Darwin on Trial Ch. 10: Darwinist Religion
While Darwinists like to make statements accommodating religion, and perhaps equivocally allaying the fears of those who accept a mingling of theistic involvement and evolution by natural processes, the logical implications of their “findings” tell another tale. Johnson cites William Provine, a historian of science, who insists that the conflict between science and religion is inescapable.
According to Provine’s understanding, the claims of evolutionary science have direct implications on the basic beliefs of religion. Some of these implications include: 1) the world is organized according to mechanistic principles excluding the possibility of supernatural involvement, 2) there is no purpose inherent in nature, 3) there are no gods or designing forces, 4) the world has no inherent ethical or moral laws, 5) humans are complex machines whose ethical persuasions are based on heredity and environment, 6) death is the end for all, and 7) human beings are not free to make choices.
Again, Darwinists insist that the realms of science and religion are separate and have no intermingling, but they either cannot see the illogical nature of that assessment or they are simply content with glossing over the reality of which they are quite aware. Any attempts to harmonize science and religion are met with harsh condemnation since any movement in that direction denies a principle tenet of evolutionary theory in that it is a purely materialistic process void of any divine involvement.
More central to the issue at hand though is that this conflict arises most emphatically only when it is the wrong religion whose harmonization with science is supported. Some Darwinists see no problem with harmonizing science and religion when it suits their views, when man can decide how such harmonization works. For example, Julian Huxley, Theodore Dobzhansky and Pierre Tielhard de Chardin insist that human beings, the discoverers of their own origins, are now faced with the mandate of realizing their own potential. These men argue that man now stands with the opportunity to control the processes that brought him into existence. Indeed this mandate is of an ethical nature as he can now pursue man-directed selection and determine how man ought to live and determine what should be valued.
Under this model, man is now the highest authority to which he must answer; in fact, it is the scientist who now wields this authority. People must be taught to accept this view and banish any idea that there is a power above mankind who imposes its will in the form of moral or ethical laws. In this sense, Darwinism is just as much a religious force as the traditional religions they oppose. By all accounts, Darwinism is a religion, and of the kind they despise.
