Today, I ran across the following quote in Lee Strobel’s The Case for a Creator. Strobel writes about late evolutionary biologist George Gaylord Simpson, who said Darwinism teaches that “man is the result of a purposeless and natural process that did not have him in mind” (Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1967, p. 345).
In conversations and discussions, people often ask me the rhetorical question of what is wrong with today’s society. They don’t expect me to give them an answer, of course—they’re only thinking out loud. But these questions plague them. Why are people so rude to each other? Why are people so impatient with each other? Why are people generally so angry? Why do school shootings happen? What ever happened to common courtesy?
Just two weeks ago in nearby Zwickau, a married father of two was on his way to a job interview. He was dressed properly, in a suit and tie, ready to live his role as a good citizen of society. On the morning before his afternoon interview, he stopped his car on the street, got out, grabbed a six-year-old girl walking by, shoved her into the trunk of his car, and drove away. A witness got the license plate number of his car and phoned the police. An hour-and-a-half later, the police arrested the man. During that hour-and-a-half, the man raped the six-year-old girl and slit her throat.
Well, if society tells him that he’s only a highly evolved animal, and the girl is only a highly evolved animal, then why shouldn’t he rape and kill her? Animals don’t treat each other with kindness and compassion. The stronger kill the weaker all the time. Why should humans behave any differently?
When I consider these things, I think it’s no wonder that there’s something fundamentally rotten about today’s society.
Then I consider the quote from Simpson. Over my admittedly short lifetime, I’ve had contact with several people who grew up knowing that their parents didn’t want them. These individuals knew that they were “accidents.” They knew that they didn’t come into this world by anyone’s plan. Some of them knew that their parents were actively trying to prevent their conception. Can you imagine being a child and hearing your parents tell you that they didn’t want you? The two people in the world who should want you the most…and they tell you that you weren’t part of their plans at all. When they envisioned the rest of their lives, you weren’t in the picture.
What does that knowledge do to a child? It creates a lack of self-worth. It creates anger. It creates hate. If the two people in the world who should love you the most don’t love you, then why in all the universe should you love yourself? Why shouldn’t you treat yourself with as much contempt and disregard as you can muster? Why shouldn’t you lash out with anger and violence against everyone around you? (By the way, to parents out there: Even if you never wanted your children, don’t ever tell them that. There’s little you could do to them that would be more psychologically abusive.)
After all, you were just an accident. Something horrible that was never meant to be, which draws the revolted stares of the morbidly curious.
Humankind has evolved into such a child. Darwinism informed us that we were categorically unplanned, undesigned, and unwanted. Simpson interprets Darwinism to say that unfeeling natural processes did not have us in mind. We were not part of a plan; we are not part of anything greater than ourselves. We are nothing but an accident that was never meant to be.
Is it any wonder, then, that our race has no self-worth? Is it any wonder that more and more frequently and intensively, our race lashes out against itself with anger and violence and hatred? If we believe that we are nothing more than accidental animals, why shouldn’t we treat each other with as much contempt and disregard as we can muster?
People ask the rhetorical “Why?”
I answer with a rhetorical “Why not?” If Darwinism is fact, then why not?
Thank God for God, that it is not so.
