Faith, Family & Freedom: Part 14‏ of 21

Good day friends!

Welcome back. 

In the famous Scopes trial of 1925, the American Civil Liberties Union defended the teaching of evolution in public schools.  True educational freedom, attorney Clarence Darrow argued, requires the teaching of both theistic and naturalistic versions of origins.  Any person with a well-rounded education should know the differing views on something as important as the most basic question in the universe.  Building on the momentum started by Scopes, the ACLU has fought hard to keep creationism from being taught in America's public schools.  With the aid of the National Education Association and other liberal groups, it has been stunningly successful in the censorship of facts and reality.

Since the ACLU and NEA have always been supported by prominent humanists, though, we should not be shocked by their contempt for the creationist worldview.  Evolution, as outlined in the Humanist Manifesto I, II and 2000, is a major doctrine of Secular Humanism.  Instead of believing in God as the basis for their religion, humanists believe in nature or "natural science" - naturalism.  The reason is supposedly to avoid resting an intellectual foundation built on what secularists call "blind faith."  

In this segment we will investigate the last inductee for our study of the third human institution: The educational establishment. This "grandfather of atheism" pioneered the God-less foundation of Evolution that is found throughout the world today and was responsible for the death of at least 135 million people during the twentieth century- the most deadly century in human history.

"Faith, Family & Freedom: Our American Values Under Fire"

Charles Darwin

(1809-1882)

Given that Adolf Hitler fully embraced the worldview of Charles Darwin, at this point in our discussion it would be tempting to ask, “Need I say more?” On the other hand, if the previous editions in this series were placed in order of importance of influence, Darwin would be number one. The spectacular scope and intensity of Darwinism’s influence on virtually every arena of thought is breathtaking. The acceptance of Darwin’s worldview and the associated “science” paved the way for acceptance of every one of the people named in this series. If rising to Darwin’s level of impact was the standard for induction into the Destructive Ideas Hall of Fame, he would be the only one to qualify for admittance. In a sense, Darwin “started it all.” His Origin of Species and The Descent of Man crystallized the worldview he would come to stand for.

The Descent of Man is essentially a call to embrace eugenics, which Darwin euphemistically called “survival of the fittest.” Although Darwin initially described a farm animal breeding program, he eventually made it clear he was talking about human “evolution” as well. The legacy of this one idea has lead to the deaths of millions. Eugenicists, as defined by Dr. George Grant, are:

…the practitioners of an odd pseudo-science who sincerely believe that if human civilization were to survive, the physically unfit, the materially poor, the spiritually diseased, the racially inferior, and the mentally incompetent had to be eliminated.

Here’s how Darwin put it:

With savages, the weak in body or mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive exhibit a vigorous state of health… We civilized men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed, and the sick; we institute poor-laws, and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of every one to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands, who from a weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox. Thus the weak members of civilized societies propagate their kind. One who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will not doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animal to breed.

Darwin spins this into his prescription for how to assure the continuing upward progress of mankind:

If… various checks… do not prevent the reckless, the vicious and otherwise inferior members of society from increasing at a quicker rate than the better class of man, the nation will retrograde, as he occurred too often in the history of the world. We must remember that progress is no invariable rule.

Now consider Hitler writing in Mein Kampf (My Struggle):

Every crossing between two breeds which are not quite equal results in a product which holds an intermediate place between the levels of the two parents. This means that the offspring will indeed be superior to the parent which stands in the biologically lower order of being, but not as high as the higher parent. For this reason, it must eventually succumb in any struggle against the higher species. Such mating contradicts the will of Nature towards the selective improvements of life in general. The favorable preliminary to this improvement is not to mate individuals of higher and lower orders of being but rather to allow the complete triumph of the higher order. The stronger must dominate and not mate with the weaker, which would signify the sacrifice of its own higher nature. Only the born weakling can look upon this principle as cruel, and if he does so it is merely because he is of a feebler nature and narrower mind; for if such a law did not direct the process of evolution then the higher development of organic life would not be conceivable at all.

