Charles R. Darwin's book, "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection," was first published in 1859. One hundred years have passed, and centennial celebrations of the Darwin theory of evolution have been held in many lands. Much ink has been used by writers of scientific, cultural, educational, secular, and religious organizations during this year in an attempt to evaluate the effects of evolution in this past century. It has been one of great progress. Most of the writings and appraisals have commended the theory, and been laudatory, even to the extreme of adulation of the man Darwin.
We feel that it falls within the scope of our magazine and in the interest of our readers to review some of these articles which have appeared, as well as some of shortly earlier production. Business Week, a magazine of no mean stature in the business world, gave an objective report of a scientific centennial celebration which took place in Chicago last December. Under the title, "What Darwin Means to the Space Age," Business Week comments that,
"Perhaps the most remarkable thing about the 'miracle of Darwin,' however, is the way scientists a century later are still riding on his coattails-rewording, reinterpreting, and rephrasing-but never really offering much fresh thinking or fresh reasoning on how the world of living things evolved...
"In predicting what man faces in space, today's scientists are leaning as hard on old Darwinian theory for their ideas as their predecessors have for the past four or five decades.
"Although they couch their suggestions in new, fancy terms, the world's scientists are even paraphrasing Darwin when they suggest the aims researchers should seek to achieve during the next 100 years. Basically, the most important thing, they agree, is to continue the search for new knowledge to 'fill the tremendous gaps that still yawn' in knowledge of man's evolution....
"In other fields of science, there have been men of tremendous foresight and vision. In virtually no other field has one man, for so long, dominated the thoughts of so many."-Business
Week, December 12, pp 103 106
Before we make any comments on the above remarks, we will herewith quote from a later issue of Business Week, in which a reader addressed the following letter to the editor:
"Dear Sir:
"Your article What Darwin Means to the Space Age [BW -December 12, '59, p. 103] was most interesting.
"Surely Sir Julian Huxley would not pretend that the space satellites now circling our globe came into existence through mere chance. Yet he proposes that the men who developed these satellites, the planet on which they live, and the universe of which we are a part, are all the result of 2.5-billion years of `blind opportunistic workings of natural selection.'...
"It is revealing, I think, that these scientists' basic goal for the next 100 years 'is to continue the search for new knowledge to "fill the tremendous gaps that still yawn" in the knowledge of man's evolution.'...
"Yes, gentlemen, I too am amazed that after 100 years of scientific advancement Darwin's theory still dominates the thoughts of some of the world's scientists.
"The entire universe, to the smallest particle of matter, exhibits order and regulation. It is inconceivable to me and contrary to all the 'laws' of nature that this well-ordered universe could have merely chanced to evolve. The creation's existence is irrefutable evidence of the Creator.... David H. Thiessen, Minneapolis, Minn."
The above is reprinted from the February 6, 1960 issue of Business Week by special permission. Copyrighted (c) 1960 by the McGraw-Hill Publishing Company, Inc.
As the second century of Darwinian-dominated thinking begins, the Christian, and especially the young Christian, must be on his guard against the reasonings of the human mind. This is a day when reason is exalted to the glorification of man. One verse bears on this very strongly: "Casting down imaginations [should be 'reasonings'], and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ." 2 Cor. 10:5. Never in the history of this world has the human intellect been deified as it is now; and its workings are basically infidel, and at complete variance with the revelation of God.
God could not be known in times past by the debased and debasing conjectures and speculations of heathen idolatry, oriental mysticism, or Greek mythology. Nor can man know God in this great intellectual age by any of the atheistic philosophies of the day. He can only be known in the manner and to the extent of divine revelation. But man largely rejects the revelation of the true God, because it makes nothing of man; he would rather have a god small enough for his finite mind to comprehend (which would be small indeed), or plainly reject God entirely and revel in his great "freedom" of thought which makes him feel unaccountable to any higher power. But this is a fatal delusion.
