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Fatal Flaws

Thomas Nelson

TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES

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Other than scripture, Darwin's magnum opus, The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, might well be the most significant literary work in the annals of recorded history. Sir Julian Huxley called the evolutionary dogma it spawned "the most powerful and most comprehensive idea that has ever arisen on earth."

Harvard scientist Ernst Mayr said that the Darwinian revolution of 1859 was "perhaps the most fundamental of all intellectual revolutions in the history of mankind." Likewise, Dr. Michael Denton points out that the far-reaching effects of the Darwinian dogma ignited an intellectual revolution more significant than the Copernican and Newtonian revolutions. He goes on to say, The triumph of evolution meant the end of the traditional belief in the world as a purposeful created order—the so-called teleological outlook which had been predominant in the western world for two millennia. According to Darwin, all the design, order and complexity of life and the eerie purposefulness of living systems were the result of a simple blind random process—natural selection. Before Darwin, men had believed a providential intelligence had imposed its mysterious design upon nature, but now chance ruled supreme. God's will was replaced by the capriciousness of a roulette wheel. The break with the past was complete.

It would be impossible to overstate the significance of Darwinian evolution. As Denton underscores, the twentieth century cannot be comprehended apart from the intellectual revolution the theory produced:

The social and political currents which have swept the world in the past eighty years would have been impossible without its intellectual sanction. It is ironic to recall that it was the increasingly secular outlook in the nineteenth century which initially eased the way for the acceptance of evolution, while today it is perhaps the Darwinian view of nature more than any other that is responsible for the agnostic and sceptical outlook of the twentieth century. What was once a deduction from materialism has today become its foundation.

In light of this unprecedented impact of Darwinian dogma, it would be reasonable to expect it to be solidly rooted in truth. In reality, as this book will demonstrate conclusively, evolution is rooted in metaphysical contentions and mythological tales. Denton aptly summed up this sentiment when he termed the Darwinian theory of evolution "the great cosmogenic myth of the twentieth century."

The far-reaching consequences of this cosmogenic myth can be felt in "virtually every field—every discipline of study, every level of education, and every area of practice." The most significant consequence, however, is that it undermines the very foundation of Christianity. If indeed evolution is reflective of the laws of science, then Genesis must be reflective of the flaws of Scripture. And if the foundation of Christianity is flawed, the superstructure is destined to fall. Noted atheist G. Richard Bozarth understood this full well when he penned the following words:

Christianity is—must be!—totally committed to the special creation as described in Genesis, and Christianity must fight with its full might, fair or foul, against the theory of evolution.... It becomes clear now that the whole justification of Jesus' life and death is predicated on the existence of Adam and the forbidden fruit he and Eve ate. Without the original sin, who needs to be redeemed? Without Adam's fall into a life of constant sin terminated by death, what purpose is there to Christianity? None.... What this all means is that Christianity cannot lose the Genesis account of creation like it could lose the doctrine of geocentricism and get along. The battle must be waged, for Christianity is fighting for its very life.

While Bozarth predicted the demise of Christianity without Genesis, he might just as well have predicted the demise of civilization without God. Friedrich Nietzsche, who provided the philosophical framework for Hitler's Germany, understood this better than most. Thus, he predicted that the death of God in the nineteenth century would ensure that the twentieth century would be the bloodiest century in human history.

In the final analysis more consequences for society hinge on the issue of human origins than on any other. Among them are the sovereignty of self, the sexual revolution, and survival of the fittest.

Sovereignty of Self

The supposed death of God ushered in an era in which humans proclaimed themselves sovereigns of the universe. Nowhere was this more evident than at the Darwinian Centennial Convention, which celebrated the hundredth anniversary of the publication of Darwin's The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection. With pomp and ceremony Sir Julian Huxley, the great-grandson of Thomas Huxley, Darwin's bulldog, boasted, "In the evolutionary system of thought there is no longer need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul, as well as brain and body. So did religion. Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge from his loneliness by creeping for shelter into the arms of a divinized father figure whom he himself has created."

