Attacking Evolution #2A
By their fruits
So, I’m enjoying my exchange with
on the issue of evolution. I think I have the most fun when I get to argue with a serious opponent who can intelligently disagree. Probably the second most fun comes from a serious ally who disagrees on a certain point, or who has a different perspective, but who is still willing to get down and argue… or at least discuss ;)I must say I’m a bit confused, however. Creation Reformation implies in his first post that the best way to attack evolution is ‘with evidence’, and then proceeds to tell us that that won’t work! At least not with atheists.
Before we get to our answer, we must recognize something counter-intuitive, but essential to “attacking” evolution: It is not about the evidence. It is about the logical inferences one is permitted to make from the evidence. In a world where methodological naturalism rules the scientific roost, all evidence will be viewed one way, even if it means pounding square pegs in round holes.
Consider this: how much evidence would it take to convince an atheist that God created the world? The answer is there is no amount of evidence. An atheist does not have a category for a creator God, so it is impossible for an atheist to be convinced that God created human beings. It is not that an atheist will not be convinced by evidence, but he cannot. An atheist’s adopted philosophy of nature (e.g., worldview) does not permit any inference of a living God from material evidence.
Now I’m not too worried one way or another, because there are no atheists.[1] However, I do wonder who he is arguing about evolution with. Lapsed Christians?
But, anyway, I’m not so ready to jump straight to ‘evidence’ as the best method for arguing for creation. Unless you count logic as part of ‘evidence’, which doesn’t seem to be the norm. And I definitely don’t think that most people consider the preaching of the gospel and the work of the Holy Spirit as ‘evidence’.
Results
“We need something to spur us against our usual selfish dispositions. Nature, therefore, has made us (via the rules) believe in a disinterested moral code, according to which we ought to help our fellow…. [E]thics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.”
Michael Ruse and Edward O. Wilson, “Evolution and Ethics,” New Scientist, 208 (October 17, 1985), 51.
But moving right along I think that there is a kind of ‘evidence’ that will convince atheists, at least it seems to be moving several of them in the right direction. And that is the kind of evidence we might call ‘results’ or, if we wish to use Biblical language, ‘fruits’. I think an interesting discussion can be had on the ‘fruits’ of a belief in evolution.
I believe that many atheists and agnostics, who hold to evolution less as an article of faith and more as a default, are beginning to see that an atheistic society, and thus one grounded in evolutionary thinking, is not one they want to live in. It is not producing the kind of success that they had thought it would. In fact it is producing some very strange ‘fruit’, in their eyes.
Of course, as Christians, we expected this. Maybe not the exact moral insanity that we are now facing (our imaginations didn’t stretch quite that far), but we expected moral chaos, a descent into darkness. Scripture teaches quite clearly that evolutionary belief… not the theory itself but the grounding of reality and morality in nature instead of God, which is in essence a grounding of morality in man, since it is man who will decide what nature ‘teaches’… will result in moral degradation and, in the end, the death of any society which holds it.
Indeed Scripture predicts the path. Or, at least, the first step.
Sodomy
And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.
Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts, to dishonour their own bodies between themselves:
Who changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
For this cause God gave them up unto vile affections: for even their women did change the natural use into that which is against nature: And likewise also the men, leaving the natural use of the woman, burned in their lust one toward another; men with men working that which is unseemly, and receiving in themselves that recompence of their error which was meet.
And even as they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, God gave them over to a reprobate mind, to do those things which are not convenient;
SOD'OMY, noun A crime against nature.
Webster’s 1828
One of the first battles in the modern culture war was over Sodomy. By which I mean male-on-male sexual activity. A hundred years ago everyone was against it. Indeed, in Webster’s definition, it isn’t even defined. Then, gradually, they moved to ‘tolerating’ it. Then they moved to such perversions as calling two men ‘married’.
Now most modern atheists will not admit that they have a problem with Sodomy, at least between two consenting adults in the privacy of their bedroom or some such drivel. Even many ‘Christians’ will act as if two men adopting a child is ‘wonderful’.
But I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I believe two things, which they would no doubt deny. First of all, I don’t believe they are actually comfortable with it. I believe they are actually very uncomfortable with it. I believe that if they were watching a movie with two men kissing in a sexual way, they would not feel the same about that (and having their children watch that) as they would one where a man kissed a woman.
