Ravi Zacharias
in The End of Reason
It's ironic how Charles Dawkins and Daniel Dennet would argue that the reason that people are diluted by religion is by the usage of emotions. Whereas, in Christianity God makes it clear that you should not act on feelings, it's selfish. Dennet would further argue that religions are using love as a leash to hold people in the faith. Dan Barker would put it as a primitive understanding of how the universe works and of the unreasonable question to 'Why are we here?”
Evolution still falls under a theory of ever-changing biology, chemistry, etc. It cannot be used in ethics or morality. There is no room for an absolute because that would decommission the attributes that make up the idea of evolution. If we choose to use it as a relative for moral ethics then by our nature we'd change or 'evolve' what we believe is right and wrong. There would be no reasoning. This would cause confusion and chaos.
Notes on Darwinism
Perhaps the main reason why Britain had not followed France into the anarchy of Revolution in the 19th century was because of the great revival sent by God through the preaching of John Wesley, George Whitfield, and others in the 18th century. That godly legacy led to all the great reforming laws, such as the abolition of slavery and child labour.
But this legacy was squandered. An evolutionary survival-of-the-fittest attitude to society itself has led the nation of Great Britain—and much of the world—away from biblical principles. Charles Darwin’s legacy is a nation which scorns the God who made the world.
Ultimately, to know what this “Darwin Year” is all about as far as the secular world is concerned, I point you to Romans 1:18-32:
For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness, because what may be known of God is manifest in them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse, because, although they knew God, they did not glorify Him as God, nor were thankful, but became futile in their thoughts, and their foolish hearts were darkened.
Professing to be wise, they became fools, and changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like corruptible man—and birds and four-footed animals and creeping things. Therefore God also gave them up to uncleanness, in the lusts of their hearts, to dishonour their bodies among themselves, who exchanged the truth of God for the lie, and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed forever. Amen.
For this reason God gave them up to vile passions. For even their women exchanged the natural use for what is against nature. Likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust for one another, men with men committing what is shameful, and receiving in themselves the penalty of their error which was due. And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a debased mind, to do those things which are not fitting; being filled with all unrighteousness, sexual immorality, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, strife, deceit, evil-mindedness; they are whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, violent, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, undiscerning, untrustworthy, unloving, unforgiving, unmerciful; who, knowing the righteous judgment of God, that those who practise such things are deserving of death, not only do the same but also approve of those who practise them.
The story of evolution leaves no room for a supernatural Creator. Evolutionary processes are supposed to be purely naturalistic. This means that even the need for a supernatural Creator disappears because it is argued that the natural world can create new and better or more complex creatures by itself. The implication of this is very revealing: evolution means “no God” and if there is no God, then there are no rules—no commandments, no God-given rules which we must obey. We can therefore live our lives as we please, for according to evolutionary philosophy, there is no God to whom we have to give an account. No wonder molecules-to-man evolution is attractive to so many, for it allows them to live as they please. This is called relative morality.
http://www.answersingenesis.org/
An Absentee God?
by Dinesh D'Souza
In my debate with atheist Christopher Hitchens in New York last October he raised a point that I did not know how to answer. So I employed an old debating strategy: I ignored it and answered other issues. But Hitchens' argument bothered me.
Here's what Hitchens said. Homo sapiens has been on the planet for a long time, let's say 100,000 years. Apparently for 95,000 years God sat idly by, watching and perhaps enjoying man's horrible condition. After all, cave-man's plight was a miserable one: infant mortality, brutal massacres, horrible toothaches, and an early death. Evidently God didn't really care.
Then, a few thousand years ago, God said, "It's time to get involved." Even so God did not intervene in one of the civilized parts of the world. He didn't bother with China or Egypt or India. Rather, he decided to get his message to a group of nomadic people in the middle of nowhere. It took another thousand years or more for this message to get to places like India and China.
Here is the thrust of Hitchens' point: God seems to have been napping for 98 percent of human history, finally getting his act together only for the most recent 2 percent? What kind of a bizarre God acts like this?
I'm going to answer this argument in two ways. First, I'm going to show that Hitchens has his math precisely inverted. Second, I'll reveal how Hitchens' argument backfires completely on atheism. For my first argument I'm indebted to Erik Kreps of the Survey Research Center of the University of Michigan's Institute for Social Research.
An adept numbers guy, Kreps notes that it is not the number of years but the levels of human population that are the issue here. The Population Reference Bureau estimates that the number of people who have ever been born is approximately 105 billion. Of this number, about 2 percent were born in the 100,000 years before Christ came to earth.
"So in a sense," Kreps notes, "God's timing couldn't have been more perfect. If He'd come earlier in human history, how reliable would the records of his relationship with man be? But He showed up just before the exponential explosion in the world's population, so even though 98 percent of humanity's timeline had passed, only 2 percent of humanity had previously been born, so 98 percent of us have walked the earth since the Redemption."
I have to agree with Kreps's conclusion: "Sorry Hitchens." But actually Hitchens’ plight is worse than this. As I pointed out in a recent three-way debate with Hitchens and radio host Dennis Prager, Hitchens’ argument poses a far bigger problem for atheism than it does for theism.
To see why this is so, let’s apply an entirely secular analysis and go with Hitchens' premise that there is no God and man is an evolved primate. Well, man's basic frame and brain size haven't changed throughout his terrestrial existence. So here is the problem. Homo sapiens has been on the planet for 100,000 years, but apparently for 95,000 of those years he accomplished virtually nothing. No real art, no writing, no inventions, no culture, no civilization.
How is this possible? Were our ancestors, otherwise physically and mentally indistinguishable from us, such blithering idiots that they couldn't figure out anything other than the arts of primitive warfare?
Then, a few thousand years ago, everything changes. Suddenly savage man gives way to historical man. Suddenly the naked ape gets his act together. We see civilizations sprouting in Egypt, Mesopotamia, India, China, and elsewhere. Suddenly there are wheels and agriculture and art and culture. Soon we have dramatic plays and philosophy and an explosion of inventions and novel forms of government and social organization.
So how did Homo sapiens, heretofore such a slacker, suddenly get so smart? Scholars have made strenuous efforts to account for this but no one has offered a persuasive account. If we compare man's trajectory on earth to an airplane, we see a long, long stretch of the airplane faltering on the ground, and then suddenly, a few thousand years ago, takeoff!
Well, there is one obvious way to account for this historical miracle. It seems as if some transcendent being or force reached down and breathed some kind of a spirit or soul into man, because after accomplishing virtually nothing for 98 percent of our existence, we have in the past 2 percent of human history produced everything from the pyramids to Proust, from Socrates to computer software.
So paradoxically Hitchens' argument becomes a boomerang. Hitchens has raised a problem that atheism cannot easily explain and one that seems better accounted for by biblical account of creation.
Ending Notes
Evolution is not science, it's driven by a philosophy.
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