While the evolutionary system of thought was credited for expunging the need for God, in reality it is merely the repackaging of an age-old deception. In the very first book of the Bible, Satan tells Eve that if she eats the forbidden fruit, "Your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil" (Gen. 3:5). What Satan was communicating was that Eve could become the final court of arbitration—she could determine what was right and what was wrong.

Humanity's newfound autonomy sacrificed truth on the altar of subjectivism. Ethics and morals were no longer determined on the basis of objective standards but rather by the size and strength of the latest lobby group. With no enduring reference point, societal norms were reduced to a matter of preference.

One of the most devastating consequences of humanity's repackaging of Satan's age-old deception was the sexual revolution.

Sexual Revolution

Years ago noted evolutionist Aldous Huxley and his peers argued that that the theory of evolution supported the assumption that there was no meaning to the world and therefore life could be lived without moral restrictions. Huxley wrote, "Like so many of my contemporaries, I took it for granted that there was no meaning [to the world]. This was partly due to the fact that I shared the common belief that the scientific picture of an abstraction from reality was a true picture of reality as a whole; partly also to other, nonintellectual reasons. I had motives for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption."

Huxley went on to say, "For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom." As such, evolution provided the ultimate escape from God. What we got in return was adultery, abortion, and AIDS.

Adultery has become commonplace as people fixate on feelings instead of fidelity. It is not surprising that nearly half of all new marriages end in divorce. Abortion has become epidemic as people embrace expediency over ethics. In America alone the death toll for preborn children has exceeded 43 million. AIDS has become pandemic. As people clamor for condoms rather than for commitment, more people have died worldwide from AIDS than America has lost in all of its wars combined.

Attempting to rationalize God out of existence in order to do away with His laws of morality is as absurd as voting to repeal the law of gravity because people have fallen off of buildings, bridges, or boats. Even a unanimous vote could not change the deadly consequences for someone who later attempts to jump off of a ten-story building. We cannot violate God's physical or moral laws without suffering disillusionment, destruction, and even death.

Survival of the Fittest

Evolutionism not only dispenses with God and attempts to make humans the center of the universe, but evolutionism is racist as well. Consider the following excerpt from a letter written by Charles Darwin in 1881: "The more civilized so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilized races throughout the world."

Lest this be considered merely an aberration, note that Darwin repeated this sentiment in his book The Descent of Man. He speculated, "At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate, and replace, the savage races throughout the world." In addition, he subtitled his magnum opus The Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.

And Darwin was not alone in his racist ideology. Thomas Huxley, who coined the term agnostic and was the man most responsible for advancing Darwinian doctrine, argued that "no rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average Negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.... It is simply incredible [to think] that ... he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites."

Huxley was not only militantly racist but also lectured frequently against the resurrection of Jesus Christ, in whom "[we] are all one" (Gal. 3:28). In sharp distinction to the writings of such noted evolutionists as Hrdlicka, Haeckel, and Hooton, biblical Christianity makes it crystal clear that in Christ "there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female" (Gal. 3:28).

It is significant to note that some of the Crusaders and others who used force to further their creeds in the name of God were acting in direct opposition to the teachings of Christ. The teachings of Huxley and others like him, however, are completely consistent with the teachings of Darwin. Indeed, social Darwinism has provided the scientific substructure for some of the most significant atrocities in human history.

For evolution to succeed, it is as crucial that the unfit die as that the fittest survive. Marvin Lubenow graphically portrays the ghastly consequences of such beliefs in his book Bones of Contention: "If the unfit survived indefinitely, they would continue to 'infect' the fit with their less fit genes. The result is that the more fit genes would be diluted and compromised by the less fit genes, and evolution could not take place. The concept of evolution demands death. Death is thus as natural to evolution as it is foreign to biblical creation. The Bible teaches that death is a 'foreigner,' a condition superimposed upon humans and nature after creation."

Adolf Hitler's philosophy that Jews were subhuman and that Aryans were supermen led to the extermination of six million Jews. In the words of Sir Arthur Keith, a militant anti-Christian physical anthropologist, "The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an evolutionist; he has consistently sought to make the practices of Germany conform to the theory of evolution."

