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From the Evolution-Creation Front

Monkeys Fail Evolutionists

◆ “If enough monkeys pecked away at typewriters long enough,” the argument of evolutionists goes, “they could eventually write the complete works of Shakespeare.” Up to now they felt safe enough passing out this “scientific” pronouncement. Who could disprove it? But now this straw that they have been grasping at for so long has been demolished.

◆ Dr. William Bennett, a professor of physics at Yale University, specializes in designing computer programs to solve unusual scientific problems. He has applied the rules of probability to the typing monkeys, and programmed computers to simulate their pecking of the keys. The report in the New York “Times,” March 6, 1979, gives the computer’s verdict. Dr. Bennett calculates that “if a trillion monkeys were to type 10 randomly chosen characters a second it would take, on the average, more than a trillion times as long as the universe has been in existence just to produce the sentence: ‘To be or not to be, that is the question.’”

◆ The answer from the computer is, “It is not to be.”

“The Creationists Tend to Win”

◆ Some high-school teachers have adopted a dual approach to the teaching of the origin of the earth and life upon it. For two days they teach that the earth is billions of years old and man descended from earlier animals and ultimately single-celled organisms. In midweek they switch to an older concept of origins—creation. “The Wall Street Journal,” in its June 15, 1979, issue, comments on one instance of this: “The dual approach is well-received in this Eastern Iowa town of about 33,000 persons. ‘We want to know all the facts,’ one student says, ‘not just the ones the evolutionists want us to hear.’ Parents haven’t complained either.”

◆ In 1975, a Tennessee statute ordering equal time for “Creation as taught in the Book of Genesis” was struck down by the U.S. Court of Appeals. Such a law had catapulted the Bible into the classroom. Efforts to pass new legislation avoid this, for they seek to teach “the Creation as revealed by science.” So far, no state has passed any of these new bills, even though the Bible is not involved in the subject inasmuch as only scientific evidence is used as proof for creation.

◆ Creationists feel that they are not getting a fair shake. “It’s the Scopes trial reversed,” says Ronald Lee, a creationist who heads the Iowa State University chapter of Students for Origins Research. “Before, they restricted evolution,” he says. “Now, they’re restricting Creation.” Creationists with top teaching credentials in science travel to high schools and universities to debate the issue with evolutionist professors. One science teacher, Robert Sloan, professor of paleontology at the University of Minnesota, concedes that in these debates “the creationists tend to win.”

◆ “We win,” says Richard Bliss of Creation Research Institute, “because the scientific data for the Creation model is far better than the evolution model. They regress toward the religious; we stick to the science.” They have faith in fossils never found, whereas the creationists stick to the known facts of genetics.

◆ John Whitehead, a professor of anthropology at Ball State University in Indiana, defends evolution by a bit of unscientific characterization: “People, and especially undergraduate students, are willing to accept just about any crackpot scheme these days.”

◆ The vast majority of people, including undergraduates, are accepting evolution.

Smithsonian’s Evolution Exhibit Protested

◆ In May of this year the Smithsonian Institution’s Museum of Natural History unveiled a new permanent exhibition hall on evolution. Creationists contend that this use of government funds to indoctrinate the masses in the evolution religion violates the First Amendment. A suit was filed in federal court, the court ruled against the creationists, and an appeal is being taken.—The New York “Times,” May 19, 1979.