MAY 2001
DAVID
AND GOLIATH
PETER WILDERS
Global decline of faith is no secret nor are the attempted explanations. They include, Free Masonry, materialism, secularism in schools, modernism in religious orders and seminaries and ignorance of the Church's magisterial teaching. Excellent documented arguments supporting these and other reasons for crumbling Christianity frequently appear in the less liberal Catholic press. Assuming accuracy of reporting, readers finish feeling that short of a miracle the situation is more likely to worsen than improve.
Important as it is that people be alerted to the problem, there is the danger of such articles leading to despondency. Little in the way of a practical solution is offered. Readers are urged to pray, and where possible bring the matter to the attention of the hierarchy. In the latter case, it is difficult to envisage individual action by parishioners having much effect upon a world-wide situation.
Going the logical step further the articles could, in the writer's view, be more effective. The extra step entails answering the question whether Masonry, materialist media, modernism, ignorance of Church teaching etc., are, in fact, the cause and not the effect of a more fundamental cause. Examination suggests that, in fact, they are. Secular humanist ideals seek the betterment of mankind by worldly means to the exclusion of the supernatural. They claim that man is naturally good and, contrary to the teaching of the Church, has no natural tendency towards evil. The well-being of society is determined by what is considered best by the majority. It is not hampered by any morality other than that deemed to satisfy popular demand. Power-seeking organisations with financial support can, under the guise of altruism, take advantage of such an ideology to establish political, economic and media control of global dimensions.
Pope Leo XIII and
Freemasonry
Throughout history, the Church
had provided a major obstacle to secular humanism. Consequently, atheism,
although always prominent, played a relatively minor role in pre-nineteenth
century world events. Religious beliefs, whether pagan or Bible-based,
have always predominated and the notion of a godless society was difficult
to conceive, let alone establish. According to Pope Leo XIII's 1884
encyclical Humanum Genus such a society was, nevertheless the
aim of Freemasonry. It drew attention to the progress it had already
made, and the dangers it represented for the Church.
Looking back, it is clear that the period in which Pope Leo was writing particularly favoured secular humanism. Charles Darwin had died two years before the encyclical, and his legacy of evolutionist naturalism was being assimilated in academic circles. Charles Lyell, whose Principles of Geology provided the rationale for Darwin's theory of evolution, died in 1875. Such was the spirit of the time fanned by organised Masonry, for an alternative to God, that the rigour, normally demanded by science in the disciplines concerned, was not insisted upon. Neither the evolutionary biology which depended upon enormous periods of time, nor the principles of geology which seemed to provide the requisite millions of years, were supported by empirical proof. An intensive propaganda campaign to convince people of evolution was launched by Thomas Huxley in England, Professor E. Haeckel in Germany and Professor Asa Gray in America. Empirical proof was, as ever, absent and the case for Darwinism was based upon the twin assumptions that the earth was thousands of millions years old, and evolution had taken place. Churchmen were amongst the first to capitulate to the propaganda, and the newly founded Biblical School of Jerusalem integrated evolution and geologic time into its interpretation of Scripture. The problem was, and still remains, the contradiction between the naturalism of a gradual evolutionary process, and the requirement of the Magisterium for all things to be created by God in their whole substance from nothing (i.e. without a process).
Masonry funds Marxism
The Masons saw the opportunity
of expanding their materialist influence through the new Socialist
ideology being advocated with difficulty by Karl Marx. Marx had been
quick to recognise the importance of Darwin's work for his own philosophy.
He wrote :
Darwin's book is very important and will help me to found class struggle in history on the natural sciences [letter to Lassalle of January 16, 1861].
By the simple expedient of financial support, Marxism became the tool of Masonry for spreading atheism on a global scale. Naturalism based on evolutionary biology was forcefully imposed in the communist schools to eradicate all idea of the supernatural. Pope Pius XII explained this in his 1950 encyclical Humani Generis :
Such [evolutionary] speculations are eagerly welcomed by the Communists, who find in them a powerful weapon for defending and popularising their system of dialectical materialism ; the whole idea of God is thus to be eradicated from men's minds.
Ironically, today, compulsory ideology is no longer required. Non-communist educational systems overtaken by secular humanism now teach it to the exclusion of any other.
Darwin's dependence
on Lyell's untested principles of geology
The subject of geology was
all-important to Darwin in formulating his theory. Without the vast
periods of time it postulated, evolution could not have taken place.
