Creation vs Evolution: The Battle of Two Religions

CREATION BITS No 25.
Creation vs. Evolution: The Battle of Two Religions

Author: Curt Sewell
Subject: Creation Overviews
Date: 11/8/1999
Curt Sewell is the author of God at Ground Zero
CREATION BITS INDEX

The conflict between Creation and Evolution is often portrayed by scientists and the liberal media as being between intelligent scientists and semi-illiterate religious fundamentalists. We even sometimes hear the term “flat-earthers.” Nothing could be further from the truth. This is not a fight between science and religion.

This conflict is really part of the basic fight that has existed for millenia — it’s between two religions — those who choose God, and those who oppose Him. Henry Morris dubbed it “The Long War Against God.” Phillip Johnson, Professor of Law at UC-Berkeley, wrote of this conflict, calling it “The Church of Darwin.”

The Anti-God Religion

Evolutionist Prof. E.O. Wilson of Harvard, a biologist, says that today traditional religions are being replaced by a new morality, a new unifying myth, based squarely on evolutionary biology. He says that Darwinism provides the scientific support for an entire naturalistic worldview or religion.

Broadly speaking, a religion is anything that functions as a person’s ultimate belief or worldview — anything that answers the basic questions of life: Where did we come from? (From chance collisions of atoms in a ‘primordial soup.’) What are we here for? (There’s no ultimate purpose in life.) How do we know what’s right and wrong? (We don’t ; we use our own judgment. ) What’s the basis for morality? (There’s no such thing as absolute morality.)

E.O. Wilson, Professor of Entomology and bitter enemy of Christianity, described his own background:

“As were many persons from Alabama, I was a born-again Christian. When I was fifteen, I entered the Southern Baptist Church with great fervor and interest in the fundamentalist religion. I left at seventeen when I got to University of Alabama and heard about evolutionary theory.”

Unfortunately, this has happened to many young people. Too often, kids from a Christian home, and who don’t have a good foundation in Biblical Christianity, are over-awed with the mystique of materialistic science, and when they once begin an intellectual rejection of Christ, they seldom recover.

Secular Humanism is a Religion

A large percentage of evolutionists consider themselves to be Secular Humanists, which they often consider to be a philosophy, not a formal religion. But the U.S. Supreme Court, in 1961, found that Secular Humanism is a religion. (A Humanist, Roy Torcaso, was denied a commission as a Notary Public in the State of Maryland. The State had required all public officials to affirm a belief in God. Torcaso appealed, and the Court found that Humanism is a religion, thus the State’s requirement was unconstitutional as a violation of religious liberty.)

In the Seeger Supreme Court Decision in 1965 (which found that a humanistic and ethical belief, sincerely professed as a religion, shall be entitled to recognition as being religious under the Selective Service Law), Justice Hugo L. Black wrote (Siecus, pg.94) :

“Among religions in this country which do not teach what would generally be considered a belief in the existence of God are Buddhism, Taoism, Ethical Culture, Secular Humanism and others.”

Darwinism and Secular Humanism

The experts in evolutionary theory are all either atheists or agnostics. However, they know they’re in the minority and that only about 10% of ‘ordinary citizens’ really believe that life began by accidental chemical reactions — that it gradually became more and more complex without any supernatural intervention. Almost half of our population say they believe that God somehow created us (although many deviate considerably from the Biblical account). Thus evolutionists are careful to disguise the religious implications of their ‘religion.’

Thomas Dewey was the long-time head of the department of education at Columbia University. Since Columbia was very influential among teachers’ colleges, Dewey’s beliefs and philosophies were adopted by most of those colleges, and in turn by the students who later became teachers. Thus he became known as one of the “fathers of American education.”

Dewey was a philosopher, and a popular speaker at forums across the U.S. His fundamental premise was the absence of moral and philosophical absolutes — that we are each the authors of our own standards. We have him to thank for the concept of “moral relativism,” so popular in society today. Of course this means that there’s no such thing as Godly principles that hold absolute truth. He considered Christianity to be simply a human philosophy, which he rejected.

In 1933 Dewey led a group of prominent intellectuals in publishing the Humanist Manifesto, which the Encyclopedia Brittanica describes as “substantially a profession of anthropological atheism, based on the theory of evolution.” Its supporters thereafter became known, quite reasonably, as “secular humanists,” and later began a magazine known as “The Humanist.” Many leaders in the ACLU (or American Civil Liberties Union), a legal group active in filing lawsuits to “cleanse” our nation of all vestiges of religion in the public domain, belong to the Humanist Society.

The public school system is being used as the ideal vehicle for spreading this atheistic belief system. John Dunphy wrote (in The Humanist, Jan/Feb 1983):

“I am convinced that the battle for humankind’s future must be waged and won in the public school classroom by teachers who correctly perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith, a religion of humanity that recognizes and respects the spark of what theologians call divinity in every human being. These teachers must embody the same selfless dedication as the most rabid fundamentalist preachers, for they will be ministers of another sort, utilizing a classroom instead of a pulpit to convey humanist values in whatever subject they teach, regardless of the educational level — preschool day care or large state university. The classroom must and will become an arena of conflict between the old and the new — the rotting corpse of Christianity, together with all its adjacent evils and misery, and the new faith of humanism.” (emphasis added)

But most public school teachers are dedicated and earnest people — they don’t “perceive their role as the proselytizers of a new faith,” as Dunphy wrote above. Many of them are faithful Christians, who have been indoctrinated in college by those who insist that “science has proved that …” or “… the fact of evolution …”. Their curriculum is often set by others, such as State Board of Education Guidelines, that require certain subjects to be taught.

However, many of these perceptive teachers are bothered by the obvious conflicts between what they’re expected to teach and the clear statements in the Bible. Each of these must rationalize the conflicts in their own way. This writer faced these conflicts in the past, and was never able to find a compromise position that made good sense. That was what made me begin a long study of the foundations of the scientific process. I was led to reject evolutionism and to become a dedicated creationist.

Conflict between Evolutionism and Christianity

Nancy Pearcey wrote this in How Now Shall We Live?:

“This is why the issue of Darwinism versus cosmic design has become such a fierce battleground in America today. The debate is not just about fossils or genetic mutations. Our theory of origins determines our identity, our values, our sense of meaning.

“This is why in today’s world, the Christian message must begin with creation. We cannot simply start off with John 3:16 and the gospel message. That’s like starting to read a book in the middle of the story — you don’t know the characters and you can’t make sense of the plot. We need to start with creation, where the main character of the ‘story’ is introduced as the Creator of all, and the ‘plot’ of human history begins to unfold.”

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