One of the greatest snares today is the temporizing of Christianity with the unproved hypothesis of evolution by so-called (perhaps, real) Christian educators and clergymen. One would have to search to find many so-called Christian schools and colleges which do not somewhere do obeisance to Darwin and evolution. It is commonly taught in these quasi religious institutions that one may believe in God and evolution at the same time. Our young people are led to believe that to reject evolution as the life source of all living things would brand one as an incorrigible and willful ignoramus. Even some true Christians are so swayed by the love of worldly approbation that they fall in line with the trend, and compromise the truth of God. Of many of them it is to be feared that they love "the praise of men more than the praise of God" (John 12:43). But one need go no further than the writings of the greatest intellects in biology and other related sciences to find that those who try to harmonize the Holy Scriptures with the dark reasonings of unbelief found in evolution are not respected by the true evolutionist. They are (probably sometimes secretly) considered bigger dupes than the Christians who reject outright anything that does not honor God the Creator. Such adapters of Christian verities to the changing follies of man are not respected by the out-and-out evolutionist, nor are those who take that ground to be trusted as Christians. They are no more stable than a weather vane which turns with every gust of the wind. They savor of those of whom Scripture speaks: "They please not God, and are contrary to all men" (1 Thess. 2:15). If anyone is inclined to believe the evolutionary scheme, let him listen to the evolutionists who are head and shoulders above the average and then reject God forthwith, and not try to palliate such an abominable mixture. Listen to some dedicated evolutionists:
"At last week's Chicago meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Harvard's George Gaylord Simpson, vertebrate paleontologist, seized upon the centenary of Darwin's publication of the Origin of Species to summarize today's consensus of scientific thinking on the nature and origin of man. The ancestry of man is still not fully known, he conceded, but he denounced 'pussyfooting' about apes in man's family tree.
"Apologists emphasize that man cannot be a descendant of any living ape, and go on to state that man is not really descended from an ape or a monkey at all but from an earlier common ancestor. In fact that common ancestor would certainly be called an ape or monkey in popular speech by anyone who saw it. Since the terms 'ape' and 'monkey' are defined by popular usage, man's ancestors were apes or monkeys (or successively both).... Man is in the fullest sense a part of nature and not apart from it. He is not figuratively but literally akin to every living thing, be it an amoeba, a tapeworm, a flea, a seaweed, an oak tree or a monkey. In a word, man lives in a world 'in which he is not the darling of the gods.' "
Then the Harvard paleontologist Simpson spoke of man's being unique in having a language whereby he could store his knowledge beyond the duration of individual memory. He also pointed out that man has a moral sense with a sense of responsibility; but note his comments on this:
"The evolutionary process is not moral-the word is simply irrelevant in that connection-but it has finally produced a moral animal."
Then to explain to whom man is responsible, Simpson added: "man is responsible to himself and for himself." See Time magazine, January 11, 1960, p. 30.
Thus according to an eminent paleontologist from a renowned university, man is purely a product of evolution; he was not created by God, nor is he responsible to God. His only salvation lies in saving himself from evolutionary degeneration. How is it that such degeneration did not set in long ago during the supposed millions of years that he has been working up from the smallest possible life that had just chanced to happen? This "salvation" is to be accomplished by man himself if he "takes a hand in determining his own future evolution."
Let us take another giant of the intellectual world and hear what he says of evolution and the Genesis account of God's creation; namely, Sir Julian Huxley, the British biologist, and grandson of the great T. H. Huxley who sided with Charles Darwin and battled to "convert the Christian Heathen of these islands [the British Isles] to the true faith," by which he meant "science." Time, May 9, 1960, p. 110.
This noted gentleman now says there need not be any conflict between science and religion, but what does he mean by "religion"? He does see a great conflict between Christian theology and science. In other words, Sir Julian will not have any truce with vital Christianity. In his opinion the battle has been won by science. He belittles Christianity as "a combination of an elaborate god-theory with a subsidiary but equally elaborate soul-theory," and consigns them to mere hypotheses.
This is a clever twist to take evolution out of the unproved hypotheses category and place God and the soul there. Poor duped man! Some day he will learn the facts to his eternal sorrow.
Huxley attacks the idea that the universe must have been created and therefore must have a Creator as discarded foolishness. When he met with the contention of an English cleric, Dr. Eric Lionel Mascal of Christ Church, Oxford, that creation was not an act of God's in the past but was an incessant activity by which it is conserved, he scoffed and called it "double talk." His remarks according to Time were:
"The whole range of physico-chemical and biological phenomena can now be accounted for in principle in naturalistic terms: to invoke the operation of God in the process is not only unnecessary but intellectually dubious." Time, August 1, 1960, p. 45.
Another report on that assemblage of scientists in Chicago late in 1959 quotes Sir Julian Huxley as saying:
"The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion.
"Evolutionary man can no longer take refuge... in the arms of a divinised father-figure, whom he himself has created... nor absolve himself from the hard task of meeting his problems and planning his future by relying on the will of an omniscient but unfortunately inscrutable providence."
