> The roots of evolutionist thought go back as far as antiquity as a
> dogmatic belief attempting to deny the fact of creation. Most of the
> pagan philosophers in ancient Greece defended the idea of evolution.
> When we take a look at the history of philosophy we see that the idea
> of evolution constitutes the backbone of many pagan philosophies.
>
> However, it is not this ancient pagan philosophy, but faith in God
> which has played a stimulating role in the birth and development of
> modern science. Most of the people who pioneered modern science
> believed in the existence of God; and while studying science, they
> sought to discover the universe God has created and to perceive His
> laws and the details in His creation. Astronomers such as Copernicus,
> Keppler, and Galileo; the father of paleontology, Cuvier; the pioneer
> of botany and zoology, Linnaeus; and Isaac Newton, who is referred to
> as the "greatest scientist who ever lived", all studied science
> believing not only in the existence of God but also that the whole
> universe came into being as a result of His creation. 6 Albert
> Einstein, considered to be the greatest genius of our age, was another
> devout scientist who believed in God and stated thus; "I cannot
> conceive of a genuine scientist without that profound faith. The
> situation may be expressed by an image: science without religion is
> lame."7
>
> One of the founders of modern physics, German physician Max Planck
> said: "Anybody who has been seriously engaged in scientific work of
> any kind realizes that over the entrance to the gates of the temple of
> science are written the words: Ye must have faith. It is a quality
> which the scientist cannot dispense with."8
>
> The theory of evolution is the outcome of the materialist philosophy
> that surfaced with the reawakening of ancient materialistic
> philosophies and became widespread in the 19th century. As we have
> indicated before, materialism seeks to explain nature through purely
> material factors. Since it denies creation right from the start, it
> asserts that every thing, whether animate or inanimate, has appeared
> without an act of creation but rather as a result of a coincidence
> that then acquired a condition of order. The human mind however is so
> structured as to comprehend the existence of an organising will
> wherever it sees order. Materialistic philosophy, which is contrary to
> this very basic characteristic of the human mind, produced "the theory
> of evolution" in the middle of the 19th century.
>
> Darwin’s Imagination
>
> The person who put forward the theory of evolution the way it is
> defended today, was an amateur English naturalist, Charles Robert
> Darwin.
>
> Darwin had never undergone a formal education in biology. He took only
> an amateur interest in the subject of nature and living things. His
> interest spurred him to voluntarily join an expedition on board a ship
> named H.M.S. Beagle that set out from England in 1832 and travelled
> around different regions of the world for five years. Young Darwin was
> greatly impressed by various living species, especially by certain
> finches that he saw in the Galapagos Islands. He thought that the
> variations in their beaks were caused by their adaptation to their
> habitat. With this idea in mind, he supposed that the origin of life
> and species lay in the concept of "adaptation to the environment".
> Darwin opposed the fact that God created different living species
> separately, suggesting that they rather came from a common ancestor
> and became differentiated from each other as a result of natural
> conditions.
> Darwin's hypothesis was not based on any scientific discovery or
> experiment; in time however he turned it into a pretentious theory
> with the support and encouragement he received from the famous
> materialist biologists of his time. The idea was that the individuals
> that adapted to the habitat in the best way transferred their
> qualities to subsequent generations; these advantageous qualities
> accumulated in time and transformed the individual into a species
> totally different from its ancestors. (The origin of these
> "advantageous qualities" was unknown at the time.) According to
> Darwin, man was the most developed outcome of this imaginary
> mechanism.
>
> Darwin called this process "evolution by natural selection". He
> thought he had found the "origin of species": the origin of one
> species was another species. He published these views in his book
> titled The Origin of Species, By Means of Natural Selection in 1859.
>
> Darwin was well aware that his theory faced lots of problems. He
> confessed these in his book in the chapter "Difficulties of the
> Theory". These difficulties primarily consisted of the fossil record,
> complex organs of living things that could not possibly be explained
> by coincidence (e.g. the eye), and the instincts of living beings.
