Some people think that evolution has nothing to do with an individual’s philosophical
outlook. But Atheism needs evolution! This week on Creation Magazine LIVE!
Welcome to Creation Magazine LIVE! My name
is Richard Fangrad and I’m Calvin Smith
Our topic this week is: Atheism needs evolution.
The question of origins. where did everything
come from, only has two possible answers.
Either the universe arose by itself or it
didn’t. If it did then some sort of cosmic
evolution must have taken place to account
for reality. If it didn’t then there must
be some sort of a Creator. There is no third option.
Many people seem convinced that the theory
of evolution is based on an analysis of brute
facts that clearly proves evolution has been
a real process throughout history. And as arch-evolutionists Richard Dawkins said:
You have got millions and millions of pieces of evidence which no reasonable person can
possibly dispute.
However, every person has an ultimate starting
point of belief about the question of origins,
a presupposition that is simply accepted as
true without proof, or as an axiom.  That's what axioms are.
Even if someone says that their ultimate starting
belief is the result of the analysis of a
collection of facts that lead them to that
ultimate starting position, it remains that
at the root of their belief system they will
always have a starting point that can’t
be supported further.
Evolutionist Michael Ruse admitted as much
when he stated this, he said:
"Evolution, akin to religion, involves making
certain a priori or metaphysical assumptions,
which at some level cannot be proven empirically.
So as an abstract example, if someone says
“I believe ‘A’”, and someone else
asks “Why?” and the responder says “Because
of ‘B’”, they cannot keep doing so forever right?  It's infinite regress.
You can run the full length of the alphabet
so to speak, because of ‘C’, because of
‘D’ etc, but sooner or later one will
have to stop and say “I believe it because
I believe it”.
Yes you’ll ultimately arrive at a place
where you can’t justify that belief with
any other belief—otherwise that other belief
becomes the ‘ultimate’ belief.  That's just how it works.
Now once someone has adopted a specific starting
point, all other data will usually be processed
through that ‘filter’, providing them
with their worldview. So for the atheist the starting point is an active
belief in the proposition ‘There is no God’, that's a-theos, from the Greek, despite some revisionism
claiming that it’s merely an absence of
belief in God. Everyone has beliefs that
govern their behavior. Everyone has those beliefs and the outworking of those beliefs result in your behaviour. If someone starts with that premise, what would their explanation
be for what we observe? The universe, the
earth, the diversity of life, human experience,
etc. What would they explain the existence
of those facts with? How would they do that?
1. Well one, you are going to accept Naturalism. Obviously you would have to
believe that everything has arisen through
naturalistic processes, because the ultimate
assumption is that there is no mind, no intelligent
designer or ‘guiding hand’ to account
for existence.
2. You have to believe in 'simple to complex'.  Believing that our universe, with such vast complexity could
come into being fully-formed is not viable.
Therefore, there would have had to have been some sort of,
and presumably are, innumerable changes taking
place in matter over time. The processes involved
must have caused matter to go from simple
to more complex.
That's one of those core beliefs. Third you'd have to believe in 'deep time'.  In order to account for the vast diversity of things in our universe,
all of these processes must have happened
over an immense amount of ‘deep’ time.
4. Humans are autonomous accidents. Human
beings must have come about via natural unguided
processes so we are therefore not special
in any sense other than we are at the ‘top
of the food chain’ basically. Any sense
of morality or ethics is just part of our
naturalistic development and is therefore
not absolute in any way.
And of course number 5 is evolution. The ultimate conclusion is that everything we experience is the result
of a process of what might be coined ‘self
creation’.
Notice though that even though ‘self creation’
in its truest sense is kind of an incoherent idea
because something can’t do anything before
it exists, but anyway new atheists like Lawrence Krauss
actually propose this kind of unscientific nonsense, but anyway, we’ll be back…
If someone decided to make a cake to celebrate
the earth’s birthday, how many candles should
they put on it?
Some people would contend that you’d need
4.5 billion, because they say the earth is
that old. However, many are surprised to learn
that this figure did not come from dating
Earth rocks, but rocks from outer space!
A famous study published in 1956 dated a group
of meteorites at 4.5 billion years. And they
assumed this was the age of the earth.
