Humanimals

As a matter of fact, the year after I was born, a very influential book called The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal was published (over 10 million copies sold and translated into 23 languages) that advanced humanistic concepts even further worldwide, all based on one simple premise: humans are nothing but animals. It recently celebrated its 50th anniversary, with an online promotion describing it this way.

Zoologist Desmond Morris's classic takes its place alongside Darwin's Origin of the Species, presenting man not as a fallen angel, but as a risen ape, remarkable in his resilience, energy and imagination, yet an animal nonetheless . . . .1

The book was named The Naked Ape because, according to the author’s evolutionary thinking, out of 193 known species of monkeys and apes, only humans (Homo sapiens sapiens) are not covered in hair. Note however that the idea that humans are derivatives of ape-like animals was already assumed and smuggled into the conclusion before it was stated.

The prestigious Sunday Times also praised it, concluding-

It's the sort of book that changes people's lives.2

Well, it certainly has. The outworking of the mindset that man is just an animal has now come to fruition in the world around us, etched into the mindset of our children and implemented by law regarding marriage, identity, abortion/euthanasia, individual freedoms, etc. Welcome to the planet of the apes.

The Planet of the Apes

Human primate is a name given to people by mainstream scientists who believe humans evolved from animals. The majority state that our similarities, including our DNA, with that of chimpanzees make them our closest relatives.

However, when listening to the average person speaking to their family and neighbors in everyday conversation, it’s doubtful that you’ll hear reference to people that way—and in a practical sense most wouldn’t think of having chimpanzees at their dinner table because they’re simply “distant relatives.” Even if we were to display some particularly rude behavior, we might be criticized as behaving like an animal, but the mere fact that we would be compared to them shows that most recognize humans are distinct from them. However, the secular humanists currently dominating the most influential aspects of modern society have leveraged the story of evolution to maximum effect in undermining the only alternative: creation. And without a foundational and authoritative way to justify the distinction between animals and people, they are winning the culture war.

Biological Classification Systems and Humans

In the 18th Century, Carolus Linnaeus, a Swedish naturalist and explorer, came up with the biological classification system (taxonomy) that was based on observational similarities and differences of characteristics in organisms. Unfortunately, even though Linnaeus believed that God created all organisms, he positioned man under the category of Primate in his classification.3

The Linnean system is still used as a standard today but has been modified many times since then, as technological advances and an increased knowledge of wider varieties of organisms were compiled through research. But many scientists use the unobserved and theoretical evolutionary relationships of taxa (any group in which supposed evolutionarily related organisms are categorized) as the basis of classification.

Phylogenetics4 is the term for the method used by evolution-believing scientists to determine the supposed evolutionary history of a species or a group of species. Basically, it’s an attempt to reconstruct the evolutionary tree, or phylogeny,5 of life. The term phylogeny is derived from Greek and was coined in 1866 by German zoologist, evolutionist, and fraudster Ernst Haeckel (infamous for forging a group of inaccurate embryo drawings to promote the story of evolution). It is the branch of biology that aims to reduce the genesis and evolution of a phylum.6

And under this evolutionary system, man is considered closely related to apes—just a highly evolved animal, all based on naturalistic assumptions of the origins of life.7

What Is Wrong with This Picture?

Of course, by general scientific definition (among other things), ‘animals’ are multi-cellular organisms that depend on other organisms for food, need oxygen to breathe, move at will, have specialized sensory organs, sexually reproduce, and grow from a blastula during embryonic development. Humans certainly have all those characteristics, and yet humans are different from animals in many ways, not all of them purely physical.

“A person with a biblical worldview understands that God created the first humans in his image, distinct from animals.”8 According to the book of Genesis, our Creator made us in his image and gave us dominion over the animals and over the earth. Although we might share some biological similarities with animals (which makes sense when eating and living in the same biosphere), we are very different indeed. Although we can talk about dissimilarities between animals and human brain size, thumb position, pelvic bones, DNA, the way we walk, etc., one of the biggest is that we are held morally accountable for the way we choose to behave, while animals aren’t (for example, when was the last time you heard someone describe a lion as being “evil” for eating a gazelle or a shark being called a depraved serial killer?).

The Bible says in Genesis 1:26 that God created man after his likeness. That sets humans completely apart from the animal kind. He also gave us dominion over all other living creatures and the works of his hands (Genesis 1:26; Psalm 8:6). That gives man a stewardship that animals don’t have. The origin of man and the history of humans are in the Bible, and we know we can trust God’s Word.9

God created man different from animals, and man holds a special place in God’s creation. His Word tells us of the close relationship between him and man. Man can connect with God directly, and every person has the law of God written on their hearts as Romans 2:15 says. Man has a conscience, a spoken and written language, can learn from people long ago from past communication, is creative and acts upon original thoughts, and can design, calculate, and build.

