Acts & Facts - Institute for Creation Research

BACK TO GENESISThe Contrasting Religions ofCreation and EvolutionJ O H N D . M O R R I S , P h .D.The often-asked question“Do you believe in evolution?”expects the answer“Of course!” Don’t onlyignorant yokels have any doubt? Butpolls consistently reveal that a greatmajority of Americans do not believein the evolution of all life formsfrom a common ancestor. Why isn’tevolution something you can knowfor sure, not just something in whichyou can believe?As always, it helps to defineterms. First, evolution is the “descentfrom a common ancestor” model,the idea that all of life came from more primitiveforms. Humankind came from an ape-likeancestor that came up through the mammalsfrom an original rodent-like creature. All mammalscame from early reptiles and amphibians,which all came from fish. And the fish camefrom some marine invertebrate like a snail orstarfish, which had still earlier evolved fromsingle-celled life.Thus, a more revealing question mightbe “Do you believe your ancestors were fish,as evolution teaches?” Or, “Are you a mutatedrodent-like creature?” Fewer people wouldbe inclined to answer, “Yes!” Despite severalgenerations now of aggressive evolution-onlyteaching in the public school classroom, mostpeople just know that they didn’t come from afish or a rodent or a starfish. They can chooseto believe they have an animal ancestry, butfew do. It just isn’t believable. Thankfully, itisn’t the only alternative explanation for origins,and the other is not only more believable,it’s more appealing.Dr. Michael Ruse, perhaps the mosteloquent spokesman for evolution today, hasadmitted:Evolution is promoted by its practitionersas more than mere science. Evolution ispromulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—afull-fledged alternative to Christianity,with meaning and morality. I am anardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian,but I must admit that in this one complaint…theliteralists are absolutely right.Evolution is a religion. This was true ofevolution in the beginning, and it is trueof evolution still today. 1Christianity has its God and its revealedtruth. It tells us our origins, who we are, wherewe came from, the meaning of life, and wherewe’re going after we die. It tells us how to live andhow to make life decisions along the way. Createdin the image of God, we have great worthin His eyes, and great standing before Him as weappropriate His gift of redemption, a great destinyto perform on earth, and life with our lovingand righteous Creator/Savior after death.Evolution answers these samequestions differently. We are andcome from the universe’s chemicalsthat have self-organized into unlikelyforms over eons of time. Single-celledlife transformed itself intohigher forms until finally the humananimal came along. As higheranimals, we have incorporated animalbehavior into societal normsand even “religious” beliefs. Theonly true meaning to life is survivaland reproduction, and life’s highestgoal is to pass on one’s genes moreefficiently than others. After life, wesimply cease to exist.As Dr. Ruse explains, “Evolution is a religion,”and not a science at all. It might be bestunderstood as a worldview, a way of thinkingand making sense of the world aroundus. Some, such as Eugenie Scott, have calledthis worldview “philosophical materialism,” areligious claim of naturalism that holds thatnature is all there is. There is no supernaturalBeing who has ever interfered with the naturalorder of things. Surely this is a religious claimregarding all of reality.And surely it’s not the only or the bestsuch claim. As constitutional attorney WendellBird has pointed out: “Evolution is at least asreligious as creation, and creation is at least asscientific as evolution.” Creation is also morebelievable.Reference1. Ruse, Michael. Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians.National Post, May 13, 2000, B-3.Dr. Morris is President of the Institute for Creation Research.NOVEMBER 2008 • ACTS&FACTS13