LIBERALISM, EVOLUTION AND ORIGINAL SIN

Author: Tom Shipley

The Western world today typically divides itself into one of two camps in a multitude of arenas, typically identifying themselves either as “liberal” or “conservative.” But what do these words, “liberal” and “conservative,” actually mean and denote in terms of the actual, real underlying ideological forces animating and driving them?

I am here to tell you something you will seldom or never hear on any major television network or any major news network: the inner fundamental essence of modern so-called “liberalism,” political, religious and otherwise, is philosophical atheism. This philosophical atheism is not rationally derived as its proponents would like everyone to believe. Rather, it is the outworking and manifestation of a psychopathology–original sin. The particulars of this psychopathology have been codified by believers in the religion of Naturalism, complete with a sectarian Confession of Faith (see The Humanist Manifesto of 1933).

Original sin in the Biblical sense is, at its deepest root and core, the drive and impulse to autonomy (i.e., “auto” = self, and “nomos” = law), that is, the will to be a law unto one’s own self, which is, practically speaking, the drive to be one’s own God in defiance of the only true and eternal Law Giver.

Modern conservatism, in its essence, is grounded in the proposition that there is a God (“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created…”), the Creator, and that He is the ground and source of all objective morality and ethics. This was the faith of virtually all of the Founding Fathers of America, regardless of what their personal fidelity may have been, and it is the reason why Jesus Christ is referred to in Article VII of The Constitution of the United States of America as “our Lord.” Virtually all of the conflict within the Western world (and much of the rest of the world, for that matter) is the outworking and manifestation of these two opposing forces. There are a multitude of variations and shades and places along the spectrum, but this dichotomy is the central core of all the conflict; these are the two opposing poles from which all of the other particulars flow.

The favorite and most cherished dogma of the faithful devotees of Liberalism (notice I have now switched to a capital “L”) is Evolution. Next to the proposition of atheism itself, Evolution is “liberals” most dearly beloved Article of Faith. Make no mistake about it, Liberalism is a religion (its real name is Naturalism), and Evolution is veritably an Article of Faith. It is founded upon unproven and unprovable philosophical presuppositions about the ultimate nature of reality and is at variance and conflict with all empirical knowledge (one example of which I will get to below),

There are many deceivers among the faithful of this religion who actively try to subvert the faith of theists. You run into them in almost every corner saying, “I believe in God and I also believe in Evolution.” When you hear a man say such a thing, mark that man as a liar. Such a man is dishonest to the core.

It behooves every Christian, at some point in life, preferably earlier, to devote a significant portion of time to the study of the Creation-Evolution controversy to the point where the highlights of the issue can be accurately articulated to others. (I have created a YouTube page with a collection of videos which you can think of as a kind of quick crash course on the subject and I will include a list of recommended reading at the end of this article.)

In particular, and perhaps primarily, every Christian should be aware that the fossil record emphatically does NOT give evidence in support of the evolutionary religion, a fact prominent and “reputable” evolutionists know and confess themselves (or not, if they think the general public is listening in). Charles Darwin’s prediction that the fairly young (in his day) discipline of archaeology-paleontology would in time uncover the multiplied millions of minute variations that “must” have lead from one species to another has failed – and failed miserably. The only thing that can be found in the fossil record are distinct species. Period. Living organisms are all biologically isolated at the species level (see Michael Denton’s comments on this in, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis). Absolutely no one, especially any paleontologist, now holds out any hope at all that any line of nearly infinite gradations ever WILL be found, Charles Darwin’s failed prediction notwithstanding. There are, of course, variations within species, but all varieties of the cat species, for example, are distinct and biologically isolated from all varieties of the dog species, and all varieties of cattle, and all varieties of horses, etc. (For obvious reasons, I accept neither the nomenclature nor the classification scheme of modern taxonomy or “cladism.”)

Consider this extraordinarily revealing admission from Niles Eldredge, the preeminent paleontologist from Columbia University who, along with Harvard’s Stephen J. Gould and Johns Hopkins’ Steven M. Stanley brought the world into the new “orthodoxy” of “punctuated equilibria.” As an insider of insiders, Eldredge should know whereof he speaks on this matter. Consider:

“Scenarios about giraffes attaining their long necks and the like are a truly commonplace in biology…The ASSUMPTION , (and it seems a perfectly reasonable one) is that artificial selection in the lab and barnyard mirrors a process in nature pretty well. But we cannot test the hypothesis…

“Creationists and skeptical evolutionary biologists alike have seized on the latter point, the latter content with the more modest conclusion that selection cannot be invoked to explain the grosser features of life’s evolutionary history. Both camps, in my opinion, are wrong. Yet, the conventional neo-darwinian explanation of how it all happened is hardly comforting…

