldwide revolutions that still champion his doctrines. The Pendragon also does not believe in evolution (at least not as the origin of all life)--for one thing, the creation story makes as much, or more, sense than the evolutionary story. But even if I did, the reverse snobbery of intellectuals, who would surely protest a belief in creation as a litmus test for the presidency, is not attractive. And while Christianity has, regrettably, sometimes fostered discord and violence, so-called science and its evolutionary philosophy have been just as guilty. To Christianity may belong the bloodshed of the 16th and 17th centuries but to evolution and science belong the bloodshed of the bloody 20th-century. Ken Ham and his ministry have every right to present their beliefs to the society in large. I always hear that Christians should read anti-Christian literature because if their belief in God is real, it will survive the onslaught. Physician, heal thyself! If evolution is really true and the evidence for it is overwhelming, it will survive the latest attempt of the Christian community to fight the ostracism pushed on us since the Scopes Trial. Where's Clarence Darrow when you really need him?