Darwin was exactly like Einstein – only not in the good way that turned out for him. I’ll tell you about that later in this programme.

Tag words: Charles Darwin; The Origin of Species; Cambrian Explosion Albert Einstein; theory of relativity; Richard Dawkins; evolution; Stephen Myer; The Return of the God Hypothesis; DNA; RNA; John Lennox; God’s Undertaker; Pierre Grasse; Michael Behe; genetic homeostasis; E. coli; Colin Patterson; Cambrian Explosion; Tree of Life; Jonathon Wells; Zombie Science; Alister McGrath; The Twilight of Atheism;

DARWIN WROTE IN THE FIRST EDITION OF THE ORIGIN OF SPECIES that North American black bears had been seen "swimming for hours with widely open mouth, thus catching, like a whale, insects in the water." What did this have to do with the subject of his book? "Even in so extreme a case as this," Darwin continued, "if the supply of insects were constant, and if better adapted competitors did not already exist in the country, I can see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."

Critics poked fun at this, and Darwin removed it from later editions, but he defended it privately. "The bear case has been well laughed at, and disingenuously distorted by some into my saying that a bear could be converted into a whale," he wrote in an 1860 letter. "As it offended persons, I struck it out in the second edition; but I still maintain that there is no especial difficulty in a bear's mouth being enlarged to any degree useful to its changing habits, — no more difficulty than man has found in increasing the crop of the pigeon, by continued selection, until it is literally as big as the whole rest of the body.”

So wrote Jonathon Wells in his book Zombie Science. But Darwin’s Theory of Evolution had problems. Problems that he knew and worried about from day one and they were as big as a whale. In fact the first and biggest , most threatening problem to his Theory of Evolution that he knew about was as big as a Blue Whale – or a 200 ton aquatic American black bear.

Tag words: Charles Darwin; On the Origin of Species; Jonathon Wells; Zombie Science; Stephen Meyer; Return of the God Hypothesis; Neo-Darwinism; the modern synthesis; Richard Dawkins; The God Delusion; Bishop Samuel Wilberforce; Thomas Henry Huxley; Daniel Boorstin; The Discoverers; Alister McGrath; The Twilight of Atheism; John Lennox; God’s Undertaker;

Now I’m about to enter into a discussion of Darwin’s Theory of Evolution. I’ll be putting material that doesn’t agree with that theory, and that’s very brave of me. Maybe insanely brave. Maybe mad.

John Lennox, in his book, God’s Undertaker explained why recounting this story:

A leading Chinese palaeontologist Jun-Yuan Chen ran into this problem when visiting the USA in 1999. His work on the remarkable discoveries in Chengjiang of strange fossil creatures led him to question the orthodox evolutionary line. In true scholarly fashion he mentioned his criticisms in his lectures but they elicited very little response. This lack of reaction surprised him and so he eventually asked one of his hosts what was wrong. He was told that scientists in the USA did not like to hear such criticism of evolution. To this he gave the delightful reply that it seemed to him that the difference between the USA and China was: 'In China we can criticize Darwin, but not the government; in America you can criticize the government, but not Darwin.'

This is in line with the view in England also it would seem from my last programme, when I quoted Richard Dawkins saying that anyone who claims not to believe in evolution that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but he said he didn’t wish to consider that possibility.

The first great fall of man, that we know about, happened with Adam and Eve. Man was expelled from paradise, the Garden of Eden. Paradise was lost.

But then thousands of years later, in 1859, the world, looked at from the point of view of the British Empire, was living in another golden age, perhaps in a new Garden of Eden, as if we’d somehow managed to find our way back into Eden. But then, perhaps even more startling, a new revelation was unveiled to us when the scales fell from our eyes. God didn’t create man, man created God. Freud revealed this staggering truth to us. As we all know today, Charles Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, in his 1859 published book, The Origin of the Species, killed the very idea of God. At least that’s what we’re told, or was that just fake news. So let’s look closely at Mr Darwin and his contribution that lead to the cover story on Time magazine of 22 October 1965 asking, Is God Dead?

Tag words: Adam and Eve; Garden of Eden; Charles Darwin; Theory of Evolution; The Origin of the Species; God; Is God Dead; New Atheists; Richard Dawkins; Genesis; William Whewell; natural philosophers; John Ray; Carolus Linnaeus; Daniel Solander; Captain Cook; Sir Joseph Banks; HMS Beagle; Georges-Louis Leclerc; Comte de Buffon; James Ussher; Archbishop Ussher; Daniel Boorstin The Discoverers; God of the Gaps; Sir Isaac Newton; the Creation;

Carl Sagan was probably the best known scientist in the West in the 1970s and 1980s. In 1980 his 13 part series, Cosmos, aired and was a spectacular hit. In the very opening of the series he told his audience this:

So according to Carl Sagan, the cosmos is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be. To elaborate he meant that the universe was made only from things in our universe -- matter and energy. Explicitly he was saying that there is no God. That was not a statement of the finding of science, made by him as a scientist, it was a statement of Carl Sagan’s personal belief.

