[BaseballMan]

Harvard’s renowned Professor Stephen Jay Gould1 is a vigorous anticreationist (and Marxist), and perhaps the most knowledgeable student of the history of evolutionary thought and all things Darwinian.

I’m glad he and I are on the same side about one thing at least — the real meaning of ‘Darwin’s revolution’. And we both agree that it’s a meaning that the vast majority of people in the world today, nearly a century and a half after Darwin, don’t really want to face up to. Gould argues that Darwin’s theory is inherently anti-plan, anti-purpose, anti-meaning (in other words, is pure philosophical materialism). Also, that Darwin himself knew this very well and meant it to be so.

By ‘materialism’ he does not mean the drive to possess more and more material things, but the philosophical belief that matter is the only reality. In this belief system, matter, left to itself, produced all things, including the human brain. This brain then invented the idea of the supernatural, of God, of eternal life, and so forth.

It seems obvious why Christians who wish to compromise with evolution, and especially those who encourage others to do this, would not want to face this as the true meaning of Darwinism. Such ‘theistic evolutionists’ believe they can accept the ‘baby’ of evolution (thus saving face with the world) while throwing out the ‘bathwater’ of materialism. I will not here go into the many reasons why the evolution/long geological ages idea is so corrosive to the biblical Gospel2 (even if evolution could be seen as the plan and purpose of some ‘god’).

My purpose is (like Gould’s, but with a different motive) to make people aware of this very common philosophical blind spot, this refusal to wake up to what Darwin was really on about. Why is it true, as Gould also points out, that even among non-Christians who believe in evolution the vast majority don’t wish to face the utter planlessness of Darwin’s theory? Because they would then no longer be able to console themselves with the feeling that there is some sort of plan or purpose to our existence.3

The usual thing vaguely believed in by this majority of people (at the same time as they accept evolution) is some sort of fuzzy, ethereal, oozing god-essence — more like the Star Wars ‘force be with you’ than the personal God of Scripture. They usually obtain some comfort from a vague belief in at least the possibility of some sort of afterlife, which helps explain the success of recent movies like Flatliners and Ghost.4

Gould appears to deplore these popular notions as unfortunate, illogical and unnecessary cultural hangups. He, of course, starts from the proposition that evolution is true. He knows the real message of Darwin to be that ‘there’s nothing else going on out there — just organisms struggling to pass their genes on to the next generation. That’s it.’ In which case it is time for people to abandon comforting fairytales and wake up to this materialistic implication of evolution.

I also regard such notions (of cosmic purpose in a Darwinian world, of life-after-death without belief in the existence of the holy God of the Bible) as tragic fables, for different reasons. They lead people away from the vital revealed truths of Scripture, the propositional facts communicated by the Creator of the universe. It is also tragic that professing Christians can be deluded into embracing a philosophy (evolution) which is so inherently opposed to the very core of Christianity, and has done so much damage to the church and society.

Climbing the ladder
As evidence for this widespread desire to see purpose and plan in the planlessness of evolution, Professor Gould points to the overwhelming tendency among evolution-believers of all levels of education to see the message of Darwin as progress. Evolution is usually illustrated (even on the cover of some foreign translations of Stephen Gould’s books, much to his chagrin) as a 'ladder of progress' or similar.

Why is this?

Think of this. If the evolutionary scenario is true, then man’s arrival on the scene has come only at the end of an unspeakably long chain of events. For example, it would have taken 99.999% of the history of the universe to get to man. After life appears, two-thirds of its history on earth doesn’t get past bacteria, and for half of the remainder it stays at the one-celled stage! In order to escape the obvious (which is that in such an evolutionary universe, man has no possible significance, and just happened to come along), our culture, he argues, has had to view these vast ages as some sort of preparation period for the eventual appearance of man. This works if the idea of progress is clung to. The universe, then organisms, just got ‘better and better’, till finally we came along.

Puncturing myths
However, there is no hint of this popular mythology of ‘evolution-as-progress’ in Darwin’s ‘grand idea’. Variations happen by chance. Those organisms which happen, by chance, to suit their local environment more effectively and thus have a better chance to pass their genes on to the next generation, are favoured by natural selection. That’s all. In the theory, the giraffe that develops a longer neck is not a better giraffe — just one with a longer neck. Given a certain change in the environment, that long neck can just as easily be a disadvantage.

There is therefore nothing 'inevitable' about the appearance of man, or intelligent self-aware beings, for that matter. I would add to Gould’s comments my opinion that it is this belief in evolution as having been an 'onwards and upwards' force leading to us, and then to greater intelligence as a historical inevitability, which makes many dedicated evolutionists so sure that there must be intelligent aliens out there somewhere.