Here it is in plain language from one who ought to know about evolution if anyone does. There is simply no place for God in evolution, nor can God and evolution be blended together. We affirm on the basis of the leaders of the evolutionist cult that it simply resolves into this: it is either God and Genesis, or atheism and evolution.
Sir Julian Huxley predicted that a new evolutionary religion will arise (giving credence to nothing supernatural), a religion which "will sanctify the higher manifestations of human nature in art and love and will emphasize the fuller realization of life's possibilities..."—Newsweek, December 7, 1959, p. 94.
God has thus labeled those who reject Himself as God: "The fool hath said in his heart, There is no God." Psalm 14:1; 53:1. But modern man is still more foolish, for he does not confine his rejection of God to his own evil heart, but proclaims it from the housetops. It is our strong conviction that they talk more and louder to keep themselves sold; for we doubt that there is a single man living (despite his protestations to the contrary) who does not at times fear that his boasted atheism may not be true, and then fears also that he must meet that God in judgment. We are reminded of the boy who lived outside of a small town, and he had frequently to walk home at night. His way home took him by the cemetery, and for some reason he was always fearful of passing that place; so as he approached the dreaded spot he would begin to whistle, and the more he feared, the louder he whistled. So we conjecture that the loud boasts of atheism are but efforts to still the voice of conscience.
True evolution rejects God, denies His revelation, pretends to tell man where he came from, but there the scientific hoax must stop. Man's destiny beyond the grave cannot be solved by his brain. The devil has from the beginning of man's history distorted the facts. True religion has not evolved, for Adam came from God's hand with a knowledge of the true God. All the corruptions invented by the "father of lies" corrupted the knowledge of God which was handed down from father to son. Then there were distinct manifestations of God at different epochs, and the creation itself has always borne witness to Him. Not so, says the evolutionist.
Zophar, in the book of Job, asks a pertinent question: "Canst thou by searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection?" Job 11:7. Man's searching by any instrument at his command will never find out God; He is known by revelation only, and it is a substantial reality to faith. But neither can man by the evolutionary theory cancel out God, or remove Him from His creation. He may as well try to remove the air which surrounds the earth. Well may we add the words from the second Psalm: "He that sitteth in the heavens shall laugh: the Lord shall have them in derision." But God has been longsuffering with wicked and unrepentant man; and because of this, many feel that they can with impunity treat Him as a myth, a delusion. We read: "Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, therefore the heart of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." Eccles. 8:11.
But of course there is no place for sin in the vocabulary of modern evolution or its counterpart, Freudian psychology. To them it is only a misnomer, a false idea of something nonexistent. So with no God to meet, no judgment after death, according to current atheistic teachings, man may as well do anything he can get away with. Is it any wonder that the crime rate is soaring to new highs almost every month? As an example of current thought, Albert Ellis, a Manhattan Psychotherapist, is reported to have said,
"No human being should ever be blamed for anything he does." If Mr. Ellis's son were kidnapped, or his life savings stolen, he might change his mind, for the moment at least. Thomas Huxley the atheist is said to have lived a circumspect life, but chiefly to prove that it could be done without any fear of meeting God, or of hell. So he had a reason for living as he did, but it was not to please God. Be it said with conviction, that man does behave better today because of the reflected light of the Christianity that he rejects. He fears even reflected light of the true light he shuns.
But we have more to say about the basic nature of evolution -that it is naturalistic and atheistic in principle and in net result. For our next "authority" on the subject of evolution, we will refer to one of the foremost biologists in the United States. one, Oscar Riddle. In 1939 he was ranked as "one of the half-dozen top biologists in the U.S." "He is a member of some twenty of the foremost scholarly societies in the United States, and holds honorary memberships in ten similar societies in Argentina, Brazil, Chili, Uruguay, Mexico, England, Italy, and India." "For many years he was attached to the Carnegie Institution's Department of Experimental Evolution at Cold Springs Harbor, New York."
This information is taken from the jacket of a book of Dr. Riddle's published by Vantage Press. The title of the book is The Unleashing of Evolutionary Thought. Its publication date is given as 1954, and while it is of a late date, it sold so readily that it was soon out of print. This book came into our hands at the suggestion of Dr. Stephen Wilhelm of the University of California. He wished us to review it for the purpose of seeing what evolution really is and where, it leads. Doctor Wilhelm, in the course of his academic studies and research, has had to come to grips with evolution, and rejects it without hesitation as
being founded on the sands of human guesswork, as being atheist in teaching, and the source of much discredit to science.