A Jealous God

I have been reading a book entitled A Jealous God, by Pamela Winnick. I was surprised to find out how immoral we as a society are- not just because of red light districts, or the Mafia, or greed and corruption, or even dishonest politicians. But because of men who believe that they know better than we do. They define their own morality. Of course the world is responsible to God and those who choose to deny that responsibility are doomed to an inferior morality. Even the well-intentioned will go astray. Remember the Ten Commandments? The first four have to do with honoring and worshiping God. If you blow the first four, the very best you can do is a mere 60%, a single point away from failure, at least in the class that I teach. I have observed that those who carry their own morality often will be very particular in one area, but lapse in another area. One might choose not to steal, but does commit adultery or vice versa. So it is a virtual cinch that all would lose and fail in their so-called morality.

But what Ms. Winnick says in her book is even worse. Men dress in white coats, and have an aura of respect—garnering respect not just for being scientists but also for somehow having the inside track on real morality. Put in charge of the country after WWII, they have systematically undercut Christianity to further their aims. After reading the book I would say that we are not in what is frequently termed the post-modern era; rather we are in the pre-antichrist era. Our country is, as they say, going to hell in a handbasket, and it seems to be going at an unstoppable pace.

The morality many of today’s scientists sell comes from the same place that the creed of Nazism, of Satanism, and of ghastly terrorism comes from. It is in new packaging but is the same old product. Coming from the depths of the hell it is concerned only with deceiving followers into descending into the same depths from which all such philosophies originate. It is all the more horrific when it is done by men who ought to, and indeed, do know better. Such a moralist can see anything to make his case seem right. He reminds me of the man standing in a downpour insisting it wasn’t water that made him wet. So is the scientist who looks at nature but denies the Creator that made it, who sees the world but sees only an accidental burp followed by ten billion other accidental burps that produce the wonders of life. A man that denies God has already denied everything that is.

Ms. Winnick fingers the wrong philosophies and the people behind them in a very scholarly work. But she is also careful to point her finger at those scientists who wrest their craft to fit their belief; she makes a clear distinction between the hard science of mathematics and the soft science of biology, a distinction I fear is lost on our present society.

For instance, she quotes mathematicians in the sixties who questioned the probability of evolution. Two brief quotes will suffice. “‘We believe that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, and we believe the gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged with the current conception of biology,’ said Marcel-Paul Schutzenberger, an internationally renowned mathematician.” In other words, hard scientists were dubious about evolution’s even being possible. Beneficial mutations are so mathematically improbable that in the words of historian Gertrude Himmelfarb it would be “an improbability as great as . . . a monkey provided with a typewriter would by chance peck out the works of Shakespeare.” My observation is that perhaps the biologists would be better served to get those monkeys typing. After all they do have a case to prove.

Anyway, I am delighted with the thoughts provoked so far by reading A Jealous God. I am only about one half of the way through it and may post again on it. By all means, put it on your reading list. Be ready for a book that will turn your stomach a bit—at least it did mine. But I do not think that is the fault of the author. Instead it is the fault of the country giving itself over to the latest idolatry—men in white coats.