But then just a year later Francis Crick, one of the discoverer’s of DNA, the famous double helix, an atheist, said something quite disturbing, well for an atheist that is:

"An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going."

Stephen Meyer’s book, The Return of the God Hypothesis, published in 2021, may have delivered the final death blow to the popularist atheism that Carl Sagan had opened his Cosmos series with. Today all the science seems to be going against any belief that there’s no Creator outside the universe. But more than that, the fall of atheism, if that’s what we’re witnessing, taken to its logical conclusion, spells the end of the West’s self loathing and weird ideologies that are based on the view that the Bible is not the truth and a return to societies based on Judaeo Christian values – which Tom Holland in his book Dominion, said was and is the reason for the success of the West – or more precisely societies that are governed in accordance with God’s laws and ethics as revealed in the Bible. For the West, and the world, I believe, this will come as a great liberation. This series will explore all of those issues and their ramifications.

Tag words: Carl Sagan; Cosmos; Francis Crick; DNA; double helix; atheist; Stephen Meyer; The Return of the God Hypothesis; Tom Holland; Dominion; Bible; John Lennox; Big Bang Theory; Fred Hoyle; Charles Darwin; The Origin of the Species; Geraint Lewis; Luke Barnes; A Fortunate Universe; Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation; anthropic coincidences; Goldilocks universe; Genesis 2:7; Richard Dawkins; The Greatest Show on Earth; Dr Stephen Iacoboni; The Undying Soul;

A great thinker said that the the medieval mind was broader than ours because they believed that the ultimate realities were outside place and time and that man could commune with them through mystical experience and after the death of the body. Who was it that said that?

Tag words: Dr Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Nazi Death camps; the no-future generation; give-up-it is; depression; aggression; addiction; the existential vacuum; logotherapy; Harold S Kushner; When Bad Things Happen to Good People; Dr Iacoboni; The Undying Soul; Henry Bamford Parkes; The Divine Order; Telos;

In his book, 12 Rules for Life, Jordan Peterson wrote:

So why not call this a book of "guidelines," a far more relaxed, user-friendly and less rigid sounding term than "rules"?

Because these really are rules. And the foremost rule is that you must take responsibility for your own life. Period.

One might think that a generation that has heard endlessly, from their more ideological teachers, about the rights, rights, rights that belong to them, would object to being told that they would do better to focus instead on taking responsibility. Yet this generation, many of whom were raised in small families by hyper-protective parents, on soft-surface playgrounds, and then taught in universities with "safe spaces" where they don't have to hear things they don't want to—schooled to be risk-averse—has among it, now, millions who feel stultified by this underestimation of their potential resilience and who have embraced Jordan's message that each individual has ultimate responsibility to bear; that if one wants to live a full life, one first sets one's own house in order; and only then can one sensibly aim to take on bigger responsibilities. The extent of this reaction has often moved both of us to the brink of tears.

Sometimes these rules are demanding. They require you to undertake an incremental process that over time will stretch you to a new limit. That requires, as I've said, venturing into the unknown. Stretching yourself beyond the boundaries of your current self requires carefully choosing and then pursuing ideals: ideals that are up there, above you, superior to you—and that you can't always be sure you will reach.

Life is not always easy, not always in your control. How would this generation have coped in the Nazi Death Camps. Dr Frankl answered that question – because he had just done exactly that.

Tag words: Jordan Peterson; 12 Rules for Life; safe spaces; responsibility; life; Dr Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Nazis; meaning of life; Rainer Marie Wilkie; SS; death camps; gas chambers; Auschwitz; Lord's Prayer; Shema Yisrael; victimhood; oppressed; tragic optimism; logotherapy;

Oppressors and oppressed. Victims and victimhoodr. Dr Viktor Frankl showed that there was an easy way any victim could escape their victimhood.

Tag words: Oppressors and oppressed; Victims; victimhood; Dr Viktor Frankl; Man’s Search for Meaning; Auschwitz; Sigmund Freud; Alfred Adler; Darwin; Theory of Evolution; Dr Iacoboni; the mass murderer of Steinhof; Lubianka prison; Freedom; Responsibility; Arthur Miller; Incident at Vichy; Nazis; Frederick Nietzsche; Twilight of the Idols;