WHAT IS THE IMPACT OF THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION (TOE) ON MORALITY?

For one thing, TOE naturalism removes any possible objective basis for objective moral truth and laws. It also denies that there is any higher purpose to life. Consequently, the only meaning of life is the meaning that we subjectively create for ourselves. In fact, many evolutionists gladly admit this. Atheist evolutionist and philosopher, Michael Ruse, admits:

• The evolutionist’s claim… is that morality is subjective – it is all a question of human feelings and sentiments… We think morality has objective reference [to a moral reality outside of our own creation] even though it does not. (Evolutionary Ethics, Zygon, Vol. 21, no. 1; March 1986)

Therefore, whatever morality we have, we must create for ourselves. In view of this, Ethics Prof. David Anderson commented about the impact of TOE:

• Objective moral values and duties are no more real than the tooth fairy. (Salvo, Spring 2016, 26)

Some atheistic evolutionists go even further and deny the existence of freewill. The late evolutionary biologist, William Provine had written:

• What modern science tells us… is that human beings are very complex machines. There is no way that the evolutionary process as currently conceived can produce a being that is truly free to make choices.

• Free will as it is traditionally conceived… simply does not exist. (“Evolution and the Foundation of Ethics,” MBL Science, Vol. 3, no. 1, 28)

Anderson comments:

• Provine’s commitment to determinism simply lays waste to morality itself.

If we are nothing more than materials, and the actions of materials are all governed by the laws of science, there is no room for any consideration of freewill, which requires an extra-material explanation.

But if there is no freewill, then we could not have acted otherwise, and if we could not have acted otherwise, then we cannot be held guilty for what we have done. Consequently, ISIS is not guilty of their genocide, rapes, and kidnappings of women and young girls into sexual slavery. They could not have done otherwise. Their behaviors are exclusively the result of forces outside of their non-existent control.

Besides, they hadn’t broken any higher, universal, objective moral laws. Consequently, this is the way that the West is treating the Muslim refugees who are raping their way across Europe. Therefore, they are not accorded their full dignity as humans and are not held responsible for their behavior, since they are just a product of deterministic forces outside of their control.

Germany is now distributing condoms to them, reflecting the fact that they neither have any moral clarity or moral resolution to meaningfully confront these horrors and to protect the innocent.

Instead, Europe, under the influence of TOE, is further descending into moral relativistic confusion. These nations are even abandoning their traditional understanding of justice as merely their own chauvinistic beliefs. The Telegraph (March 28, 2016) reports:

• Teaching children fundamental British values is an act of “cultural supremacism”, teachers have said, as members of the National Union of Teachers (NUT) vote to replace the concept with one that includes “international rights”.

• However, teachers argue “fundamental British values” set an “inherent cultural supremacism, particularly in the context of multicultural schools and the wider picture of migration”.

TOE has eliminated from the discussion the question of whether the British concept of justice might include some vital objective truths about justice. It has also eliminated any possible objective rationale for Britain’s existence. God help us.

Evolution and the Scientific Consensus

Is there really a scientific consensus in favor of macro-evolution? According to Casey Luskin, research coordinator for the Discovery Institute, such a consensus, if it still exists, is quickly coming apart:

• In 2007, Harvard chemist George Whitesides admitted he has “no idea” how “life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth.” More recently, a paper in Complexity acknowledged, “Many different ideas are competing and none is available to provide a sufficiently plausible root to the first living organisms.” (CRJ, Vol 37/#03, 37)

This issue of “consensus” is not a minor one. Evolutionists continually appeal to this alleged consensus to argue that they represent science, while IDers and creationists do not. Therefore, in order to be in step with science, schools must use the textbooks that advance evolution. It also means that there should be no place for ID or even any criticism of evolution in the classroom.

However, this “consensus” is becoming increasingly elusive, even on Darwin’s home-turf:

• In 2008, sixteen leading biologists convened in Altenberg, Austria, to discuss problems with the neo-Darwinian synthesis. When covering this conference, Nature quoted leading scientists saying things like, “evolutionary theory has told us little about” important events like “the origin of wings and the invasion of the land.” That same year, Cornell evolutionary biologist William Provine explained that “every assertion of the “evolutionary synthesis below is false,” including: “natural selection was the primary mechanism at every level of the evolutionary process,” “macroevolution was a simple extension of microevolution,” and “evolution produces a tree of life.” (38)

The “tree-of-life” is a concept inseparable from Darwinism. If higher life-forms had evolved from lower ones, we should expect the fossil record to bear witness to this fact. We should therefore be able to observe how one form gradually morphs into another, creating a virtual tree-of-life, connecting the dots. However, such a tree has eluded its proponents:

• The following year, leading biologist Eugene Koonin wrote that breakdowns in core neo-Darwinian tenets such as the “traditional concept of the tree of life” or that “natural selection is the main driving force of evolution” indicate “the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair.” (38)

• Koonin mentioned growing skepticism over the “tree of life,” and the technical literature contains numerous examples of conflicting evolutionary trees, challenging universal common ancestry. An article in Nature reported that “disparities between molecular and morphological trees” lead to “evolution wars” because “evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology.” Another Nature paper reported that newly discovered genes “are tearing apart traditional ideas about the animal family tree,” since they “give a totally different tree from what everyone else wants.” A 2009 article in New Scientist observes that “many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded.” (38)

It is noteworthy that the tree should be “discarded” rather than revised. This is because many have despaired of finding a tree – a biological/morphological roadmap - to demonstrate how one species evolved into another. However, it would seem that to despair that such a tree exists is also to despair of neo-Darwinism. The tree is as indispensible to neo-Darwinism as a blueprint is to an engineer.

Consistent with the idea of unguided natural selection, evolutionists had predicted that they would find leftover, now useless, genes leftover from our evolutionary ancestors. They called these genes “junk DNA.” Francis Collins had even claimed that “45 percent of the human genome” consists of “genetic flotsam and jetsam” – leftover junk! The presence of such an extensive collection of junk, would, of course, rule in favor of evolution. However, more recently, the findings have ruled against evolution:

• A major 2012 Nature paper by the ENCORE consortium reported “biochemical functions for 80% of the genome.” Lead ENCORE scientists predicted that with further research, “80 percent will go to 100” since “almost every nucleotide is associated with a function.” (39)

This prediction does not accord with the messiness of evolution and its leftover loose ends that evolutionists would expect to find, but rather with the design of Intelligence!

Is there a consensus regarding evolution among the scientific community? Hardly! Nevertheless, the vast majority still expect to find a natural explanation for the origins of life and speciation. However, in light of the above, such an expectation is the product of faith and not science. Interestingly, it is this faith that now predominates throughout our scientific institutions.