The link between the new geological concepts of the nineteenth century
and evolution are expressed in Darwin's own words:
He who can read Sir Charles Lyell's grand work on the Principles of Geology, which the future historian will recognise as having produced a revolution in natural science, yet does not admit how incomprehensibly vast have been the past periods of time, may at once close this volume ['The Origin Of Species' 1859]
Without certain proof of Lyell's principles readers of Darwin's work should indeed have closed his volume. The fact that they didn't can be attributed to success of the secular humanist propaganda of the time. Having circumvented the hurdle of proof, there was no difficulty in convincing subsequent generations of students of the reasonableness of the geological principles. The result is that virtually no one today would question them. The extent of the revolution in natural science can be measured against the fact the majority of people in Darwin's day believed the geological formations around the Earth, and the fossils contained in them, were witnesses of the cataclysmic global Flood recounted in Genesis. The humanists had declared the Flood to be religion, not science, and thanks to the new geology were able to promote a non-biblical explanation. Charles Lyell was aware that his geological principles would be a blow to biblical inerrancy. In 1830 he wrote to Georges Scrope :
...this idea came to me five or six years ago, that if the Mosaic geology can be dismissed without upsetting anyone, it would be a historic blow...Let them feel it and draw their own conclusions [Lyell, 1881, p. 138].
In the stampede to install secular ideology, the timorous demand for scientific proof of Lyell's geological principles went unheard. As a result, it has taken nearly a century and a half to set the record straight. One hundred and fifty years, during which naturalism has triumphed and materialism replaced the spiritual. Society has arrogated to itself the right to kill the unborn, to euthanise its sick senior citizens, to assist those who want to kill themselves, to break the natural law of sexual morality in all its forms. It has replaced God's rights by human rights with all their aberrations. All in the name of naturalism nourished by evolutionary philosophy disguised as science.
Lyell's principles
of geology invalidated
In May of the year 2000, the
results of a researcher's experimental research on strata formation
were published in the French scientific review Fusion. They
invalidated Lyell's geological principles. Application of the research,
in conjunction with observations and experimental data from other
sedimentologists, revealed that geological formations did not need
millions of years to deposit. For example, it has been calculated
from the size of sedimentary particles and the velocity of current
needed to transport and deposit them, that it could not have taken
more than a few weeks to form the 800 kilometer long and 500 meter
high Tonto Group in the Grand Canyon. According to the geological
time-scale, formulated on the basis of classical stratigraphic principles,
the Tonto Group would have taken 70 million years to form.
The secular humanists not wanting to see all their patiently planned achievements melt away, have reacted. First was the classical and normally most effective tactic of silence. By not replying to the documentation sent to them, the Geological Society, in this case that of France, blocked all dialogue. The author of the experiments countered their tactic by sending a copy of the scientific journal to all the 1200 or so active members of the society. In this way, everyone in the geological community in France was made aware of the experimental results. The society retaliated by attacking the experimenter from authority, i.e. they claimed that all the geologists for three centuries could not be wrong, therefore the experimental evidence could be safely ignored. The success of such a method depended upon the geologists being united. To a large extent they were, but a few responded independently of the society saying they were interested to know more about the experiments. This situation produced the coup de grâce from the hierarchy in the form of a letter in the Geological Society's half-yearly letter to members accusing the experimenter of pseudoscience and creationism. By attacking his personal credibility they knew that most geologists would not take his work seriously.
Ideology's precedence
over science ?
The David and Goliath battle
continues. Supportive geologists fearing for their credibility and,
therefore livelihood, wait in the wings. Meanwhile naturalism, via
evolutionism, continues feeding materialism. Who to appeal to? The
Church has a vested interest to combat materialism. Her intellectual
elite is sorely aware of the hole it has made in the bark of St Peter.
It knows that naturalism is the cause, but cannot bring itself to
admit that the evolution, albeit theistic, it continues to teach,
is the driving force of naturalism. The reason is simple. Theologians
have been convinced that the Lyellian geology which supports evolution,
is an unalterable fact. It was made acceptable and introduced into
the Church's theology at the end of the nineteenth century through
Fr. M.J. Lagrange, founder of the Jerusalem Bible School, whose views
had been influenced by walks in the Alps with his geologist Godfather.
Providence has, however, intervened and the means to destroy naturalism at its roots seems now to be a reality. The arms to fight the battle are available and waiting to be used. The problem is that there are few warriors, i.e. professional geologists, willing to use them. Apart from the career risk, there exists, not unnaturally, a climate of extreme scepticism. What if the experimental results are incorrect, or are right but have been interpreted wrongly?
