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© Copyright 2000, Jim Loy
Creationists not only think that Evolution is incorrect, they think that it is evil. In fact, calling it "evil-ution" is a kind of standard joke among many of them. The following are excerpts from several creationist sources, on the subject of the immorality of evolution. My few clarifications are in [square brackets].
1. The Case Against Evolution, by George Barry O'toole, Ph.D., 1925
If man is but a higher kind of brute [animal], if he has no unique, immortal principle within him, if his free will is an illusion, if his conduct is the necessary result of chemical reactions occurring in his protoplasm, if he is nothing more than an automaton of flesh, a mere decaying organism which is the sport of all the blind physical forces and stimuli playing upon it, if he has no prospect of a future life of retribution, if he is unaccountable to any higher authority, Divine or human, then morality ceases to have a meaning, right and wrong lose their significance, virtue and vice are all the same... From a world which accepts this degraded view of human nature all heroism and chivalry must vanish utterly; for it will recognize no loftier incentives to action than pleasure and love of self.
... Anarchy and Socialism are the consequences which the logic of the situation inexorably portends...
Marxian Socialism has been called "scientific" for no other reason than that it is based upon materialistic evolution, and this scientific socialism has brought upon modern Russia a reign of terror, which eclipses that of France in the bloodiest days of the Revolution. Eleanor Marx, it will be remembered, after falling victim to her father's teachings regarding "free love," committed suicide...
Again, it may be objected that evolutionists, for all their agnosticism and materialism, frequently put Christians to shame by their irreproachably upright and moral lives. That they sometimes succeed in doing this cannot be gainsaid. But they do so because they borrow their moral standards from Christianity, and do not follow the logical consequences of their own principles... "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow we die," is their proper philosophy of life, only they have not the courage of their convictions...
Recently, the chancellor of a great university has seen fit publicly to disclaim, in the name of his institution, all responsibility for a crime committed by two members of the student body. The young men involved in this affair had performed an experimental murder [apparently Leopold & Loeb]. The experimenters, it would seem, were unable to discriminate between man and beast. They had been taught by their professors that scientific psychology dispenses with the soul, and that the difference between men and brutes is one of degree only, and not of kind. Even that negligible distinction, they were told, had been bridged by evolution. In the sequel, the young men failed, apparently, to see why vivisection, which was right in the case of animals, should be wrong in the case of human beings. Their astounding obtuseness on this particular point was, of course, exceedingly regrettable and hard to understand. Yet, somehow, one cannot help thinking but that their education was largely responsible for it.
In the startling crime of these students, modern educators will find food for serious thought...
2. Man's Origin, Man's Destiny, by A. E. Wilder Smith, Ph.D., 1968
... Evolutionary doctrine... invites and justifies the terrors of fascism, communism and other types of tyranny... It favors glorification of war and struggle in general. Anything which leads to struggle, and therefore to selection in struggle, is to be welcomed, since it opens the way to progress and the upward evolution of living organisms. The intellectuals among the Darwinists hotly deny this conclusion, although their theory leads patently and logically directly to it.
It is noteworthy that many of our Western intellectuals have socialistic as well as Darwinistic views. Perhaps the two positions may be related. But it is more remarkable that Darwinism is not only the state doctrine of the Communists but was also that of the National Socialists [Nazis] and fascists.
... The theory of organic evolution on the basis of struggle for existence and natural selection became, in Hitler's mind, the excuse to wipe out whole races to "improve" the rest of the human stock.
... If nature worked this way, it could not be immoral for him, Hitler, to accelerate matters and wipe out all the Jews, Czechs, etc., who were "obviously" inferior to his race.
3. The Great Brain Robbery, by David C. C. Watson, 1976
For eighteen centuries Christians took Genesis at its face value... Genesis 3:16-19 ... appears to teach that if Eve had not sinned, childbearing would have been comparatively painless; thorns and thistles would never have existed; man would have lived without toil, on fruit plucked from trees; and the human race would have been immortal.
All this is flatly denied by modern science... Which is right, science or the Bible?
The neoevangelical answer is that science is right... Even reputable scholars... declare that the world as now constituted is "very good." Included in this "goodness" are not only thorns and thistles, cancer and leprosy, scorpions, earthquakes, childbirth without chloroform, and death, but also the rack and the thumbscrew, Sodom and Gomorrah, Belsen [Nazi death camp] and the atomic bomb.
4. Creationist Viewpoints, by John W. Klotz, Ph.D., from A Symposium on Creation, 1968
... If there is no purpose in the universe and if God is withdrawn completely from its governance, then there is no reason for prayer... Then, indeed, the pessimism which we see on so many sides today is justified...
Evolutionists argue that natural selection operates with the less than 1 percent of mutations which are neutral or harmful [sic] ...
In this connection it is interesting to note the concern which evolutionists feel for any increase in man-made radiation. Increased radiation means an increase in the mutation rate. If this were the mechanism by which progressive evolution occurred and if the path of evolution is ultimately one of improvement then anything which would speed up the rate of mutation, such as radiation, would be regarded as favorable, but the fact of the matter is it is regarded as undesirable and very much unfavorable. Here is tacit recognition that mutation is not an adequate mechanism for evolution...