> Darwin hoped that these difficulties would be overcome by new
> discoveries; yet this did not stop him from coming up with a number of
> very inadequate explanations for some. The American physicist Lipson
> made the following comment on the "difficulties" of Darwin:
>
> On reading The Origin of Species, I found that Darwin was much less
> sure himself than he is often represented to be; the chapter entitled
> "Difficulties of the Theory" for example, shows considerable self-
> doubt. As a physicist, I was particularly intrigued by his comments on
> how the eye would have arisen. 9
>
> While developing his theory, Darwin was impressed by many evolutionist
> biologists preceding him, and primarily by the French biologist,
> Lamarck. 10 According to Lamarck, living creatures passed the traits
> they acquired during their lifetime from one generation to the next
> and thus evolved. For instance, giraffes evolved from antelope-like
> animals by extending their necks further and further from generation
> to generation as they tried to reach higher and higher branches for
> food. Darwin thus employed the thesis of "passing the acquired traits"
> proposed by Lamarck as the factor that made living beings evolve.
>
> But both Darwin and Lamarck were mistaken because in their day, life
> could only be studied with very primitive technology and at a very
> inadequate level. Scientific fields such as genetics and biochemistry
> did not exist even in name. Their theories therefore had to depend
> entirely on their powers of imagination.
>
> Darwin's Racism
>
> One of the most important yet least-known aspects of Darwin is his
> racism: Darwin regarded white Europeans as more "advanced" than other
> human races. While Darwin presumed that man evolved from ape-like
> creatures, he surmised that some races developed more than others and
> that the latter still bore simian features. In his book, The Descent
> of Man, which he published after The Origin of Species, he boldly
> commented on "the greater differences between men of distinct races".1
> In his book, Darwin held blacks and Australian Aborigines to be equal
> to gorillas and then inferred that these would be "done away with" by
> the "civilised races" in time. He said:
>
> At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries, the
> civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace
> the savage races throughout the world. At the same time the
> anthropomorphous apes... will no doubt be exterminated. The break
> between man and his nearest allies will then be wider, for it will
> intervene in a more civilised state, as we may hope, even than the
> Caucasian, and some ape as low as baboon, instead of as now between
> the negro or Australian and the gorilla.2
>
> Darwin's nonsensical ideas were not only theorised, but also brought
> into a position where they provided the most important "scientific
> ground" for racism. Supposing that living beings evolved in the
> struggle for life, Darwinism was even adapted to the social sciences,
> and turned into a conception that came to be called "Social Darwinism.
>
> Supposing that living beings evolved in the struggle for life,
> Darwinism was even adapted to the social sciences, and turned into a
> conception that came to be called "Social Darwinism".
>
> Social Darwinism contends that existing human races are located at
> different rungs of the "evolutionary ladder", that the European races
> were the most "advanced" of all, and that many other races still bear
> "simian" features.
>
> 1 Benjamin Farrington, What Darwin Really Said. London: Sphere Books,
> 1971, pp. 54-56
> 2 Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, 2nd ed., New York: A.L. Burt
> Co., 1874, p. 178
>
> While the echoes of Darwin's book reverberated, an Austrian botanist
> by the name of Gregor Mendel discovered the laws of inheritance in
> 1865. Not much heard of until the end of the century, Mendel's
> discovery gained great importance in the early 1900s. This was the
> birth of the science of genetics. Somewhat later, the structure of the
> genes and the chromosomes was discovered. The discovery, in the 1950s,
> of the structure of the DNA molecule that incorporates genetic
> information threw the theory of evolution into a great crisis. The
> reason was the incredible complexity of life and the invalidity of the
> evolutionary mechanisms proposed by Darwin.
>
> These developments ought to have resulted in Darwin's theory being
> banished to the dustbin of history. However, it was not, because
> certain circles insisted on revising, renewing, and elevating the
> theory to a scientific platform. These efforts gain meaning only if we
> realise that behind the theory lay ideological intentions rather than
> scientific concerns.
>
> 6 Dan Graves, Science of Faith: Forty-Eight Biographies of Historic
> Scientists and Their Christian Faith, Grand Rapids, MI, Kregel
> Resources.
> 7 Science, Philosophy, And Religion: A Symposium, 1941, CH.13.
> 8 Max Planck, Where is Science Going?,www.websophia.com/aphorisms/science.php..
> 9 H. S. Lipson, "A Physicist's View of Darwin's Theory", Evolution
> Trends in Plants, Vol 2, No. 1, 1988, p. 6..
> 10 Although Darwin came up with the claim that his theory was totally
> independent from that of Lamarck's, he gradually started to rely on
> Lamarck's assertions. Especially the 6th and the last edition of The
> Origin of Species is full of examples of Lamarck's "inheritance of
> acquired traits". See Benjamin Farrington, What Darwin Really Said,
> New York: Schocken Books, 1966, p. 64..http://www.evolutiondeceit.com/chapter3.php