Academic argues for multiple worldviews
Academic argues for multiple worldviews
Nancy Pearcey tells crowd that Darwinism has evolved into more than just a theory
Rachel Kyler - Northwest Florida Daily News - 5/8/2008 - original
NICEVILLE — Not religion pitted against science, but philosophy against philosophy.
In a truly liberal education system, that’s how academic Nancy Pearcey says educators would approach intelligent design and the theory of evolution.
Nearly 800 people attended Pearcey’s lecture Thursday at Okaloosa-Walton College on the foundation of Darwinism and its far-reaching implications in American culture.
A former agnostic and author of Total Truth, Pearcey studied at L’Abri in Switzerland under American Christian theologian Francis Schaeffer.
She is currently the Scholar for Worldview Studies at the Center for University Studies at Philadelphia Biblical University and senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture, the center of the intelligent design movement.
Pearcey said intelligent design is often narrowly defined as viewing creation as something so complex that it can’t be explained.
However, it is an innate recognition that neither law nor chance played a role in the creation, she added.
For example, a person does not look at Mount Rushmore and believe that was a product of wind and rain erosion, she said.
The same detection of design can be applied to the origin of life, she said.
In today’s society, science is no longer treated as the avenue for the best explanation. But evolution has moved beyond the confines of scientific study into in art, music and literature, Pearcey said.
Morality and religion have also been debunked and, in many cases, things such as altruism or kindness are viewed as an evolutionary means to an end, she added.
Because strict Darwinians cannot account for morality as more than a social construct to control society, society focuses on political correctness — not right or wrong, she said.
Morality is not applied, she said, so behavior seen as “morally repugnant” is explained away as a part of human wiring.
Referring to books written in recent years from the Darwinian perspective, rape becomes a natural biological phenomenon that is a product of human evolution and sex across the species ceases to be an offense, she said.
Pearcey cited a number of renowned evolutionary scientists who are hard-pressed to live the same truths outside of the laboratory.
Many are forced to live with inconsistent beliefs, because with true Darwinism there can be no room for free will, love or human dignity, she said.
If a person cannot live their worldview, “then I suggest you should go back to the drawing board,” Pearcey said.
Nick Guthrie of Niceville said he’s head some of these explanations before, but believes it’s all accurate.
“A lot of truth,” he said of the presentation.
The present educational system is becoming “exclusively Darwinian,” said Bill Caine of Niceville.
“(Intelligent design) is sort of covered over,” he said.
Not long ago, history and education marginalized blacks, women and other minorities. Pearcey said.
Now “it’s religious cultures that are disenfranchised,” she said.