EVOLUTION CONTRADICTS GOD AND CHRISTIAN FAITH
Evolution can be a problem for believers in God. Muslims and Christians and Mormons come to mind as struggling with it.
Here are the problems they have.
If you assume that there is nothing but the physical and that all physical states of affairs are set and determined by the clockwork way nature works and the previous state of the universe then you need evolution. That does not necessarily say there is no supernatural but that if there is we don't need to think about it. I refuse to use the term laws of nature here for it can be misleading. Something acting in a certain way does not mean somebody made a law to make it like that.
It suggests that the creator if any may be ruthless or indifferent.
It suggests that scriptures that affirm God just made us are wrong.
It suggests that to survive we must be the most adaptable which means we
should be scheming and hiding what we are really up to to get ahead. That
contradicts any religion of love or justice or even respect.
It is easy to pick up on how religious authorities are not keen on the idea of
or topic of evolution for it suggests other animals may be as important as us.
You can tell them about our closest DNA match in the animal kingdom and how
sexually wanton it is. We are talking about bonobo chimpanzees which as soon as
they meet have sex. For them it is about recreation that just happens to result
in pregnancy at times. This does not sit well with the Catholic principle that
sex is a sin unless it expresses, "This is the act that can give life and if
that life is possible then I accept it."
Evolution is an attempt to explain life and the complexity of life without God.
It denies that there is any plan in nature. It simply says that change happens
and just happens. There is no goal. There are countless things that look like
goals but are not. You cannot assume what looks like a goal is a goal. Remember
Occam's Razor.
Evolution does not mean things are improving. If blind force makes a clock that
is not improving for the whole picture has to be considered. What has been
ruined in the process? The entire process is too complicated to be assessed so
what looks like an improvement in the bigger picture is really nothing at all
and indeed may make many things worse. One things "design" is everything else's
"un-design."
If life can be explained by evolution then there is no need for God. Actually to
start claiming that God is behind evolution would be silly. It would deny the
fact that science says evolution just happened.
Religion ignores that and pretends that evolution requires the guidance of a God
more than the old theory that God simply made all life does! Or they suppose
that it requires it at least as much. This is a denial that anything can be a
refutation of God and is an extremely arrogant and stubborn claim. To say
evolution requires God is to say that it shows the signs of being the work of
God. This is a scientific idea. It is making God a hypothesis. But God can never
be a scientific hypothesis. You can't find God in a test tube. You can't see him
in a telescope. You can't detect the presence of God through scientific
investigation. Even worse science never detects any activity that could in
theory be put down to God!! In other words there is nothing like, "There is
something outside of nature - extra-natural or supernatural doing this. Some
would say it is God. We don't know but they might be right."
Evolution is the idea that life came from non-living things and that it grew
more and more complicated and that it is through this process and natural
selection the species currently on earth appeared. Controversially for
Christians it teaches that man and ape had a common ancestor. Evolution is a
theory but science terms many proven things as theories. Evolution is proven.
Science calls proven things theories for science has to commit itself to
whatever evidence says meaning it opposes dogma and the idea of scientific
orthodoxy. It has to be very open-minded. In principle, science has to be open
to new evidence that may refute evolution and then revise the theory or scrap
it. In this sense, science and religious dogmatism are incompatible. A genuine
religionist cannot be an honest scientist for science is antithetical to
dogmatism.
Creationists try to make evolution sound absurd. But is it? They say we cannot
say evolution is true when we cannot make life in the lab. Consider this. We
have the power to evolve even junk food into ourselves. Our bodies and whatever
our minds are are being continually remade and replaced. The burger you eat
today will be your body tomorrow. We don't have to be able to make life in the
lab to know that substances can become a living being. We prove it can be done
every day though we do not know how. It is dishonest to reason, "I don't know
why such and such is the case so I will attribute it to the work of God." Why
not just say you don't know and leave it at that? Why use a God of the Gaps to
fill the holes? Why not an angel or an alien civilisation of the gaps? When we
cannot argue, "We are unable to make life in the lab so God must have done it"
why bother trying to use him to fill other gaps which many Christians interested
in science do? The God concept cannot fill the biggest and most important one -
which incidentally is not a real gap at all! It will do little good filling up
the rest.
Evolution necessarily rejects the notion of a perfect God for a God who knows
all things will not need to use trial and error to form us. Using trial and
error would imply God does not clearly know what he is doing. And if God goes
through the motions of trial and error and knows what he is doing then he is a
fraudster and his followers are his equally duplicitious cronies.
The creationists say that evolutionists who claim to believe in God arrogantly
assume, "Most creatures that ever lived only existed for the sake of producing
the creatures that live today. They suffered and bled and died for that. We must
be something special for the human race is a speck of dust compared to all the
living things that had to be tormented by God's plan to produce us." The
argument would imply that as we enjoy the fruits of all the torture and death
that others underwent that we are the zenith and purpose of evolution. God used
the creatures and the people that went before as means to the end of producing
wonderful and incredible us. The creationists are right to see the argument as
hideous and vile. The argument logically flows from belief in evolution and in
God. They are a bad mixture.