Stewards of His creation. Without regard to any human’s abilities or status here on earth, each life is sacred to God, and the only thing that separates man from God is sin. From Adam and Eve’s disobedience in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3) to man’s sinful nature today, man lives in a fallen world and is in need of a Savior (Romans 3:23-24). And for those who put their faith and trust in Jesus, only humans may receive forgiveness for sins because of what Christ has done in paying the penalty for sin on a cross approximately 2,000 years ago.

What the Atheistic Evolutionary Worldview Means

In complete contradiction to the history of man revealed in the Bible, the story of evolution teaches that humans came about by random, chance processes over billions of years. Many Christians do not seem to understand that adopting evolution as a mechanism for God “creating” is completely untenable, as secularists have a specific understanding of what belief in, and acceptance of, evolution actually means. For example, in a key 1995 statement, the National Association of Biology Teachers (US) said,

The diversity of life on earth is the outcome of evolution: an unsupervised, impersonal, unpredictable and natural process of temporal descent . . . .10

Christians should understand that this is supposed to be a scientific statement. But it is actually a theological statement, because “unsupervised” means no Creator God, “impersonal” means life has no special meaning, “unpredictable” means we are a product of blind chance, and “natural process” means processes inherent in matter—i.e., no God required! And should believers still not truly understand what is going on here, let’s look at the written creed of the atheist, the Humanist Manifesto, and see what it says about the universe and man’s place within it:

Religious humanists regard the universe as self-existing and not created. Humanism believes that man is part of nature and that he emerged as the result of a continuous process . . . As non-theists we begin with humans not God, nature not deity.11

Compare the two statements: Is there any difference? No! What state-run schools are teaching, using taxpayers’ money (many of them Christians and others that do not support a humanist world view) is naturalistic, atheistic humanism at its core. And that teaching has had a direct effect on culture because of the natural outworking of those ideas applied to the meaning of what a human being is and how they should function in relation to one another, and ultimately to God.

In a completely naturalistic worldview, man has no soul, no purpose, and no absolute morality to conform to. Under evolutionary beliefs, life becomes dispensable: some humans are more evolved than others and therefore more fit for survival. Might makes right; killing babies in the womb or even after a baby is born has become a matter of choice, as is the choice to be ambiguous about human sexuality. There are no set norms; all of life is in constant flux and change, and because we were born the way we were, no one can criticize anything we do. Anything goes—just live and let others live (unless of course they disagree with that creed, in which case you should shame, criticize, punish, and eliminate them).

The “live and let live” premise is reverted when it comes to Christianity and freedom of speech, the sanctity of life, or the institution of marriage between a man and a woman (Genesis 2:24). The Bible and its account of how the world and humans came to be are the arch-enemy of the humanist religion. However, they have managed to establish their ideas as truth in the education systems at a global level now and have also managed to exclude creation science from curricula, often with massive amounts of help from within the Christian community itself!

For those Christians who have been unable to connect the dots and are still puzzling as to how society has gotten to the level of insanity it has, just read the following quote from a 2004 evolutionary documentary actually titled “testing God” from the Australian Broadcasting Company that sums it up perfectly.

But why have we turned out the way we are? Once we believed we were unique, blessed with a soul and lovingly created by God in His image. Today, evolution says we are just a product of Natural Selection, the descendants of primitive bacteria, not the children of God.12

Genesis, Evolution, and Christianity—A Matter of Authority

Many Christians educated in the state schools of the country they’ve grown up in have adopted the idea that God used evolution to create. Theistic evolution or “evolutionary creation” is basically the idea that God started everything and that he is watching over his creation and perhaps directing evolution. Under this belief, logically, the Bible contains truths, but they cannot be taken as plainly written, and Scripture needs to be constantly reinterpreted or corrected depending on what secular science currently says.

The most influential example of this thinking is Biologos, a well-known, self-identified “Christian ministry” that promotes marrying the story of evolution with the Christian faith. Their leader is Francis Collins. But look at where his ideas about how to interpret Scripture originated, according to his own admission.

I couldn’t take Genesis literally because I had come to the scientific worldview before I came to the spiritual worldview . . . When I read Genesis, I had to say “I don’t know what this means here” . . . 13

Aha, see how that worked? “It was not Scripture that shaped Collins’ view regarding Genesis,”14 it was the secular interpretations of science he’d already imbibed and come to believe beforehand. However, “if asked why he believed in a virginal conception or a dead person coming back to life after three days when science clearly denies”15 both of those events as possible, he would likely say, “Because of what the Bible says.” “But to believe the clear historical revelation from Scripture in one area and disregard other areas as unscientific is completely arbitrary and illogical.”16 It leads to a weak faith, which is largely indefensible to attacks from Bible skeptics.

To illustrate the point, a Biologos’s contributor Karl Giberson wrote a book titled Saving Darwin; How to be a Christian and Believe in Evolution. In it “he expounds as to why he feels Christians should embrace evolution. As one of his main messages is that accepting evolution will prevent young people from losing their faith, it is revealing to hear what he has to say about his own faith”17:

[M]y belief in God is tinged with doubts . . . I sometimes wonder if I am perhaps simply continuing along the trajectory of a childhood faith that should be abandoned.

