Warning: The following article deals with topics some readers might find upsetting.
The following article is rather long, and is predicted to take almost an hour to read from beginning to end. For the convenience of readers who do not wish to read it in one sitting, it has been divided into segments, which can be reached using the contents links found below.
Contents
The fallacy of circular reasoning
Circular reasoning is a fallacy in which the conclusion of an argument is assumed within the argument itself. Christians are often accused, in some cases justifiably, of using this fallacy. Indeed, the most common example would be "the Bible is infallible because the infallible Bible says so". This is a circular argument, and it fails because if we do not believe the Bible is infallible, then its own testimony to its own infallibility is invalid.
But ironically, while circular reasoning is usually fallacious, there are some scenarios in which its cannot be. For example, why is circular reasoning a fallacy? Any argument defending the statement "circular reasoning is fallacious" will inevitably be circular.
In this article, I want to point to two scenarios in which circular reasoning is inevitable, and yet, without it, humanity itself would collapse in on itself. In particular, I want to show how two competing worldviews - Evolution and Christianity - must rely on a degree of circular reasoning. But I am of course going to contend that Christianity has the better circle.
The opening of the first circle
I am about to make an intentionally shocking statement. One which, unless you are familiar with the concepts I am about to present, you will not understand. The temptation may be to stop reading. Let me assure you, it does not mean what you may initially think it means. Rather, I am attempting to set the stage for a very powerful argument in a way I do not believe has been done before. My statement is simply this: There are scenarios in which rape can be right.
Even with my preface, the chances are such words do not sit right with you. You're wondering what I mean. How I could possibly even type such words, much less contend there is any sense in which they may be true. Allow me to clarify, from a purely moral perspective, rape is one of many sins that can never be justified. Rape is, and will always be, morally wrong. And what I am counting on is that you, the reader, fully understand that.
My plan with the statement is to set up a very long-winded explanation of the moral argument. While logically sound, the primary sway of the moral argument comes from its emotional impact.
The moral argument is often misunderstood, though I hope by the end of this article, it will be one of many things my readers understand quite deeply. In short, the moral argument is a circular argument which seeks to utilise our instinctive moral convictions, arguing from morality to God, then from God to morality. If we do not assume morality exists, then the argument fails. But as humans, we generally do assume moral absolutes exist, and even seek to conform our lives to them to a degree. The moral argument seeks to bridge the gap between those instincts, and the objective grounding for them.
Ironically, Charles Darwin gives one of the best summaries of the problem at hand: "With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has been developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy. Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?" (1).
So what is Darwin saying here? Ultimately, he is pointing out a major flaw in Evolution. Namely, it can produce some very strong delusions, and erase our ability to detect them. As humans, we all have convictions, including moral ones. When you read the words "There are scenarios in which rape can be right", you probably recoiled. It takes a seared conscience, or severe mental disorder, not to recognise rape as morally wrong. But that is a conviction of your mind, which by Darwin's reckoning was never designed to assess truth claims. Rather, it is the current end result of a long, and frankly rather brutal process of descent with modification. You may have strong convictions that rape is wrong, but other animals, and even other humans, do not.
The moral argument suggests that there is one way - only one way - to ground those convictions in reality. Evolution, or indeed any atheistic worldview, not only cannot do it, but has actually erased the thing which can.
Descriptive vs. Prescriptive
To illustrate this, let's ask a simple question: Is 5 right or wrong? On its own, this is a nonsensical question. With no prior input, "5" is meaningless. Thus, before we ask whether 5 is right or wrong, we must ask a question. Let's give a few examples:
Question | Is 5 right or wrong? |
10 ÷ 2 | Right |
2 + 2 | Wrong |
What is the second digit of one hundred and fifty three? | Right (in English), wrong (in Roman Numerals) |
Pick a number between 1 and 10 | Valid |
Pick a number between 1 and 3 | Wrong |
What's your favorite number? | Valid |
How many dollars does this cost? | Valid |
The chart above shows a range of possible questions to which 5 may be a right, wrong, or valid answer. On its own, 5 is neither right nor wrong, but it can be right or wrong, depending on the question. This is because each question falls under a number of different categories. The first two are mathematical formulas with only one valid answer. The third is a linguistic question. The fourth and fifth have a variety of right answers, but 5 is only valid as an answer to the fourth. The sixth is a subjective question, there is no "right" answer. But the seventh is a very special kind of question. All the others are what's called "descriptive". That is, they are descriptions of a reality that is. 2 + 2 is 4. But "how many dollars does this cost?" adds a new element: prescription.
A prescriptive truth is not merely about what is, but what should be. Descriptive truths, which are about what is, can be arrived at by conventional means. Science, for example, is a highly descriptive field. We observe the natural world, and we describe what we see. We know, for example, that gravity exists, because while we do not observe the force itself, we observe it in action. Jump, you will fall back down. History is also a descriptive field, though it is harder to observe due to the inability to recreate it. But history has been observed. We know, for example, that the Battle of Hastings took place in 1066, because although no one alive today can see it, it was seen, and the descriptions of those who see it still survive today.
But prescriptive truth - truths about what should be, often even in spite of what is - cannot be arrived at by conventional means. As David Hume put it, "Reason of itself is utterly impotent in this particular. The rules of morality, therefore, are not conclusions of our reason." (2).
A problem Hume recognised, and one that no one has ever solved to this day, is that you cannot get an "ought" (prescriptive) from an "is" (descriptive). So, let's finally explain the meaning of my uncomfortable statement "rape can be right". First, we give our input: "This man performed sexual acts with this woman without her consent". In this case, rape is right descriptively, but wrong prescriptively. Now, I specifically chose rape as the example in the beginning because of its emotional impact. Now that it has served that particular purpose, I am able to change my active example.
The simple, and unfortunate fact is that there is no logical bridge between descriptive truths and prescriptive truths. I hope to illustrate this with this flow chart. In the chart, I have categorised a number of truths surrounding nuclear bombs. While nuclear warfare is not a moral problem most of us will ever have to wrestle with, it is nevertheless a question most of us have beliefs about, and often very strong ones.
You will notice that in the chart, I have categorised scientific and historical claims under the "descriptive" category. This is because that is precisely what they are. As a species, we can describe nuclear physics, up to and including the knowledge of how to make a nuclear bomb, regardless of whether or not it is morally permissible to do so. We can also describe the history of nuclear warfare, showing who has made nuclear weapons, who has dismantled their nuclear arsenal (in whole or in part), and who has actually used nuclear weaponry. But none of these descriptions answer the question as to whether or not a country should obtain, maintain, or use nuclear weapons.
There is one theory to counteract this persistent problem. Although descriptive facts are not automatically prescriptive, we can actually describe the effects of certain causes. We can say that this cause produces this effect, and so to achieve these effects, we should take these specific actions. This produces a logical prescriptive chain between various descriptive truths. For example, if a man intends to kill his wife, we can say he should use a particular kind of poison which is unlikely to arouse suspicion, and is difficult to detect during an autopsy.
Already, you see the problem. It is possible to link descriptive truths together to create a prescriptive link between them, but all this does is push the problem further back. How do we assess the moral implications of the goal itself? No matter how far you take this chain, "this action is likely to produce this consequence", there is no way to get from the descriptive to the prescriptive.
Laws without legislators
While it is impossible to argue from the descriptive to the prescriptive, it is possible to argue from the prescriptive to the descriptive. We can do this, for example, with human laws. I like to use two examples for this concept, usually depending on the point I am making. Let us first consider driving. Specifically, left and right handed traffic. From a purely moral perspective, this particular question is of no consequence. Typically, I use this as an example of a morally neutral question that highlights moral truths. We recognise right and left handed traffic as a very different question for different types of homicide, yet if morality is not objective, all such moral questions are equal, and it ceases to be about right and wrong.
But in this case, my intention is quite different. I am using it as an example of prescription, because while you are in a country, it is legally wrong for you to drive on a side of the road that the government have already declared is wrong. And of course, as a Christian, I would argue on the basis of Romans 13:1-7 that this makes it morally wrong as well.
