Dub McClish
Charles Darwin was born more than two centuries ago (1809). Even those who reject his premises cannot deny the impact of them on mankind. Along with the change Darwinian evolution has wrought in science, its effect upon religion and morals has been incalculable.
The acceptance of Darwin’s theories required abandonment of faith in God and in the Creation account of Genesis (the claims of “theistic evolutionists” notwithstanding). It was natural to assume that, if the Bible’s opening words are suspect, the rest of it (including its moral laws) might also be faulty (which assumption atheists and humanists have warmly embraced). In the Darwinian domain, men are soulless critters—freak “accidents of history,” common in origin with everything from maggots to monkeys to mules. Men therefore have no uniqueness that makes them superior in worth or authority to their environment or to other life forms. Moreover, there is no Heaven to seek nor Hell to avoid upon the basis of one’s behavior.
The broad acceptance of Darwinism gradually eroded Biblical moral values, the cohesive social force of Western Europe and North America until the early-to-mid 20th century. Generations of children have been propagandized by a humanistic public education system with predictable effect. A large percentage of several generations became convinced that we are mere animals. Why should anyone be surprised at the corresponding increases in sexual promiscuity, illegitimate births, destroyed families, and acceptance of sexual perversions as “normal”? The “right” of a woman to murder the baby in her womb could never have been imagined, much less “found,” had not Darwinism done its fiendish work of devaluing life.
After all, we’re first cousins to alley cats and stray dogs (some of which, incidentally, would not stoop to the behavior of some of our kind). If we are mere animals, “morals” are merely what we decide they are. This being so, “morals” are wholly subjective and situational; my idea of “morality” is as good as anyone else’s. Each person should have the right to be a law unto himself. Why should there be any laws against assault, murder, theft, rape, or incest? Dogs and cats are amoral.
Darwinists had their counterparts in the ancient world: “For the invisible things of him since the creation of the world are clearly seen, being perceived through the things that are made, even his everlasting power and divinity; that they may be without excuse:… Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools” (Rom. 1:20–22).