Radical
But isn’t Gould going a bit far to suggest that Darwin knew how radically anti-God his philosophy was? After all, wasn’t he a kindly, doddery naturalist who just happened to be in the right place at the right time, who was persuaded by what he saw in the Galápagos?

Wrong on all counts. If what follows sounds too revisionist, remember that Gould (an undisputed intellectual giant who has made a very careful study) is not alone in his conclusions, and has had access to unpublished notebooks of Darwin from when Darwin was a young man. It appears that:

1.The myth of the ‘kindly slow-witted naturalist stumbling across evolution’ was fostered by an autobiography Darwin wrote as a deliberately self-effacing moral homily for his children, not intending it to be published. It was a common Victorian thing to do. His notebooks tell a different story, of an ambitious young man who knew he had one of the most radical ideas in the history of thought.

2.Darwin did not get his idea from Galápagos finches — Gould even says ‘he clearly did not know that they were finches’. About the Galápagos tortoises, he says Darwin ‘missed that story also and only reconstructed it later.’ Did he get it from observing the results of animal breeding? Peter Bowler, writing in Nature (vol. 353, October 24, 1991, p. 713) says that ‘many now accept that Darwin’s analogy between artificial and natural selection was a product of hindsight’. So where did the ideas come from?

Just prior to his famous ‘insight’, Darwin spent months studying the economic theories of Adam Smith. In Smith’s extreme free-market view, the struggle of individuals competing for personal gain in an unfettered marketplace (by eliminating inefficient participants, for instance) is supposed to give an ordered, efficient economy. Although nothing is guiding it, it is as if there is an 'invisible guiding hand'. The ‘benefits come as an incidental side-effect of this selfish struggle.’

Of course, it is not hard to see where Darwin applied this idea to nature. The apparent design and order in nature is an incidental side-effect of the selfish struggle to leave more offspring.

3. Why did Darwin wait 20 years before publishing? It was not because of his modesty (another common myth which Gould debunks), so it is clear that he was afraid to reveal something.

Was it his belief in evolution itself? No. Evolution was quite a common concept in Darwin’s day. It was because of the bombshell he knew lay behind his theory, namely its rank, radical materialism. He knew as a young man that he had ‘the key to one of the great reforming ideas of history and systematically [went] out to reformulate every discipline from psychology to history.’5 To explain apparent design without a designer — that was the key to Darwin’s theory, not the idea of 'evolution' (common descent) itself.

4. It is likely that this assault on design had a lot to do with a reaction against Captain Fitzroy6 on the Beagle. The captain’s views on almost all political subjects were diametrically opposite to Darwin’s. For instance, Darwin was an ardent abolitionist, whereas Fitzroy believed that slavery was benevolent. Apparently, the good captain would wax long and eloquent on Paley’s argument from design7, which was used to justify many of his ideas. Nothing could possibly have taken deadlier aim at Paley’s argument than Darwin’s persuasive concept that design is an incidental side-effect of otherwise random change.8



http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation...darwin.asp

[BaseballMan]

5. Darwin knew that his notion, being utter planlessness, could not possibly involve any sort of purposive progress, which is the romanticized notion of evolution held by so many of its believers today (especially theists). In fact, it is likely that this is why he did not, himself, use the word ‘evolution’ until his last book in 1881, when he gave in to the by then popular term applied to his concept. The common meaning of ‘evolution’ at that time implied progress. In a letter to the paleontologist Hyatt, Darwin wrote:

[INDENT]‘… I cannot avoid the conclusion that no inherent tendency to progressive development exists.’[/INDENT]

6. Darwin’s casual aside about a ‘creator’ in earlier editions of The Origin of Species seems to have been a ploy to soften the implications of his materialistic theory. Ernst Mayr’s recent book on Darwin, One Long Argument: Charles Darwin and the Genesis of Evolutionary Thought, Harvard, 1991, also acknowledges that Darwin’s references to purpose were to appease both the public and his wife. His early, private notebooks show his materialism well established. For instance, in one of them he addresses himself as, ‘O, you materialist!’ and says, ‘Why is thought, being a secretion of brain, more wonderful than gravity as a property of matter?’ He clearly already believed that the idea of a separate realm of the spirit was nonsense, as is further shown when he warns himself not to reveal his beliefs, as follows:

[INDENT]‘to avoid saying how far I believe in materialism, say only that emotions, instincts, degrees of talent which are hereditary are so because brain of child resembles parent stock.’[/INDENT]

