False Goals -- Solid Truth

by F. Yater Tant

It is amazing to discover how much of the world's great store of solid and demonstrated truth has come from the base and ignoble impetus of false goals. Ponce de Leon was led to Florida by his search for a nonexistent Fountain of Youth. Coronado made a long and fabulous journey through the plains of Kansas and the west, collecting a vast store of information about the area, all in search for the mythical Seven Cities of Cibola. Columbus would not have ventured on his great voyage of exploration had he not been looking for a new passage to the riches of India.

All of which simply leads into a few comments we want to make about an article by Garrett Vanderkooi. There can be little doubt that the acceptance of the evolutionary hypothesis by a vast number of those who embraced it was emotional rather than intellectual. They were not qualified by any stretch of the imagination to make a rational, intelligent analysis of the evidence for and against the proposition; they simply believed what they wanted to believe. Acceptance of the theory was an act of pure faith, and was motivated by the desire to find some basis on which God could be excluded from the universe. In all likelihood this motivation was subconscious and unrealized by most of those whom it influenced. But the first chapter of Romans is most explicit in assigning such motivation to those "did not like to retain God in their knowledge."

Thus, for nearly a century "evolution" was the fair-haired darling of certain ones who "professed themselves to be wise." Huge segments of the scientific world began generally to accept it as a settled and established fact. High school and college text-books began to speak of it much as they spoke of the rotundity of the earth and the movement of the planets. "Evolution" explained life upon this earth, in all its varied forms and manifestations. God was no longer needed; modern man had outgrown him. Divinity could be relegated to the folklore and mythology of ancient ignorance and superstition. Jehovah and Zeus and Jupiter could all occupy the same remote realm of primitive precursors of enlightened and liberated mankind. They belonged to the dim and ignorant childhood of the race. The marvelous development of "science" would soon have an explanation for all natural phenomena, and mankind would be freed from the shackles of ignorance which had fettered him for so many millennia.

And, lo! look what happened. The very field in which it was expected to find indisputable proof of the origin of life (biochemistry) now gives increasing and overwhelming evidence that there can be no explanation. No explanation, that is, apart from some initial action on the part of an intelligent Being! Not only so, but the more research is done in all related fields, the more it becomes apparent that science as such can NEVER come up with a satisfactory answer to the existence and perpetuation of life. Note this sentence from the Vanderkooi article, "The weakness of the evolutionary hypothesis is recognized and acknowledged by some members of the scientific community; it is become more common to find doubts and reservations concerning the theory expressed in the scientific literature."

Setting out to "prove" the non-existence of a Supreme Being, they now come up with more and more evidence pointing to just such an Intelligence. Seeking evidence for one point of view, they come up with evidence pointing in exactly the opposite direction. It has always been this way. In chasing after a will-of-the-wisp, one may catch sight of a fixed star. The cause of truth is often served by base and ignoble motivations. Ancient kings kept great numbers of men studying the stars. They did it in hope of discovering (and using to their own advantages) the powers of the celestial world. But out of these studies came a vast store of information in the field of astronomy. Chemists for centuries were subsidized by kings and men of great wealth in the hope they could discover the elixir of life and the philosopher's stone. They failed; but what a great debt the world owes to their studies. And so the "evolution-egomaniacs" have moved heaven and earth trying to prove the non-existence of God — and are uncovering a veritable mountain of evidence to the contrary. Truly, God "hath not left himself without witness." - Gospel Guardian, 1971

 

Other Articles by F. Yater Tant
Going Home
Authorized by a Well-Defined and a Clear-Shown Majority of Churches of Christ in Texas
Larimore and Tant