The second example I like to use is the recreational use of cannabis. As I haven't put much study into this issue, I actually do not know the moral implications of smoking cannabis recreationally. I know I have no particular desire to do it, but as far as the implications of actually using it go, I know next to nothing. What I do know is that aside from there being conflicting opinions on what the law should be, there are also conflicting laws across human territories. So, much like we did with "is 5 right or wrong?", let us ask whether it is legal, or illegal, to recreationally smoke cannabis?
At the time of writing, cannabis is a class B drug here in the UK, the possession of which may carry an unlimited fine, 5 years in prison, or both (3). Cross the pond to the U.S., however, and the answer to our question varies drastically. Contrary to the saying that "everything's legal in Texas", Texas is one of the few states that still punishes possession (4). By contrast, Colorado and Washington legalised the recreational use of cannabis as early as 2012 (5). The laws are different, because the legislative body is different.
But there are small pockets of Earth which, for one reason or another, lack a legislative body. Ignoring the famous "Slab City" (which technically is not as lawless as the memes might suggest), the most obvious example is Antarctica. Being apparently devoid of any useful natural resources - and I'll add, fluffing freezing - Antarctica is a gargantuan no man's land. There are no citizens, no permanent denizens, and, most importantly, no governments. There are various treaties which have been signed with respect to Antarctica, but even these are only binding upon those who have signed them. There are no laws for those who have not (6).
Because there are no laws in Antarctica, the question "is it legal to recreationally smoke cannabis?" is nonsensical there, much like the unqualified "is 5 wrong?" One may have a range of opinions regarding whether or not cannabis should be legal, and an even larger range of reasons for coming to those opinions, but in the end, there are no laws in Antarctica at all, and so it is neither legal, nor illegal.
With all of that said, we see that it is very difficult to arrive at the prescriptive via the descriptive, and that even when the prescriptive exists, it requires a prior foundation. If there is no government, as is the case in Antarctica, there are no laws. Even where there are laws, they differ across jurisdictions. Combining all of this, we see that atheism is basically Antarctica.
Ultimately, this is the case for all atheistic worldviews. But just as Theism is not a religion, neither is atheism. Rather, they are both religious orientations. A Theistic religion has specific beliefs about divine beings as they supposedly exist, whereas atheism is specifically the denial of divine beings. Because atheism is nothing but denial, atheists only have one universal common belief: There is no God. Beyond this, they lack unity regarding both the prescriptive and descriptive.
Now, the denial of the legislative body always results in the removal of laws stemming from it. Thus, the moral argument works against all forms of atheism, regardless of what stage of development an atheistic religion is in. However, while not all atheists believe in Evolution, it is an atheistic religion, and is perhaps the most well-developed one in the modern world. To put it as Evolutionist Michael Ruse did, "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—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." (7)
Evolution is a well developed religion in a number of ways, both in its attempts to get rid of God, and in its attempts to replace Him. Of course, as a Christian, I would argue it has miserably failed in both regards, at least on an intellectual basis. It may be quite popular to believe it, so it has succeeded in a sense, but regarding its power to explain our reality without God, and especially to recreate moral truth without Him, it is really quite the embarrassment.
What is Evolution?
But before we can discuss morality within Evolution, we first need to explain what it actually is. This is actually a contentious area from the beginning. Because Evolution is such an intellectually weak religion, it relies very heavily on persuasive fallacies, such as the appeal to authority fallacy. But most notably, Evolution relies on the fallacy of equivocation.
The fallacy of equivocation is the ambiguous use of language within the same argument. This is exceptionally easy for Evolutionists because of the wide variety of possible meanings of "Evolution". In fact, the term is very commonly divided into what some Creationists call "micro Evolution" and "macro Evolution". Personally, I find these two terms problematic, as when a Creationist claims to believe in micro, but not macro, the Evolutionist hears "I only believe in some Evolution", and immediately asks "then what stops you from believing the rest?" It sounds like it's the amount of change and time that is in dispute, whereas the simple reality is it is the type of change we dispute. To avoid this problem, I like to avoid the terminology altogether. When I say "Evolution", I have a very specific meaning, and one which I expect every honest Evolutionist to also agree with. Why? Because I got it from an honest Evolutionist.
In 1960, Gerald Kerkut, the aforementioned honest Evolutionist, solved the problem beautifully. In his book "Implications of Evolution", he distinguished between what he called the "special" theory of Evolution, and the "general" theory of Evolution. The former, he described as the "...theory which states that many living animals can be observed over the course of time to undergo changes so that new species are formed." (8). The latter, he called "...the theory that all the living forms in the world have arisen from a single source which itself came from an inorganic form".
When Creationists like me reject "Evolution", the overwhelming majority of us are referring exclusively to Kerkut's "general" theory of Evolution, which he, himself, admitted "...the evidence that supports it is not sufficiently strong to allow us to consider it as anything more than a working hypothesis". Regarding Kerkut's "special" theory of Evolution, Darwin is actually known to have plagiarised it from Creationists like Edward Blyth, who believed in it long before he did, and almost all of us still believe in it now.
I had to laugh, many years ago, when I debated an Evolutionist, and he eventually announced "Aha! So you admit you are different from your father! Now we are getting somewhere!" But this falls under Kerkut's "special" theory of Evolution! The two are wholly distinct, because while one describes a fact that has been obvious for 6,000 years, the other merely extrapolates this fact, concluding that if small changes can occur over small amounts of time, leading to the creation of new species, then large changes over large amounts of time must necessarily be how we ended up with the wide range of species we see today, from pigs to pine cones.
First of all, this is a huge and unnecessary leap of faith. Yes, there are small differences within kinds that mean different species are related. Canines, for example. We all know that there are a variety of dog breeds, which all share a common ancestor. But it takes more imagination than I possess to conclude that, therefore, we also share a common ancestor with them. It's not a necessary leap, nor is it even a sensible one. But this extrapolation, while unjustified and unjustifiable, also leads us to understand why origins is not actually a science issue.
That's not to say that there is no overlap. In that regard, life as a whole is complicated. History is not synonymous with science, but may involve science. Science is not synonymous with math, but may involve math. We do not live in a world in which every academic field sits in its own little box, never interfering with each other. However, while each field may blend together, it still maintains its own separate identity.
In the case of science and history, there is some overlap. Evolutionists particularly love to remind us that forensic science is a thing. What they're significantly less likely to boast about, however, is the large number of false convictions it leads to (9).
Wrongful convictions alone should tell us that scientists make abysmal historians. If science cannot tell us who to put in jail with any reasonable accuracy, why would we trust it with our very soul?
But this leads to a very common mischaracterisation of Creationists in particular (though we are not, by any means, the only ones to doubt Evolution, nor to make the points I am currently making). We do not claim, as it is commonly misunderstood, that science is entirely useless for assessing the past. Rather, we simply argue that there needs to be an adequate distinction between science and history. If the two must be blended, the blending must also be rightly divided. The two common terms are "observational" science, or occasionally "operational" science, and "historical" science.
This essential division is neither original, nor exclusive, to Creationists. For example, as GeoClassroom states, "Geology is traditionally divided into two broad areas. (...) These are physical and historical geology, often taught as separate, introductory courses in a one-year sequence. Physical geology deals with the materials (minerals, rocks, water, etc.) that comprise Earth; with processes of rock formation and decomposition; with how surface morphology is altered by the various agents of erosion; and with how rocks deform, lands are uplifted or lowered, continents moved, and ocean basins opened and closed through tectonic forces and lithospheric plate movements. Historical geology places origins of rock masses, integrated effects of geologic processes, interpretations of ancient environments and life forms, and past tectonic movements into the chronological framework of the geologic time scale. Thus geology is an historical science; passage of time and evolutionary concepts are vitally important." (10).
Amazingly, even when Evolutionists attempt to deny this essential distinction, they generally end up admitting it. The infamous National Center for Science Education, for example, claims "The failure of many students to understand and accept the fact of evolution is often a consequence of the naïve views they hold of the nature of science, which may be largely a result of the way science is presented in textbooks and in classroom discourse (...) According to this naïve view, the key to the unique success of science at producing true knowledge is "The Scientific Method", which, on the standard account, involves formulating hypotheses, making predictions, and then going into the laboratory to perform the crucial experiment (Gould 1980). In this parody of scientific methods, if a hypothesis passes the test set up by the crucial experiment, that is, if it is confirmed by direct observation, then it is "proven" and it is considered a fact or a law and it is true for all time. In contrast, the work of many evolutionary biologists involves the reconstruction of the past. The methods they use do not conform to the standard view of "The Scientific Method"." (11).