The unequivocal response is for geologists and sedimentologists to examine them objectively and address any scientific criticism to the author. Over 1200 members of the profession have seen the experimental results and after nine months, not one unanswerable criticism has been registered. The principles of stratigraphy which the experiments have demonstrated to be invalid are basic to every geologist's thinking. They are used to formulate hypotheses and theories. They underpin the geological time-scale. The experiments refuting them can be observed and repeated. When is the scientific debate going to start?
Theology influenced
by geology
Church leaders, not being aware
of any connection between geology and theology, would justifiably
want to know what possible relevance the results of laboratory experiments
could have upon Scripture.
The response is to ask them why the period of time between Adam and Abraham, which was held by the Church Fathers and Doctors to be about 2,000 years, is now taught as being around 2,800,000 years. A little research would reveal to them that according to the 19th century principals of geology, unknown to the Fathers and Doctors, the age of strata could be calculated in terms of hundreds of thousands or millions of years. The rock strata containing the fossilised remains of primitive man could be dated at least 2.8 million years before the present. If Abraham lived 4,000 years ago, it followed that Adam the first man must have lived not less than 2.8 million years less 4000 or so years before the present. According to such data, the period between the two must be enormously greater than 2,000 years. Geology had thus obliged Scripture scholars to revise the history of the first three chapters of Genesis. The Church leaders would also discover that Lyell's geology claimed that strata were deposited slowly one on top of the other over millions of years. By deduction, it followed that the fossils found in the strata would also be millions of years old. If the geological principles were right, it also meant that fossils in the lower strata would have been buried long before fossils in the succeeding strata. Darwin had based his evolution of species on the assumption that earlier fossilised species had transformed into the later ones. Their records would show that despite concern amongst the more orthodox theologians of the day, that evolution was not mentioned in the Bible and was contrary to the exegeses of the Church Fathers, the new teaching on geology and Darwin's theory based upon it won the day. Genesis 1-3 had been gradually rejected as a historical narrative, and taught as being merely symbolic. By considering the subsequent chapters 4-11 in the same way, evolution and Lyell's long geological ages had been assimilated into modern theology.
The problems for the Magisterium created by evolutionary based theology should be recalled. If Adam and Eve were only symbols, the Church's definition of Original Sin came under a cloud. There was the knock on effect for doctrines flowing from it, such as baptism, the Immaculate Conception and redemption. Theologians had spent much time discussing these problems and suggesting answers. Much was written about whether man's nature was really wounded by the effects of an Original Sin. Pelagianism saw a revival. Not surprisingly, the feeling was, and still is, that if the Church had been wrong about such basic teachings, could the others be considered definitive ?
It is in this climate that the Church finds itself today. Science has effectively determined the meaning of Scripture, at least the first chapters of the Bible. The same science used by secular humanists to support naturalism and its sibling, materialism.
Scientific method
to the rescue
It is difficult to find a parallel
to the present situation. Because of its relative Church-wide proportions,
perhaps the closest would be Arianism in the early 4th
century. The heresy, denying that Christ was fully God, said He was
inferior to the Father. The 'David' of the time was, of course, St
Athanasius, deported several times because of his stubbornness for
the truth. His resistance against overwhelming odds was eventually
vindicated by the heresy being condemned at the first General Council
of the Church at Nicea in 325.
Today's David is an experimenter in sedimentology. The odds are just as overwhelming. He too is on his own. As Athanasius had the certainty of truth of God's teaching, he has the proof of the results of peer reviewed scientific experiment. No proof is stronger in science than that of laboratory experiments. Results are observable facts and should not be confused with their interpretations or implications. The results cannot be changed. They are available and reproducible at any time. As the experimenter points out, movement of particles and liquids follow the basic laws of mechanics. Such laws apply equally in controlled laboratory conditions as in the field. The experiments demonstrated that within all the parameters tested, the principles of stratigraphy did not apply in the presence of a water current. By definition, a principle is of universal application, and any exception invalidates the principle. It is no exaggeration, therefore, to claim that Lyell's principles have been refuted.
It is the extent of the damage done to Christendom, and the apparent inability of the Church to limit it, that is incredible. Praying for an end to materialism whilst fuelling it with evolution, guarantees keeping the Church on a disaster course. The means are there for averting the disaster, how long before they are used?