Darwin's Evolution Is Religion, Not Science

Charles Darwin

This weekend, The University of Texas at Tyler will host its annual Darwin Day activities with lectures, events, and educational booths. According to the International Darwin Day website, Darwinism is neither good nor bad, but instead just “properly sourced” and “factual.” Darwinism is fact. But is it? Here is engineer Dr. Henry M. Morris: 

"Since both naturalism [the belief that life came about solely through natural causes] and humanism [the belief that man is the center of the universe] exclude God from science...their position is nothing but atheism. And atheism, no less than theism, is a religion!" (Parentheses mine.)

Darwinian evolution is a religion, Morris writes. And he’s right. Here is why: 

1. Darwinism claims to answer ultimate questions which mere science cannot do. Darwinism competes with religion with its history of man, its definition of his nature and his fundamental problem as a race. These claims address ultimate questions about the universe, which is the realm of philosophy and religion, not science which deals with observable natural phenomena through the scientific method.

For example, one cannot observe the nature of man through the scientific method. One can tell that man is material, physical, but these other assertions about his history or even spiritual nature, if any, go outside the parameters of the scientific method. By attempting to answer ultimate questions, Darwinism reveals it belongs to the realm of religion and not science.

2. For people to maintain their faith in a belief system so blatantly problematic such as Darwinism, shows that Darwinism is that even people even have a powerfully religious adherence to Darwinism and not a scientific one. Despite the evidence, Darwinists hold on to evolution with the strength of belief arguably equal to religious commitment. This reveals a different priority on the behald of Darwinists than truth based on empirical evidence. Its religious attraction reveals its religious character. 

Just look at what Darwinists have to overlook in order to maintain their belief in Darwinian evolution: 

Darwinists have to overlook that the fossil record lacks any record of an organism in a transitional stage of evolution from one species to another. There should be millions. 

Darwinists have to ignore the second law of thermodynamics, the law of entropy, which states that the universe is in a state of decreasing complexity and rather than a in a state of increasing complexity as evolution asserts. Disorder, not order, is the standard of things.

Darwinists have to avoid the question of how life arose from non-life in the beginning, how nothing could produce something through merely natural causes. 

When one considers all the evidence a Darwinist must ignore in order to maintain faith in evolution, it becomes clear that what drives adherence to Darwinism is a prior commitment to the metaphysical philosophies of naturalism and humanism that supersedes openness to evidence to the contrary. This is not the relentless pursuit of truth that they attribute to Charles Darwin. 

Evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin once said: 

"We are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Darwinism is certainly a religious belief, not scientific fact. 

For all intents and purposes, Darwinism is a religion. It operates in the realm of religion with its teaching about natural history and its adherents hold to it with the strength of a religious commitment. Far from being scientific fact, Darwinism is certainly a religious belief. With Darwin Day events happening this weekend, students will do well to keep this in mind. 

Twitter: @jhescock