Like all radioactive dating studies, these
results depended on a number of questionable
assumptions.
But unlike dating Earth rocks, this study
also relied on the speculation that meteorites
are left-over junk from Earth’s formation.
Contemporary Geologist Arthur Holmes remarked
that this approach was ‘unsound in principle’.
But for ideas to become firmly entrenched
it doesn’t necessarily require solid data;
it just needs sufficient repetition.
To find out more from Creation Ministries
International visit our website creation.com
If you’ve just tuned in, today we are talking
about; Atheism needs evolution
It does, believe it or not. Well we just walked through the logical results of a belief about the universe if there is
no God, and found that all of the core elements
of the grand theory of evolution cosmological,
geological, chemical, biological and human
evolution are simply a logical, philosophical
outworking of the basic concept of classical atheism applied to the world that we see, applied to the world that we live in.
All of these conclusions could be derived
from a simple general belief that God does
not exist, atheism, prior to influence from
specific physical evidences whatsoever.
From that point forward every fact you see
could be interpreted according to that view.
These would then be correlated to create a
history about the universe about the universe that supports those
beliefs.
We were just talking about starting axioms.
And these ultimate starting axioms of creation
or evolution have been the same throughout
history.
The idea of evolution is not a modern concept.
The ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus,
Greeks and Romans all had ideas about millions
of years and/or some form of biological evolution in various forms, not Darwinian evolution, in their beliefs long ago, all without access
to facts commonly held up today as proof of
evolution like from the geologic column, DNA, natural selection,
radioisotope dating, hominid fossils, and things like that. As a more modern example, Charles Darwin’s
atheistic grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, he conceived
and published a naturalistic explanation of
the world in his book Zoonomia and that was actually published in 1794 and that was some 65 years before Charles Darwin did.
This included the ideas that the earth was
formed from a cosmic explosion, life began
in the sea, things became progressively more complex
and eventually became people, and that all
of this happened over millions of years of history.
So again, notice that all of these assumptions
were concluded without the common ‘evidences’ that people point to, that evolutionists point to today.  Right, evolution has been around for a long time.
So why would anyone start with the concept
of atheism? The Bible says of course that unregenerate people
are in active rebellion against God.
The ultimate rejection of any person would
be to deny their existence right, its like saying, “You are dead to me”. That's a huge insult. Ultimately, some
people reject God to the point that they deny
His existence.
The denial of God is often epitomized by the
famous statement “God is dead” made by
Nietzsche years ago.
Although some people throughout history have
declared themselves atheists, the concept
has always been deemed questionable by astute
thinkers presumably because of the scientific
and philosophical illogicality, and the obvious
moral indications of that system.
For example, Sir Isaac Newton undoubtedly
the greatest scientist who ever lived said this,
“Opposition to godliness is atheism in profession and idolatry in practice. Atheism is so senseless
and odious to mankind that it never had many professors.” That's is a great quote. That's a great quote. And he's still hailed as the greatest scientist who ever lived today...
Some have the wrong impression that evolution
itself is ‘scientific’. But it wasn’t
just scientists that immediately embraced
Charles Darwin’s theories of evolution.
Rather it was those whether scientific-minded or not that were naturalists and Bible skeptics
that supported Darwin initially.
Opposition to Darwinism came immediately from
the likes of the brilliant scientists.
These include physicist James Clerk Maxwell
founder of electromagnetism for example, Louis Pasteur, that's a name you're familiar with,  pioneer of immunization and developer of
the fundamental law of biology Biogenesis,
Lord Kelvin pioneer of thermodynamics and
the trans-Atlantic telegraph, and Louis Agassiz
founder of modern glacial geology. They
all, here are scientists, they all  rejected Darwin.
Famous mathematician, astronomer and Fellow
of the Royal Society Sir John Herschel dismissed
it as ‘the law of higgledy-pigglety’.
Richard Owen, the Superintendent of the Natural
History Department of the British Museum so
irked Darwin with his objections to his theory
that Darwin eventually admitted he hated him!
William Whewell, renowned philosopher of science
author of ‘The History of Inductive Sciences’,
banned 'Origin' from the Cambridge library.  
