EVOLUTION: Science or Religion?

Did life come spontaneously from dead matter? Are you an ape’s cousin’s nephew? Do you have a separable soul? Is there life after death? by Louis A. Turk, B.A., M.Div., Ph.D.

The theory of evolution is not science, as many people have been led to believe, but is the core faith belief held by the atheistic religion called humanism. All humanist teachings revolve around and rest upon the evolution worldview.

The significance of evolution is this: if evolution is true, then the Bible is not true, and there is no God. And if there is no God, then morality is relative not absolute, and so "individuals should be allowed to express their sexual proclivities and pursue their lifestyles as they desire" (Humanist Manifesto II, section 6). It is this freedom from God's morality which gives humanism its appeal.

"Plato and Aristotle, in general, are the mental gods of the Humanists."¹ Other well known humanists are Adolf Hitler, Benito Mussolini, Joseph Stalin, John Dewey (father of so-called "progressive education"), Roger Baldwin (founder of the American Civil Liberties Union [ACLU]), Margaret Sanger (founder of Planned Parenthood Federation of America), Joseph Fletcher (author of the book Situation Ethics: the New Morality), Isaac Asimov (writer and late president of the American Humanist Association), Betty Friedan (founder of National Organization for Women [N.O.W.]) and Gene Roddenberry (creator of "Star Trek: The Next Generation").

Sir Julian Huxley, world famous evolutionary biologist, former head of UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization), and a signer of Humanist Manifesto II, clearly stated the atheistic implication of evolution as follows: Darwinism removed the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion. Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed; since natural selection could account for any known form of life, there was no room for a supernatural agency in its evolution....I think we can dismiss entirely all idea of a supernatural overriding mind being responsible for the evolutionary process.

Since the theory of evolution is being taught daily to our children in public schools, and since powerful political forces are advocating humanism as the religion to be espoused by the United Nations, it is very important that Americans understand more about humanism and its theory of evolution.

A Deceptive Name For a Deceptive Religion

The name humanism has a nice ring; when people hear it they tend to think it means humane or cultured. But its name, like all things about humanism, is deceptive. Since humanists reject belief in God, they conclude themselves to be the highest life form, and thus assume positions as gods. The name humanist refers to this self-idolization. Humanism is the ultimate conceit. Humanist Manifesto II, Section 1, states:

traditional dogmatic or authoritarian religions that place revelation, God, ritual, or creed above human needs and experience do a disservice to the human species. Any account of nature should pass the tests of scientific evidence; in our judgment, the dogmas and myths of traditional religions do not do so. Even at this late date in human history, certain elementary facts based upon the critical use of scientific reason have to be restated. We find insufficient evidence for belief in the existence of a supernatural; it is either meaningless or irrelevant to the question of the survival and fulfillment of the human race. As nontheists, we begin with humans not God, nature not deity.

Christians agree that any account of nature "should pass the test of scientific evidence," but point out that the Bible has never failed this test, while the Humanist theory of evolution has never passed it, an example of which will be shown below. Meanwhile, the Bible gives this comment about the Humanist rejection of the Bible, which is God's supernatural revelation of Himself, and about the Humanist's rejection of God Himself:

Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools....changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen. For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature [became lesbians]: and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly [became homosexuals], and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was meet [disease, AIDS, etc.] And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind (Rom 1.21-28; see also Lev 18.22-30 and Ex 15:26)

Humanism Is Not New

As admitted in the preface to Humanist Manifesto I and II, "Humanism is a philosophical, religious, and moral point of view as old as human civilization itself." In fact, it originated with Satan in the Garden of Eden.

Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the LORD God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, Ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?....Ye shall not surely die...your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil (Gen 3.1-5).

The Most Ancient Superstition

The myth of evolution also is not new, beginning even before the temptation of Eve. Only disbelief of God's Word concerning creation (as given in Gen 1 and 2), could have motivated Satan to so foolishly try to overthrow God (Rev 12.7-9). No one could possibly overcome God if God be what He says He is---the omniscient, omnipresent, omnipotent Creator. But, it is logical to conclude that Satan reasoned that perhaps God was lying, and that everything---including God---just evolved from the primeval ooze. And since Satan still is revolting against God, it is obvious that he is still an avid evolutionist.³ He has swallowed his own lie, and will end up in the eternal Lake of Fire as a direct result (Rev 20.10).