Dr. Erwin Lutzer in his book, Hitler’s Cross, illuminates the Darwin/Hitler connection:

Hitler also accepted Charles Darwin’s theory of “the survival of the fittest” and asserted that man had every right to be “as cruel as nature.” Detailed lectures were given in schools and to SS troops to prove the inferiority of the Jews. Aryan skulls were compared with those of Jewish ancestry to prove on a scientific basis that the latter were hopelessly inferior. Only the “fittest” had the right to survive.”

Darwin was committed to naturalism, the belief that all that exists is the natural world. To him, there is no spiritual world, no Creator God. This worldview brings wit it serious consequences:

·         If there is no God or Creator, then everything happens by chance or by mistake.

·         If there is no God, then there is no right or wrong.

·         If there is no God, there is only the natural world.

·         If there is no God, then man does not have an eternal soul and there is no life after death.

·         If there is no God, life has no meaning.

·         If there is no God, man does not have a free will, for he is the product of his environment.

Yale University history professor Donald Kagan points out the consequences of a worldview that says “God is dead.” Often called nihilism and based largely on the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, it permeates our culture:

A vulgar form of Nihilism has a remarkable influence in our educational system through our universities. The consequences of the victory of such ideas would be enormous. If both religion and reason are removed, all that remains is will and power, where the only law is that of tooth and claw.

Hitler, Stalin, and Mussolini demonstrate the destruction that results when a leader doesn’t believe in God, life after death, heaven, hell, or a judgment day on which he will be held accountable by the righteous Judge. In their atheistic worldviews, they were the highest authority.  As a result, Hitler killed as many as six million Jews and five million non-Jews during his holocaust, and while Stalin was dictator of the Soviet Union, he killed some 20 to 40 million people. The twentieth century was the most murderous of any century in history, due largely to tyrants and dictators who did not acknowledge any authority higher than themselves. The Congressional Record noted that 135 million people were killed by Communists in the twentieth century.

Our Founders so believed in the importance of elected officials believing in a deity higher than government that Benjamin Rush, known as the Founding Father who promoted the establishment of schools in America said “…the religion I mean to recommend in this place is that of the New Testament.” Benjamin Rush understood that religion – or a belief in God – made for great citizens. He also knew that if America’s future educators were not firm in their belief in the Deity who rewards good and punishes evil, our republican form of government would not last.

Scripture says, “The heavens declare the glory of God, and the sky proclaims the work of His hands” (Psalms 19:1), and a discussion of Darwin offers a natural time to look at various aspects of creation that reveal this glory and announce God’s existence.

Happily for some in the scientific community, the remarkable discoveries of the past few years have caused some scientists to reject the lie of evolution and explore evidence for an “intelligent designer.” The complexity of the human body and the orderliness of the universe are so overwhelming that these researchers no longer believe everything we see and know happened by chance. They may not quite be ready to say, “God is,” but at least they acknowledge the necessity of an intelligent designer of some sort. So, the issue is not that one worldview (theism) requires faith while the other (atheism) does not – both do. The question is: Which worldview is based on a more rational faith? And to that, the answer is clear.

There is far greater evidence for the existence of God as Creator than for the notion that everything came about by random chance. To accept the idea of a Creator God, you need to have faith in only one thing – an all-knowing, all-powerful Being. The astonishing complexity of creation is consistent with the infinitely knowledgeable, omnipotent Creator. Only such a One could have created the universe as we know it. On the other hand, to believe in spontaneous evolution, you must have faith in billions upon billions of mathematically improbable and scientifically impossible occurrences.

The real goal of evolution is not to gain knowledge about how the world came to be. The primary purpose is to explain away the existence of God. Atheists just don’t want to admit that Someone could be so powerful and unimaginably intelligent as to put together the cosmos as we know it. It’s too… well… humbling. They have Darwin to thank for giving them a way out.

Sources:

Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, (New York: Mentor, 1958)

Adolf Hiler, Mein Kampf, Vol. 1

Erwin Lutzer,”Hitler’s Cross”

D. James Kennedy, Lord of All: Developing a Christian World-and-life View (Wheaton, IL: Crossway, 2005)

Brannon Howse, Grave Influence (Worldview Publishing, 2009)

“Many are the plans in a man's heart... but it is the Lord's purpose that prevails." - Proverbs 19:21

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