Far the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and
unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness
so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:18-20).
When men decide either for or against the claims of Christ do they
objectively evaluate all "the facts" as those who are neutral and without
prejudice? The Apostle Paul says, No: non-Christians deliberately and
maliciously suppress the true nature of "the facts" because they bear
inescapable witness to the certain judgment of God upon their lawless lives.
Consider the confrontation of ungodly men with the record of Creation in
Genesis. James P. Lodge has described the components of the "scientific
method" as follows:
A scientist formulates a hypothesis . . . to explain something he has
observed . . . He then makes the best efforts of which he is capable to
prove himself wrong. If he is unsuccessful, the hypothesis makes an
official transition into the status of a theory, and it is provisionally
accepted until such time as it fails to explain something it should have
explained. Then it is replaced
Was this the dispassionate method used by the Post-Enlightenment world to
set aside the Biblical perspective in favor of an evolutionary one?
It must be admitted by all that at no point in time did the creationist
framework" fail to explain something it should have explained." It was put aside
many generations before Darwin or anyone else found it "wanting" at the bar of
science. The 1800's saw men grow increasingly intolerant of the Biblical
perspective on life and more and more desirous of the non-Christian world-and-
life view (Weltanschauung) expressed by men like Kant Hegel, Mill and Marx.
But no worldview is complete without a theory of origins, and Darwin filled this
vacuum perfectly. Well- not quite. It seems that Darwin's hypothesis failed to
explain many things it should have explained. But it would have to do. As
Dobzhansky tells us, "Darwin's successors had to labor to adduce proofs that
the evolution of the biological world and of man had actually occurred. That was
the paramount task which biologists faced in the closing decades of the 19th
century." After reading Dr. Lodge, one might have thought that the paramount
task of 19th century biologists would have been to make the best efforts of
which they were capable to prove the theory wrong. This was not the case.
Dobzhansky observes, "With Darwin's successors. . . it was necessary to prove
beyond reasonable doubt that the living world as we see it is a product of the
evolutionary process." The "scientific" questions must surely be, "Why?" Why
was it "necessary to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the living world as we
see it is a product of the evolutionary process"? The German Biblical critic David
Strauss answered that evolution was irresistible to those who thirsted for truth
and freedom:
Vainly did we philosophers and critical theologians over and over again
decree the extermination of miracles; our ineffectual sentence died away,
because we would neither dispense with miraculous agency nor point to
any natural force able to supply it, where it had seemed most
indispensable. Darwin has demonstrated this force, this process of
nature; he has opened the door by which a happier coming race will cast
out miracles, never to return. Everyone who knows what miracles imply
will praise him, in consequence, as one of the greatest benefactors of the
human race.
The biologist Karl Pearson also recalled "the joy we young men then felt when
we saw that wretched date BC 4004 replaced by a long vista of millions of years
of development." Why is the "neutral" date BC 4004 "wretched"? Is this
"objectivity"? What do miracles "imply"? Is this merely a dispassionate search
for truth?
With the cataclysmic judgment of the Flood in back of us, the inevitable
judgment of God looms threateningly on the horizon, But Darwin's confession
of faith was sure: "As all forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which
lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we feel certain that the ordinary
succession by generation has never been broken, and that no cataclysm has
desolated the world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure
future of great length." Sir Julian Huxley also demonstrated the truth of2 Peter
3 when he affirmed, "The past of life has been steadily increased by science
until it now (1958) exceeds the staggering figure of two and one-half billion
years. And in place of an imminent Last Judgment Life on this planet can now
envisage at least an equal span of evolutionary time in the future." No doubt his
belief produced great relief
Did the "objective facts of scientific pursuit' compel acceptance of an
evolutionary Welranschauung? Or was and is it a desire to escape the Living
God of the Bible? George Bernard Shaw answered: "If you can realize how
insufferably the world was oppressed by the notion that everything that
happened was an arbitrary personal act of an arbitrary personal God of
dangerous, jealous and cruel personal character, you will understand how the
world jumped at Darwin." The Bible was clearly known to all, but its truth was
"suppressed in unrighteousness." History and the world around us, however,
testify against Mr, Shaw's implied justification, demonstrating with unmis-
takable clarity that it is the arbitrary rule of man over man that has created
slavery, tyranny and oppression; the rule of God's Law brings justice and
security. But as Milton mightwrite today, "Better to rule man impersonal world
ofwould-be gods than to serve in a personal world of responsibility under God's
Law."