The above article then goes on to compare Evolutionary biology with forensic science, before complaining that Creation scientists and ID proponents exploit this difference to "...characterize evolutionary biology as a philosophy of naturalism rather than a science." Hilariously, in the original article, "Creation scientists" is even in air quotes, because in spite of claiming to promote and defend "...accurate and effective science education because everyone deserves to engage with the evidence" (12), the NCSE cannot help but commit the appeal to purity fallacy. Creationists, in their eyes, cannot be true scientists, because their religious beliefs differ from the dominant religion among scientists.
But in their attempts to justify why the distinction exists, they are necessarily admitting that the distinction exists. This is a problem for Evolution simply because the same set of scientific facts can support a variety of different historical interpretations. With regard to origins in particular, there are a grand total of zero facts which are exclusively supportive of Evolution.
To further illustrate the distinction, consider that scientific facts work in all tenses. For example, we can describe gravity in the following ways:
- Gravity was a force that caused mutual attraction between all objects that have mass.
- Gravity is a force that causes mutual attraction between all objects that have mass.
- Gravity will be a force that will cause mutual attraction between all objects that have mass.
The reason this works is because gravity is a scientific theory. We see it happening now, and we assume (based on Christian philosophy) that scientific laws are constant. The way in which gravity currently works, that is how it worked in the past, and how it will continue to work in the future.
Unlike with gravity, we can only make Evolution work in the past tense. Observe:
- Humans evolved from ape like creatures.
- Humans evolve from ape like creatures.
- Humans will evolve from ape like creatures.
While grammatically correct, the second and third sentences make no sense when compared to our reality. Human beings are already here, and we even know where they tend to come from. On a daily basis, new human beings are formed, but for as long as we have observed, human beings have always and only come from pre-existing human beings. We have never observed them coming from ape like ancestors, nor have we even found the remains of said mythical ancestors. Because of this simple history, we can as easily count the first statement as "logical", but likely false. As far as the present and future tenses go, the claim cannot work because neither of them are logically true. To be clear, Creationism isn't a scientific claim either. With the above demonstration, we see that any origins claim is going to be a historical one.
The moral implications of Evolution
With all of the above in mind, we see that Evolution, ultimately, is an entirely descriptive claim. It is a claim about what could happen, scientifically, and what did happen, historically. Noticeably absent from all of this is a prescriptive element. Evolution, by its very nature, even by its very design, takes God out of the equation almost entirely. Of course, there is still room for some kind of divine figure to exist in the background if Evolution is true. The Biblical God, not so much. Evolution is fundamentally incompatible with His nature, and also His word. Thus if Evolution genuinely did happen, the Christian faith is false. But maybe some other god is responsible for the rather obvious design in this universe.
Regardless of the possibility for some god to exist, Evolution erases the need for faith in a moral legislature, therefore creating a moral vacuum. While some have clung to other gods, and even many Christians have attempted to hypocritically cling to both views, "One can have a religious view that is compatible with evolution only if the religious view is indistinguishable from atheism." (13). Thus, the vast majority of Evolutionists are left scrambling to either accept that, in their view, "...there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil and no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference" (14), or to endlessly try, and fail, to find morality within their system.
There are actually many Evolutionists who admit this is a lost cause, but it is quite intolerable. Who wants to be told that their deepest moral convictions are equal to their favorite ice cream flavor? You prefer chocolate, I prefer lemon. We aren't fans of cannibalism, Jeffrey Dahmer certainly was. And much like many other historical menaces, he used his Evolutionary worldview to justify it.
Now, I'm not arguing that some Evolutionists are bad, or even that they used that view to justify it, and that's what makes Evolution bad. That would be quite inconsistent, especially since I plan to address that identical argument when it is used against Christianity later in this article. My argument is fairly simple: If Evolution is true, we have permission, but not obligation, to act like it.
This produces two consistent Evolutionary views. The first, as I have already shown, is to just admit that if Evolution is true, there is no such thing as objective morality. But remember earlier, when we spoke about how, if you have a goal, you can actually use descriptive truths to prescribe how to achieve it. "This action leads to this result, therefore to get this result, we should do this." Our wife poisoning analogy shows that this isn't necessarily a good thing. But what if our goal is noble?
Darwin's visions for the future
Nothing can ultimately solve the is-ought problem, and so it is impossible to call a goal "noble" without some foundation. But I'm sure we can all agree that we all want to live in a "better" society. What does that look like? We're all going to differ in that regard. But Darwin certainly had his ideas:
"With savages, the weak in body and mind are soon eliminated; and those that survive commonly exhibit a vigorous state of health. We civilised men, on the other hand, do our utmost to check the process of elimination; we build asylums for the imbecile, the maimed and the sick; we institute poor laws; and our medical men exert their utmost skill to save the life of everyone to the last moment. There is reason to believe that vaccination has preserved thousands who, from a weak constitution, would formerly have succumbed to smallpox. Thus the weak members of civilised society propagate their kind.
No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this must be highly injurious to the race of man. It is surprising how soon a want of care, or care wrongly directed, leads to the degeneration of a domestic race; but, excepting in the case of man himself, hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed." (15).
From this, we see that Darwin did not believe mankind to be above the process of Evolution. In his eyes, the way in which we care for the weaker members of our society is "highly injurious" to our kind, and even states that animal breeders should quite readily recognise this fact. Applying the same logic to mankind that a farmer might use to improve and maintain the quality of his livestock, Darwin suggests that it is ignorant to allow the weak members of civilised society to breed.
Darwin did not stop there. To begin with, Darwin was not even slightly ashamed of his incredibly racist beliefs. Conveniently, his own race, the "Caucasian", was in his eyes the superior one, whereas others were closer to apes. Furthermore, he believed, the Caucasian superiority would lead to the destruction of all other races. He writes "At some future period the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace throughout the world the savage races. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes will no doubt be exterminated. The break will then be rendered wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized state, as we may hope the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a baboon, instead of as at present between the negro or Australian and the gorilla."
So where do we go from here? On the one hand, humanity has injured itself with its charity, its innovative medical advancements, and its general lack of restrictions on reproductive autonomy. On the other hand, Darwin has provided us with an answer in the very title of his famous book! "On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life" (emphasis mine).
Evolution's early moral failures
This lead to the rise of what is appropriately called "Social Darwinism". Social Darwinism is the ideological belief that human groups are subject to the same laws of natural selection as any other animal, and even plants (16). Though Social Darwinism bears his name, and certainly incorporates his religion, Darwin is not actually the father of Social Darwinism. That dishonor goes to Herbert Spencer, who also coined the term "survival of the fittest", which most people today associate with natural selection. As Spencer himself wrote, "This survival of the fittest, which I have here sought to express in mechanical terms is what Mr. Darwin has called ‘natural selection’, or the preservation of favoured races in the struggle for life." (17).
The fact that even the vast majority of modern Evolutionists still associate the term "survival of the fittest" with Darwinism, when it actually comes from Social Darwinism, should be enough to show how seamlessly the two fit together. But how did it actually play out?
It's no secret that the 19th and 20th centuries, during which Social Darwinism was especially popular, were not pleasant times to live. At least, depending on where you were on the Darwinian food chain. Economically speaking, the rich were seen as the "fit" who survived, whereas the poor were unfit, and attempts to aid them were seen as interfering with nature.
It's quite ironic that "interfering with nature" is seen as a problem even today. Thankfully, in less grotesque terms. It generally applies to helping an animal when filming a nature documentary, rather than helping the poor or sick among us as an act of charity. But if man truly is a part of nature, and the actions we perform are shaped by it, then how can anything we do, good or bad, ever be considered "interfering with nature"? This certainly isn't a term we apply when termites build their incredible mounds, or when other social animals, like elephants, care for their own weaker members. So clearly, Evolutionists do not have much faith in their own religion when they talk about man interfering with nature.
But Darwinism was applied to more than just economics, justifying nigh unrestricted competition among the rich while the poor were left to fend for themselves. According to Francis Galton, Darwin's own cousin, the poor were not merely victims of circumstance, but rather, it was their biological inferiority that lead to their destitution.
