“I Need Feedback From People who don’t accept my
Ideas.”
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Author: Jerry Bergman |
Essays by Author |
Radio Interview with Jerry Bergman
Radio interview with Jerry
Bergman on “Kansas Live,” August 16, 2006 produced in Wichita for American
Family Radio. Dr. Van Stipdonk provided the transcription. The meeting at
Wichita State was Friday, August 18th, room 208 of Hubbard Hall. Edited for
space and clarity by Jerry Bergman
Host: We will talk with you more, Mr. Lehman, but thank you for
sharing why Dr. Jerry Bergman will be coming to town. Dr. Bergman, this is a
issue that has permeated our school system for a long time and several
generations now have been taught that life comes from just matter and that
evolution is fact and schools haven’t been given the opportunity to criticize
it as you would any science theory in a classroom. Tell us about why you got
involved with this particular issue and why it is close to your heart?
Dr. Jerry Bergman: I became very involved because at one
time I was an atheist. I became disillusioned with atheism, what they were
doing and what they weren’t doing. They seemed to spend all their time
condemning Christians instead of going out and doing positive things. And when
I began to question atheism, the question “is there a god?” naturally arose.
The first thing I looked at is why--why are we atheists? Why do atheists exist?
One of the main reasons why is that many scientists, and most all atheists,
believe that we can account for the creation, not by a Creator, but by
Darwinism. And so, one of the first things I questioned, since I taught biology
(one of my majors in school), was if Darwinism was true. And so I slowly, but
surely, evaluated each of the major arguments for Darwinism, one at a time, and
concluded after a certain point that the idea simply was not true. And by
Darwinism I mean the “from the goo to you by way of the zoo,” theory which
expresses the major idea behind Darwinism.
Host: From goo to you by way of the zoo.
Bergman: Right
Host: That is a very simple way of putting it. I don’t
understand why challenging Darwinism is so much of a threat. You can’t prove
evolution by evidence any more than you can prove the creation theory. Yet they
say, “Well, evolution is the only theory that has all this evidence to back it
up.” And you say the evidence that they’re coming up with isn’t accurate. Tell
us a little bit about DNA and what it tells you about the theory of evolution.
Bergman: Now that we understand more about how cells divide and how
cells work at the cellular level, an area called molecular biology, we realize
that its not only the complexity but that design is very apparent in life. For
example, there is strong evidence for design in the DNA code. Not only design,
but design at a far more complex level that we even thought a few years ago. We
know that there’s a code which produces the amino acid sequence that produces
protein, but now we realize that there are codes within this code that help to
regulate the DNA, where it sits on histones, for example. So, as time goes by,
we realize the cell is not only more complex, but it’s also more intricate and
well designed, providing more evidence of design.
Host: And you say that orthodox evolutionists have claimed that
certain things are true, and yet your finding is that that research is invalid.
Do they accept any of the arguments against some of this, or is that what’s put
college professors in jeopardy?
Bergman: When you come up with arguments against Darwinism, and
begin to seriously question Darwinism, it can, and often does, put your job in
jeopardy. For example, I have a list of almost 3,000 Ph.D. level scientists in
the life science/physical science area that are what I call “Darwin doubters”.
And I must be careful on who I put on this list because I don’t want to “out”
anyone. I don’t want the scientific community to be aware of in the closet
“Darwin doubters” because it could jeopardize their career. And so most people
I ended up putting on the list are either retired or are well along into their
career, or are on a position, such as in industry doing scientific research,
that their exposure will not affect them. Many on my list are already out of
the closet. They’ve written books and they’ve come out in support of
intelligent design, or, creationism, so I don’t have to worry about “outing”
them. But that is a concern when I made this list and I wanted to check to make
sure that is it OK that someone is on this list and, a fair number, I estimate
about a third, said “No way, this would really hurt my career. And so I don’t
want to be on your list, but I’m very supportive of what you’re doing”. So I
didn’t put them on.
Host: You’re in the process of doing a book that has not yet
been released called The Long War By Darwinists Against Darwin Skeptics,
documenting hundreds of these cases of blatant discrimination against
professors because they are willing to question or not buy into the idea of
evolution hook, line and sinker. Dr. Bergman, talk a little about this
persecution. At Wichita State University, I have both my degrees from there, I
received an F on the first paper I submitted with content about Jesus, and the
Bible, and it was the only F I got, so I changed my major, and it changed the
direction of my career because I knew if I was discriminated against by writing
one paper, it effected my selection of what I was going to do at that
university. That was just one minor
student being persecuted. But you’re saying the professors themselves are being
persecuted?
