Dr. Nathaniel Abraham, Ph.D., is a biologist, scholar, and research scientist specializing in zebrafish, developmental biology, and programmed cell death.  He was fired from Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, a highly esteemed research facility based in New England in March of 2004.  The reason?  Dr. Abraham believes in Creation and does not accept evolution as a scientific fact.  With his termination, Dr. Abraham became one of many scientists and academics who have dedicated years of their lives to the pursuit of scientific knowledge; but because they are unwilling to spout the "party line" with respect to evolution, they are being forced out of their field.

Read how CLA is defending the rights of this Christian scientist to practice his profession consistent with his faith.

Dr. Abraham came to the United States from India to earn his Ph.D. in biology at St. John's University in New York.  While at St. John's, he became an expert in zebrafish.  He did a groundbreaking doctoral dissertation in his area of research science.  Dr. Abraham was well respected at St. John's, and it was no secret that he was a strong Christian who believed the Bible and believed in Creation.  Many of his colleagues there enjoyed asking him questions about issues of science and religion.  In the first sentence of the acknowledgements in his doctoral thesis, Dr. Abraham thanks his Lord and Savior Jesus Christ.

Fired for His Faith

While Dr. Abraham was completing his Ph.D. program at St. John's, he began to look for a postdoctoral position where he could continue his research.  He married, brought his wife to America, and they were expecting their first child.  Life was looking very good.  He applied for a research position at Woods Hole after seeing the opportunity listed on the Internet.  Scientists at Woods Hole were interested in expanding their toxicology laboratory to include programmed cell death research using the zebrafish benchmark model, which was Dr. Abraham's specialty.  In fact, Dr. Abraham was so valuable to them in this endeavor that he assisted them for several months in designing and building their lab before he was able to join them fulltime as a researcher.  Dr. Abraham contributed greatly to the design of the new facility and his superiors were pleased with his work. 

The relationship between Dr. Abraham and Woods Hole was mutually beneficial and productive until one lunchtime shortly after Dr. Abraham began working fulltime at Woods Hole.  In a passing conversation with his supervisor, Dr. Abraham happened to mention that he believed in Creation.  His supervisor expressed concern that if Dr. Abraham believed in Creation, he was not qualified to do the job he had been hired to do.

Dr. Abraham told his superiors in writing that he was willing to analyze his research using evolutionary concepts if that was warranted, but he was not willing to personally renounce his belief in Creation or accept evolution as a scientific fact.  Dr. Abraham pointed out that his belief in Creation was irrelevant to the research he was doing.  After all, he had developed his research specialty and expertise at St. John's University, where his faith had not been an issue.  Dr. Abraham believed a scientist should merely do the experiments and follow the evidence wherever it led.

The "establishment" scientists at Woods Hole were not convinced.  They wanted Dr. Abraham to share their wholehearted acceptance of evolution as a scientific fact, or they felt he was not "fit" to work in the field of science-at least not at their prestigious laboratory.  They finally told Dr. Abraham he would have to leave if he did not accept evolution as fact.  

Dr. Abraham's decision to hold to his Biblical faith and to his belief in Creation was a very costly decision for him.  His wife was about to have their baby.  Without a job, Dr. Abraham would lose his visa, which would soon expire.  Woods Hole was not willing to even permit Dr. Abraham to complete the first year of his potential three-year employment.  As a result, Dr. Abraham was forced to send his expectant wife home to India, and he missed the birth of his first child.  

Attorneys for the Christian Law Association are now representing Dr. Abraham in a lawsuit against Woods Hole to test whether America's courts will permit this sort of blatant religious discrimination against scientists in America. 

Religious Discrimination in the Scientific Community

Dr. Abraham's private Biblical faith did not affect his ability to do the job for which he had been hired, but his supervisors refused to tolerate his belief in Creation.  This is a phenomenon that is becoming increasingly common in both the academic and scientific research communities.  "Establishment" scientists have become increasingly willing to require that everyone who works in the field of science must accept the tenets of evolution as fact or be banned from the profession.

Attorneys for the Christian Law Association believe that Title VII antidiscrimination laws protect scientists from being terminated because of their religious beliefs.  In addition to limiting opportunities for Christian scientists and researchers, highly qualified professors are also losing their jobs and being denied tenure at some American universities merely because they do not toe the line regarding evolution.

What the scientific community seems to be saying to creationists or to those who hold to intelligent design, is that if you are not willing to accept an evolutionary philosophy, we will indeed shun you, terminate you, and push you out of the field of science.  Does that mean that in the future scientists will be forced to deny their belief in God or their belief that an intelligent designer played a part in the origins of the universe or of life on earth in order to work?  Just where would such a repressive attitude lead?

Interestingly, just as some secular university science departments and research laboratories are forbidding anyone to defy the new scientific principle recognizing "evolution's role as the central organizing principle of modern biology" (a quote from the press release for a new book called Science, Evolution and Creationism, published by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences along with the Institute of Medicine, both advisory bodies to the U.S. government in the area of science and medicine), more and more scientists are coming to the conclusion that there is increasing scientific evidence for intelligent design in the universe.  The Discovery Institute in Seattle, Washington, has compiled a list of over 700 scientists who have signed the following statement.

We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life.  Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.

CLA believes it is very important at this point in history to defend Dr. Abraham's right to work as a scientific researcher no matter what his personal religious beliefs.  We agree with Dr. Abraham that scientists should follow the evidence wherever it leads.  Establishment scientists should not be allowed to put a thumb on the scale of evolutionary research outcomes. 