Galton's own moral destitution, and that of his fellow Evolutionists, lead to the invention of one of humanity's greatest sins to date: Eugenics. Eugenics is the practice of selectively breeding humans, just as one might selectively breed livestock. Eugenics is divided into two categories: Positive eugenics (the encouragement of breeding the fit) and negative eugenics (the discouragement of breeding the unfit). This lead to many horrendous atrocities, including, but not limited to, the Holocaust.
It is my firm belief, with all of the above information, that the only reason the excessively bigoted rhetoric of savages like Darwin and his ilk haven't lead to them being cancelled, in this era of hate speech laws, cancel culture, and social media censorship, is that all of these things are all fuelled by the "god of this age" (2 Corinthians 4:4), in whose sway the whole world lies (1 John 5:19). There is no way a Christian could get away with all this nonsense, and ironically, when they want to slander Christians, some unbelievers even try to claim Hitler himself was a Christian. So the existence of the devil really is the only sensible way to explain why Darwin, the actual inspiration behind the Holocaust, is still celebrated in our culture.
Evolution's modern moral failures
But thankfully, Evolutionists have learned something from their mistakes. Not enough to actually repent, but they at least now recognise that their first attempt to apply Evolution to morality just didn't work. Gone are the days when Evolutionists could put black people on display in zoos, or hunt them down to collect their remains as "research specimens". No longer is the Caucasian seen as the highest of 5 races, and woe betide you if you even say the word "negro", as did George Hunter when he ranked Africans significantly lower on that particular hierarchy (18).
Now, most people might recognise that if at first you don't succeed, skydiving isn't for you. But Evolutionists have always had a passion for scraping up the splattered remains of their decidedly unfit theories and attempting to take another shot at it. Recognising that applying Evolution to human society in a brutal way wasn't the best idea after all, they reason that we had the right idea, we just didn't do it right. Conveniently, this is the same excuse used for every failed ideology in human history, but there's no reason to assume it could never actually be applied to the truth. A utopia has never existed, after all, so if it's possible to create one, clearly the way to do so has never been applied correctly.
So how exactly do we apply it correctly? Many Evolutionists now argue that Evolution makes sense of morality in an entirely different way. It is argued that the same process that created absolute monsters, such as sharks, also created human beings, as well as the many billions of weird and wonderful creatures with which we share our world. Obviously, this process did not make all things identical. Yes, Evolution made sharks brutal, but it made humans empathetic. Thus, the process which made us what we are, and sharks what they are, is not what we need to look to. Rather, we need to look at the current end result. Evolution has made us a cooperative, social species, who do care for the weak. Amazingly, even the father of eugenics himself, Francis Galton, believed that "...after myriads of years of barbarism, our race has but very recently grown to be civilized and religious." (19).
From a descriptive point of view, then, our cooperation has, in theory, aided our survival so far. Thus, it is reasoned it will continue to do so in the future, if we keep it up. Contrary to Darwin's assertions, our preservation of the weak is not injurious to our race, but really quite beneficial.
One failure of this approach is its irony. It uses the same formula it condemns. On the one hand, it says "don't look at the process that made us what we are today, because it made this other thing with major differences". On the other hand, it says "look at the process that made us what we are today, we need to keep that up". The latter is no different to Social Darwinism, it just uses it in a different, more pleasing way. Not that this is necessarily a bad thing overall, for as I've pointed out before, one can arrive at the right answer by the wrong formula.
Comparative explanations
Another issue is it doesn't actually explain anything. As previously pointed out, there are no facts which compel us to accept the Evolutionary story of our origins over the Biblical account. In this case, the Bible as a whole describes this exact state of affairs. In the book of Job, God takes Job through a variety of wonderful creatures He has made, from the mighty Behemoth to the dumbest of ostriches, all to make one point: God is sovereign. He creates what He pleases. If He wants to make a practically untouchable dinosaur, He can make a practically untouchable dinosaur - and wipe it out as easily (Job 40:19). Similarly, if He wants to make a dumb bird, He can make a dumb bird. There is no limit to the types of creatures God can create.
Switching over to Ecclesiastes, Solomon describes life "under the sun" in an admittedly rather cynical, pessimistic way. Nevertheless, he writes "Two are better than one, Because they have a good reward for their labor. For if they fall, one will lift up his companion. But woe to him who is alone when he falls, For he has no one to help him up. Again, if two lie down together, they will keep warm; But how can one be warm alone? Though one may be overpowered by another, two can withstand him. And a threefold cord is not quickly broken." (Ecclesiastes 4:9-12).
So here we see the power of cooperation. The strength of man is in our community. In other words, both Christians and Evolutionists are looking at the identical reality, and both of our explanations fit this particular set of facts. There is nothing we should reasonably expect to be different if Genesis is true. The world we see right now, with its brutal sharks, dead dinosaurs, dumb ostriches, and social humans, is exactly what we should expect to see if Scripture gives the true history of the Earth.
What would we expect to see differently if Evolution was true? Well, we might start with the ever-elusive "innumerable transitional forms" Darwin predicted in the fossil record... But on top of this, in a world in which this particular brand of Evolution is true, we would expect to see strong morals thrive across the board, at least with regard to humanity.
See, it would be nice if humanity was united as one big happy family, but the unfortunate fact is, in this world, wickedness is not synonymous with extinction. Evolution is not a compassionate process by any stretch of the imagination. The only thing it truly rewards is reproduction. As long as one is reproductively successful, what one does in the meantime is utterly irrelevant.
This is true even in the world of cause and effect that God has set up. The world Solomon describes, in which cooperation between people is beneficial to their group, works for everyone. And as Jesus says in the famous sermon on the mount, "“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’ But I say to you, love your enemies, bless those who curse you, do good to those who hate you, and pray for those who spitefully use you and persecute you, that you may be sons of your Father in heaven; for He makes His sun rise on the evil and on the good, and sends rain on the just and on the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what reward have you? Do not even the tax collectors do the same? And if you greet your brethren only, what do you do more than others? Do not even the tax collectors do so? Therefore you shall be perfect, just as your Father in heaven is perfect." (Matthew 5:43-48).
This exposes two critical things for our discussion. First, note how Jesus speaks of love both within a social group, and without. As far as Evolution goes, you could theoretically argue that it is beneficial to cooperate within a group, but loving enemies is a different kettle of fish. In the Christian faith, loving enemies is prescriptively essential. But in Evolution, even if you assume the survival of your group is a noble goal, which you have no foundation to do, the survival of other human groups isn't quite as necessary. It may even be beneficial to cooperate against an enemy group, subjugating them, or even flat out destroying them.
Second, this exposes how, from a descriptive point of view, a world maintained by God shows no partiality. The same laws working for a Christian also work for an Evolutionist, meaning an Evolutionist can both recognise, and enjoy the benefits of doing good. It's just not necessarily good within their worldview.
But one thing Solomon points out repeatedly in Ecclesiastes is that everything is vanity. Yes, there are benefits to certain behaviors while we're alive, and yes, an Evolutionist can enjoy them. Ultimately, however, our fate is the same regardless of how we live. As Solomon explains, "I said in my heart, “Concerning the condition of the sons of men, God tests them, that they may see that they themselves are like animals.” For what happens to the sons of men also happens to animals; one thing befalls them: as one dies, so dies the other. Surely, they all have one breath; man has no advantage over animals, for all is vanity. All go to one place: all are from the dust, and all return to dust. Who knows the spirit of the sons of men, which goes upward, and the spirit of the animal, which goes down to the earth? So I perceived that nothing is better than that a man should rejoice in his own works, for that is his heritage. For who can bring him to see what will happen after him?" (Ecclesiastes 3:18-22).
Now, if Evolution is true, that applies across the board. Man has no advantage over the animals, because ultimately, in Evolution, man is an animal! Yet, that's typically used as an insult. To be told you're "behaving like an animal" is to be told the behavior you are exhibiting is appropriate for animals, which do not have strong moral compasses (and certainly should not be imitated), but for us as humans, it's no longer acceptable. When, in our alleged Evolutionary past, did it become unacceptable? That's as impossible to answer as why it is now.