They thought this was such nonsense, the
idea that complexity like this could come together by purely naturalistic processes they just declared this as non-science or nonsense...And there was
a slew of what they call scriptural geologists that also
rejected Darwinism and its accompanying ‘millions
of years’ of earth history.
And we’ll get into more of this when we get back...
Creation.com is world’s most powerful internet
resource for finding answers to questions
about the origins debate.
It includes an online store where you can
browse through hundreds of the world’s leading
creationist books, DVDs and related materials. Scientists and researchers from around
the world have contributed more than 8000
articles, many of which appeared in leading
creationist publications over more than
30 years. Creation or evolution? When the results are
in which one is supported by scientific observations?
Find out at creation.com
On this week’s episode we are talking about
how atheism needs evolution, that's our topic this week.  Now we're
continuing on this list of scientists that initially when they saw Darwinism just thought it was totally unscientific.
Professor Johann H. Blasius, director of the
Ducal Natural History Museum of Braunschweig
Germany, in an interview, said,
“I have also seldom read a scientific book
which makes such wide-ranging conclusions
with so few facts supporting them. … Darwin
wants to show that kinds come from other kinds.”
On the other hand it was self-described ‘free
thinking’ individuals such as Charles Lyell
who wanted to “free science from Moses”,
and agnostic Thomas Huxley, and including the notorious faker
Ernst Haeckel, who already had deep seated
anti-biblical ideas regarding origins, and
hated the Bible’s opposition to racism
who eagerly supported Darwin’s book.
Even the initial adopters coming from a theological
perspective like theistic evolutionist Asa
Gray and racist theologian Charles Kingsley
seemed predisposed to naturalistic explanations
for the creation prior to accepting Darwinism.
From the beginning of the scientifically fruitful
Middle Ages to about only 200 years ago, the
Western World’s primary worldview was overtly
based on Christianity and the biblical narrative
and concepts of law and morality that sprung
from it.
Today it is very different, with Christianity
and the Bible nearly thrown out of public
life all altogether. Teaching from the Bible,
and even promoting biblical morality, is literally
outlawed in many places and only one view
of origins, evolution, is taught in the majority
of state schools.
So it is easy to see why so many people believe
in the theory of evolution today, because
state run school systems and media throughout
the Western world teach it as ‘fact’ and
‘science’ to impressionable kids everywhere.  And impressionable adults as well.
So much so now that evolutionary teaching
is a self perpetuating concept. Because evolutionary
ideas support a naturalistic worldview rather
than a theistic worldview, this means that
many, even ones that grew up in a home that
professed belief in God conclude atheism
is true and adopt that as their starting point.
Right they get converted. However, evolution does not fall out of ‘the facts’.  we looked at that already. People would do well to re-examine
the starting position of atheism.
The evidence used to support it via evolution
simply doesn't stack up. Starting with a biblical view, what we see in God’s world matches
what we see in His word with little need for
the ‘fudge factors’ which are so common in the evolutionary
explanation of origins.
Well let’s look at this another way now.
We were talking about how people have starting
axioms that they base their view of origins on
and people may chose to change their starting
axiom if they wish, and many
people will do so because they say that the evidence drove them to do so, but others have come to evolutionary conclusions before they looked at the evidence and some
some even admit they had motivations for doing so. Here are a few:
Old earth promoter James Hutton, before he
had examined the evidence declared this:
“…the past history of our globe must be
explained by what can be seen to be happening
now … No powers are to be employed that
are not natural to the globe, no action to
be admitted except those of which we know the principle.” Well how did he know that?  He just declared that!
That's a statement, that's his axiom.  That's what he started with and then he reinterpreted geology......Exactly...
Aldous Huxley, the British novelist who wrote
Brave New World in 1932, and was a grandson
of ‘Darwin’s Bulldog’, T.H. Huxley,
made this frank admission about his anti-Christian
motivation:
“I had motive for not wanting the world
to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty
to find satisfying reasons for this assumption, that's an interesting statement. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the
world is not concerned exclusively with a
problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned
to prove that there is no valid reason why
he personally should not do as he wants to
do, or why his friends should not seize political
power and govern in the way that they find
most advantageous to themselves.
