Page 131 - Quick Grasp of Faith 2

pushed aside as an unscientific idea. This is how many
ideas, such as the Earth-centered universe model, have been
taken out of the agenda of science throughout history.
However, the theory of evolution is kept on the agenda
of science. Some people even try to represent criticisms di-
rected against it as an "attack on science." Why?
The reason is that this theory is an indispensable dog-
matic belief for some circles. These circles are blindly de-
voted to materialist philosophy and adopt Darwinism
because it is the only materialist explanation that can be put
forward to explain the workings of nature.
Interestingly enough, they also confess this fact from
time to time. A well-known geneticist and an outspoken
evolutionist, Richard C. Lewontin from Harvard University,
confesses that he is "first and foremost a materialist and then
a scientist":
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow
compel us accept a material explanation of the phenomenal
world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori
adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investi-
gation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations,
no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to
the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, so we
cannot allow a Divine [intervention]... 20
These are explicit statements that Darwinism is a dogma
kept alive just for the sake of adherence to materialism. This
dogma maintains that there is no being save matter.
Therefore, it argues that inanimate, unconscious matter
brought life into being. It insists that millions of different liv-
ing species (e.g., birds, fish, giraffes, tigers, insects, trees,
flowers, whales, and human beings) originated as a result of

131
HARUN YAHYA