But if the Bible is true, even the small things matter. Jesus says "For whoever gives you a cup of water to drink in My name, because you belong to Christ, assuredly, I say to you, he will by no means lose his reward." (Mark 9:41). A cup of water to drink, there in one moment, gone the next, may echo throughout eternity.
The Evolutionary success of evil
Now, offering a cup of water to drink is a relatively small thing. In Christianity, it's a morally good thing, but in Evolution, it's wholly unimpactful. But when we consider morality as a whole, what we find is that things which are prescriptively good or bad in the Christian faith do not equate to descriptively "beneficial to survival".
One way I like to demonstrate this is to shrink the system down to an absolute minimum: Two people in a single survival scenario. Bill and Ben's grenade, for example. In this scenario, there are two different ways to reach the identical result. The first is self sacrifice. Bill may jump on the grenade, which explodes, killing him, but shielding Ben, who survives as a result. In this case, Bill is a hero, but we cannot assess Ben's moral character. Alternatively, Ben may actually use Bill as a shield, resulting in Bill's death and Ben's survival. In this scenario, Bill is the morally ambiguous one, and Ben is the villain. Yet, the outcome is identical.
From this, we see a small version of the world in which we live, regardless of how you believe we came to live in it. An incontrovertible observation is that there are a variety of ways to achieve the identical result. Even Biblically speaking, while righteous living tends to yield fruit, and wickedness tends to be its own punishment, this is not a hard and fast rule. There are even periods of time in which wickedness flourishes to the extent of causing envy among the righteous. It's a real challenge to our faith. As we see in the Psalms, for example: "Behold, these are the ungodly, Who are always at ease; They increase in riches. Surely I have cleansed my heart in vain, And washed my hands in innocence. For all day long I have been plagued, And chastened every morning." (Psalm 73:12-14).
So we see, on the one hand, that there are different ways to achieve the identical result, but actually, we also see that, in some cases, the way of the wicked is quite beneficial for the wicked. As far as Christianity is concerned, there's the possibility of reward for righteousness in this life, but the guarantee of it in the next. But as far as Evolution is concerned, all rewards are for this life, and often, immorality is the way to achieve them.
To really drive this point home, consider population growth rates. This seems like a sensible way to measure the Evolutionary success of a population. Logically, if a population is growing, its members must be fairly "fit", not only reproducing at a high rate, but also surviving fairly long, too. By contrast, if a population is decreasing, this would be the antithesis of survival - the population is literally dying at a faster rate than it can be replaced.
I would hope we can all agree that there are many problems in the West. Nevertheless, there are also many good things. We have abolished chattel slavery, we value both genders equally, we ensure access to education, we care for the elderly. These are just a few good things about Western society. Yet, we have very low population growth rates. The UK, for example, has not approached even a 1% population growth rate in the past 4 years (20). By contrast, Afghanistan's population growth rate has not dropped below 2% in the same timeframe (21). Keeping in mind, in 2021, Afghanistan fell into the hands of the Taliban, an actual terror organisation based on the principles of Islam.
Even with a terror organisation in power, Afghanistan has managed to maintain a high population growth rate. It is not alone. In fact, the Islamic world as a whole is maintaining a significantly high population growth rate to make Islam the fastest growing religion in the world, projected to even overtake Christianity by 2060 (22).
So what is it that makes Islam such an Evolutionary success story? Well, as we've already established, Evolution rewards reproduction above all else. Thus, if we insist on measuring success by survival (which, itself, is a prescriptive truth claim), and reasoning from the descriptive to the prescriptive, then whatever Muslims are doing that is making them outbreed Western nations by such a large amount is "right", from an Evolutionary perspective. Yet, ultimately, their main success is their degradation of women.
See, in Islam, women aren't very valuable at all. They're seen as intellectually deficient, with this even being the reason their testimony is worth half a man's, and why most of the people in Hell are women (23). So what good are women? Well, they're essentially a tilth to be ploughed as the husband wishes (24), and a Muslim man may have as many as 4 wives.
This results in women being reduced to sex toys and baby-making machines in Islam. Though not all Islamic countries are alike, they are notorious for their male chauvinism. By contrast, in the Western world, women are as free as men, a fact I'm sure most people will agree is a good thing. There is one drawback. Because women are treated so poorly in Islamic countries, but equally in Western nations, women in the West tend to have less babies, and do so later on in life. By the time a Western woman has had her first child, a Muslim woman may have had several. Thus, we see that the morally good option - equality and freedom - is bad for the survival of the good group. By contrast, the morally reprehensible option - reducing women to baby factories - is actually beneficial.
Implications of Christianity
So how do we reach the conclusion that liberty and equality of the sexes are good things? For this, what we actually need is a religious, specifically Christian foundation. Unlike Evolution, Christianity is both a descriptive faith, and a prescriptive one.
On the one hand, Christianity is descriptive because it describes a number of realities. To begin with, it describes many historical truths - in some cases even before they happened. Throughout history, the Bible has predicted what, at that time, was the future, but to us, now, is the past. This is called "prophecy", and it means we can verify the Bible via other descriptive truths. Through prophecy, we see just how impressive its predictive record is. Ironically, this is also an argument Evolutionists use for their religion, even though Christianity has a higher rate of success. Even lacking prophecy, the Bible is a historical record, often written by contemporary witness, meaning we know it's true in the same way we know other historical documents are true.
Of course, when it comes to the Bible's historical accounts, there are exceptions to the contemporary witness thing. With the exception of God and the angels, no one witnessed the vast majority of the creation week. Even Adam was asleep during the creation of Eve. Certainly, Moses did not witness any of the events in Genesis, all of which happened before he was born. Nevertheless, through divine inspiration, he provided us with the historical description of the origins of the heavens and the earth.
And this is where the prescriptive element really begins. God, being the ultimate Originator of all things, has great power, which cannot be overruled. When He said "let there be light", the light obeyed. Objective reality is created by His very words, and the reality He created with those words is our reality.
Now, for a moment, consider that we also create things. We create tools, we create dwellings, we create vehicles, we create communications devices, we even create art. All of this has one thing in common: What we create, we dictate.
What do I mean by that? Well, I actually have a double meaning. First, from the very start, there are very few limits on what we can create. But there are some, both ethical and objective. From an objective standpoint, we can't make illogical things, like round squares, or a device that is older than itself. Nor can we create impossible things, like a whole planet, or an honest Prime Minister.
On top of what is objectively possible, there are also ethical guidelines, stemming from God Himself, on what we may create, and when. It is physically possible to create an idol, but it is wrong in all circumstances. Though it is a different kind of creation, it is physically possible for a fertile, heterosexual couple to create a baby, but this must be done within the confines of the marriage bed. These are all limits on our creative rights and abilities.
Beyond these, there isn't much to say if we gather some materials, we may or may not do certain things with them. As God Himself says in Romans 9:21, "Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?" Here, God uses a very human analogy to describe His own creative sovereignty. When a potter has access to some clay, he can turn it into a beautiful sculpture, a storage jar, a mug, a shooting target, he can even turn it into a chamber pot if he so desires.
But this is where things get complicated. First, even once a creator has decided what he will make, he also decides how it should be used. If he tries to make something and it doesn't turn out how he desires, he is within his rights to do whatever he sees fit. If his mug doesn't turn out right, he can turn it into a flower pot. If his vase breaks, he can repair it with gold (a genuine Japanese process called "kintsugi"). If all else fails, a creator is quite within his rights to just destroy the creation.
But regardless of what a creator may do with a creation that doesn't turn out as he desires, very rarely will a creator set out to design something without some kind of plan. Of course, that's not always the case. If you log on to Minecraft, for example, you might set out to build a house with absolutely no idea how it will look. But generally, design is intentional. Most people don't just pick up a rock, throw it against the ground, and expect people to marvel at the shattered pieces.
This actually answers the famous Euthyphro dilemma: Is a thing good because God declares it, or does God declare it because it is good? When we understand that good is actually based on both the unchanging nature of God, and the unalterable purpose with which He created, we see that both can be true.
When we set out to create things, we judge our own work the same way. What good is a plane that cannot fly? Well, as it turns out, pretty good if your only intention is to create a life sized replica for a museum display. But very bad if it turns out you very much intended to fly the plane. Even when we set out to make "better" planes, the standard is purpose-driven. We have succeeded in making "better" planes when they fly more comfortably and efficiently.
