1) I spent 40 years making up my mind about evolution. I puzzled over it from my late teens up to the age of about 60. So I was not exactly hasty. Let me explain why I now think Darwinism is bunk.

2) First, the idea that bits of matter just combine by accident & evolve . .

2) . . . into all life on planet earth by sheer chance always seemed like a fairy tale to me. I tried, really tried, to understand how it is supposed to work using my Gr. 12 biology & learning more of the sc. But I was never convinced. Sorry, I just can't see how it is plausible.

3) Second, I really wanted to be admitted to what C. S. Lewis calls "the inner ring." I wanted to be accepted by the "intellectuals." The problem is that I read Lewis's essay (The Inner Ring) early on & couldn't shake the feeling that wanting to be "in" was the only reason. . .

4) . . .I didn't reject it out of hand. That seemed dishonest, so I always had a bad conscience about it.

Third, it was obvious all along that the real driver of Darwinism is naturalistic metaphysics, not empirical evidence. The evidence can be interpreted many different ways.

5) Fourth, I noticed that altho many Xians sought a peace treaty (the body evolved; God implants a soul) with Darwinism, the evolutionists never reciprocated. They saw the Xians as coming their way one step at a time, but never took them seriously. It is just surrender in stages.

6) Fifth, & this was really decisive, I began to note that science was being politicized & ruined. The same activist pressure on biologists to toe the party line or keep quiet was applied to the APA to remove homosexuality from the list of mental disorders. Then it was . . .

7) . . . applied to anyone who dissented from global warming alarmism. Then it was applied to anyone daring to question transgenderism. Sc. was not longer neutral & open to new evidence & arg; instead, the science was "settled." Consensus is attained by cancelling the dissenters.

8) This is not new. It goes back to the early 20th C. It started in biology & spread to other sciences. A lot of people were shocked when a trillion dollar pandemic shutdown was interrupted by leftist protests during the middle of Covid. It was just unbelievable to many that . .

9) . . . medical professionals were acting in such a blatantly hypocritical & irrational way. But I wasn't surprised - it was just a continuation of the pattern. What the "Party" says is what goes. Facts, logic & science are just tools to be used for fooling fools.

10) Finally, it dawned on me that the only real reason I had for accepting Darwinism was not logic, empirical evidence or scien. arguments, but only the appeal to authority: "Could all those biologists, geologists, etc. really be wrong?"

Now it is v. clear; the answer is "Yes."