Karl Marx, the father of communism, saw in Darwinism the scientific and sociological support for an economic experiment that eclipsed even the carnage of Hitler's Germany. Marx's hatred of Christ and Christianity led to the mass murder of multiplied millions worldwide. Karl Marx so revered Darwin that his desire was to dedicate a portion of Das Kapital to him.

Sigmund Freud, the founder of modern psychology, was also a faithful follower of Charles Darwin. His belief that man was merely a sophisticated animal led him to postulate that "mental disorders were the vestiges of behavior that had been appropriate in earlier stages of evolution." Daniel Goleman points out that "the evolutionary idea that Freud relied on ... is the maxim that 'ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny,' that is, that the development of the individual recapitulates the evolution of the entire species." This notion, which I refute in chapter 6, supposes that the conceptus at one stage is a fish rather than a fetus (from the Latin for "infant") and is thus expendable. The human carnage that has resulted from this evolutionary dogma has eclipsed the atrocities of Hitler and Marx combined.

It should also be noted that Darwinian evolution is not only racist but sexist as well. Under the subheading "Difference in the Mental Powers of the Two Sexes," Darwin attempted to persuade followers that "the chief distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes is shewn by man's attaining to a higher eminence, in whatever he takes up, than can woman—whether requiring deep thought, reason, or imagination, or merely the use of the senses and hands.... We may also infer ... [that] the average of mental power in man must be above that of woman."

In sharp contrast to the evolutionary dogma, Scripture makes it clear that all humanity is created in the image of God (Gen. 1:27; Acts 17:29), that there is essential equality between the sexes (Gal. 3:28), and that slavery is as repugnant to God as murder and adultery (1 Tim. 1:10). The consistent application of biblical principles inevitably leads to emancipation. The consistent application of evolutionary principles inevitably leads to enslavement.

The tragic consequences of evolution can hardly be overstated. Denton correctly points out that it "is one of the most spectacular examples in history of how a highly speculative idea for which there is no really hard scientific evidence can come to fashion the thinking of a whole society and dominate the outlook of an age." Furthermore, says Denton,

Considering its historic significance and the social and moral transformation it caused in western thought, one might have hoped that Darwinian theory was capable of a complete, comprehensive and entirely plausible explanation for all biological phenomena from the origin of life on through all its diverse manifestations up to, and including, the intellect of man. That it is neither fully plausible, nor comprehensive, is deeply troubling. One might have expected that a theory of such cardinal importance, a theory that literally changed the world, would have been something more than metaphysics, something more than a myth.

In light of the tragic consequences, it is incredible to think that evolution is still being touted today as truth. The responsibility of demonstrating that it is in reality a farce can no longer be left to a few hired guns in the bastions of higher learning. It is crucial that all thinking human beings become involved in the process as well. This is why I developed the acronym FACE—to make it easy for anyone to remember how to demonstrate the fatal flaws of evolution.

We begin with the letter F, representing fossil follies. Darwin had predicted that the fossil record would bear him out. In reality, the fossil record has become one of the greatest embarrassments to his legacy.

FOSSIL FOLLIES

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Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist at the prestigious British Museum of Natural History, which houses the world's largest fossil collection—60 million specimens—confessed, "If I knew of any [evolutionary transitions], fossil or living, I would certainly have included them [in my book Evolution]." His statement underscores the fact that the fossil record is an embarrassment to evolutionists. No verifiable transitions from one species to another have as yet been found.

Darwin had an excuse. In his day fossil finds were relatively scarce. Today, however, more than a century after his death, we have an abundance of fossils. Still, we have yet to find even one legitimate transition from one species or kind to another. David Raup, curator of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, underscores this fact: "We are now about 120 years after Darwin, and the knowledge of the fossil record has been greatly expanded. We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn't changed much.... We have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we had in Darwin's time."

Ironically, while the general public seems blithely unaware that no transitions from one species to another exist (which would be necessary to prove macroevolution ), it is common knowledge among paleontologists. That is precisely why novel theories involving pseudosaurs, pro-avises, and punctuated equilibrium are constantly evolving.

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Excerpted from Fatal Flaws by Hank Hanegraaff. Copyright © 2003 Hank Hanegraaff. Excerpted by permission of Thomas Nelson.
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