And secondly, and I know they would deny this, for I have heard them do it by implication, but I think they know that it has led to the modern insanity of transgenderism and wokeism. I think this because it is very common, when they discuss the issue, that they will say something like, “Now, I think it is great that we have gay marriage but…” and after the ‘but’ will come all sorts of modern moral insanity. They see that the woke are trying to put transgender issues into the larger ‘civil rights’ arena, but I think the liberals mugged by reality recognize that it wasn’t letting blacks use drinking fountains that led to men changing in women’s locker rooms. It was the widespread acceptance of Sodomy.
I believe that they understand instinctively that the acceptance of the immoral and anti-biological idea that Sodomy was in some way equivalent to sexual activity in marriage broke a binary that led to our modern insanity.
Transgenderism
The woman shall not wear that which pertaineth unto a man, neither shall a man put on a woman's garment: for all that do so are abomination unto the LORD thy God.
Deu 22:5
It was the transgender issues that really got the ball rolling for the whole ‘leftists-mugged-by-reality’ crowd. They all claim to be OK with adult transgenders in their personal life (altho a bit iffy on pronouns) but they get all wonky when it comes to such things as teenage boys changing in front of teenage girls, and forcing the girls to change in front of them. And children being ripped from one parent in a divorce because they refuse to call their boy a girl.
And they get pretty incandescent when it comes to castration and mastectomies on those same boys and girls.
Population Cliff
Here would be an interesting experiment. Make a chart comparing the percentage of people in a given society who believe in evolution, and compare it to the fertility rate. Is there anyone who would doubt that the chart would show, on average, that the higher the rate of belief in evolution, the lower the fertility rate.
And atheists and agnostics are definitely beginning to notice the population cliff. Podcast after podcast, substack after substack, speak of the coming population decline, and the current ageing of society. And seeing what an absolute disaster that will be when we have ten elderly people expecting to be taken care of by the productive work of one young person.
Marriage
And everyone nowadays seems to be decrying the current problem with marriages. Each of them seems to do it a bit differently… Tim Pool vs Jordan Peterson vs Triggernometry for example… but they all see huge problems in the marriage market. (Which they often lump in with dating, not realising that dating is one of the problems with marriage.)
Again we need someone to run the numbers. The numbers of divorces, the numbers of unmarried young men and women (and not so young men and women), the number of shacking up for a time couples… lets compare all of that to who believes in evolution nation by nation and sub-culture by sub-culture. Is it the Creation Science people who aren’t getting married? Or is it the atheistic believe-evolution-by-default people? I know which way I’d put my money.
Conclusion
What all of these things have in common is that, unmoored from any kind of morality, like the kind you get from religion, our society has gone so totally off the rails that we aren’t having children any more. We are committing societal suicide.
Thus a belief in evolution (and, it could be shown, a lack of belief in certain foundational issues which are typically correlated with certain forms of theism more than others) is evolutionarily unsuccessful. Now I, as a Christian, don’t care. My belief in God certainly doesn’t rest on whether I am evolutionarily successful. My goal is to be successful in God’s eyes, part of which involves being fruitful and multiplying.
But the question on the floor concerns how we should best argue with those who believe in evolution, either ardent believers or naive defaulters. And I believe that pointing out that their own theories contradict their own practice might be helpful. Even more so pointing out that their own theories have resulted in the dumpster fire that is today’s world. Eventually they might come around (the gospel being preached and the Holy Spirit doing His work) to understanding that… by their fruits ye shall know them.
Footnote
[1] For the Biblical evidence that there are no atheists, see Romans chapter one. The logical case against hard atheism goes like this:
1) In order to deny the existence of something in a given space, you must have adequate knowledge of the entire space. To say there is no spider in a box, you must know the whole box simultaneously, and be able to see or recognise all of the types of spiders your statement includes. Thus if you say there are no ten-inch tarantulas in a one-foot cube box, ordinary human senses are able to make that determination. To say there were no microscopic spiders in the same box would require an entirely different process, far beyond the ordinary human being. To say there were no ten-inch tarantulas in the State of Texas would require the ability to perfectly scan the entire state at the same time.
2) To say that something ‘doesn’t exist’ is to exclude it from the entire universe, and indeed from all possible universes and other forms of existence.
3) The only way to do (2) would be to be omniscient… i.e. to know all of reality.
4) Omniscience is a characteristic only of God, or at least a god.
5) Thus to say ‘I know there is no god’, is to claim to be a god, and thus self-contradictory.
Links
This Series
Attacking Evolution #1A
Some other stacks which mention the issues of depopulation
https://americanmind.org/salvo/the-rules-of-the-gamete/
https://www.palladiummag.com/2023/05/18/industrial-civilization-needs-a-biological-future/