Bergman: Very commonly so. In fact, of the 3,000 names that I have
on my list I contacted about half of them were and a good percent of these, I
would say about 95%, related some incident of persecution or some problem they
had, (denial of promotion, or denial of degrees, or they were denied tenure and
they had to go in the closet or had to find work elsewhere. It’s actually
unusual not to have problems. Most of the people that I talked with had
some problems; some had severe problems.
Host: What’s the source? I mean, it can’t be one particular
person controlling all this. Have the universities selected these liberal or
evolutionist type professors throughout the years, and now other professors are
beginning to say “we don’t agree with this” is that what’s causing the problem?
Bergman: Well, there are a lot of reasons for the problem. One is
that, as I found out when I was an atheist, many are very militant and very determined
to wipe out religion--they walk around with hatred in their heart. They’re
going to do what they can to eliminate theism. And, one of the main ways that
people use to support the idea of a creator is to look at whether or not
evolution is true. They realize that if people accept creationism, atheism is
problematic. And they realize that creationism and intelligent design, and any
attack on Darwinism, is a threat to their worldview. Even people like Lynn
Margulis, who is an atheist herself, but she has major reservations about
Darwinism, has been attacked. In her writings she talks about the fact that
some scientists are viciously against her, even though she is an evolutionist.
But she feels that the Darwinian mechanism is incorrect, that a theory that she
has proposed is the mechanism of evolution. Namely, a theory called
endosymbiosis, and some variations of it, where not only cells can move into
other cells, but also genes can be moved from one cell to another cell or from
one organism to another organism.
Host: We’re talking with Dr. Jerry Bergman, who will be a guest
speaker coming up this Friday evening, 7:00 pm at Wichita State University’s
Hubbard Hall in room 208. It is free and open to the public. He will be talking
about the persecution and, some of the distress in our college campuses when a
professor either does not agree with the theory of evolution, or would at least
like to be able to express the idea that there may be a god who created us. The
issue in Kansas is not the age of the Earth, but whether God had anything to do
with creation. Are you aware of the creation-evolution, conflict with the Board
of Education that has been going on here in the State of Kansas?
Bergman: I’m quite aware of
what’s going on here. And what the Board is trying to do is allow criticism of
Darwinism. They’re not trying to force the teaching of either creationism or
intelligent design, but simply to allow students to critically evaluate
Darwinism. Even that is pretty non-threatening, I would think, but has caused
the Darwinists to go ballistic. And they are determined that no criticism of
Darwinism will be allowed in the schools. Now they wouldn’t say it that way.
They would say, “Well, there is no criticism of Darwinism. It’s been
proven true and therefore there’s no valid criticism of it.” And, therefore,
they say, “Criticism of Darwinism is only opening the door to teaching
creationism.” And, by and large, most creationists that I know, and all the
creationist organizations that I’ve been a part of, do not want to force
creationism in the schools. All creationist and intelligent design
organizations, as far as I’m aware, only want the right to be able to freely
criticize Darwinism if the teacher elects to. Basically what they want is
academic freedom, and that is, by and large, resisted by movements that want to
shove Darwinism down the throats of students (and with incredible intolerance).
Host: We’ll go ahead and, I’ll let you take a short break here
and listen in, as David Lehman explains about the college students on the
campus. Mr. Lehman, since you’re a consultant and involved in this arena, are
you aware of how the students feel about giving the freedom to be critical of a
scientific theory? I mean, that’s what science is all about, checking it and
shaking it and, writing down the results. And, so far, I have never seen a
half-monkey and a half-man, in the process of evolving, so, what are the
students on campus saying?
Lehman: What we find is a lot of professors are very antagonistic
against any kind of even theistic evolution, and so atheistic evolution is the
only thing that’s allowed. Now, some would say, “Well, we believe in a god, but
they still believe in the evolutionary model completely; hydrogen, an odorless,
colorless, tasteless gas, given enough time, becomes people. They postulate
mechanisms that they expect that will cause this to happen, but I have never
heard of a mechanism that actually could be, even be theoretically, workable.
