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Slide 1: Evolution – a Theory in Crisis Part 2 of 3 The Philosophical Bankruptcy of Darwinian Evolution Also available: Part 1 of 3 – The Scientific Bankruptcy of Darwinian Evolution Part 3 of 3 – The Biblical Creation Alternative & Its Implications
Slide 2: Philosophy “A set of beliefs reached by investigation & contemplation of the cause and nature of being and reality.” Socrates Your ‘take’ on life Logical Positivism – Existentialism – Relativism Pragmatism – Utilitarianism – Postmodernism
Slide 3: James Dewey Watson (Co-discoverer of the structure of DNA) “Charles Darwin will eventually be seen as a far more influential figure in the history of human thought than either Jesus Christ or Mohammed.”
Slide 4: ‘‘It was because Darwinian theory broke man’s link with God and set him adrift in a cosmos without purpose or end that its impact was so fundamental. No other intellectual revolution in modern times…so profoundly affected the way men viewed themselves and their place in the universe.’’
Slide 5: The philosophical direction of Darwinism? Naturalism = “The cosmos is all there is.”
Slide 6: 1st Panel in ‘Origin of Species’ exhibit @ Natural History Museum
Slide 7: ‘‘The entire scientific ethos & philosophy of modern Western man is based to a large extent upon the central claim of Darwinian theory that humanity was not born by the creative intentions of a deity but by a completely mindless trial & error selection of random molecular patterns. The cultural importance of evolution theory is therefore immeasurable, forming as it does the centrepiece, the crowning achievement, of the naturalistic view of the world, the final triumph of the secular thesis which since the end of the middle ages has displaced the old naïve cosmology of Genesis from the western mind.’’ Michael Denton Ph.D.
Slide 8: Dark shadows • Theology • History • Morality Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
Slide 9: Andrew Carnegie (1835-1919) “…light came as in a flood and all was clear. Not only had I got rid of theology and the supernatural, but I had found the truth of evolution.”
Slide 10: “I have done a great deal of work on Darwin and can say with some assurance that Darwin did not derive his theory from nature but rather superimposed a certain philosophical world-view on nature and then spent 20 years trying to gather facts to make it stick.” George Grinnell
Slide 11: MARX (1818-1883) LENIN (1870-1924) STALIN (1879-1953) HAECKEL (1834-1919) NIETZSCHE (1844-1900) FREUD (1856-1939) HITLER (1889-1945) MAO (1893-1976)
Slide 12: The ‘Darwin’ statue Lenin kept on his desk in the Kremlin
Slide 13: Frontispiece from Ernst Haeckel’s 1868 book The Natural History of Creation
Slide 14: Darwinism provided scientific justification for: • Racism • Eugenics
Slide 15: From Darwin to Hitler “Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism, especially in its social Darwinist and eugenics permutations, neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world’s greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.” Richard Weikart - associate professor of modern European history at California State University.
Slide 16: An illogical outworking of the teachings of Christ
Slide 17: A logical outworking of atheistic evolutionary ideology
Slide 18: 1904 “The new world view actually rests on the theory of evolution. On it we have to construct a new ethics…All values will have to be revalued ” Darwinian biologist Arnold Dodel
Slide 19: Darwinism continues to provide justification for: • Eugenics (screening) • Abortion • Embryonic Stem Cell research • Euthanasia • Infanticide
Slide 20: ‘‘I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption… 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.’’ Aldous Huxley
Slide 21: “Not all atheists are immoral, but morality as goodness cannot be justified with atheistic presuppositions… He may have personal moral values, but he cannot have any sense of compelling and universal moral obligation. Moral duty cannot logically operate without a moral law; and there is not moral law in an amoral world.”
Slide 22: William Provine Biologist at Cornell University Darwinism means: ‘‘No life after death; no ultimate foundation for ethics; no ultimate meaning for life; no free will.’’
Slide 23: The 4 Big Questions 1. Origin How did life come to be? 2. Meaning To what purpose is my life? ? 3. Morality How may I distinguish between right & wrong? 4. Destiny What happens to me when I die?