For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness
was essentially an instrument of liberation,
sexual and political.” Interesting.
So we definitely see motive behind the idea
of atheism. And we’ll get into more of this when we get back…
Did you know that the earth’s magnetic field
has reversed direction, or ‘flipped’, multiple
times in the past?
The evidence for these reversals is rock solid,
because when molten rock cools, certain mineral
grains align with the earth’s magnetic field,
thus recording the direction of Earth’s
magnetic field at the time, in the solidified
rock.
Previously, most geologists thought that a
single reversal would take many thousands
of years.
However, creationist physicist, Dr Russell
Humphreys, reasoned they must have happened
quickly to fit within the biblical timescale.
So Dr Humphreys made a prediction that quickly-cooling
thin lava flows would be found that recorded
fast changes in the direction of the magnetic
field.
This prediction was later proven correct.
Scientists were shocked to find major magnetic
field changes had occurred within weeks in
a single larva flow.
They published this in the regular scientific
literature. Thus yet another scientific prediction,
based on biblical history, proved to be correct. To find out more from Creation Ministries International visit our website creation.com.
So our subject today is atheism needs evolution.  That's right.
Now Isaac Asimov, the famous author of the sci
fi series ‘The Foundation’ and ‘I robot’
confessed his atheistic faith when he said this;
“I have faith and belief myself. I believe
that the universe is comprehensible within
the bounds of natural law and that the human
brain can discover those natural laws and
comprehend the universe.
I believe that nothing beyond those natural
laws is needed. I have no evidence for this.
It is simply what I have faith in and what
I believe.”  All right, those are his axioms.
Self-professed atheist Thomas Nagel, Professor
of Philosophy at New York University, said this:
“I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy
by the fact that some of the most intelligent
and well informed people I know are religious
believers.
It isn’t just that I don’t believe in
God and naturally, hope there is no God, I
don’t want there to be a God; I don’t
want the universe to be like that.”
And finally Richard Lewontin, Marxist and
social commentator summed up his motivations
and preconceptions perfectly when he wrote the following:
“Our willingness to accept scientific claims
that are against common sense is the key to
an understanding of the real struggle between
science and the supernatural.
We take the side of science in spite of the
patent absurdity of some of its constructs,
in spite of its failure to fulfill many of
its extravagant promises of health and life
in spite of the tolerance of the scientific
community for unsubstantiated just-so stories,
because we have a prior commitment, a commitment
to materialism.
It is not that the methods and institutions
of science somehow compel us to accept a material
explanation of the phenomenal world, but,
on the contrary, that we are forced by our
a priori adherence to material causes to create
an apparatus of investigation and a set of
concepts that produce material explanations,
no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter
how mystifying to the uninitiated.
Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for
we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”
"The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used
to say that anyone who could believe in God
could believe in anything.
To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow
that at any moment the regularities of nature
may be ruptured, that Miracles may happen.”  Amazing, can you see the axioms there?  Exactly, the bias, the starting points. So we can see that many atheists are very
open about admitting that their philosophy
of life determines how they will view facts.
They will build a framework in which they
evaluate facts to produce evidence for an
atheistic worldview, and not consider any
evidence for the contrary.
Let’s look a little more deeply into this
motivation with a few more quotes. Here is
Michael Ruse once again said: “Evolution is promoted by its practitioners
as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated
as an ideology, a secular religion, a full-fledged
alternative to Christianity, with meaning
and morality.
I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian
but I must admit that in this one complaint, and
Mr Gish is but one of many to make it, Gish obviously being a famous creationist, the
literalists are absolutely right.
Evolution is a religion. This was true of
evolution in the beginning, and it is true
of evolution still today.”
“… Evolution therefore came into being
as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit
substitute for Christianity.”
Incredible isn't it.  Open admission.  Wow.  And there have been people in history that govern how the world thinks today, how you think
how we think to some extent, and we've been carrying this book for many many years, 7 Men Who Rule the World from the Grave
Their philosophies their ideas continue to shape people's thinking today, people like Charles Darwin, Karl Marx, Sigmeund
Freud, John Dewey, you might know some of these,  Kierkegaard,  John Maynard Keynes, they are still
influencing schools, businesses and churches
around us.
