Exposing the Connection: How Evolution Impacts Morality

I believe the message of the AiG ministry has been very “prophetic.” Even when I began teaching on creation vs. evolution back in 1975, I was already asserting that atheistic evolution and morality were connected and that, over time, immorality would grow as people rejected God’s Word and accepted evolution.

I taught that the more people believed that life arose by natural processes, the more they would also believe that life was ultimately meaningless and purposeless—and morality could be whatever a person determined. Or, as Judges 21:25 states, when there was no king (or absolute authority) in the land, “everyone did what was right in his own eyes.”

The late Dr. Henry Morris (considered the father of the modern biblical creation movement) had also been writing about this connection between evolution and morality in most of his early books.

Over the decades, evolutionists have often mocked me for tying evolution to morality. They claim that evolution has to do with “science,” not morality. But notice that as generations have been indoctrinated into believing naturalistic evolution, Christian morality has declined. Armed with so-called “science,” secularists have become bolder in opposing Christian morality.

While we do not argue that evolution directly causes immorality, people can use Darwinian thinking to justify their behavior.

In our Western world, we are seeing more and more people (like Bill Nye “the Science Guy”) who boldly claim that evolution is “science” and are using it to promote an anti-Christian worldview. More than ever, secular activists are vehemently opposing Christian morality, such as marriage being between one man and one woman and abortion being murder.

And we are seeing very amoral and immoral behavior growing across the culture, especially, it seems, among the millennial generation. While we do not argue that evolution directly causes immorality, people can use Darwinian thinking to justify their behavior.

Humans Are Just Animals?

Now, it’s a challenge to read Charles Darwin’s books like On the Origin of Species and The Descent of Man. His writing can be very convoluted and difficult to follow. But what is clear is that Darwin believed humans are not special as the Bible states (i.e., made in God’s image), but just animals. As a result, he declared that morality was a result of evolution, shaping man into a highly social species through the process of natural selection.

In The Descent of Man, Darwin wrote, “Nevertheless, the difference in mind between man and the higher animals, great as it is, certainly is one of degree and not of kind.”

They vigorously rejected my insistence that evolution involved a worldview that helps build a relative/subjective morality.

My point is that there has always been a connection between evolution and morality. Over the years, I’ve heard many evolutionists (like Bill Nye) and even some Christians claim that evolution is all about “science.” They vigorously rejected my insistence that evolution involved a worldview that helps build a relative/subjective morality. That’s why many people were shocked (though I wasn’t at all) when Bill Nye released his new series on Netflix that pushes shocking immorality and is sometimes anti-Christian.

Kids and adults enjoyed Nye’s TV series years ago where he did lots of fun things to teach science. Even if you watched his series back then, you would have noticed how he promoted evolutionary ideas in biology and geology. But he did it in such a way that most children would not have really noticed—and many parents probably didn’t see those pro-evolution sections. But kids were subtly indoctrinated.

Even before his famous “Science Guy” program, Bill Nye had his television debut when he performed a comedy routine. It included a number of sexual innuendos.

For the many of you who saw my 2014 debate with Bill Nye (available uncut online or as a DVD), you will remember how I emphasized that the creation vs. evolution issue was actually a clash of two worldviews. Nye rejected this, of course, claiming I was the one who was talking about religion, but he was all about “science.”

In that debate I revealed the connection between naturalistic evolutionary beliefs and morality. Nye totally rejected this view. But people are now starting to see that what I stated in the debate is now being played out before their very eyes.

A recent article in the Christian Post reported (please excuse the crudeness):

On his Netflix show “Bill Nye Saves the World” on Sunday, the man famous for his 1990s series “Bill Nye the Science Guy” cheerily featured “Crazy Ex-Girlfriend” star Rachel Bloom performing a lewd number called “My Sex Junk” and a video called “Ice Cream Sexuality,” a clear derision of Christian sexual ethics. Nye’s new show occasionally references science and scientific language with the purpose of promoting left-wing causes.

Michelle Cretella, president of the American College of Pediatricians, told the Christian Post, "These sad videos prove that atheistic Darwinians are so committed to blind faith that they very well may be invincibly ignorant.”

Liberation from (God’s) Morality

But really, this is what the belief in naturalistic evolution has always been about! I’m sure many of you have heard of the book Brave New World by Aldous Huxley. He was an English novelist and grandson of the famous contemporary of Darwin, Thomas Huxley. Thomas Huxley was known as “Darwin’s bulldog,” who, as an aggressive secular humanist, heavily promoted Darwin’s evolutionary ideas. He clearly saw Darwin’s naturalistic evolution as a justification for his secular humanist worldview.

Encyclopedia Britannica states the following about Brave New World: “The novel presents a nightmarish vision of a future society in which psychological conditioning forms the basis for a scientifically determined and immutable caste system that, in turn, obliterates the individual and grants all control to the World State.”

In 1937, Aldous Huxley made this statement in his book Ends and Means:

For myself, as, no doubt, for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality.

We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom; we objected to the political and economic system because it was unjust. The supporters of these systems claimed that in some way they embodied the meaning (a Christian meaning, they insisted) of the world.

There was one admirably simple method of confuting these people and at the same time justifying ourselves in our political and erotic revolt: we could deny that the world had any meaning whatsoever.

We’ve often said that this worldview struggle is ultimately one that started in the Garden of Eden over 6,000 years ago. It’s a battle between God’s Word and man’s word—a battle between two worldview religions.

Answers in Genesis has been involved in this struggle for 23 years. It’s the battle our Creation Museum and Ark Encounter are engaged in.

The Saving Gospel

And the only way to ultimately win this struggle is for people to be redeemed by the blood of the Lamb: “knowing that you were ransomed from the futile ways inherited from your forefathers, not with perishable things such as silver or gold, but with the precious blood of Christ, like that of a lamb without blemish or spot” (1 Peter 1:18–19).

This is why the Creation Museum and Ark Encounter exist. As we answer questions that will point people to the truth of God’s Word, we also clearly present them with the gospel. We’ve never hidden the fact that evangelism is our ultimate purpose—which is why we receive so much opposition from secularists.

We’ve never hidden the fact that evangelism is our ultimate purpose.

At the Creation Museum we present the saving gospel in different ways. That includes the stunning movie The Last Adam and the powerful new exhibit Christ, Cross, Consummation. We also make evangelistic tracts available free to our guests.

At the Ark Encounter, the gospel is featured in a number of ways including through the new movie As in the Days of Noah. The gospel is also powerfully shown in the massive exhibit Why the Bible Is True, with a graphic-novel approach. In that exhibit, we walk guests through the various “doors” of Scripture and then challenge visitors to go through the most important “door,” the Lord Jesus Christ.

We have just created a new gospel-witnessing tract on the “doors” of Scripture. It has been produced in conjunction with our new Ark exhibit, and we freely offer it to each guest who wants one at the Ark Encounter.

I’m very excited about this new resource. It’s one more evangelistic tool to share the gospel at the Ark Encounter. And now you can order this “Doors of the Bible” tract from our online store and share it with someone who needs to hear the gospel.

I ask that you pray for the Ark Encounter and Creation Museum outreaches. Everything we do at Answers in Genesis is for the ultimate purpose of sharing the life-changing message of the gospel. And it is through your prayers and support that you are enabling AiG to continue all its many vital outreaches—to impact millions of souls for the kingdom of Christ while countering anti-Christian influences, like Bill Nye.