Fathers of Science who Advocated Special Creation

Many Fathers of the Natural Sciences Rejected Naturalistic Origins: Many leading fathers of the physical sciences, both before and after Darwin, rejected atheistic origins, like Copernicus, Bacon, Kepler, Galileo, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Cuvier, Dalton before, and after Darwin including Faraday, Mendel, Pasteur, Joule, Kelvin, Lister, Carver, who continued to advocate for special creation and reject evolution. This is not an argument from authority, as a typical evolutionist might claim. Rather, this list rebuts the common claim that only uneducated people reject evolution, made by countless atheists (including TOL's Stratnerd).

The above link goes to the sixth round in Battle Royale VII, a fun and educational debate between Bob Enyart and Zakath. That round includes this list of the fathers of the physical sciences who rejected natural origins. I have not copied this list from another source but assembled it myself by reading these scientists' own quotes (while preparing for our video seminar, Does God Exists?):

Philip Paracelsus, died 1541, Chemical Medicine
Nicolas Copernicus, 1543, Scientific Revolution
Francis Bacon, 1626, Scientific Method
Johann Kepler, 1630, Physical Astronomy
Galileo Galilei, 1642, Law of falling bodies
William Harvey, 1657, Circulatory System
Blaise Pascal, 1662, Probability and Calculators
Robert Boyle, 1691, Chemistry
Isaac Newton, 1727, Gravitation
Carolus Linnaeus, 1778, Taxonomy, Modern Biology
George Cuvier, 1832, Anatomy/Paleontology
John Dalton, 1844, Atomic Theory

For those who object that these brilliant men lived prior to the 1859 publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species, consider the following scientific giants all of whom in a time of more open debate, publicly rejected natural origins and Darwinian evolution, and indicated that the evidence supports belief in a supernatural Creator:

Michael Faraday, 1867, Electromagnetism
Gregor Mendel, 1884, Genetics
Louis Pasteur, 1885, Microbiology
James Joule, 1889, Thermodynamics
Lord Kelvin, 1907, Thermodynamics (preferred ID over Darwinism; see below)
Joseph Lister, 1912, Modern Surgery
G. W. Carver, 1943, Modern Agriculture

William Paley: Unlike the countless corrections that evolutionists must make to Darwin's book a century-and-a-half later, Paley's 1802 Intelligent Design book was praised in 1871 by Lord Kelvin in his address as president to the British Association for the Advancement of Science, and to this day, Natural Theology remains awesomely relevant and accurate!

* Lord Kelvin's Deepest Origins Commitment was to Intelligent Design: In the Address of Sir William Thomson [Lord Kelvin], President, at the Forty-First Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Kelvin concluded his lengthy report with these words:

"But overpoweringly strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie all round us; and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through Nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend on one ever-acting Creator and Ruler." -Lord Kelvin

In the same speech, Kelvin also rejected the popular claim of naturalistic origins for life itself:

"A very ancient speculation, still clung to by many naturalists... supposes that... dead matter may have run together or crystallized or fermented into 'germs of life,' or 'organic cells,' or 'protoplasm.' But science brings a vast mass of inductive evidence against this hypothesis of spontaneous generation, as you have heard from my predecessor in the Presidential chair. Careful enough scrutiny has, in every case up to the present day, discovered life as antecedent to life. Dead matter cannot become living without coming under the influence of matter previously alive. This seems to me as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation." -Lord Kelvin

Still though, Kelvin was not a young-earth creationist and he proposed in his speech that perhaps life that was originally created by God on another planet and may have come to Earth via meteorites. And then, while specifically disavowing the mechanisms of Darwinism, he wrote, "if evolution there has been," then that life would have been guided to diversify by intelligent design. And ultimately Kelvin observed that even if all this did happen, it does not imply however that mankind evolved from animals!

And Kelvin would always reject efforts to provide a maximum age for the earth as older than 20 to 40 million years, which age is far too young, even if evolutionary mechanisms could theoretically create vital organs, for Darwinian mechanisms to explain the diversity of life. For as widely stated, natural selection can explain the survival, but not the arrival, of the fittest.

TheologyOnline Thread: Two Questions for Atheists, with somewhat honest and dishonest responses.

Other topics that that lead today's show:

Oil Celebration in the Gulf: America may have increased our oil reserves by 50% (15 billion barrels!) thanks to extremely expensive exploration and development, paid for by wonderful oil profits!

Wal-Mart Partners: with homosexuals, hiring a gay marketing firm, and joining the National Gay & Lesbian Chamber of Commerce.

Scott from Longmont CO: loves BEL, and warns public school parents that his own grandson's school book deceptively promotes homosexuality... in kindergarten!