In 1837 a story written by Hans Christian Anderson was published in a final installment of his first collection of “Fairy Tales Told for Children”. The story was an adaptation of a Spanish collection of similar work written as a tale of moral conscience; Anderson’s work was a twist on that caution and warned of intellectual vanity and the pride of social acceptance. He titled the work, “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. The classic fairytale concerns the deceptive business dealings of two supposed weaver’s. They boasted that they were the makers of the finest cloth to an emperor whose vanity in fine clothing knew no limits.
One day the two swindlers propositioned the emperor to make him clothes of the finest thread and of the most splendid colors. Their cloth would have the amazing property of being invisible to anyone who was stupid or incompetent. This pleased the emperor since in wearing these new garments anyone who could not see them could be discovered as ignorant and unworthy of there post. In this way, the emperor could eliminate the foolish and employ only the most intelligent and the most competent persons for their posts. He said to himself, “It would be wonderful to have clothes made from that cloth,” … “Then I would know which of my men are unfit for their positions, and I’d also be able to tell clever people from stupid ones”.
Asking for a large sum of money, the best silk thread, and the finest gold, the two swindlers set about to make the emperor’s new clothes. And as we all know, they pretended to make the cloth and to sew it into clothing. As the work continued all who were called upon to inspect the progress of the weavers found the cloth and the clothing to be invisible. For fear of being held stupid or incompetent, each concluded that the final garments were of astonishing brilliance and quality and this they conveyed to his Majesty.
In the course of time the Emperor’s servants, from his minister to his Cavaliers to the Grandmaster of ceremonies and even the Emperor himself, concluded that the clothes were invisible to them. But they would not admit this to others for fear of being considered stupid or incompetent. When the ‘garments’ were announced as finished, the Emperor stripped himself naked and the weavers pretended to dress him. Naked and in front of his mirror the Emperor decided he must proceed with a majestic display of his new clothes. All the city came out to see the Emperor’s new clothes; “No one wanted it to be noticed that he could see nothing, for then it would be said that he was unfit for his position or that he was stupid.” That day, “None of the emperor’s clothes had ever before received such praise.”
However, a small child also looked upon the Emperor and saw only a naked man walking down the street. The child shouted, “But he doesn’t have anything on!” And one by one the people in the crowd murmured the truth of the child’s observation even to the hearing of the Emperor himself. Now knowing the truth of the farce the Emperor shuddered in shame, yet stood the bolder, saying to himself, “The procession must go on.”
This simple fairytale of the Emperor’s New Clothes was certainly intended to entertain children but it also brings clarity to the truth of the human tendency towards the vanity of pride and the intimidation of social rejection; far more complex concepts that were intended for adults. In simple terms, people generally want the acceptance and admiration of others and to ‘fit in’ to what the world thinks is important; the recognition, acceptance, and praise of others. Fear of rejection or of personal loss often motivates people to delusional thinking. Many marketing tactics make an opportunity of this great human flaw and use it to seduce the buyer to make decisions on purchases that are irrational, irrelevant or useless to their real needs. Today we see peer pressure in the teenage years turn into “group think” in the workplace; a term coined in the 70’s to define faulty decision-making due to perceived group pressures in business meetings. Such thinking has been shown to lead to a deterioration of creativity, of reality testing, and of moral judgment. It has led to political decisions to wage wars, commit genocide, create situational ethics, forced human sterilization and massive government waste on useless programs that create only bureaucracy, not solutions. I also believe that at every level of public education the fear of social humiliation and the pride of life has led to an acceptance of the theory of biological evolution; a failed hypothesis having no scientific validity yet promoted as fact through a systematic but often subtle mode of intimidation.
When discussing this phenomenon it is difficult to realize that there are people, many people, who would rather go along with a lie than to speak up for truth; to accept what can and what cannot be proven. In academia, students who doubt the Darwinian evolutionary ‘science’ invite ridicule and rejection of those who proudly embrace this view. Those who swallow the hoax think themselves a part of the intellectual elite. They discover freedom from moral responsibility and embrace the fancy that they have become intellectually fulfilled as atheists. In the one case, intelligent and competent people for fear of social rejection would not admit the truth about the emperor’s new clothes. There was too much at stake for anyone who openly admitted the truth. They would be less than society’s concept of intelligent, sophisticated or capable. Belief in the theory of evolution isn’t much different. Taught as fact in Western civilization from youth to graduate school and broadcast by every form of media as the paradigm for science, none can escape its subtle grip of social terrorism. After all, as the high priest of evolution, Richard Dawkins, has said, “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).”
Group Think.
The intellectual snobbery that accompanies the acceptance of biological evolution is often matched by the natural draw to immorality, and prejudice of anything and anyone religious. The course of living for those so enamored by the theory, their world views and life decisions would not seem so pathological save for the fact that just as all could see the Emperor was naked, they would not admit it. That is, evolution is devoid of any proof or, in particular, of any scientific merit, yet those so gainfully employed as proponents of the theory, or so liberated from theological considerations, so seduced into a life of hopeless decadence or simply unburden by the concept and the shame of sin, have too much to lose in admitting that the Emperor is naked! Regardless of what is scientifically obvious about evolution, i.e., it is naked, people will not admit it and all the more boldly assert, “ The procession must go on!”.
Now I must admit, there are some believers in Darwin’s popular fairytale that genuinely believe our ancestors were slime molds and their ancestors were just particles of stardust. They have heard the idea often and long enough that they have come to believe that what is improbable, even impossible is actually the fact of life. No critical thought needed. No second opinion sought. And by the time they have become what they have become, it is a non-issue. They may live good, quiet and fulfilling lives, never knowing that they have lived believing a lie. Had they looked at the front of the crowd they would have seen the Emperor for themselves and cried out as did the little child, “But he doesn’t have anything on”.
Make note here that the same could be said of religious people. Many aspire to a theology without a shred of evidence for what they believe. Most such people believe this is what faith is all about; believing in something that has no proof. Like the evolutionist, such a faith in what is invisible, for example, the person of God, is what religion is all about. From the unique revelations of the Judeo-Christian perspective, nothing could be further from the truth. But this leads us off the current argument.
Evolution theory as an explanation for how life ‘evolved’ from nothing into all these incredibly complex living organisms (of which even the smallest parts are vastly more complex than anything we, humans, have ever managed to ‘create’) is too much of a stretch (to put it mildly) for anyone not blinded by fate in ‘science’. It’s by far not the only scientific theory (pillar) without which the scientific building would collapse, but it’s surely one of the most laughable ones 🙂