A Matter of Faith Page #9

Man and the oak tree,

the hummingbird and the whale.

Life is about change

and the sequence of fossils

in the strata

documents that change.

And the clear progression

of simpler life forms

evolving into more complex

life forms is accepted

by every clear-thinking

scientist mind

as irrefutable truth.

Radiometric dating of the earth,

shows it to be four point five

billion years old, give or take,

and the rocks and fossils

that we see all around us

are millions

and millions of years old.

That's a lot of time for change,

Mister Whitaker.

That is time for evolution.

Thank you.

[Loud applause]

Thank you Professor Kaman.

You may both now question

each other's opening statements.

Mr. Whitaker'?

I guess my first question

for you Professor Kaman

and the most important one

I can think of is how do you

explain away God'?

Explain away'?

Yes, what about God'?

Simply put, man created God.

Man created God'?

I am a hundred percent

with Freud on this one sir.

That man created God'?

Dr. Sigmund Freud brilliantly

observed many years ago

that man is riddled

with deep seated fears

living as he does in a world

of disease and famine

and disaster with very little

control over his circumstance

so yes, he created God.

He postulated a being

who could deliver him.

Kind of life

a supernatural sky hook

that could pull him

out of trouble.

[Crowd laughs]

Man also believed that

he was getting a raw deal

from just about everybody

so he wanted a cosmic umpire,

to blow the big whistle

and halt the game

until everybody got

what they deserved.

But most of all,

man fears death and extinction,

and so he needed

a heavenly Father,

who could take him at the end

to some heavenly place

that he decided to call heaven,

all because he couldn't

face the fact

that eventually he was

going to vanish from existence.

So, what's the purpose of life

Professor Kaman'?

We live, and then we die

and go back in the earth.

That's it,

there's no afterlife.

Face the music Mister Whitaker.

Elvis is dead,

he's left the building.

[Crowd laughs]

In this life,

we get a chance to make a mark.

If we do that,

maybe the next generation

will remember us,

maybe we'll even

teach them something

but there is no afterlife.

I believe there is much

more than that.

Yeah, you believe

Mister Whitaker

but do you have any proof

of an afterlife.

Proof'?

Proof.

Scientific proof,

any kind of proof'?

The Bibles says

we believe by faith.

Faith in what'?

In a God we can't see

and a book we can't rely on?

I'd like a little

scientific proof.

I can't offer scientific proof.

Well the words in this book

that you hold so sacred,

how do you even know

they're true?

The Bible is very trustworthy.

I didn't ask if it

was trustworthy,

I asked if it was true.

The Bible is the word of God.

Wasn't the Bible

written by men'?

Yes it was.

Then how does that

make it the word of God'?

Look, I can't explain it.

So, your betting your afterlife

on a book you can't explain

about a God you can't prove.

I am sticking with Freud

on this one Mister Whitaker.

I am definitely

sticking with Freud.

PORTLAND:
Freud was wrong!

[Audience move in seats]

Freud was wrong.

Freud was wrong.

Excuse me sir.

There will be a time later for

the audience to ask questions.

STEPHEN:
It's okay.

He's my friend and he's with me.

[Audience mumbles]

I decided to get back

in the game.

Mind if I take over from here.

Mr. Jamison,

if it would be alright,

I would like for my friend here

to continue for me.

Well that's not how

we normally do things.

Is that acceptable to you

Professor Kaman'?

Proceed.

You never cease

to amaze me Marcus.

Of course you are going to agree

with Freud's views on God

since evolution leaves no room

for a supernatural Creator.

And since there is no God,

then there are no rules,

and no one to whom

we must give an account.

But man didn't create God.

Freud got that wrong.

In fact, I would propose to you

the very opposite.

I believe that if man

had his way,

he would rather God did not

exist and eliminate God.

Haven't you noticed,

whenever anything goes bad

in someone's life

or there is some

tragic event that occurs,

people, religious

and non-religious,

almost inevitably blame God.

How could God allow this,

how could God allow that?

No, if man had his way,

he would rather eliminate God,

not create him.

He even comes up with

theology that says

God is dead and

has left the building.

[Crowd laughs]

Sorry to be so rude

to your guests.

My name is Joseph G. Portland,

Professor Joseph Portland.

You see, twelve years ago,

I was the one that taught

Biology here at this university.

Only I taught from

the perspective

that God is our Creator

and I refused to teach

what I felt were evolutionary

lies from the textbook.

When Professor Kaman

joined our staff,

he got me fired

over this very issue.

I despised you Kaman.

I blamed you

for ruining my career.

Sadly for me,

I let you take me

out of the game.

You're talking about

how those laboratory

experiments have proven

that living organisms evolved

from non-living chemicals

as proof of a naturalistic

origin of life.

This is just not so.

Those experiments only showed

that certain organic compounds

could be formed from

inorganic compounds

and intelligence was

and is still needed

since someone had to conduct

and design those experiments.

Certainly that's far from

creating life in the laboratory.

And you know that

the amount of information

contain ed in the nucleus

of a living cell

shows that it could not have

evolved from nonliving chemicals

and that it must have

been created.

You know the fossil record

does not show the

continuous development

of one kind of

creature into another

and that no one has ever seen

one kind of plant or animal

changing into another

of a different kind.

Dogs change into

different kinds of dogs,

but they are always dogs.

And we can breed dogs

to form new varieties,

but they never turn

into cats or kangaroos

because they remain

in the boundaries

that God created for them

in the beginning.

And you know that there

are layers of assumptions

used to calculate the age of the

earth using radiometric dating

so why are you misleading

our audience'?

The earth is not billions

of years old.

The earth is not millions

of years old, not even close.

You see, the Professor

and I can go on and on and on

and bore you with

our technical definitions.

Whatever he says,

I have a rebuttal

and back and forth.

We could go outside right now

and the stars can come down

and form the words in the sky

God created the world,

and the evolutionists

would blame it

on those clever Baptists.

[Crowd laughs]

To me, the most troubling

aspect about this issue

is that in our society today,

evolution is being taught in

our schools and universities

across this land

as a matter of fact.

But no one can scientifically

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