You don’t get a code from a random process, as Dr. Bergman will explain, the
code is there already, and you can have variation within the kind, but you
don’t go from one kind to another. Environments change that may cause triggers
to operate, like your immune system. We lose information, but will never gain
information from a random process. Nobody that I know on the campuses has ever
come up with anything that would demonstrate even a workable model of how
evolution could occur at anytime, at anyplace. We’ve had talks on this for 6
months on campus. Professors and graduate students and others have come, and we
appreciate their coming, but they’ve been very critical.
Host: And so this is a
very heated war and I believe it’s down to the root of principalities and
powers fighting for the truth to actually be taught to a generation that will
base their behavior on their core beliefs about from where they came from. Dr.
Bergman, what do say about why we’re not seeing one-half monkey, one-half man
in the process of evolving, and all the different things that debunk the idea
of evolution, having real evidence that’s tangible today, to the students? What
do you hope to achieve from your talk, or to help these colleges on behalf of
the students that will go through their courses?
Bergman: I strongly believe that we need academic freedom. We need
the right to discuss this issue--that’s the main concern that I have. Darwinism
now has blinded people to important research areas. And in order to look into
these areas, for example the degeneration of the genome, we need to realize
that maybe Darwinism doesn’t explain everything. Maybe other theories are more
viable. This is the problem that Lynn Margulis has. She’s looking at another
theory and she is getting much resistance. She is an atheist, and an
evolutionist, but she’s looking at a different mechanism--so she hasn’t been
totally ostracized from the academic community, but, nonetheless, she’s written
a fair amount about academic freedom and the problems that she has had in her
career. And so it is a major problem when this straitjacket is put on people,
that they can look at the universe only in one way, and attempts to look at it
in other ways, which may support, or may not support, creationism or
intelligent design; they don’t want people to go into this direction. And if
they see where you are going, there’s resistance. They say, “Well, I see where
you’re going and I don’t like this. I disagree with you.”
Host: Do you think it’s an underlying spiritual battle for the
truth of acknowledging a god?
Bergman: I think that is at the core of a lot of it, and one reason
why we have such a dichotomy today is that creationists and intelligent design
and those who oppose Darwinism, can get into the churches, and so they hear the
other side. The schools only hear one side and so, therefore, the country is
more and more dichotomized, not because religious people are necessarily
inclined to accept creationism or non-religious people are more inclined to
accept evolution, but because the forum where most non-religious people are at,
as the schools, accept only one view. The forums where the other side, the
religious, are at accept the other view. Therefore, this has dichotomized the
nation. I see this country being divided right in half between the red states
and the blue states, so to speak, and I see this as very divisive and very
harmful. We need dialogue. I need feedback from people who don’t accept my
ideas. I need people to critically evaluate my ideas. And it’s hard to get that
because they don’t critically evaluate them. They sit there and condemn the
person, and this is what I see over and over, like what we see in Kansas with
the Board. They rarely criticize what the board is doing; in fact I don’t think
most people know what the Board is doing. They criticize the Board itself. They
say they’re bringing Kansas back to the 12th century, back to the dark ages,
and they’re idiots (all name calling). They’re not evaluating the issues. And
this is one problem I had with the atheist movement. Many are very nice people;
some of the nicest people I’ve known in my life are atheists. But, many were
vicious, determined to wipe out religion, and they were not ethical in the ways
that they did this. They were in many ways very dishonest in how they tried to
do this.
Host: I’d like to hear from you about how you were transformed
from an atheist to what I assume is a Christian today. If you would, you might
think about that while we ask David Lehman to tell us once again when you’ll be
speaking and where. And I understand not only at WSU, but also at one of the
local churches here in town on Sunday. So David, if you would, tell us again
when Dr. Jerry Bergman will speak here in Wichita?
Host: Do you have any comment, or anything that I maybe need to
ask you or haven’t asked you before we go, to back to Dr. Bergman to hear about
how he became a Christian?
Transcript ended here.
Other media promoting the meeting:
Christian Newswire:
http://www.christiannewswire.com/news/42676709.html
Evangelical News: http://www.evangelicalnews.org/indiv_pr.php?pr_id=6578
One Comment on the show follows:
Great. Two more people who don’t know the difference between a science classroom and a church, and wish to declare the two even grounds for non-scientific discussion. If I’d been there, I would have probably thrown a chair!
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