Now if a Bible professor can openly confess such a tentative belief in saving faith, how much reinforcement does his commitment to Darwinism actually provide? And apparently it was not just the topic of creation that was affected by him adopting such naturalistic beliefs:

It etched holes in those parts of Christianity connected to these stories—the fall, ‘Christ as second Adam’, the origins of sin, and nearly everything else that I counted sacred.

And why then does he say he still believes in God?

As a purely practical matter, I have compelling reasons to believe in God. My parents are deeply committed Christians and would be devastated, were I to reject my faith. My wife and children believe in God, and we attend church together regularly. Most of my friends are believers. I have a job I love at a Christian college that would be forced to dismiss me if I were to reject the faith that underpins the mission of the college. Abandoning belief in God would be disruptive, sending my life completely off the rails.

Ah yes, wouldn’t it just be fantastic if the children growing up in Christian homes developed a robust “faith” like this? Be honest, even recognizing that someone “can believe in evolution and be born again due to blessed inconsistency,”18 if you asked one of your friends at church why they call themselves a Christian and received this answer, would you not be deeply concerned?

And despite many believers bemoaning biblical creationists as “hampering gospel outreach,” it’s not as if atheists are embracing Christianity because of evolutionary compromise like Giberson’s. Observe atheist Jerry Coyne’s actual review of Giberson and Kenneth Miller (another theistic evolutionist) promotion of evolutionary creationism.

Like Giberson, Miller rejects a literal interpretation of the Bible. . . . But this leads to a conundrum. Why reject the story of creation and Noah’s Ark because we know that animals evolved, but nevertheless accept the reality of the virgin birth and resurrection of Christ, which are equally at odds with science? After all, biological research suggests the impossibility of human females reproducing asexually, or of anyone reawakening three days after death.19

Typically, “atheists like Coyne reject such compromise views [like Christianity for the logical inconsistencies], they clearly understand how they can use them to their own advantage.”20

This disharmony [between science and religion] is a dirty little secret in scientific circles. It is in our personal and professional interest to proclaim that science and religion are perfectly harmonious. After all, we want our grants funded by the government, and our schoolchildren exposed to real science instead of creationism. Liberal religious people have been important allies in our struggle against creationism, and it is not pleasant to alienate them by declaring how we feel.

This is why, as a tactical matter, groups such as the National Academy of Sciences claim that religion and science do not conflict. But their main evidence—the existence of religious scientists—is wearing thin as scientists grow ever more vociferous about their lack of faith. . . . we can expect more books like those by Kenneth Miller and Karl Giberson. Attempts to reconcile God and evolution keep rolling off the intellectual assembly line. It never stops, because the reconciliation never works.

“Far from fortifying a Christian’s faith, TE [theistic evolution] actually disconnects it [Christianity] from real history and weakens it immeasurably. A belief in an evolutionary history destroys the ability to answer even the simplest and most common objections to faith like; ‘If you have such a loving God, why is there so much death, pain and suffering in the world?’ (If millions of years of earth history and/or evolution is true, then He must be fine with pain, death and suffering as part of the creative process rather than a consequence of sin).”21 And it shatters the whole concept of being created in the image of God by reinforcing the idea that we are simply advanced animals, but animals nonetheless.

Encouragement

We are not a naked ape. Apes aren’t even aware that they are naked. We recognize when we are naked because of sin, which is why we wear clothing. We cannot escape our Genesis roots as we live out our lives.

It might be discouraging to see how even evangelical experts can be, and are, deceived, and how doubting the inerrancy and accurate account of the Word of God leads believers astray and vulnerable to the works of the enemy. We see the devastating consequences of this compromise all around us, in the church, and in the utter nonsense that is happening around the world.

Yet, we have that same Word of God that teaches us how to withstand the fiery darts of the devil (Ephesians 6:10–20) and how to discern what is true from what is not.

All Scripture is breathed out by God and profitable for teaching, for reproof, for correction, and for training in righteousness, that the man of God may be complete, equipped for every good work. (2 Timothy 3:16–17)

As believers, we need to remain vigilant. “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8). We must trust in what the Bible tells us. “Every word of God proves true; he is a shield to those who take refuge in him.” (Proverbs 30:5), and we must equip ourselves with the truth and do what the Lord tells us to do thorough his Word. We also need to ask God for guidance to bear fruit (John 15:16; Philippians 4:6–7).

Just as Christians who are deceived influence others the wrong way, we can influence others the right way in our circle of influence, starting at home with our family, our children, our friends, and our neighbors. God made us in his image for his glory on the sixth literal day of creation (Genesis 1:26). He gave us a direct access to him after the fall through his Son Jesus Christ (Ephesians 2:10). God set us apart from any other living creature on earth and gives us the courage to keep going (1 Corinthians 15:58), as God fulfills his perfect purposes in us and in the rest of his creation.