“And one might ask why such a distortion [i.e., the neo-Darwinian explanation] of the grosser patterns of the history of life have come about…a theory of gradual progressive, adaptive change so thoroughly rules our minds and imaginations that we have somehow, COLLECTIVELY, turned away from some of the most basic patterns permeating the history of life. We have a theory that…is out of place with the actual patterns of events that typically occur as species histories unfold. And that discrepancy seems enlarged by a considerable order of magnitude when we compare what we think the larger-scale events ought to look like with what we actually find. And IT HAS BEEN PALEONTOLOGISTS—MY OWN BREED–WHO HAVE BEEN MOST RESPONSIBLE FOR LETTING IDEAS DOMINATE REALITY…

“(T)he certainty so characteristic of evolutionary ranks since the late 1940’s, the utter assurance not only that natural selection operates in nature, but that we know precisely how it works, has led paleontologists to keep their own counsel…(w)e have proffered a COLLECTIVE acceptance of the story of gradual adaptive change, a story that strengthened and became even more entrenched as the synthesis took hold. WE paleontologists have said that the history of life supports that interpretation, ALL THE WHILE REALLY KNOWING THAT IT DOES NOT.”—Time Frames, pgs. 142-144

Dear reader, did you get that? This is a candid admission from an evolutionary insider at the very top of the evolutionary academic establishment, an evolutionist of evolutionists, that the entire evolutionary establishment has not been honest about the facts of their profession!!! There is no apology here, just a simple reporting of the fact!

Eldredge elaborates further:

“Each new generation, it seems, produces a few young paleontologists eager to document examples of evolutionary change in their fossils. The changes they have always looked for have, of course, been of the gradual, progressive sort. More often than not their efforts have gone unrewarded–their fossils, rather than exhibiting the expected pattern, just seem to persist virtually unchanged…This extraordinary conservatism looked, to the paleontologist keen on finding evolutionary change, as if no evolution had occurred. The studies documenting conservative persistence rather than evolutionary change were considered failures, and, more often than not, were not even published.”–emph. supp.

Bear in mind, this is not a biblical creationist speaking but one of the high priests of the evolutionary academic establishment. Eldredge’s oblique reference to the studies that never were published refers, in many cases, to the fact that the paleontologists were not able to get their studies published due to the stringent and pervasive evolutionary censorship mechanism in place in the academic world. It starts with self-censorship motivated by fear: if you are able by some miracle to get past the strict peer review process which is under the control of the Great Darwinian Propaganda Machine, publication of such studies places one in jeopardy of being refused application for Ph.D. programs, denial of Ph.D. after being earned, loss or denial of tenure, de-funding of one’s department, or even job termination if one is brash enough to publish studies contrary to evolutionary dogma in defiance of the evolutionary establishment.

It cannot be stressed too strongly that this total and complete lack of any intermediate forms is not a guess, it is not speculation, it is not deduction; it is empirical fact. Those who continue to adhere to the evolutionary religion are painfully aware of this reality. This is why since the 1970’s more and more of those of this religion have converted in droves to the “Punctuated Equilibrium” model of evolution.

For those not familiar with all of this, basically Punctuated Equilibrium (or Equilibria) says that biological organisms go on for thousands and millions of generations without changing very much until —voila!, rabbits out of the hat!–suddenly, and without any recognizable cause, virtually miraculous transformations take place over a relatively short period of time, leading to all sorts of new species. Evolutionists call it “allopatric speciation”—as if giving the concept an academic-sounding name somehow bestows more credibility upon the concept. Basically, it is the idea that evolution happens in quick bursts of “adaptive radiation” over a relatively short period of time in small populations that get isolated from the parent group and evolve separately, and this is supposedly why transitional forms are never found in the fossil record. Moreover, punctuated equilibrium is basically equivocation as far as the terminology about evolution is concerned, confusing and conflating a real phenomenon (variation within species) with an imaginary one (fundamental transformation into different kinds of organisms). This is basically where the academic evolutionary establishment hangs its proverbial hat today.