And that really is what morality is all about. It's not about making more babies, obtaining more wealth, living longer lives, conforming with societal expectations, obeying the commands of a government, or even living according to your own personal preferences. At the end of the day, morality is about the way we were designed, based on the standards of our designer. We are "good" when we do His will, and "evil" when we fail. Good morals, which are prescriptive truths, are therefore a necessary extension of the descriptive truths within Scripture.
What about Christian atrocities?
But just as Evolution has produced some truly horrible atrocities throughout history, many unbelievers, and even Christians, are quick to point out that Theocracies tend to be horrendous, too. And I actually agree with this sentiment. I do not advocate for Theocracy by human effort, mainly because the human element, by definition, muddies a Theocracy. Of course, eventually, there will be a Theocracy, and it will be a utopia, because Christ will personally rule. But attempts to make Him king by force failed during His first ministry (John 6:15), and will fail until He returns. The simple fact is a Theocracy can only occur on God's own terms, and anything short of that is not a Theocracy, regardless of the actual success of the system.
Another flaw in this argument is that, once again, equivocation is quite useful. When an atheist uses terms like "religion", the chances are they don't have a standard dictionary definition in mind. "Religion" is a broad term, much like "animal". If you want to make a domesticated dog look as dangerous as a lion, you can say "animals are man eaters", but that only holds true for the lion, not the dog. In the same way, when you talk about "religion" as a foundation for a society, or even when you talk about the failures of a Theocracy, you are lumping too many things together that ought never be lumped together.
You can even do this with "Christianity" itself, because it has taken on a very broad definition in our culture. Today, anyone who identifies as Christian is considered a Christian. Even atheists! So we even hear things about "different versions" of Christianity.
But one thing not even an atheist can deny is that the prescriptive element is there regardless of how well people follow the prescription. They would have to, because whether they like it or not, atheists have been just as evil as Theists in the past. If you believe there is any hope for morality in an atheistic system, you must admit there are atheists who have failed to uphold it. Thus, Christians are allowed to use the same excuse when our people mess up.
This is especially the case given that our faith has a built in mechanism by which to discount "our" people as our people. With Christianity, the prescriptive element isn't just there, it's there in writing. We can read our book and compare our actions to it. If the Bible says "Let him who stole steal no longer..." (Ephesians 4:28), you might still have Christian thieves, but to say this is a failure of Christianity is asinine. It's a failure of the individual, not the faith.
But one individual - the one individual - did not fail, and it is upon Him the Christ-ian faith is based. That, of course, is Christ Himself. Modern Christians are poor imitations of poor imitations, but it is Christ that we are supposed to imitate (1 Corinthians 11:1). And frankly, I don't think any atheist could ever deny that if everyone attempted to imitate Christ, society would be better off without ever even needing a government.
But maybe they could try. After all, the entire problem, which has been ever-present for the past 6,000 years, is that we are sinners. We've all gone our own way instead of God's, and so as much as we would be better off following His ways, an atheist might still argue that no, this wouldn't be a good thing. In this particular era, many atheists cling to sins like abortion, fornication, homosexuality, greed, sloth, pride, and of course blasphemy. It's all well and good pointing out that Jesus never killed, raped, or robbed anyone, but because He's perfect in every way, up to and including affirming Scriptures atheists find objectionable, maybe a Christian society wouldn't be ideal after all?
This reasoning, ultimately, is backwards. You can say you don't like it. Boohoo, you have to wait until marriage to have sex with your significant other. Honestly, this still feels like a good trade off. I'm sure we'd all rather live in a society governed by objective moral principles we dislike than in a society where anyone can have any moral view, and strength alone stops them carrying out their will.
But ultimately, even if you don't like Christian morality, you have no solid reason to actually object to it. Going back to the whole creative sovereignty argument, imagine a critic who actually gets upset with a car designed to drive on a specific side of the road. He wants to drive his car on the left side of the road, so even though he's driving in a car designed for right handed traffic in a country that does drive on the right, he shakes his fist at the designer and drives on the left. What an absolute wally! Is there any sense in this man getting angry with the car designer? Will he have any grounds to object when the police inevitably pull him over? How does this man look when he criticises the other drivers for going the right way? Answer: Exactly as sensible as an atheist arguing, without foundation, that God is immoral.
The closure of the first circle
And so we see that Christianity, and Christianity alone, provides a foundation for morality. Morality, as a prescriptive concept, cannot be proven by conventional means. To argue from the descriptive to the prescriptive, at best, pushes the problem back a few steps. We may argue "this set of morals will create this kind of society", but we cannot say "this kind of society is actually good". This not only means Evolutionists cannot adequately brush aside the moral failures of their own past, but also cannot criticise Christianity at any level.
By contrast, the Christian faith is inherently prescriptive, being based on the will and word of the same unchanging God who created all other objective truths. This not only allows us to say "this is good" and "this is evil", but also to judge good and evil when it occurs within and without our own system. When attempted theocracies go wrong, we can not only say why it failed, but ultimately, we can even say it was doomed to fail.
The long and short of this is if you believe, as most humans do, that morality exists, you must necessarily believe some kind of God exists to govern it. But the only way to consistently believe morality exists is to believe in God in the first place. If you argue from morality to believe in God, but you need God to believe in morality, then one who does not believe in God may consistently reject morality. This is an uncomfortable conclusion even for the atheists who draw it, but they do, indeed, draw it. Much like Darwin, they doubt the convictions of their own mind; however strongly they may hold their moral views, they are willing to set them aside for sake of their religious views.
The opening of the second circle
But there is a circle that is harder to escape. In fact, it is impossible, for to even try is to tighten the very chains which hold us in. You may deny, against all reason, that morality exists, but to deny that reason exists is truly unreasonable.
Such is the impact of the argument from reason. Unlike the moral argument, this argument lacks moral kick. Not that there is no emotion at all. As a species, we don't even like to be told we are stupid, much less being guided to accept such a conclusion. But without Yahweh as a foundation, you have no reason to conclude you are anything but stupid.
To be clear, I am not accusing all non-Christians of being stupid. That would be very childish, and frankly very stupid in and of itself. But what I do mean is that before we know anything about anything, there are some assumptions we must make.
To illustrate this, picture a gold mine. The construction of a gold mine requires three things: Motive to mine gold, a reason to believe there is gold to be mined, and techniques with which to mine it. If any of these is absent, even the largest gold deposit in the world will remain right where it is, completely untouched and unutilised. But once all elements are present, anyone can benefit from the gold deposit, even if they weren't the ones to initially invest in the gold mine.
Darwin's horrid doubt revisited
So it is with reason. We require three very similar elements. We are required to believe truth exists, that we can discover it, and that we have reason to do so. But remember Darwin's horrid doubt: Are the convictions of a man's mind of any value, or at all trustworthy? As he put it, "Would any one trust in the convictions of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?"
Personally, my answer is a solid "no". In fact, having put much thought into the issue of superpowers, even the power to speak to animals would be quite useless overall. And I say that as a devout animal lover.
See, ultimately, animals do possess some reasoning capacity. Some even possess problem solving abilities, the ability to construct tools, and even the ability to imitate human speech.
But how much can they understand our world? They're certainly curious about it. There's no shortage of stories of wild animals interacting with humans, even stealing things from us just for sake of examination. This is to the extent where there have even been lawsuits to determine whether or not a monkey can own the copyrights to photos (25).
The idea is clearly absurd, though this is a statement I am quite willing to repent of on the following conditions: "Naruto" the Macaque, who took the instigating photo, must read, comprehend, and autonomously respond to this paragraph.
Of course, we all know this isn't going to happen, mainly because while it's certainly interesting that a macaque did manage to take a flattering selfie with a human camera, we know what happens when you give macaques a computer. The result is, and I quote, "vvvvvvvpppsssggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
ggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggggg
gggggggggggggggggg sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss
ssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss" (26).
