Yes we should accept Evolution as much as we accept any other scientific theory. I mean, why be prejudice to this one theory? It seems to me that the only reason that Christians choose to challenge evolution is because it was presented by anti-theists as a challenge to belief, and so Christians mistakenly believe that it disproves or servery undermines the truth of our beliefs. Because many Christians lack understanding of there own belief system, they felt it suitable to hold to a literal understanding of scripture as being a definitive expression of Christian truth, as they had done before in the past, assuming that they were being attack by false information stirred up by the scientific witchcraft of the naturalists. Such a person has fallen for the propaganda of naturalism, and is striking out in fear rather than with reason. They are fighting the wrong enemy. Evolution does not undermine our faith, although it does challenge us to be more mature and knowledgeable about what we actually believe. But we shouldn’t accept Evolution as the the being and end all of existence. It certainly is not the whole story. Evolution doesn’t tell us why there is something rather then nothing, or how we should conduct ourselves morally. In terms of value, it doesn’t tell us how we should view our selves as people or whether or not there is a meaningful purpose to why we exist. We should resist naturalist gurus who claim that science has an answer to these questions. Anybody who claims that science does have an answer is false.
It’s already gotten into the Biology textbooks, and therefore, into young people’s heads:
We can see this in current biology
textbooks:
“[E]volution works without either plan or purpose — Evolution is random and undirected.”
(
Biology, by Kenneth R. Miller & Joseph S. Levine (1st ed., Prentice Hall, 1991), pg. 658; (3rd ed., Prentice Hall, 1995), pg. 658; (4th ed., Prentice Hall, 1998), pg. 658; emphasis in original.)
“
Humans represent just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on the enormously arborescent bush of life.”
(Stephen J Gould quoted in Biology, by Peter H Raven & George B Johnson (5th ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pg 15; (6th ed., McGraw Hill, 2000), pg. 16.)
“By coupling **undirected, purposeless **variation to the **blind, uncaring **process of natural selection,
Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous.”
(
Evolutionary Biology, by Douglas J. Futuyma (3rd ed., Sinauer Associates Inc., 1998), p. 5.)
“Darwin knew that
accepting his theory required believing in philosophical materialism, the conviction that **matter is the stuff of all existence **and that all mental and spiritual phenomena are its by-products. Darwinian evolution was
not only purposeless but also heartless–a process in which the rigors of nature ruthlessly eliminate the unfit. Suddenly,
humanity was reduced to just one more species in a world that cared nothing for us. The great human mind was no more than a mass of evolving neurons. Worst of all,
there was no divine plan to guide us.”
(
Biology: Discovering Life by Joseph S. Levine & Kenneth R. Miller (1st ed., D.C. Heath and Co., 1992), pg. 152; (2nd ed… D.C. Heath and Co., 1994), p. 161; emphases in original.)
“Adopting this view of the world means accepting not only the processes of evolution, but also the view that the living world is constantly evolving, and that
evolutionary change occurs without any goals.’ The idea that **evolution is not directed **towards a final goal state has been more difficult for many people to accept than the process of evolution itself.”
(Life: The Science of Biology by William K. Purves, David Sadava, Gordon H. Orians, & H. Craig Keller, (6th ed., Sinauer; W.H. Freeman and Co., 2001), pg. 3.)
“The ‘blind’ watchmaker is natural selection. **Natural selection is totally blind **to the future. “**Humans are fundamentally not exceptional **because we came from the same evolutionary source as every other species. It is natural selection of selfish genes that has given us our bodies and brains “Natural selection is a bewilderingly simple idea. And yet what
it explains is the whole of life, the diversity of life, the apparent design of life.”
(Richard Dawkins quoted in *Biology *by Neil A. Campbell, Jane B. Reese. & Lawrence G. Mitchell (5th ed., Addison Wesley Longman, 1999), pgs. 412-413.)
“Of course, no species has 'chosen’ a strategy. Rather, its ancestors ‘little by little, generation after generation’ merely wandered into a successful way of life through the action of random evolutionary forces. Once pointed in a certain direction, a line of evolution survives only if the cosmic dice continues to roll in its favor.
“[J]ust by chance, a wonderful diversity of life has developed during the billions of years in which organisms have been evolving on earth.
(Biology by Burton S. Guttman (1st ed., McGraw Hill, 1999), pgs. 36-37.)
“It is difficult to avoid the speculation that Darwin, as has been the case with others, found the implications of his theory difficult to confront. “The real difficulty in accepting Darwins theory has always been that it seems to diminish our significance. Earlier, astronomy had made it clear that the earth is not the center of the solar universe, or even of our own solar system. Now the new biology asked us to accept the proposition that, like all other organisms,
we too are the products of a random process that, as far as science can show, we are not created for any special purpose or as part of any universal design.”
(Invitation to Biology, by Helena Curtis & N. Sue Barnes(3rd ed., Worth, 1981), pgs. 474-475.)
Peace,
Ed
