Darwinism and Truth

By Kerby Anderson, 08 August, 2007

Darwinism and Truth<?xml:namespace prefix = o ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:office" />
By Kerby <?xml:namespace prefix = st1 ns = "urn:schemas-microsoft-com:office:smarttags" />Anderson

Nancy Pearcey writes in her book Total Truth that Christians must counter the effects of our secular culture and mindset by developing a consistent and comprehensive biblical worldview.[1] In the middle chapters of her book, she demonstrates how Christians should do this with the question of origins.

Earlier in her book she notes that our society has divided truth into two categories. She calls this the sacred /secular split or the private/public split or the fact/value split. They are different ways of saying the same thing. Religion and moral values are subjective and shoved into the upper story where private opinions and values reside. And in the lower story are hard, verifiable, facts, and scientific knowledge.

There is another key point to this split. The two spheres should not intersect. In other words, it would be bad manners and a violation of logic to allow your personal and private choices and values to intersect with your public life. As the popular saying goes, that would be "shoving your religion down someone's throat."

Darwinists accept this split and have even tried to convince Christians that in this way religion is safe from the claims and conclusions of Darwinian evolution. But a brief glance at the best seller list shows that evolutionists regularly invade this upper story of values with their harsh criticism.

In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins says that religious belief is psychotic and arguments for the existence of God are nonsense. Sam Harris echoes that sentiment in his bestselling book, Letter to a Christian Nation. Daniel Dennett in his book, Breaking the Spell, believes that religion must be subjected to scientific evaluation.

Nancy Pearcey shows that Darwinism leads to naturalism. And this is a naturalistic view of knowledge where "theological dogmas and philosophical absolutes were at worst totally fraudulent and at best merely symbolic of deep human aspirations."[2] In other words, if Darwinian evolution is true then religion and philosophical absolutes are not true. Truth, honesty, integrity, morality are not true but actually fraudulent concepts and ideas. If we hold to them at all, they were merely symbolic but not really true in any sense.

Daniel Dennett in his book Darwin's Dangerous Idea says that Darwinism is a "universal acid" which is his allusion to a children's riddle about an acid that is so corrosive that it eats through everything including the flask that holds it. In other words, Darwinism is too corrosive to be contained. It eats through every academic field of study and destroys ethics, morality, truth, and absolutes. When it is finished, Darwinism "eats through just about every traditional concept and leaves in its wake a revolutionized world-view."[3]

Nancy Pearcey writes in her book Total Truth that "Darwinism functions as the scientific support for an overarching naturalistic worldview."[4] Today scientists usually assume that scientific investigation requires naturalism. But that was not always the case.

When the scientific revolution began (and for the next three hundred years), science and Christianity were considered to be compatible with one another. In fact, most scientists had some form of Christian faith, and they perceived the world of diversity and complexity through a theistic framework. Nancy Pearcey points out that Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Newton, and others sought to understand the world and use their gifts to honor God and serve humanity.

By the nineteenth century, secular trends began to change their perspective. This culminated with the publication of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin. His theory of evolution provided the needed foundation for naturalism to explain the world without God. From that point on, social commentators began to talk about the "war between science and religion."

By the twentieth century, G.K. Chesterton was warning that Darwinian evolution and naturalism was becoming the dominant "creed" in education and the other public arenas of Western culture. He said it "began with Evolution and has ended in Eugenics." Ultimately, it "is really our established Church."[5]

Today, it is easy to see how scientists believe that naturalism and science are essentially the same thing. They often slip from physics to metaphysics. In other words, they leave the boundaries of science and begin to make philosophical statements about the nature of the universe. While scientists can tell us how the universe operates, they cannot tell us if there is anything outside of the universe.

But that didn't stop astronomer Carl Sagan in the PBS program "Cosmos." The first words you hear from him are: "The Cosmos is all that is or ever was or ever will be."[6] In other words, the universe (or Cosmos) is all there is: no God, no heaven.

Now, Carl Sagan's comment is not a scientific statement. It's a philosophical statement. And it set the ground rules for the rest of the program. Nature is all there is. In many ways it sounds like a creed. It is as if Carl Sagan was attempting to modify the Gloria Patri: "As it was in the beginning, is now, and ever will be."

Do those ideas end up in our children's books? Nancy Pearcey tells the story of picking up a science book for her son, The Bears' Nature Guide, which featured the Berenstain Bears. The Bear family goes on a nature walk. Turn a few pages in the book and you will see a sunrise with these words in capital letters: "Nature . . . is all that IS, or WAS, or EVER WILL BE!"[7] Sounds like a heavy dose of Carl Sagan's naturalism packaged for young children courtesy of the Berenstain Bears.

If you are looking for a resource to counter this Darwinian and naturalistic indoctrination, let me recommend Probe's DVD series on "Redeeming Darwin." You can find more information about the series at www.probe.org. It will give you the intellectual ammunition you need.