5. Director's Column, by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D., from Creation - Acts, Facts, Impacts, 1974
... Theistic evolution is about as logical as "Christian atheism" or "flaming snowflakes." If evolution is true, then there have been three billion years of suffering and death in the world of living things leading up to man. Billions of animals suffered and died, for no apparent reason. Multitudes even of species have died out. It does seem that, if God used evolution, He used the most wasteful, most cruel process, that He could possibly conceive by which to produce man. But the God of the Bible is not that kind of God!
If they want to believe in evolution, OK. It's a free country. But they should not blame God for it. He would never do it that way!
6. Evolution and Modern Racism, by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D., from Creation - Acts, Facts, Impacts, 1974 (reprinted in The Troubled Waters of Evolution)
... As the 19th century scientists were converted to evolution, they were thus also convinced of racism. They were certain that the white race was superior to the other races...
... The seeds of evolutionary racism came to fullest fruition in the form of National Socialism in Germany. The philosopher Friedrich Nietsche, ... an ardent evolutionist, popularized in Germany his concept of the superman, and then the master race. The ultimate outcome was Hitler, who elevated this philosophy to the status of a national policy...
However one may react morally to Hitler, he was certainly a consistent evolutionist...
... In recent years... we have highly vocal advocates of "black power" and "red power" and "yellow power," and these advocates are all doctrinaire evolutionists, who believe their own respective "races" are the fittest to survive in man's continuing struggle for existence.
7. Fallacies of Evolution, by Arlie J. Hoover, 1977
... Laissez-faire capitalists used Darwinism to defend their system of unrestrained competition in the business world of the late nineteenth century...
Imperialists used Darwinism to justify the conquest and exploitation of non-western peoples in the last century...
Exponents of war used Darwinism to justify military struggle among nations... Nature shows us, they said, that war is the great winnowing process, the terrible final examination between nations...
Champions of eugenics used Darwinism to push for eugenics legislation. Eugenics... is the science of breeding applied to human beings... Eugenics champions tended to be very critical of all forms of altruistic morality, toleration, humanitarianism, liberalism, democracy, or internationalism, because these sentiments, with their concern for the unfit, were "counterselecitive." Nature wipes out the weak specimen; shouldn't sound legislation do the same?
Racists found Darwinism especially useful in preaching their gospel of ethnic superiority.
8. The Troubled Waters of Evolution, by Henry M. Morris, Ph.D., 1974
... Few issues today are more emotionally charged than that of population control. Sociological alarmists insist that the growth of human population must be stopped by whatever means are available... Obviously, the present growth rate cannot continue indefinitely.
... The creationist is confident that the world God made for man is large enough and productive enough to accomplish His purpose. That purpose will surely have been consummated before the population exceeds its divinely-intended maximum.
... It is very significant that all of the earth's serious environmental problems, even its population crisis, have developed during that one century when the evolutionary philosophy had effectively replace creationism in the thinking of the world's leaders in education, science, and industry. The earth has been exploited... because of social Darwinism, economic and military imperialism, secular materialism, anarchistic individualism, and other such applications of the "struggle and survival" rationale of modern evolutionism.
... Three generations of evolutionary teaching have had the pragmatic result of inducing in man an almost universal self-centeredness. God, if He exists at all, is pushed so far back in time and so far out in space that men no longer are concerned about responsibility to Him. As far as other people are concerned, doesn't nature itself teach that we must struggle and compete for survival? Self-preservation is nature's first law. Race must compete against race, nation against nation, class against class, young against old, poor against rich, man against man.
... It is no mere coincidence that the modern deterioration of family life has occurred contemporaneously with the modern universal prevalence of evolutionary teaching... If man is an evolved animal, then the morals of the barnyard and the jungle are more "natural," and therefore more "healthy," than the artificially-imposed restrictions of pre-marital chastity and marital fidelity... Instead of training children in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, better to teach them how to struggle and survive in a cut-throat world, and then toss them out of the nest. Self-preservation is the first law of nature; only the fittest will survive. Be the cock-of-the-walk and the king-of-the-mountain! Eat, drink, and be merry, for life is short and that's the end. So says evolution!
... Perhaps the most important such factor involved in this breakdown [of the family] has been the so-called "sexual revolution." ... Since animals are indiscriminate with regard to partners in mating and, since men and women are believed to have evolved from animals, then why shouldn't we live like animals? Why develop sexual inhibitions and frustrations that may lead to psychological neuroses?
... The concern expressed by Christian parents and pastors over the widespread introduction of sex education courses into the public schools is precisely because of the prominence of this kind of emphasis (sex as natural, with no moral connotations, based on the assumption of human evolution from an animal ancestry) in the texts and courses offered...
A very strange development of recent years has been the rapid growth of serious belief in the bizarre... since there is no evidence of life in space, so the argument goes, therefore it must be there! This kind of evidence is, to say the least, not compelling evidence! ...
9. The Truth, God or Evolution?, by Marshall and Sandra Hall, 1974
... Told in science class that they are just animals, students proceed to act as if this were so in other classes, at home, and in their social lives. Seeing no purpose to life, they become selfish and churlish. It is a pitiful thing to see so many youths so rudderless, so loveless -- so blameless, basically. The situation is desperate in many urban schools. The time to expose evolution as a myth, and thereby begin to restore dignity and purpose to the learning process is now...