In 1837, when Darwin was only 28 years old, he wrote in a private notebook, responding to Plato’s belief that the ideas of our imagination arise from preexistence of the soul, ‘read monkeys for preexistence’. He seems to have violently opposed Alfred Wallace’s suggestion of a ‘divine will’ behind the evolution of man, at least.9

In summary, then, Darwin was fully aware that his idea was a frontal assault on the very notion of an intelligent Designer behind the world. In fact, he might very well have formulated it precisely for that purpose. The idea of a spiritual realm apart from matter seems to have been anathema to him as a young man already. The primary inspiration for his theory of natural selection did not come from observation of nature. Perhaps not incidentally, his writings also reveal glimpses of specific antipathy to the God of the Bible, especially concerning His right to judge unbelievers in eternity.

Darwin knew, and virtually all the world’s foremost students of his idea know, that belief in his concept quite simply spells materialism with a capital ‘M’. The idea of no designer, no purpose, no guiding intelligence, no progressive plan — these are not afterthoughts to Darwin’s evolution, but form the very core of it. Accept Darwin’s ‘baby’, and this ‘bathwater’ has a nasty habit of coming along, as the drastic decline in belief among evolution-compromising churches attests.

One can only pray that more and more of the evolution-compromisers in the church begin to see the poisonous core of the fruit they not only swallow, but encourage others to accept. And that many of those outside of Christ will realize that there is no purpose in an evolutionary world. In any case, there is so much evidence stacked against evolution nowadays. True meaning to life can be found only through Jesus Christ, the non-evolutionary, miracle-working Genesis Creator, whose eternal Word is ‘true from the beginning’.

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation...darwin.asp

[BaseballMan]

Charles Darwin suffered extreme ill-health for most of his working life. The New Encyclopaedia Britannica says, 'Some of the symptoms—painful flatulence, vomiting, insomnia, palpitations—appeared in force as soon as he began his first transmutation notebook, in 1837. [This is the year after he returned to England from his five-year voyage aboard H.M.S. Beagle.] Although he was exposed to insects in South America and could possibly have caught Chagas' or some other tropical disease, a careful analysis of the attacks in the context of his activities points to psychogenic origins.'1 (Psychogenic means originating in the mind or in mental condition.) Other symptoms included 'nausea, headache ... sensitive stomach, spells of faintness, twitching muscles, spinning head, spots before the eyes.'2 Today we would call this an anxiety-caused psychoneurosis.3

So then, what caused this condition of extreme stress in Darwin? What was he so worried about? And how is it relevant to us today?

Rejection of religious influences
Charles's thinking and writing on the subject of evolution and natural selection caused him to reject all the religious influences in his life. One of these was William Paley.

In his early twenties Charles was willing to become an Anglican clergyman. As part of his theological studies at Cambridge he read William Paley's book Natural Theology,4 which begins with the famous 'watch' argument for creation (a watch requires a watchmaker and so design requires a Designer), about which Charles said, 'I do not think I hardly ever admired a book more than Paley's Natural Theology. I could almost formerly have said it by heart.'5

Another religious influence was his wife Emma, whom he married in 1839, and who used to read the Bible to their children.

As Charles developed his theory of natural selection, these influences diminished. His son Francis recalled him as saying, 'I never gave up Christianity until I was forty years of age.'6 And the death of his eldest daughter Annie from fever at this period of his life hammered the final nail in the coffin of his Christianity.

More than all this however, Darwin knew that his theory was sheer atheistic materialism—a bombshell which when released on Victorian society would undermine people's faith in God, the Bible, and the Church. In effect, he was shaking his fist at Almighty God. Professor Adam Sedgwick of Cambridge, the foremost geologist of his day and a creationist, recognized this as soon as he read the Origin, about 1861. He wrote, 'From first to last it is a dish of rank materialism cleverly cooked and served up...And why is this done? For no other reason, I am sure, except to make us independent of a Creator.'7

Darwin's chief proponent was the most prominent unbeliever, hater of religion, and arch-enemy of the Church of his day—Thomas Henry Huxley, nicknamed 'Darwin's bulldog'. Sir Julian Huxley, Thomas's grandson, who gave the keynote address at the centenary celebration of the publishing of the Origin, held in Chicago in 1959, said, 'Darwin's real achievement was to remove the whole idea of God as the creator of organisms from the sphere of rational discussion.'8,9

Psychologically there can be little doubt that Charles Darwin suffered from feelings of guilt. These undoubtedly arose from his desire to escape from God and from the force of Paley's arguments about design in his Natural Theology. That is, Darwin's theory of natural selection was his attempt to explain design without the need for an intelligent Designer. Professor Stephen Jay Gould of Harvard University concurs; he believes that 'Darwin constructed the theory of natural selection in large measure as a direct refutation of the argument from design'.10,11

