By Steve Byas

In a move akin to prominent atheist Richard Dawkins taking the pulpit at one of Oklahoma's evangelical churches, and delivering a speech ridiculing the idea of God, a leader of the Intelligent Design (I.D.) Movement presented a movie challenging the Darwinian, or "NeoDarwinian" evolutionary theory accepted basically without question in what some call the "temple" of evolution in Oklahoma.

Author Stephen C. Meyer was the guest of a student organization that rented the auditorium at the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History, just off the campus of the University of Oklahoma, and showed the movie, Darwin's Dilemma, and then took questions afterward. The movie focuses on the so-called Cambrian Explosion, which refers to the sudden appearance of an array of life markedly different from anything seen prior to that moment of time. Because of the sudden appearance (so sudden that the movie asserted could take only a few thousand years, or as little as a day) of vast variety of life seen in the fossil records, Darwin's concept of gradualness taking millions of years to develop new species is untenable.

Meyer wrote the book Signature in the Cell, in which he argues that DNA presents powerful evidence for "Intelligent Design." Meyer said this is not creationism, which is a religious position, but rather a scientific approach to the issue.

"Intelligent Design is an inference from biological data while creationism is a deduction from a theological text," Meyer explained. In his article in 2004 in the journal Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington (DC), he put forth evidence for the plausibility of an intelligent source as an actual truth that could be defended in scientific terms.

An important moment in the history of the Intelligent Design movement came in 1996, with the publication of Darwin's Black Box by Michael Behe, who argued that the cell is "irreducibly complex," meaning there are certain necessary elements to the cell that would not allow it to evolve as Darwinians contend.

Many ID proponents are Christians, but ID advocates only assert the scientific case for an intelligent causation of life on earth. Darwinians contend that all of life on earth evolved from a common ancestry, while ID scientists contend the scientific evidence disputes this, that animals appeared without any transition from "lower forms of life."

Meyer faced unrelenting hostility when the movie ended. It was obvious that some OU faculty members did not take kindly to his invasion of their "temple." There was no dispassionate debate of the evidence for and against the competing theories, but rather angry accusations and insults.

While many Christians have simply conceded this field to the evolutionists, lamely stating that they are theistic evolutionists (they believe God created the initial life on earth and allowed it to "evolve" through millions of years until, finally, human beings appeared), William Jennings Bryan countered that theistic evolution is like an "anesthetic for the Christian while his religion is removed."

Many lament the decline of the influence of Christianity over the past several decades, which has led to many of the social problems we grapple with today. Much of the increase in crime, higher and higher rates of illegitimacy, socialist beliefs, and increased dependence upon government can be laid at the doorstep of the theory of evolution.

If Adam and Eve were simply a myth, mere "representatives" of the earliest humans who evolved from apelike creature before them, then what becomes of the concept of original sin? And, without sin, there is no need of a Savior, such as Jesus Christ.

While the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) and its allies oppose any government promotion of Christianity, little is said about government promotion of an evolutionary theory that, at its base, is a denial of any Higher Power in the universe. Yet, the Sam Noble Museum of Natural History stands as the government-sponsored temple of disbelief in traditional Christianity.