The History of Evolution

The myth of evolution has an interesting history. The root idea of evolution is that living beings can come into existence without parents out of non-living matter. In the past, this presupposition of evolution was called abiogenesis or spontaneous generation. Humanists boast that humanism caused the scientific revolution that brought in all the advancements in medicine in the past 100 years. However, that is not true. In fact, scientists' rejection of the Bible and belief in the humanist doctrine of evolution kept the medical world blinded to the true cause of diseases for thousands of years. Unwilling to accept God's account of creation, and being unable with their naked eyes to see small creatures reproduce, they reasoned that dead meat just "spontaneously generated" flies, and that germs had no parents, but evolved from naturally occurring chemical processes.

The story of the theory of spontaneous generation is one of the most fantastic in all biology. Thompson says: "If longevity of a belief were an index to its truth, the theory of spontaneous generation should rank high among the veracities, for it flourished throughout twenty centuries and more." We cannot trace the history of the theory in detail, but the story may be recommended to the psychological historian as a labyrinth of error, with glimpses of truth at every turn. The belief in spontaneous generation is recorded in literature back as far as Anaximander (611-547 B.C.). He believed that eels and other aquatic forms are produced directly from lifeless matter. His pupil Anaximenes (588-524 B.C.) "introduced the idea of primordial terrestrial slime, a mixture of earth and water, from which, under the influence of the sun's heat, plants, animals and human beings are directly produced in the abiogenetic fashion," says Osborn in "From the Greeks to Darwin." Diogenes and Xenophanes...also believed in spontaneous generation. Then came the "father of natural history," Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), who fostered this idea so strongly that it has persisted for more that twenty centuries.

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Louis Pasteur Disproved Darwin's Theory

Louis Pasteur, the father of modern medicine, dared to question the evolution dogma. He observed the opposite of evolution, and suspected that spontaneous generation of living beings from dead matter was not a reality. Furthermore he believed that species did not evolve into new species, but rather came from parents of the same kind as themselves. (This is called biogenesis, and is what the Bible teaches in Genesis chapter one.) Pasteur realized that if he were right, different kinds of germs caused different diseases, and by determining a germ's kind and learning how to kill that kind, the disease it caused could be cured. Pasteur declared, "It is in the power of man to make parasitic illnesses disappear from the face of the globe, if the doctrine of spontaneous generation is wrong, as I am sure it is."⁵On April 7, 1864, six years after Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species, and after Pasteur had endured years of opposition, ridicule and outright hatred from evolutionary pseudo-scientists, he lectured in a large lecture room of the Sorbonne concerning his famous experiments. He began by alluding to the significance of his experiments to the creation/evolution conflict.

Great problems are now being handled, keeping every thinking man in suspense; the unity or multiplicity of human races; the creation of man 1,000 years or 1,000 centuries ago, the fixity of species, or the slow and progressive transformation of one species into another; the eternity of matter; the idea of a God unnecessary. Such are some of the questions that humanity discusses nowadays.

Then he explained his famous experiment, disproving abiogenesis. He showed two flasks. Both contained portions of the same organic broth. Both had necks open to the air. Months before, the broth in both had been sterilized by heat. But the neck of one pointed upward, while the long neck of the other curved downward, then upward, like a swans neck. "Why does one decay," he asked, "while the second remains pure?" Then he answered his question:

The only difference between them is this: in the first case the dusts suspended in air and their germs can fall into the neck of the flask and arrive into contact with the liquid, where they find appropriate food and develop; thence microscopic beings. In the second flask, on the contrary, it is impossible, or at least extremely difficult...that dusts suspended in air should enter the vase; they fall on its curved neck....And, therefore, gentlemen, I could point to that liquid and say to you, I have taken my drop of water from the immensity of creation, and I have taken it full of the elements appropriated to the development of inferior beings. And I wait, I watch, I question it, begging it to recommence for me the beautiful spectacle of the first creation. But it is dumb, dumb since these experiments were begun several years ago; it is dumb because I have kept it from the only thing man cannot produce, from the germs which float in the air, from Life, for Life is a germ and a germ Life. Never will the doctrine of spontaneous generation recover from the mortal blow of this simple experiment....No, there is now no circumstance known in which it can be affirmed that microscopic beings came into the world without germs, without parents similar to themselves. Those who affirm it have been duped by illusions, by ill-conducted experiments, spoilt by errors that they either did not perceive or did not know how to avoid.

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Evolution Requires Blind Faith

Amazingly, in spite of Pasteur's conclusive evidence against evolution, atheists still lust to believe any book which explains away God, no matter how fraudulent. For example, Charles Darwin's Origin of Species, gave not one proof that has stood the test of time. Yet it is their bible. If Darwin said it, evolutionists blindly believe it, and that settles it in their minds.

