Belief in evolution is not a harmless enterprise. Pro-active evolutionary propagandists claim that the debate over origins is purely about science: They have the science, and creationists don’t; it’s that simple. But it’s not. There are specific ethical implications that follow from believing and applying the major tenets of the evolutionary religion to life. The late Stephen Jay Gould (1941-2002), who served as a popular spokesman for the evolutionary worldview, stated the following:

No factual discovery of science (statements about how nature “is”) can, in principle, lead us to ethical conclusions (how we “ought” to behave) or to convictions about intrinsic meaning (the “purpose” of our lives). These last two questions–and what more important inquiries could we make?–lie firmly in the domains of religion, philosophy and humanistic study.[1]

In the final analysis, by Gould’s own admission, science cannot teach us how to live. Following the inherent atheism of the evolutionary worldview, how can there be objective morality and intrinsic meaning when religion is a myth, philosophy is the random musings of evolved chunks of organic matter, and humanistic study is nothing more than the record of what Homo sapiens do? What’s the basis for evaluation?

Gould found himself caught in the implications of his own atheistic and impersonal worldview, so he perpetrated a con, a philosophical dodge. “Science and religion should be equal, mutually respecting partners, each the master of its own domain, and with each domain vital to human life in a different way.”[2] But a consistent evolutionist does not believe in the equality of religion. In fact, he doesn’t believe in religion at all. And yet, when it comes to the meaning of life and the “oughts” of behavior, Gould must turn to religion for answers because he cannot find morality in his evolutionary hypothesis. He admits that “Today, all scientists accept materialism (at least in their workplace), and the philosophically astute realize that it poses no threat to our love for music, subjective insight, and love itself!”[3] But if evolution is true–“operating blindly and randomly”[4] as evolutionists insist–there cannot be any scientific justification for morality and meaning because these are outside the realm of science. In fact, there is no reality outside the realm of science. As materialists, they cannot account for a “subjective insight” like love since both insights and love are non-material and beyond the scope of science. Francis Crick, co-discoverer of the double-helix structure of DNA, set forth the logical implications of materialism:

Crick’s “astonishing hypothesis” declares that all of our interior states, joys and sorrows, our memories and ambitions, even our personal identity and the cherished notion of free will, are “no more than the behavior of nerve cells.”[5]

Crick and Gould used the Christian concepts of love, joy, and sorrow simply as labels to identify the impersonal, purely random “behavior of nerve cells.” What’s true for “interior states” is also necessarily true for morality. Michael Ruse asserts that morality developed in the same way as hands, feet, and teeth–the “ephemeral product of the evolutionary process.”[6] According to Ruse, “Morality,” like gills in fish and lungs in Homo sapiens, “is just an aid to survival and reproduction, and has no being beyond this.”[7] Killing Jews, starving millions for the greater cause of “the revolution,” guillotining aristocrats, and lopping of the heads of relief workers are just aids to survival.

Once again, in order for the evolutionist to do science and live in this world, he must borrow religious presuppositions that do not exist in his materialistic worldview. This schizophrenia is most evident when a recent article published in The Sciences, a New York Academy of Science magazine, stated that “rape is a ’natural, biological’ phenomenon, springing from men’s evolutionary urge to reproduce.”[8] Rape makes perfect sense when explained scientifically. Even so, the authors conclude, “Plainly, rapists are responsible for rape and should be punished.”[9] Why? Animals aren’t punished for “rape.”

Evolutionists need to be pushed on these points. Don’t let them take a breath. Force them to answer this series of questions when you attend the next school board meeting where creation and evolution are discussed: Why are you important and why would it be wrong to kill you, take all your possessions, and enslave your children? “If we are all biological accidents, why shouldn’t the white accidents own and sell the black accidents?”[10]

Endnotes:

[1] Stephen Jay Gould, “Dorothy, It’s Really Oz,” Time (August 23, 1999), 59. [2] Gould, “Dorothy, It’s Really Oz,” 59. [3] Stephen Jay Gould, “Darwin’s ‘Big Book,’” review of Natural Selection, by Charles Darwin, ed. by R. C. Stauffer (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1975), in Science (May 23, 1975) 188:824-26. Quoted in Henry M. Morris, That Their Words May be Used Against Them (Green Forest, AR: Master Books, 1999), 474. [4] Michael D. Lemonick and Andrea Dorfman, “Up From the Apes: Remarkable New Evidence is Filling in the Story of How we Became Human,” Time (August 23, 1999), 58. [5] Daniel Voll, “Soul Searching with Francis Crick,” Omni (February 1994), 46. [6] Michael Ruse, The Darwinian Paradigm (London: Routledge, 1989), 268. Quoted in Paul Copan, “True for You, Not True For Me”: Deflating the Slogans that Leave Christians Speechless (Minneapolis, MN: Bethany House Publishers, 1998), 46. [7] Ruse, The Darwinian Paradigm, 268. [8] Dan Vergano, “‘Natural, biological’ theory of rape creates instant storm,” USA Today (January 28, 2000), 8D.
[9] Quoted in Vergano, “‘Natural, biological’ theory of rape creates instant storm,” 8D.
[10] James Scott Bell, The Darwin Conspiracy (Gresham, OR: Vision House, 1995), 64.