However, there is more to it than that. Natural selection to Darwin was not something progressive, as many modern writers portray it, much less a process that God used to create, as theistic evolutionists proclaim it; rather it was something which was utterly planless and purposeless—Gould refers to it as 'the naturalism of purposelessness'.12 Darwin knew that this was an idea which could and would destroy the faith of millions of believers—and he was the one who was about to unleash it on an unsuspecting world. But what if he was wrong? How could he accept the responsibility for what it would do to others? It is little wonder that he 'broke out in boils' (see below), referred to the Origin as 'my accursed book'13 and seems to have thought of himself as a 'Devil's Chaplain'.14

Publication of On the Origin of Species
The result was that Darwin put off publishing his work for 20 years. It was only the fact that in June 1858 he received a letter from Alfred Russel Wallace (a naturalist working in the Malay Archipelago) with a manuscript that perfectly summarized the theory of natural selection which Charles had for so long been contemplating that finally galvanized him into action. As a result, he abandoned his plans to write a multi-volume epic and instead produced a single-volume 'Abstract', as he described it several times in the Introduction. This 'Abstract' was published on November 24, 1859, with the title, On the Origin of Species.15

There was considerable trauma associated with this. In the year leading up to publication he was rarely able to write for more than 20 minutes at a time without stomach pains, and he finished the proofs on October 1, 1859, in between fits of vomiting.

Ten days before the proofs were bound he wrote to his friend J.D. Hooker, 'I have been very bad lately; having had an awful "crisis" one leg swelled like elephantiasis—eyes almost closed up—covered with a rash & fiery Boils: but they tell me it will surely do me much good. — it was like living in ****.'16,17 His modern biographers talk of his 'self-doubt, his nagging, gnawing fear that "I ... have devoted my life to a phantasy"'.18

He was too sick to be on hand in London when the first copies were sold, or to attend the debate between Thomas Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce held at Oxford on June 30, 1860, or to attend the Royal Society of London meeting that awarded him its Copley Medal in November 1864.19,20 The same year he wrote to Hooker, 'I shd [sic] suppose few human beings had vomited so often during the last 5 months.'21

What Darwin did not know
We now know that if Darwin could have foreseen coming scientific developments, he would have had good reason to be concerned that his theory might one day be proved wrong.

In particular, Gregor Mendel had not yet established and published his work on the laws of heredity and genetics, which said that the characteristics of offspring are passed on from parents according to precise mathematical ratios and do not derive from chance random processes in what Darwin called 'blending inheritance'.

James Joule, R.J.E. Clausius, and Lord Kelvin were only just developing the concepts of thermodynamics, the first law of which states that energy can neither be created nor destroyed (so the present universe could not have created itself), and the second law of which says that the universe is proceeding in a downward degenerating direction of increasing disorganization (so things overall do not of themselves become more organized with time).

Louis Pasteur was just beginning his famous experiments which showed that life (even microbial life) comes from life, not from non-life.

The mathematical laws of probability, which show that the odds of life's occurring by chance are effectively zero, had not yet been applied to the theory of evolution.

Molecular biology, with its revelation that the cell is so enormously complex that it could not possibly have been formed by chance, had not yet commenced.

The fossil record had not yet been investigated sufficiently for palaeontologists to be able to say, as they now do, that chains of intermediate 'links' do not exist.

Any one of these concepts or laws, if known to Charles Darwin at the time he was writing his Origin (1856-59), would have been enough to torpedo his ideas; taken all together they kill the theory of evolution stone dead!

Relevance today
Today all these counters to the theory of evolution are known and, as such, form a compelling case against evolution. In short, they indicate that evolution could not have taken place, while the fossil record shows that evolution did not take place. The incredible thing is that otherwise rational scientists continue to cling to the concept of evolution, modifying it in any way they can to get around the proofs against it, regardless of the destructive moral and social effects that evolutionary theory has on society. As Michael Denton says, '... 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.'22 Darwin did well to be anxious about the long-term effects of his theory!

But why has this happened? Why has the theory become so much more important than the evidence necessary to sustain it?

Answer: Because of what the alternative involves. If the biblical account of creation is true, then there will be a Day of Judgment, for God the Creator has said that He has 'appointed a day in which He will judge the world in righteousness by that man whom he hath ordained [namely Jesus]; whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He raised Him from the dead' (Acts 17:31).

http://www.answersingenesis.org/creation...llness.asp

[ComfortEagle]

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