Why Question Darwinism?

Dec 21, 2015 2215

Not to understand our world and the reasons for its moral chaos is to be like a boxer forced to fight with his eyes bandaged. Our world is very sick, and its illness is exceedingly contagious. The best evidence for that is the fact that over 100 million people were slaughtered in war during the last century – more than in the preceding nineteen centuries put together. But we do not need a history book to inform us – just read any newspaper or listen to any news report. Angels looking down cannot be blamed if they consider our globe to be the lunatic asylum of the universe.

Albert Schweitzer decades ago declared that our world is in the process of suicide and that what remains of our civilization is only rubble that can be disposed of by the next international landslide. How strange it is that humanity can split the atom and walk on the moon but it cannot stop killing, stealing, raping or lying!

The Bible, in a single word, gives the reason for our dilemma – SIN. But search modern books or magazines, and it is quite unlikely you will come across that word. And there is another missing word – God. I have just re-read several times an account of the troubled sixth decade of last century when the world was torn by student riots and the spirit of anti-authoritarianism. (See The Glory and the Dream by William Manchester.) God was not given a place in that record, though his absence was the cause of the chaos chronicled.

A third word is vital—law. Modern man believes in self–gratification, not self-discipline. The youth who traumatized their seniors in the 1960s have been described as over-privileged, under-disciplined and irresponsible; in other words, lawless.

‘The way of man that walks is not in himself’, says Scripture. We need guidance, and only when we obey the laws of God do we walk at liberty. The opening chapters of the Bible are the seed from which the rest of Holy Scripture proceeds. Two institutions established at creation, became the hinges of the Decalogue: Worship (the Sabbath) and Marriage. The first four of the Ten Commandments spring from the fact that the world did not make itself or arrive by chance, it is the product of a loving heavenly Father. The institution of a day of worship was meant to be a perpetual reminder to men of that fact.

The last six of the Ten emanate from the realities that spring from marriage and the family. The fifth commandment introduces the family. The sixth speaks of the sacredness of life, which has its origin in the family. The seventh has to do with the relationship between the two sexes produced by life. In the family we first learn of property and possessions; thus the law, ‘Thou shalt not steal’. Also in the family we learn relationships and speaking the truth, which is always is central to human interactions: – the ninth commandment. And the tenth law touches the source of every sin – wrong thinking.

All our world’s sorrows spring from neglect of the divine law. Once the fourth and fifth commandments are violated, transgression of the others immediately follows. Today, most moderns in the Western world cohabit before marriage and completely ignore giving God his place by regular worship.

Elton Trueblood summarized our state:

The signs of the decay of the Christian faith are so great on every side that only wishful thinking can deny it. Convenient illustrations are the contemporary ignorance of the Bible, the decline of the observance of a day of worship, and the loosening of the marriage tie
(The Predicament of Modern Man, page 21).

Whence then this deliberate lawlessness of our race? A century and a half ago Charles Darwin wrote his Origin of Species, which became the Bible for evolutionists in every country of the world. The key idea of this influential book is chance – believing that all things arrived fortuitously, not by divine fiat. The best-known writer on evolution in our day was Stephen Jay Gould. He insisted that our arrival was the result of fifty billion chances.

Dr Will Provine, Professor of Biological sciences at Cornell University tells us that:

There are no gods, no purposes, no goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There is no absolute foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free will for humans either (‘Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy?’ Debate between W. B. Provine and Philip E. Johnson at Stanford University, April 30, 1994).

With such a philosophy, are there any grounds for gladness and goodness, or for resisting our inclinations to selfishness? If this life is but a blip of light between two eternities of darkness, why give value to anything?

Ideas have consequences. Our world is a world of violence, greed, sexual perversion and a thousand other ills, because of the myths we cherish and the truth we reject. The rebellious nature of fallen man is the fundamental cause of our woes. But the trigger that multiplied and exacerbated existing evils was the ‘scientific’ heresy of Darwinism. This new view of human origins motivated heads of nations, leaders of business and teachers in schools and universities to act on the Darwinian assumptions that life is a violent struggle between competitors where only the fittest (the cruellest) can survive. Results included wars, oppression of the poor and helpless by the rich and powerful, racism, colonialism, increased extortion and crime. Darwinism also bewildered minds and broke hearts, for sin was no longer evil but only a relic of our animal ancestry.

It has long been understood that without hope man is weak and vulnerable. Darwin robbed mankind of this basic staple of existence. Many thoughtful men have recognized this. For example C. E. M. Joad found his way back to God when he contemplated the emptiness by which moderns live. He wrote:

Nobody believes in Utopias any more. As literary men look into the future they envisage something like George Orwell’s 1984. The last of the long line of Utopia-makers, which began with Plato in the fourth century B.C., was H. G. Wells. But it is very interesting to note that at the end of his life he abandoned his expectation of Utopia, and threw up his hands in blank despair. He saw the human race hell-bent on self-destruction. In his Mind at the End of Its Tether, Wells – who all his life had been preaching the perfectibility of human nature – gave way to the great wave of modern despair when he concluded “There is no way out, or round, or through the impasse. It is the end.” (Cited in Desmond Ford, Genesis Versus Darwinism, page 30.)

William James was a predecessor of Joad. Just as clearly he saw that without hope existence is meaningless. Consider his words:

All natural goods perish. Riches take wings; fame is a breath; love is a cheat; youth and health and pleasure vanish. Can things whose end is always dust and disappointment be the real goods which our souls require? … We need a life not correlated with death, a kind of good that will not perish, a good in fact that flies beyond the goods of nature (Varieties of Religious Experience, pages 136-137).

Consider yet another verdict:

The ultimate sadness is that nothing lasts; that the bloom so soon disappears from all things that are young; that the vigour of maturity is so short-lived, while age brings weariness and forgetfulness and decay such as presage the oblivion and corruption of the grave. That is why our sincerest laughter with some pain is fraught (John Baillie, Invitation to Pilgrimage, page 115).

Years ago Christianity Today published an article entitled ‘An Anchor for the Lonely Crowd’, in which the writer stated

Creation means that God is the true home of man’s spirit and that when the knowledge of this doctrine is lost, man himself becomes lost. Not knowing of whom he is the son, he knows not who he is (January 1962, page 3).

These verdicts are all true, but the main reason for rejecting Darwinism is that in dismissing Genesis we lose the doctrine of the Fall. If man is not spiritually lost, he does not need a Saviour. Then Christ becomes irrelevant, and Christianity itself is dissolved.

So, in summary, we recognize that the doctrine of organic evolution dismisses God, sin, the Ten Commandments, Christ, the Bible, hope and meaning. It leaves mankind lost, hopeless and despairing in a world without meaning, purpose or love.
DES FORD

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