Why the CSC Case is Important

Two years ago a group booked the California Science Center’s IMAX theater, in downtown Los Angeles, for a screening of Darwin’s Dilemma, a film that questions evolutionary theory. Furious evolutionists quickly censored the showing and canceled the event.

After being sued for censorship the CSC constructed a cover-up lie. The evolution lie was that there was no censorship. Instead, as the lie contended, the CSC cancelled the event because of a press release. This lie was in stark contrast to internal emails. One CSC Vice President wrote that the main problem was that the event was sponsored by “an anti-Darwin/creationist group.” And as the CSC Vice President of Communications explained, the CSC Chief Executive Officer instructed his staff to find a false pretense:

Jeff just called and is wondering if they violated an agreement -- like was this supposed to be a private screening or did they say it was a public screening? If they misrepresented the event, then we can cancel them.

So first the evolutionists censored the event, and then they lied, in order to cover-up their censorship. Next the evolutionists lied about the press release, claiming it implied the CSC was a sponsor of the event. But the press release said no such thing. In fact it explicitly stated that “The screening is sponsored and hosted by the American Freedom Alliance.”

Next the evolutionists lied to cover-up their cover-ups. This evolution lie was that there was no censorship because, after all, they originally were willing to book the event. Again, internal emails shine a light on the lie. They reveal that the booking was accepted only because there was a lack of vigilance. As one CSC Vice President wrote:

This screening event was booked through the Events Dept., and they were unaware of the nature of the groups involved. It has come to Jeff’s attention and he is “working on it.”

Similarly, another evolutionist from the nearby Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County concluded:

Apparently the IMAX was booking events without CSC knowing about all of them, and when they found out they immediately cancelled the event.

The next evolution lie was about the court case. This was one case where the evolutionists could not fool the judge and lie their way through a trial, so they had to settle. So they lied about the settlement, saying they were right all along and that the sponsor and the Discovery Institute have not “learned their lesson.” So after a long trail of lies the CSC casts judgment on the sponsor, saying they have not “learned their lesson.” Oh, what a web we weave.

Not your garden variety theory

But is this anything more than the sordid tale of a rogue department gone wrong? Were not the usual lines of authority broken and was not this department operating independently of the greater evolution movement? Surely there is plausible deniability and we cannot equate their many lies with evolution itself. Right?

Wrong. Unfortunately, the CSC case is typical. This is evolution in action. The only difference in this case is the evolutionists were found out. To understand why CSC is representative and not a loose cannon, one first must understand evolution itself.

Evolution is not your typical scientific theory that makes predictions for evaluation against empirical findings. If that were the case it would have been dropped long ago as evolution is, if anything, a contra indicator. Practically all of evolution’s fundamental expectations are in the red. Whatever it says, go with the opposite.

Far from an innocent scientific theory, evolution is a metaphysical commitment. For if evolution is wrong then the specter of teleology is raised. Final causes are back in the fight and perhaps design is detectable. All kinds of unthinkables must now be thought and unquestionable truths must now be questioned. For evolutionists that is unacceptable, no matter what the evidence.

So evolution is not common descent, or gradualism, or selection acting on random biological variation, or a dozen other spin offs. In Lakatosian terms, those are all auxiliary hypotheses making up the protective belt that surrounds and shields the theoretical core. And what is that core? Evolution, at its core, is naturalism.

It is not atheism, as often is charged. Nor is it bad science as is equally as often charged. Would that those were evolution, for the problem would be far simpler. But those are both merely consequences. At its core evolution is a metaphysical commitment to naturalism—it must be true.

It is no surprise that evolutionists are so insistent that their idea is a fact. The fact of evolution is at its very core. Evolution was not declared to be a fact after boat loads of evidence endlessly corroborated a theoretically sound idea. That is a fiction. It never happened. Not only is evolution at odds with the data, the declaration of its certainty was at the very beginning.

We can go back to the formalization of neo Darwinism in the twentieth century, or back to Darwin himself, or to Kant, or Hume, or Leibniz, or we can go farther back in antiquity to Lucretius and the Epicureans. Wherever your resting place, you will find metaphysical certainty amidst empirical confusion.

The consequence of all this is, yes, lies. The science is misrepresented to fit the mandate. The philosophy of science is misrepresented to arrive at the predetermined truth. The education and law are twisted and force fit to support the fiction, judges are misled, photographs are altered, data are misinterpreted, and at the National Center for Science “Education,” dissenters are blackballed. All of this to promote the dogma that the world and everything we see must have arisen spontaneously, by itself. For it must have, there is no other option.

Religion drives science, and it matters.