Have Charles Darwin’s Theories Helped Us at All?

In a surprisingly candid article (with a blasphemous title), Britain’s Times asks readers, “What has Charles Darwin done for you? Do you feel better or worse for the news that a gibbon is your close cousin?”

One of the answers comes from Answers in Genesis anatomist Dr. David Menton, who told the Times, “Darwinism is what you have once you have denied the existence of God.”

“Darwinism is what you have once you have denied the existence of God.”

The article then contrasts that “[w]e do things differently here [in the UK],” adding that “even the most hermetic among us must be aware [that this is] Darwin’s year.” Apparently author Bryan Appleyard didn’t read the survey results less than two months ago that revealed that 80 percent of Britons don’t have a clue about about Darwin’s connection to 2009.

Skipping through the typical Darwinian minutiae, we come to an interesting account Appleyard reports. He met 21-year-old lapsed Catholic Michelle Wilkinson at the Natural History Museum’s Darwin Big Idea exhibit; as they looked at all the Darwin paraphernalia, he asked, “Does this make you doubt even more?”

“Yes,” she says wistfully and maybe a bit sadly.

Yet Appleyard pointed out problems in Darwin’s model. “There were gaping holes in [Darwin’s] argument,” he explains, continuing:

He knew nothing of genes and he had not shown how perfection emerges. It’s all very well to talk of small mutations changing an organism, but how do such changes make, for example, an eye? . . . And, finally, although Darwin showed micro-evolution . . . his leap to the conclusion that this proved macro-evolution (species transforming into other species) was a leap of faith.

Appleyard adds, “Even among Darwinists, this unexpected complexity has produced confusion and [rancor] . . . . The division remains, deep and unresolved.”

Later in the article, the topic turns to the connection between Darwinism and morality. “Almost from its first appearance, the Darwinian idea has been used to justify appalling [behavior],” Appleyard writes, pointing out the social Darwinism advocated by philosopher Herbert Spencer as well as an infamous German leader.

Appleyard never fully explains what he believes about evolution, although he concludes, “Man still thinks he can be the master of nature, yet the one thing Darwinism shows more clearly than anything else is that we are its servants.” That, indeed, is what Darwinists believe—though they rarely pursue that logic to its end. The final outcome, if Darwinism is truly heeded, is a world devoid of morality or meaning; nature a kaleidoscope of uncaring change. That model is utterly opposed to the biblical worldview that sees morality, purpose, and meaning in each human life.

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