Learn how to avoid the traps that countless
people have fallen into when they have uncritically
accepted these ideas of these seven men. These unbiblical ideas.  You can get this book at 30% off
When you go to creation.com order it online use the coupon code: CML7M.  Creation Magazine LIVE!, 7 men who rule the world from the grave
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And we'll have more about this topic in just a minute...
With all the responsibilities
most pastors have it is often too much to
ask them to keep up with all the latest science
that supports the Bible and creation.
The Information Department at CMI reviews the leading evolutionary
science publications so that our scientists
and speakers are both constantly updated with
the latest evolutionist information and able
to refute it.
Give your pastor a break. Book a CMI speaker
into your church for a faith-strengthening
Sunday morning message.
Visit creation.com to contact your nearest CMI office.
So our subject today is: Atheism needs evolution.
So what is the main ‘bone of contention’
for atheists? We can see the underlying problem
is 'authority' in this candid quote from Thomas
Nagel, you'll see that very plainly here...
“My guess is that this cosmic authority
problem is not a rare condition and that it
is responsible for much of the scientism and
reductionism of our time.
One of the tendencies it supports is the ludicrous
overuse of evolutionary biology to explain
everything about human life, including everything
about the human mind …”
That's a revealing quote there, it's about authority. Yes, this debate is clearly about which authority
you will adhere to. Does God and His word
have authority in our lives or do we think
we should have ultimate authority?
This next quote typifies the answer for most
atheists,
“We no longer feel ourselves to be guests
in someone else’s home and therefore obliged
to make our behavior conform with a set of
pre-existing cosmic rules. It is our creation
now. We make the rules.
We establish the parameters of reality. We
create the world, and because we do, we no
longer have to justify our behavior, for we
are now the architects of the universe.
We are responsible to nothing outside ourselves,
for we are the kingdom, the power, and the
glory for ever and ever.”
Well that’s blasphemous, but it’s interesting
how Rifkin uses biblical terminology here isn't it?
It is like he is emphasizing his belief that,
now, humanity has the ultimate authority over
God.
And why? Because of ‘science’, or so called science,  has disproved
the Bible! It’s not really because of science,
science is just the atheists code word for
evolution.  That's the way he's using it there.
But this should be a wake up call to Christians
that have accepted evolutionary ideas. The
concept of evolution is absolutely foreign
to the Bible and is actually anti-Bible and
anti-God.
It is an idea that is integral to an atheistic
worldview and that attacks the roots of the
Christian faith because it destroys the reason
for the Gospel.
And atheists know this. Look at Richard Bozarth’s
comment from American atheist magazine,
“Christianity has fought, still fights,
and will continue to fight science to the
desperate end over evolution, because evolution
destroys utterly and finally the very reason
Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made
necessary.
Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin,
and in the rubble you will find the sorry
remains of the Son of God. If Jesus was not
the redeemer who died for our sins, and this
is what evolution means, then Christianity
is nothing.”
And he’s not alone. Darwin historian Peter
Bowler, who is hostile to biblical Christianity,
described it perfectly when he said,
“If Christians accepted that humanity was
the product of evolution— even assuming
the process could be seen as an expression
of the Creator’s will—then the whole idea
of Original Sin would have to be reinterpreted.
Far from falling from an original state of
grace in the Garden of Eden, we have risen
gradually from our animal origins.
And if there was no Sin from which we needed
salvation, what was the purpose of Christ’s
agony on the cross?”
He sees the incompatibility between Christianity
and evolution very clearly.
Exactly. Yes, atheists need evolution and it has been
very detrimental to Christianity.
and it's just a key thing that people really need to understand.  Many Christians think that OK, evolution is just science
They have gone to a state run school system and they have been taught it as science and fact and things like that
but they just don't understand the philosophical framework that has boosted that up.
Right, I mean that's what we do as a ministry.  We provide the Bible first...the Bible supporting information, the science and philosophy that supports creation
and shows where evolution has gone off the rails and it goes off the rails everywhere...
And if you want to get a free Creation magazine go to creation.com/free-mag
You can look at a free issue there and  next week on Creation Magazine LIVE!: When exactly were bad
things created? We'll see you next week.
