Atheistic and theistic evolutionary ideas as expressed in today’s western culture, have had, and continue to have, many bad societal consequences. Consider the partial list that follows:
1. Behavioral Consequences: Accepting the ideas of Darwinian evolution reduces humans to animals who have evolved from lower life forms. The Bible says God created man in His own image. These opposing concepts have both influenced human behavior – one idea for bad the other for good.
2. Meaning Consequences: If Evolution is true, life has no meaning other than passing on genetic information to the next generation. There is no possibility for hope! This idea is counter to the Christian message of a hope for everlasting life.
3. Good & Evil: If Evolution is true, then logically there can be no Good or Evil. The Bible says that humans are unable on their own to determine Good from Evil without God’s instructions. God has directed humans since the beginning with his Word and the Holy Spirit. Unfortunately, men have often chosen to ignore God’s instructions.
4. Survival of the Fittest: This idea is a common understanding of the goal of Evolution and a mainstay of Darwin’s hypothesis. Applying this to human endeavor has resulted in exploitation, mercy killings, forced sterilization, selective breeding, the killing of humans by category, and the killing of millions of babies in the wombs of their mothers.
5. Communism: Engels, one of the founders of communism, wrote Karl Marx, another founder, and strongly recommended Darwin’s book, The Origin of Species. In response, Marx wrote Engels that Darwin’s book “contains the basis in natural history for our view” [Communism]. Marx offered to dedicate his book, Das Capital, to Darwin, but Darwin declined. And, Joseph Stalin, ruthless dictator of the Soviet Union from 1929 to 1953, killed millions of his own people. Stalin read Darwin’s book as a student at a church-based school and urged others to read it. During that time, he became an atheist.*
6. Personal Responsibility Consequences: If Evolution is true, and everything came into existence by the random-chance interaction of matter over millions of years, then humans have no responsibility to a Creator God. If Evolution is true, then humans, and their actions, are things over which they have no control; and therefore no responsibility.
7. Social Darwinism: If life evolved, then the human mind evolved and so did all the products of the human mind; including law, government, science, education, religion, language, industry and civilization itself.
8. Secular Humanism: If Evolution is true, then humans are the highest life form so far evolved. Therefore, man is the object of greatest concern, not a Creator God. This is the ruling paradigm for public education and many other aspects of society in America today.
9. New Age Thinking: If Evolution is true, then humans are evolving toward a god and a new conciousness…toward a glorious New Age.
10. Marriage Consequences: If Evolution is true, the Bible is wrong and humans are animals, so why should they marry? If people are products of natural processes, then all should do what comes naturally. The Bible says God initiated marriage in the beginning to be one man and one woman for a lifetime.
11. Racism: If Evolution is true and humans have evolved from some apelike creature, then some people must have advanced higher on the evolutionary ladder than others. Some classes of people should be superior to others. The Bible says God created man, and there is only one race – the human race!
12. Relativism: If Evolution is true, there are no absolutes, moral or otherwise (except that there are absolutely no absolutes). One person’s beliefs are just as valid as anyone else’s. Truth is “in the eye of the beholder” or determined by majority rule.
As a partial list the above certainly is not exhaustive. When a lie as fundamental and insidious as Evolution is promulgated by many of the foundational pillars of a society, the consequences affect every apect of its culture. Examples abound. Few would have predicted, even 50 years ago, that a major political party in America today would officially promote perversity as being “progressive.”
*Walter Brown, In the Beginning, 8th Edition, p. 399. [This listing of consequences has been adapted and expanded from those formulated by Dr. Brown in his book.]
J.D. Mitchell