You need not think I'm joking. This is a direct quote from a short book written by macaques, when researchers at Plymouth University installed a crap-proof computer in the macaque enclosure of Paignton Zoo, Devon (27). Of course, the computer had to be crap-proof because that is precisely what the macaques did with it. Not that they didn't also type some things, as the above quote shows. In fact, they produced 5 pages of incoherent mess, mostly consisting of the letter S.
In spite of expressing some curiosity about the computer, the macaques mainly used it as a seat and a toilet. To them, it just wasn't as exciting as their climbing frames. Much like other animals, they did not share a human mindset. With the exception of angels and demons, which themselves are only detectable under certain, usually pre-planned circumstances, no other created being compares to humans, mentally speaking.
But that leads us to wonder if we're truly unique. We answer questions animals never think to ask! But if we all come from the same source, what makes us think we are even capable of understanding much more than they are?
Of course, if you believe in Evolution, there are some truths one might reasonably expect we can be sure of. If Evolution rewards reproduction, then truths which give us a reproductive advantage may be discoverable. The typical example would be what kinds of berries and mushrooms are poisonous. If you are correct about how to survive and reproduce, then you will survive and reproduce, and as long as your progeny maintains this trait, they can trust their ability to discover a certain category of truths, too.
But what if error is beneficial, too? We even saw this earlier when we examined the moral argument. In Francis Galton's view, and in the view of many other Evolutionists even today, religion has given us a selective advantage. We have literally evolved to be religious, which by Evolutionary reckoning is a very strong cultural delusion that was produced and preserved by Evolution!
You see, then, how Darwin's horrid doubt is very much a justified one. At least, in his worldview. If man is just an animal, it's not only our moral convictions that are questionable, but any conviction beyond our ability to survive and reproduce.
The importance of design
We see, then, that Evolution, being an unguided process, does not allow us to reasonably assume we can reasonably assess truth claims, and may actually cause delusion where those delusions are beneficial. As long as the end result is reproductive success, what one believes is irrelevant. It's like using a pocket watch as a compass. If it gets you where you wanted to go, you might claim it worked, but it was a fluke, and isn't likely to work again.
Ultimately, if a thing wasn't designed for a given purpose, one cannot assume it will achieve that purpose, and certainly not that it will do it well. Imagine a scenario in which you are about to undergo heart surgery. Instead of a man dressed in scrubs, an apron, and an M95 medical mask, you are greeted with an absolute dunce dressed like Jason Voorhees, armed with a potato peeler and a pizza wheel. Are you letting him cut you open, or are you immediately hopping off the table to report this surgeon for medical malpractice?
In this comical situation, the latter response is certainly more appropriate. Neither the surgeon's PPE, nor the tools of his trade, were designed for the task he was about to perform. While it's possible a truly skilled surgeon could pull off some quite impressive surgery with such an array of poorly selected instruments, you're not likely to risk letting him try it.
So what if our brains aren't designed for thinking? What if the accuracy of our thoughts is coincidence at best? If the vast majority of human history is characterised by strong cultural delusions that just so happened to preserve our kind until now, then why would we ever assume we are any better at reasoning than a magpie, dolphin, or macaque?
The Christian origins of science
But what if our minds are designed for intelligent thought? Within the Christian faith, we do also have to account for the stain of sin, but we were also designed in the image of God for the purpose of relating to Him, but also filling and subduing the creation.
This was certainly the mindset of the pioneers of science. If we are to believe the memes, produced by ultracrepidarians with the reading capacity of a schoolyard bully, as scientific knowledge increases, the need for God decreases. The study of science, supposedly, lead to the slow, yet inevitable demise of religion. Our new discoveries began to close the gaps in our knowledge, and where God once sat, reason prevailed.
But even the most amateur of apologists can refute this puerile claim. It is neither a well-kept secret, nor pure coincidence, that almost all of the pioneers of science professed the Christian faith to some degree. Of equal note is that the so-called "Scientific Revolution" occurred alongside the Protestant Reformation.
The Reformation was a revolution of its own kind, with the battle cry of "ad fontes", meaning "back to the sources". The simple premise was that the Bible was never intended to be interpreted only by a special class of priests. Rather, the people should freely know the Scriptures, just as the original audience knew them. Thus, the Reformers not only sought to provide the Scriptures to the people, an endeavor greatly aided by the invention of the printing press, but also promoted what is known as the "historical grammatical" method of interpretation. As Isaac Newton, himself a devout theologian, would go on to put it, "...the Scriptures [speak] not in the language of Astronomers . . . but in that of ye common people to whom they were written" (28).
In his book "The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Modern Science", Peter Harrison joins the chorus of scholars acknowledging the role of Christianity in founding modern science. In the very introduction, he says "It is commonly supposed that when in the early modern period individuals began to look at the world in a different way, they could no longer believe what they read in the Bible. In this book I shall suggest that the reverse is the case: that when in the sixteenth century people began to read the Bible in a different way, they found themselves forced to jettison traditional conceptions of the world." (29).
Harrison is not alone by any means. It is a widely acknowledged fact in Academia that Western science owes its very origins to a very Biblical approach to studying the world. But I don't just mean in a hermeneutical sense. Rather, the Bible itself presents a few key assumptions that are absolutely essential for the continuity of science. Or, as Loren Eilsley put it, "It is surely one of the curious paradoxes of history that science, which professionally has little to do with faith, owes its origins to an act of faith that the universe can be rationally interpreted, and that science today is sustained by that assumption." (30).
The necessity of truth
As stated earlier, there are some important assumptions we must make. I used the analogy of a gold mine: We must assume there is gold to be mined, that we can mine it, and that there is any profit in doing so. In much the same way, for science to be successful, we must assume that this universe possesses certain characteristics, that we are able to study it, and that doing so is helpful to us. Furthermore, it is essential that these assumptions be true.
If any of these elements are either absent or false, science cannot work. But the necessary elements of science all flow naturally and effortlessly from an informed view of Scripture, whereas they are absent, in varying degrees, from all of the world's other religions. In some cases, they are even contradicted.
As this article is geared towards Evolution, we have very little need to look to other religions, like Islam. But Islam is actually an easy example to demonstrate the problem we have here. See, in Islam, Allah is said to be the greatest of deceivers (Qur'an 3:54; 7:99). There are even several cases where Allah is shown to be actively deceptive, particularly when "...they killed him not, nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them..." (Qur'an 4:157, Yusuf Ali translation). Of course, you all know who that refers to. In Islam, in spite of its endless claims to be a continuation of the Biblical faith, Jesus' death, and subsequent resurrection, never happened. Allah just made it appear so, then empowered Jesus' followers until the day of resurrection. In other words, the largest religion in the world today, according to Islam, exists because Allah performed the greatest deception in all of history. With such an omnipotent deceiver in control, science would be impossible, because an infinite number of scientists could perform the same experiments an infinite number of times, they could never know that Allah wasn't pulling some divine prank.
But even if truth cannot be discovered unless Allah wants us to, that's still enough to know that truth exists. You would think that this is self evident, and frankly, it is. But you don't need to look too far in the modern world to know that people just don't care anymore. We like to "live our truth", because "there are no absolutes". More modern theories even include that we might be living in a simulation (31). The universe itself might not be real!
But the idea that the universe actually exists, and there are absolute truths, flows naturally from the Christian worldview. God, by His very nature, is absolute truth, and ultimately is the very foundation by which we may know truth (Psalm 111:10; Proverbs 1:7; 9:10). Furthermore, He actually created the heavens and the Earth (Genesis 1:1). That not only means the heavens and the Earth are genuine things, not mere illusions or simulations, but that ultimately, the way in which they run will be based on God's purpose and character.
This leads us to our second assumption: That the universe is orderly. The aforementioned Loren Eilsley articulated this well when he wrote that science "...began its discoveries and made use of its method in the faith, not the knowledge, that it was dealing with a rational universe controlled by a Creator who did not act upon whim nor inference with the forces He had set in operation. The experimental method succeeded beyond man’s wildest dreams but the faith that brought it into being owes something to the Christian conception of the nature of God."
Here we see that it is not merely on paper that one might assume God would create an orderly universe. This is, in fact, a key assumption that sustains science to this very day, meaning when Evolutionists chirp about how science has proven the Christian faith to be in error, what they are actually doing is disproving the ocean by producing a fish. It is our worldview, not theirs, that allows science to function.