It should be noted that this new brand of evolutionary thinking did not come about due to any additional evidence whatsoever. It is simply a reinterpretation of the existing fossil and geological data on the part of evolutionists trying to explain WHY there is no indication of evolution in the fossil record (or among living organisms, for that matter. Why don’t we see any existing sequential spectrum of life among living organisms? Why isn’t the living world of species one great blur?). This is true even if the geologic strata containing fossils is misinterpreted as representing long geological ages in the millions of years, rather than the obvious interpretation that they are the result of rapid deposition over a short period of time as a result of a flood. The evolutionists have been struggling greatly with this lack of evidence all along and the proposition of some kind of rapid evolution was proposed, to my knowledge, as long ago as 1940 by renowned geneticist Richard Goldschmidt, whose theory was self-dubbed as the “hopeful monster” theory. Goldschmidt was very severely ridiculed and ostracized by his contemporary evolutionists, the scientific and educational establishments, for introducing this heresy into their religious dogma. After all, everyone “knew” that evolution happened by innumerable small gradations over millions and billions of years.

Ironically, what the proponents of Punctuated Equilibrium have done is to introduce magic and the miraculous into their schema! There are some who remain faithful to the old Darwinian gradualism despite the contraindications of the fossil evidence but the inertia within the ranks of the evolutionary religion is definitely in this direction. After all, the fossil record has to be explained (away) somehow and the stasis of organisms found there is simply too embarrassing for evolutionists. Some explanation is needed no matter how preposterous. They would rather believe another lie, or a variation of the lie, than embrace the obvious truth that there never has been any evolution of one species into another. (The implications are just too unacceptable!)

The sheer weight and magnitude of this empirical and factual consideration, and its obvious relevance to the issue, and the nature of the schema to avoid the obvious meaning and implications of the lack of transitional forms, reveals the nature of the denial as a psychopathology. There is simply no rational reason to believe in evolution on the part of anyone actually acquainted with the science of the matter. The underlying cause of this evasion of reality is a moral and ethical sickness, the manifestation of original sin.

Featured image credit: The Expulsion of Adam and Eve from Paradise (1791) by Benjamin West (1738-1820), currently in the National Gallery of Art

Recommended reading:

1. Evolution: A Theory in Crisisby geneticist Michael Denton
2. Shattering the Myths of Darwinism by science journalist Richard Milton
3. The Genesis Flood by Henry Morris and John Whitcomb (this is the book that started the whole modern creationist movement)
4. Creation’s Tiny Mysteryby Robert V. Gentry (a major work documenting the scientific falsification of geologic uniformitarianism)
5. Darwin’s Doubtby Stephen C. Meyer
6. Darwin’s Enigmaby Luther Sunderland
7. Darwin’s Creation Mythby (evolutionist) Alexander Mebane (a uniquely well-written and articulate refutation of Darwinian evolution by, ironically, an evolutionist) subtitled: “What It Is, How It Has Proved ‘Unfit,’ Why It Survives
8. Slaughter of the Dissidentsby Jerry Bergman
9. Living Fossils / Evolution: The Grand Experiment by Dr. Carl Werner
10. Forbidden Archaeology and The Hidden History of the Human Race by Michael Cremo and Richard Thompson
11. The Ghost in the Machineby Arthur Koestler
12. Janusby Arthur Koestler
13. From Darwin to Hitlerby Richard Weikart
14. That their Words May Be Used Against Themby Henry M. Morris
15. Evolution: Fact, Fraud or Faith?by Don Boys, Ph. D. B
16. Bones of Contentionby Prof. Marvin L. Lubenow
17. Bones of Contention(same title, different book) by evolutionist Roger Lewin
18. The Young Earthby John Morris
19. Young Earth Scienceby Jay Hall M.S.
20. The Intelligent Universeby Fred Hoyle
21. Signature in the Cell by Stephen Meyer
22. Darwin’s Black Boxby Michael Behe
23. Darwin Retriedby Norman MacBeth
24. Darwin on Trialby Phillip E. Johnson T
25. The New Evolutionary Timetableby Steven M. Stanley
26. The Collapse of Evolutionby Scott M. Huse
27. The Bone Peddlersby William R. Fix
28. Fossils in Focusby J. Kirby Anderson and Harold G. Coffin
29. The Fossil Recordby John D. Morris and Frank J. Sherwin
30. Mystery in Acambaroby Charles Hapgood
31. Secrets of the Ica Stones and Nazca Linesby Dennis Swift
32. Evolution: Challenge of the Fossil Recordby Duane T. Gish, Ph. D.
33. Dinosaurby Carl E. Baugh, Ph. D.
34. Why Do Men Believe Evolution Against All Odds?by Carl E. Baugh, Ph. D.
35. Icons of Evolutionby Jonathan Wells
36. The Case of the Midwife Toadby Arthur Koestler
37. Creation Compromises by Bert Thompson Ph.D. (on biblical theology)
38. Cosmology and the Zero Point Energy by Barry Setterfield (different subject but very relevant due to the significance of time to Darwinian dogma)