Dr. Abraham's lawsuit against Woods Hole represents more than one person's termination for refusing to abandon his religious beliefs.  If those in the scientific establishment in America's laboratories and universities are permitted to fire anyone who does not accept evolution as "the central organizing principle of modern biology," America will be on a slippery slope toward renouncing the traditional rules of scientific inquiry, which are based upon experimentation and observation that is always open to testing by competing theories. 

What is True Science?

True science is founded on the proposition that everything we think we know about the natural world can, in principle, be rejected if it does not meet the test of observation and experiment. The very practice of science, at its core, is a constant exercise of extending what we do know about the world, and then correcting what we thought we knew for sure.  The Academic Press Dictionary defines science as "the systematic observation of natural events and conditions in order to discover facts about them and to formulate laws and principles based on these facts."

We should remember that it was their observation of order in the universe that led the scientists of the Middle Ages to begin their quest to discern that order.  Many of these early scientists were Christians who believed that the Creator God had made an orderly universe and that His order could be discerned by using scientific methods of experimentation and observation.

The consideration of alternative explanations for scientific claims is vital to the development of a scientific mind.  There are actually four terms used in science to address the results of experimentation and observation.  They are hypothesis, theory, fact (near-certainty), and law.

A scientific hypothesis is a testable scientific idea that can be proved right or wrong with experiments. It is an educated guess that can be verified or disproven by observation or experimentation.  A scientific theory is defined as the culmination of many scientific investigations drawing together all the current evidence; thus, it represents the most powerful explanations scientists have to offer.  The closest we can get to absolute truth in science are indisputable observations which we call facts or near-certainty.  Finally, a scientific law generalizes a body of observations to which no exceptions have been found.

It appears that modern establishment scientists, such as those at the Woods Hole research laboratory, no longer think of evolution as merely a "hypothesis" or even a "theory."  Instead, evolution has now become more like a "law."  In fact, the scientific establishment is now claiming that evolution is "the central organizing principle of modern biology," a conclusion from which no working scientist or academic can apparently deviate.

How did this happen?  Did someone find the "missing link" that scientists have searched for to prove that men were formerly monkeys and we somehow missed it?  If some scientist has conclusively demonstrated in a laboratory that evolution produced life on earth, we must have missed that too. 

Did some recent experiment contradict the work of Louis Pasteur who conclusively demonstrated in the mid-19^th century that life cannot spring spontaneously from non-life?  Pasteur's work in developing pasteurization through that experiment still appears to be valid in our milk cartons, and no verified ape/man is as yet on display in the Smithsonian Institute.  Instead, evolutionary scientists appear to have taken a "leap of faith" and declared without evidence or proof that evolution is a verified "fact" or "law," no matter how it is defined.  

The unsupported conclusory statement being touted not only by establishment scientists, but also by many high school and university teachers that "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology and is supported by multiple forms of scientific evidence" throws an incendiary bomb directly into the heart of the traditional scientific method.

The Evolution of Evolution

In reality, the word evolution is a very slippery term. When simply defined as "change over time" within species it is relatively non-controversial. Fruit flies, moths, and Galapagos finches all provide examples of change over time. However, when modern scientists tout evolution as a near fact or law and then extrapolate from this meaning that it is also a fact that flies, moths, and finches all evolved from a remote common ancestor, the word becomes extremely problematic.

When modern scientists or educators propound the philosophical notion that "evolution is the fundamental concept underlying all of biology," they are not confirming some grand new scientific development in our understanding the concept of evolution.  What we have instead is merely evidence that the term evolution itself has now evolved.  This gigantic leap in the evolution of evolution provides research facilities like Woods Hole with a rationale to fire a world renowned scientist like Dr. Abraham merely because he has a different belief-one based on the Bible and not on evolutionary philosophy.

What is at Stake?

When establishment scientists declare evolution as the winner in the contest of determining the origins of the universe and of life, their conclusion has nothing at all to do with traditional science.  Darwin merely provided a rationale for science to reject religion and God.  Ponder carefully that if evolution is allowed to become the  "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology" by which all of life must be interpreted and understood, many more eminent and qualified scientists like Dr. Abraham will lose their jobs.  In fact, we could reach a point in America where believing in God automatically disqualifies a person from working in the field of science, despite the fact that the whole field of modern science developed because early scientists believed God had created a rational and orderly universe with controlling principles that could be known.

There is a connection between the termination of Dr. Abraham, the release of the new National Academy of Sciences book cited above, and high school and university science standards that prohibit teaching anything other than evolution as "the fundamental concept underlying all of biology."  We see in all of these developments evidence of a rapidly growing movement in the scientific establishment to mandate a philosophical worldview that definitively eliminates God.  Dr. Abraham has been the victim of a modern science "inquisition" that mandates a personal belief in the philosophy of evolution and bans a personal belief in God as the Creator. 

Please pray that CLA's defense of Dr. Abraham will be successful and that our courts will determine that Christians who believe in a Creator God may not be excluded from working in the field of science when they are otherwise qualified.  Pray also that a philosophy based on a nonscientific view of evolution will not become required teaching in the science classrooms of America's public schools and universities. 

The attack against the Word of God in our culture begins against the very first verse in Genesis.  "In the beginning God" is not accepted by many in our nation.  CLA is honored to stand and defend those Christians who remain true to what they believe based on the Bible regardless of the consequences.