This edition of our web page addresses the theory of evolution. Why did a culture that was permeated with Christianity accept the Godless doctrine of evolution?

Other essays are available. Just e-mail us with a request. Please also watch our web-site for posting of new essays. Other essays include:

• Is it Religion or Politics?
• Christmas Tradition or Truth?
• Prayer in Public
• Love, Love, or Love?
• The Resurrection of Jesus the Christ
• A Service of Prayer and Reflection (after September 11, 2001)
• Peace on Earth
• Forsaken by God
• Science vs. Evolution
• War With Iraq?
• Episcopal Church Accepts Homosexual Bishop

Why did western culture accept the theory of evolution?

Belief in a natural evolution of the universe from a disorganized or undeveloped state into what exists today is not new. The ancient pagan Greek philosophers wondered about such things and posed some possibilities that their minds, steeped in the popular theology of their day, considered logical and reasonable. But belief in natural evolution for anything but minor changes was never very popular. The evidence of a plan of design in so much of the world is so overwhelming, that most ancient cultures concluded that a God or Gods or spirits of some kind played a part in the formation of the world.

With the coming of the Old Testament Scriptures, came a detailed account of the formation of the world and universe, an account that clearly stated that everything that exists was created by one almighty God in six ordinary days. This teaching was accepted not only by many of the descendants of Israel, but also in New Testament times by those who recognized in Jesus Christ the fulfillment and true God of the Old Testament. The doctrine of divine creation was also accepted later by the followers of Mohammed.

In time Christianity became the dominant religion in all of what is commonly called western civilization, and Islam became the dominant religion of the near east. For centuries all of western and near eastern civilization fully accepted that our world was created by a very real and powerful God. Today, however, the dominant view in western civilization with regard to the origin of the world is the idea that it all came about without any direct participation by any God, purely through natural processes.

A question: How could western civilization, which once so strongly and universally believed in divine creation, come to reject that teaching in favor of the demonstrably unreasonable belief that everything came into being apart from intelligent design and divine participation?

Part of the answer is the sin of rebellion. Humanity is sinful, and as such carries with it a latent tendency to rebel against God. It does not want to be accountable to a creator God, therefore it will be attracted to a teaching that there is no creator God to whom one might be accountable.

Part of the answer is the sin of pride. In the quest for knowledge, it appeals to human nature to think that God is not needed for revelation, that the intelligent human mind can figure everything out on its own.

Part of the answer lies with Bible-rejecting authors like Llyle and Charles Darwin, whose works and terminology are praised and used today by believers in the doctrine of Evolution, even though new discoveries in science have demonstrated the errors of their theories.

A significant part of the answer, however, lies in what some might consider an unlikely place: the medieval organized Christian church. To be sure, the medieval church did not reject the doctrine of creation. It did something else that would eventually lead many both inside and outside the church to reject this important doctrine. It developed the habit, instead of always returning to and examining the bare words of Scripture, of quoting the "fathers", those early leaders in the church and in time other prominent men and theologians. Together with this unfortunate habit, it adopted a most pernicious attitude and policy: the idea that once an issue had been addressed by the church and accepted by its leaders, the conclusions were to be accepted without question from then on.

For example, in the mid 800's a number of documents were collected and promoted as proof that the Pope of Rome had been recognized as the supreme power in the church directly by Constantine. They are known as the Pseudo-Isadorian Decretals. They were later proven to be forgeries, but since the church had accepted them it was considered heresy to oppose the papal power they had established.

So it was that when Martin Luther and others started reading the Scriptures and discovered that the church had departed from Scripture teaching, the response was not, "It is written in Scripture," but "the church has established." When it could, the organized church silenced all opposition with imprisonment, torture, and even death.

So also it happened that when people started learning more about the physical universe and could see with their own eyes that there was disagreement with what the organized church had accepted as truth, they, too, were considered heretics for questioning the church.Yet the church was so obviously wrong, those involved in empirical studies continued coming to conclusions that were in accord with their observations. So, a wedge started to be pushed between science and the church.

Because the organized church had discouraged the people from reading the Bible themselves, claiming that the Bible was too hard for non-theologians to understand, many people did not realize that there was a difference between what was actually written in Scripture and what the church was saying. It was simply assumed by many that the church and Scripture were in agreement. Sadly, this resulted in a "guilt by association", such that when it became obvious that the church should be doubted when it came to certain scientific conclusions, people started to doubt the Scriptures as well. It did not matter that from the time of the Lutheran Reformation the Bible was being translated and put into the hands of the people. The seeds of doubt in its veracity had already been planted.

Another factor compounded the problem started by the medieval church. In the years after the Reformation, there were some who egaged in extensive debate and polemics about what was true doctrine, while at the same time ignoring the need to apply God's truth practically to the lives of people. This occurred in the Lutheran and Reformed branches of Christianity as well as in the Catholic church. When the Pietists turned their attention to Christian living, two things happened. First, the proverbial pendulum swung from the extreme of emphasizing doctrinal purity while ignoring Christian living to emphasizing Christian living and ignoring any need or call for doctrinal purity. Secondly, many in the churches came to consider moral living the only real purpose for religion. The field of western civilization had been well fertilized for the seeds of Modernism, the rejection of Biblical authority, the limitation of the role of the church and religion to moralism, and the turn to empirical studies and natural observation for answers about the physical world.

The accepted view of Evolution did not come as a result of purely scientific study. It was the result of people who had already rejected the Biblical view and were deliberately looking for an explanation of the physical world that did not include the supernatural. It was not merely that purely empirical studies cannot address questions about God, it was because they started with an anti-theist bias reached apart from science that they came up with the conclusion of long periods of time and natural selection. They wanted a godless creation, and because their knowledge of the details especially of biology was limited, even though they acknowledged that there was no proof for their idea, they believed further scientific investigation would prove them correct.

Further scientific investigation has instead revealed that especially the theories of biological evolution cannot even possibly be true. Much so-called scientific investigation has been said to confirm the theories, but only if the theories are imposed upon the results of the investigation, and the data is forced to conform with an evolutionary presupposition. Citing numerous examples of true science that argues against the theory of evolution is beyond the scope of this essay. The reader is encouraged to check the references at the bottom of the LINKS page for a couple of web sites that do address this matter. That so many "scientists" continue to believe, support, and preach the doctrine of evolution in spite of the observable facts confirms the claim that the theory of evolution is not a scientific theory but a religiously held dogma.