Charles Darwin is said to have been a shy man, who did not like public speaking. Thomas A. Huxley, grandfather of Sir Julian Huxley (previously quoted) was a close friend and public defender of Charles Darwin and his Origin of Species. So fervently did he promote Darwinian evolution that he earned the nickname "Darwin's Bulldog." Yet listen to Huxley's admission:

To say...in the admitted absence of evidence, that I have any belief as to the mode in which the existing forms of life have originated, would be using words in a wrong sense. But expectation is permissible where belief is not; and if it were given to me to look beyond the abyss of geologically recorded time to the still more remote period when the earth was passing through physical and chemical conditions which it can no more see again than man can recall his infancy, I should expect to be a witness of the evolution of living substance from non-living matter....This is the expectation to which analogical reasoning leads me; but I beg you once more to recollect that I have no right to call my opinion anything but an act of philosophical faith.

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Huxley was one of the rare evolutionists who would admit that his belief in evolution was "an act of philosophical faith" in a theory for which there is complete "absence of evidence." Now we have the truth: evolution is pagan religion, not science! It really takes faith to believe in something for which there is not one shred of evidence! To this day, no one has ever, even once, witnessed non-life give birth to life; if it ever happened, it would still be happening. Evolution is a monstrous lie! Think of the millions of people who died of infectious diseases because of this myth! Think of the millions now who are rejecting God and dooming themselves to Hell because of faith in this pagan religious teaching!

Public Schools Are Humanist Churches

The First Ammendment to the Constitution forbids teaching religion in pubic schools, yet the biology book used in the Oklahoma City Public School District teaches the unscientific, occult, humanist religious doctrine of evolution, saying,

Today, however, the principle of biogenesis may have to be modified. When considering the origin of life on Earth, some scientists have hypothesized that the first cells arose from non-living materials."

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This is indeed an unbelievable giant-step back to the Dark Ages for science-and for our children! Such is the dubious science of wizards and soothsayers. No wonder the Bible warns us to avoid

profane and vain babblings, and oppositions of science falsely so called: which some professing have erred concerning the faith (I Tim 6.20-21).

The Unavoidable Conclusion

Evolution exposed to be a myth, we come unavoidably to the only alternative origin of life: special creation by the true and living God. And we begin to understand why "The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge" (Prov 1.7), and why no educational system that rejects God can succeed. As Jesus put it, the word of God "is truth" (John 17.17); scholars who reject it doom themselves to be "ever learning, and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth" (2 Tim 3.7). And since the Bible is truth, every doctrine in it is true: doctrines such as the absoluteness of truth and morals, the fall of man, the global flood in the days of Noah, a literal Heaven and a literal burning Hell, the virgin birth of Christ thereby providing a sinless Savior, Christ's substitutionary death on the cross to redeem us from our sins, His burial and bodily resurrection, salvation not of works but by grace through faith in Christ, the absolute necessity of repentance and the new birth, and the fact that Christ will return to judge those who reject Him---everything the Bible teaches is inerrantly true, and if we ignore it we do so at great peril. "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God" (Ps 14.1).

To learn more about how to know God, read "Ye Must Be Born Again."

FOOTNOTES

¹"Scholastic, Humanist and Scientific Thought and Theory" in The Outline of Knowledge, James A. Richard, ed. (New York: J.A. Richards, Inc., 1924), vol. 2, The Story of Religion and Philosophic Thought, by Frederick H. Martens, 282.

²Sir Julian Huxley in "At Random: A Television Preview," in Evolution After Darwin, Sol Tax, Ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1960), vol. 3, Issues In Evolution, 45.

³For a detailed discussion of Satan as the first evolutionist see Henry M. Morris, The Long War Against God: the History and Impact of the Creation/Evolution Conflict (Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1989), 255-327.

⁴"The Origin of Life" in The Outline of Knowledge, James A. Richard, ed., (New York: J.A. Richards, Inc., 1924), vol. 6, Biology, by Carolina E. Stackpole, 227-8.

⁵Louis Pasteur as quoted in Beverley Birch, Louis Pasteur: the Scientist Who Found the Cause of Infectious Disease and Invented Pasteurization (Milwaukee: Gareth Stevens Children's Books, 1989), 50.

⁶Louis Pasteur as quoted in Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, translated by R.L. Devonshire (Garden City, New York: Doubleday, Page & Company, 1923), 107-9.

⁷Stackpole, 226-7.

⁸Harvey D. Goodman et al., Biology (Orlando: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, Inc., 1989), 32 and 228-230.

(C) Copyright 1994 by Louis A. Turk. All rights reserved. You may reprint this article, provided you do not edit it in any way without the author's consent, and provided this paragraph is printed at the end of the article. Other publication requires advance permission of the author.

Louis A. Turk, B.A., M.Div., Ph.D.

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