Transcript Powerpoint - Wallingford Christian Assembly

Evolution – a Theory in Crisis
Part 2 of 3
The Philosophical Bankruptcy
of Darwinian Evolution
Also available:
Part 1 of 3 – The Scientific Bankruptcy of Darwinian Evolution
Part 3 of 3 – The Biblical Creation Alternative & Its Implications
Philosophy
“A set of beliefs reached by
investigation & contemplation
of the cause and nature of
being and reality.”
Socrates
Your ‘take’ on life
Logical Positivism – Existentialism – Relativism
Pragmatism – Utilitarianism – Postmodernism
James Dewey Watson
(Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA)
“Charles Darwin will
eventually be seen as a far more
influential figure in the history of
human thought than either Jesus
Christ or Mohammed.”
‘‘It was because Darwinian theory
broke man’s link with God and set
him adrift in a cosmos without
purpose or end that its impact was
so fundamental.
No other intellectual
revolution in modern
times…so profoundly
affected the way men
viewed themselves
and their place in the universe.’’
The philosophical
direction of
Darwinism?
Naturalism
=
“The cosmos
is all there is.”
1st Panel in
‘Origin of
Species’
exhibit @
Natural
History
Museum
‘‘The entire scientific ethos & philosophy
of modern Western man is based to a
large extent upon the central claim of
Darwinian theory that humanity was not
born by the creative intentions of a deity
but by a completely mindless trial & error
selection of random molecular patterns.
The cultural importance of evolution
theory is therefore immeasurable, forming
as it does the centrepiece, the crowning
achievement, of the naturalistic view of the
world, the final triumph of the secular
thesis which since the end of the middle
ages has displaced the old naïve cosmology of Genesis from the western mind.’’
Michael Denton Ph.D.
Dark shadows
• Theology
• History
• Morality
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Andrew
Carnegie
(1835-1919)
“…light came as in a flood
and all was clear. Not only
had I got rid of theology and
the supernatural, but I had
found the truth of evolution.”
“I have done a great deal of
work on Darwin and can say
with some assurance that
Darwin did not derive his
theory from nature but rather
superimposed a certain
philosophical world-view on
nature and then spent 20
years trying to gather facts
to make it stick.”
George Grinnell
MARX
(1818-1883)
LENIN
(1870-1924)
STALIN
(1879-1953)
HAECKEL
(1834-1919)
NIETZSCHE
(1844-1900)
FREUD
(1856-1939)
HITLER
(1889-1945)
MAO
(1893-1976)
The ‘Darwin’
statue Lenin
kept on his desk
in the Kremlin
Frontispiece
from Ernst
Haeckel’s 1868
book The
Natural History
of Creation
Darwinism provided
scientific justification for:
• Racism
• Eugenics
From Darwin to Hitler
“Darwinism by itself did not produce
the Holocaust, but without Darwinism,
especially in its social Darwinist and
eugenics permutations, neither Hitler
nor his Nazi followers would have had
the necessary scientific underpinnings
to convince themselves and their
collaborators that one of the world’s
greatest atrocities was really morally
praiseworthy.”
Richard Weikart - associate professor of modern
European history at California State University.
An illogical outworking of the
teachings of Christ
A logical outworking of atheistic
evolutionary ideology
1904
“The new world view actually
rests on the theory of evolution.
On it we have to construct a
new ethics…All values will have
to be revalued ”
Darwinian biologist Arnold Dodel
Darwinism continues to
provide justification for:
Eugenics (screening)
• Abortion
• Embryonic Stem Cell research
• Euthanasia
• Infanticide
‘‘I had motives for not wanting the world to have
meaning; consequently assumed it had none,
and was able without any difficulty to find
satisfying reasons for this assumption… For
myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness
was essentially an instrument of liberation.
The liberation we desired was simultaneously
liberation from a certain political and economic
system and liberation from a certain system of
morality. We objected to the morality because it
interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected
to the political and economic system because it
was unjust.’’
Aldous Huxley
“Not all atheists are immoral,
but morality as goodness
cannot be justified with
atheistic presuppositions…
He may have personal moral
values, but he cannot have
any sense of compelling and
universal moral obligation.
Moral duty cannot logically
operate without a moral law;
and there is not moral law in
an amoral world.”
William Provine
Biologist at Cornell University
Darwinism means:
‘‘No life after death; no ultimate
foundation for ethics; no ultimate
meaning for life; no free will.’’
The 4 Big Questions
1. Origin
How did life come to be?
2. Meaning
To what purpose is my life?
3. Morality
How may I distinguish between right & wrong?
4. Destiny
What happens to me when I die?