The Christians who claim that science is right that complex life forms have
emerged through trial and error (natural selection) and this was the way the
all-knowing God chose to do it are contradicting themselves. It's saying both
that all things emerged by chance and they didn't emerge by chance at all. When
Christians talk such bullshit, it is only to be expected that some Christians will
resort to the nonsense that is creation science.
For evolutionists, the process of natural selection churns out DNA in forms that
can't survive and some that do. Just like some junk seems to serve a purpose, we
are junk that seems to serve a purpose. We might think our purpose is to
progress and learn but for all we know we might nuke ourselves to bits next
week. Thus if evolution had never produced anything more than amoebas it would
have been better than making us. We look at ourselves and think we are so
wonderful that evolution was set up by God to make us. But we don't know that.
We are guessing what the purpose of our existence is and reading that into the
evidence. It is not there.
The Second Law of Thermodynamics is that things will get more chaotic and worse
as time goes on. We could be speeding up that worseness so we are not the great
masterpieces we think we are.
The notion that God set things up to make themselves is akin to finding a fine
doll in your Christmas stocking and because you can't explain how it got there
you say thin air was set up to make itself. That is not science but the
perception you impose on the situation. It is irrational.
Evolution emerged as a major theory through Charles Darwin. Religion at the time
taught that people and animals were created directly by the action of God.
The notion that God making us by snapping his fingers means he is less involved
in making us than he would if he used evolution is outrageously bizarre and
foolish. Coming from reasonably smart believers it is obviously just a
deliberate lie. God making us by magic would imply that he is more involved. His
hiding and making us from a distance would imply he is less involved. Both views
claim that God helps our character formation so he would be equally involved
that way. That would be the only form of divine involvement that would matter.
The argument that evolution needs God more than direct creation does is a plain
lie. But that aside what do those who say it mean by it? Do they mean that the
natural course is for us to be a new form of animal derived from other animals
but God took over to ensure that we would be something special perhaps spirits
living in bodies of flesh and bone? Yes. They are ashamed though to be that
clear about it. And also they are trying to create the illusion that they are
pro-science.
If Christians wish to say that science and faith in God are different things and
that God is not a scientific hypothesis, they have to say they assume there is a
God despite there being no sign of him in creation. Those who say that there are
signs of design will have to say that the designer may be a great being but not
necessarily a god.
Fundamentalist Christianity pretends that it opposes belief in evolution and
belief in Darwinism for they imply that survival of the fittest is and should be
the law. The Fundies say that evolution destroys morality and particularly it
attacks the Christian doctrine of charity that you should esteem others as much
as yourself and not be trying to defeat them to be top person. They are right.
But the problem is that even if evolution and Darwinism is untrue, it remains
true that we live in a survival of the fittest world. So it makes no difference.
It is thought by some that survival of the fittest does not mean that the
strongest and the most intelligent will get the upper hand. They think it means
that it is those who are the best at adapting to change that survive and get the
upper hand. But true strength and intelligence involve adapting to change so we
are still saying that only the strongest and the smartest should survive.
Consider the doctrine:
All people in the world do not make up one big family. Whether Darwinism is true
or not, survival of the fittest is the law. Get all you can out of life for
someone else will get it what you could have if you don’t. Life is naturally
competitive. Religion bizarrely condemns survival of the fittest which amounts
to seeing it is a deadly problem and fact of life. Denial makes the issue worse.
Then you cannot be prepared.
If you encourage others not to be competitive so that you will end up with the
benefits they could have got, that is not going to help your self-esteem.
Moreover, you will fear that just as they lost, you might lose too.
Survival of the fittest is more inexact than wrong. Survival of the most
versatile is the best way to put it. The fittest would be those who adapt the
best and quickest to change.
If the law of survival of the fittest just happened, you don't have to approve
of it. It would be better to believe that it just happened that survival of the
fittest is the law of life. The law is down to chance. That would imply that you
don't have to approve of it. To believe that a God who is all-good set it up
implies that you do have to approve of it. If God created the law and you take
it to imply that you possibly have to approve then you are really welcoming
evil. Belief in God condones evil. Unbelief abhors the evil. Even to suggest the
possibility of approving is diabolical. Yet if you believe in God you would have
to go much further than that and bless the evil! Are you trying to console the
sufferer? Are you not like the lick who when a child is molested by her father
would tell her, "But no matter how it seems, he loves you really!"? Shove your
consolation!
Evolution might need us to behave as if we are God. Evolution endangers belief
in God. Belief in evolution is suited to the idea that God does not really exist
and that he is just a human idea. He is not real.