The dominion MAN-date
This is true in more ways than one. It's one thing to assert that the universe works in a certain way, it's another thing entirely to assert that we're capable of discovering what, exactly, that is. Once again, would anyone trust the convictions of a monkey's mind?
To put it another way, humans are not the only creatures to use tools. Many do, including chimps, elephants, and dolphins (32). Whose tools are most likely to be sold at a hardware store? Obviously man made tools! Animals are capable of some amazing feats, but their scientific abilities are nothing compared to ours.
We believe we are more capable scientists than animals, simply because we are. But this isn't an accidental result of a mutant berry finding ability. It is a quite intentional extension of what Christians call the "Dominion Mandate". Man's one and only advantage over the other animals is that we were made in the image of God. We were designed for deep thought, not only so we could relate to Him, but also fulfil His very first command: "Be fruitful and multiply; fill the earth and subdue it; have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves on the earth." (Genesis 1:28).
But the world is quite a tough place to subdue. We obviously can't just wonder around giving commands to every lion, tiger, and bear. To exercise dominion over a world that seems to have a greater dominion over us is no easy task. No wonder Nobel Prize winner Sir William Bragg said "From religion comes a man's purpose; from science, his power to achieve it. Sometimes people ask if religion and science are not opposed to one another. They are: in the sense that the thumb and fingers of my hands are opposed to one another. It is an opposition by means of which anything can be grasped." (33).
And how right he is. Most creatures are faced with the unfortunate problem of having to adapt to their environment. Mankind? We adapt the environment to suit our needs. We either turn threats into opportunities, or wipe them out entirely. We discover new ways to turn even the most inhospitable environments into a comfortable paradise. Look no further than Israel. Through science, they have become a water superpower in a desert environment! (34). So science is profitable.
We see, then, that first of all, the assumptions necessary for science to work flow naturally from the Christian faith. We believe science is possible, because the universe in which we live possesses the necessary characteristics for it. We believe science is possible for us, because we were designed with the particular skills, and permission to use them. We even see the fruit in doing science, because it helps us fulfil our purposes, namely worshiping God through His creation, and obeying His command to subdue it.
Circling back to ethics
But there is a final key element of science that, as we have already seen in great detail, flows exclusively from faith. If there is no God, and we're just the descendants of equally amoral, ape-like creatures, then even if we assume the universe can be rationally interpreted, even if we assume we are somehow able to rationally interpret it, and even if we assume there is profit in doing so, nothing compels us to do any of this in an ethical manner. There are no rules to determine how we make, or how we use our discoveries.
I believe I already showed this quite adequately with our nuclear bomb explanation. We can also point to a number of other examples. One I find particularly interesting is the Burke and Hare murders in Edinburgh, 1827 - 29. In 1827, William Hare was annoyed that a pensioner died in his house, still owing him £4. With the help of his friend, William Burke, he stole the body and sold it for a tidy profit of £7.10s (7 pounds, 10 shillings). This lead them to go on a 16 body murder spree, wherein they would suffocate their victims and sell them to Robert Knox, an unassuming anatomist, who dissected the cadavers (35).
It is an unfortunate fact that a lot of what we know about science, particularly biology, has been learned by some of the most unethical methods. Even today, there are still some very unethical practices going on. For example, whereas in the Christian faith, even animals enjoy certain intrinsic rights, even as recently as 2022, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences published an article by Margaret Livingstone, based on taking young monkeys from their mothers and sewing their eyes shut (36).
The closure of the second circle
The greatest irony of this is that while Evolutionists so often accuse Christians, particularly Creationists, of lying, there is nothing in their worldview that condemns lying, or suggests we should be any better at exposing a lie than a sea otter. While Christianity gives us grounds to believe science is possible, that humans in particular may do it, and that there is good reason for us to do it, Evolution brings nothing of any value to the table. It is the Christian faith, in its purest form, that gave rise to modern science, and it is the Evolutionist faith, in its purest form, that muddies it.
Unlike the moral argument, the argument from reason is nigh impossible to wriggle out of. As far as morality goes, you can show that morality leads to God, and God leads back to morality, but if you don't believe in morality, the moral argument will not work. But by showing that reason leads to God, and God leads back to reason, you create a circle that can only be escaped by means which are entirely unreasonable. If you don't believe in reason, there is nothing left for you but pure insanity.
So who draws the better circles?
Throughout this article, we have examined two very important circles, which show that, ultimately, circular reasoning itself is not always a fallacy. There are scenarios in which one must reason in a circle. Furthermore, these circles are all-encompassing, pertaining to the most important topics of human life: Morality, and reason. We must then ask which worldview draws the better of the two circles?
Regarding morality, it is perfectly clear that Christianity draws the better circle, mainly because it actually sets out to draw a circle. With morality being based on God's goal for the creation of humanity, and God's goal for humanity being the reflection of His moral character, we have a working circle, wherein morality leads to God, God leads us to morality, and morality leads to God.
But if you believe in Evolution, you're not actually drawing a circle, you're drawing whatever your pen leads you to and calling it a circle. As a natural consequence of your worldview, you might have certain moral instincts, but have nothing to ground them in. You may have ways to reach your goals, but there is nothing by which you may judge those goals themselves. Ultimately, the option is there for you to just drop the pen entirely.
Regarding reason, Christianity also draws the better circle, not only being philosophically geared towards reason, but actually, historically, leading to academic fields that work in practice. We believed the universe could be rationally interpreted. We believed we could rationally interpret it. We believed this was a noble and profitable goal. And we were right about all of it.
Today, even Evolutionists benefit from the gold mine we dug. This is testament to the strength of our worldview. If even an unbeliever can benefit from acting as though he believes, and especially if he must act as though he believes, then clearly ours is the better worldview.
Of course, in the end, these two circles lay even more foundations upon which to stand. Christian apologists do not need to dig so deep as to show that reason itself requires Christian assumptions. Evolutionists already know that the human race are a uniquely reasonable species. They just believe, somehow, those reasoning skills lead them away from the very God who gave them to us. This is ultimately because of another circle they have drawn: Naturalism.
The philosophy of Naturalism is the belief that nature is the only active force in our universe. It is the a priori exclusion of the supernatural from science. Under this philosophy, you cannot prove "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth", but must instead assume God does not exist, because He is beyond nature.
Interestingly, even if an actual miracle occurs - resurrection, for example - a Naturalist can acknowledge the event, but not the cause. They can actually believe Jesus rose from the dead, but even if no natural means can explain the resurrection (which, of course, they can't), a Naturalist is required to default to the explanation "the event was caused by natural means, we just don't know what they are yet". Thus, if a supernatural explanation exists for anything, a Naturalist will always be prevented, by his circular philosophy, from finding out.
And such is the grounding of Evolution. A Naturalist who assumes, without merit, that the natural world is all there is, and that natural laws are all that governs it, will naturally be forced to extend this view both forwards and backwards in time. The universe, by his reckoning, must have been formed naturally, and will as easily be destroyed naturally.
The temporary delusion
But as impenetrable as this circle may seem, it is certainly not permanent. Naturalism may lead to insane religions like Evolution, but death is an ironically effective wake up call. When a man dies and faces judgment, a fate appointed to all men (Hebrews 9:27), even our pettiest philosophies burn away. Not a single blinder will remain when every eye sees God, and every tongue will confess that Jesus Christ is Lord (Isaiah 25:43; Romans 14:11).
But just as there is no point administering medicine to a corpse, there is no hope for those who confess Christ on the other side of the veil. To ensure our confession is effective, we must do it in life. Those who confess Jesus as Lord, and believe God raised Him from the dead, will be saved from the punishment their sins rightly deserve. Those who resist, unfortunately, will perish.
The argument from reason may be described as "meta", and for many people, it's certainly confusing. But there are a vast array of reasons to believe that not just a god, but the God, exists, that He loves you, that you have sinned against Him, but that in His love, He made propitiation for that sin. In this article, we have established that God has given man fantastic reasoning skills, all for the purpose of relating to Him. Throughout history, many unbelievers, including Evolutionists, have set out to disprove Him, only to find themselves praising His name from the pews. It is my hope and prayer that if this article has failed to convince you to do likewise, it will at the very least begin your journey to the Christian faith. Until the next time, Shalom.
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