Set aside for the moment the reality that evolution is about as far from fact as east is from west; a little objective study of known scientific truths makes this clear. What I find most fascinating is the idea that the majority of the world’s scientists allegedly believe this unproven theory to be fact. How can that be?
Dr. Jerry Bergman explained it all some years ago with the publication of The Slaughter of the Dissidents: The Shocking Truth about Killing the Careers of Darwin Doubters (Leafcutter Press, 2008). In that landmark volume, he showed how the scientific establishment, particularly in academia, systematically derails the career of scientists and Ph.D. candidates who dare to question the truth of Darwinian evolution.
But Dr. Bergman did not call it a day when he released Slaughter for publication. He continued to amass evidence that these were far from isolated incidents. In the process, he collected many more stories of anti-creationist persecution, the most egregious of which he has presented in Silencing the Darwin Skeptics: The War Against Theists (Leafcutter Press, 2016).
Volume II in this eye-opening series of exposés, Silencing the Darwin Skeptics makes it clear that this is a problem that is not going away.
One reason: the increasingly angry anti-creationist voices in the mass, specialized and social media. In Silencing the Darwin Skeptics, Dr. Bergman exposes some of the most damaging and subtle of these assaults. For instance, he shows how even prestigious periodicals such as Scientific American routinely classify Intelligent Design views as “religious” while calling evolutionary ideas “scientific” – this, in spite of the fact that Darwinism by definition eschews the scientific method.
Worse, the author demonstrates how many in the media openly mock creationists, sometimes using terms such as “dangerous” without any explanation – the implication being that none is needed. Equally perplexing, many equate Intelligent Design with flat-earthism, a ridiculous charge, given the fact that the earth is a sphere was first revealed in the Bible (see Isaiah 40:22, written in the 7th century B.C.).
But that’s just the start for readers of Silencing the Darwin Skeptics. Dr. Bergman also covers such topics as the failure of organizations from the ACLU to the AAUP to defend victims of anti-creationist discrimination, and the ongoing campaigns against Darwin skeptics conducted by various universities. He also describes a number of specific cases in riveting detail.
For me, however, the most gripping section in this book is Dr. Bergman’s blow-by-blow comparison of the current persecution of Darwin doubters with the early stages of Nazi anti-Semitism.
“The intense dislike, ridicule, and contempt shown to Jews in Nazi Germany is well-documented and well-known,” he writes. “A very similar kind of scorn is currently being expressed against Darwin skeptics.” He proceeds to outline the six major steps leading up to the Holocaust – verbal attacks, propaganda, termination of careers, ghettoization, concentration camp internment and killing in the Holocaust – and details how Darwin skeptics now find themselves in a variation on stage four, intellectual ghettoization.
This is a warning that should be taken very seriously. Dr. Bergman is no newcomer to the subject; he has written extensively on Nazi Germany, particularly on the role that Darwinian thought played in the horrors of that era. (See, for example, his book Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview.)
Silencing the Darwin Skeptics is a critically important book – one that deserves serious study by anyone who is concerned about the future of this nation and its children. I recommend it highly.