The "Facts" vs. The Faith

For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness . . . so that they are without excuse (Romans 1:18-20).

When men decide either for or against the claims of Christ, do they objectively evaluate all "the facts" as those who are neutral and without prejudice? The Apostle Paul says, No: non-Christians deliberately and maliciously suppress the true nature of "the facts" because they bear inescapable witness to the certain judgment of God upon their lawless lives.

Consider the confrontation of ungodly men with the record of Creation in Genesis. James P. Lodge has described the components of the "scientific method" as follows:

A scientist formulates a hypothesis ... to explain something he has observed... He then makes the best efforts of which he is capable to prove himself wrong. If he is unsuccessful, the hypothesis makes an official transition into the status of a theory, and it is provisionally accepted until such time as it fails to explain something it should have explained. Then it is replaced.

Was this the dispassionate method used by the Post-Enlightenment world to set aside the Biblical perspective in favor of an evolutionary one?

It must be admitted by all that at no point in time did the creationist framework "fail to explain something it should have explained." It was put aside many generations before Darwin or anyone else found it "wanting" at the bar of science. The 1800's saw men grow increasingly intolerant of the Biblical perspective on life and more and more desirous of the non-Christian world-and-life view (Weltanschauung) expressed by men like Kant, Hegel, Mill and Marx. But no worldview is complete without a theory of origins, and Darwin filled this vacuum perfectly. Well-not quite. It seems that Darwin's hypothesis failed to explain many things it should have explained. But it would have to do. As Dobzhansky tells us; "Darwin's successors had to labor to adduce proofs that the evolution of the biological world and of man had actually occurred. That was the paramount task which biologists faced in the closing decades of the 19th century." After reading Dr. Lodge, one might have thought that the paramount task of 19th century biologists would have been to make the best efforts of which they were capable to prove the theory wrong. This was not the case. Dobzhansky observes, "With Darwin's successors... it was necessary to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the living world as we see it is a product of the evolutionary process." The "scientific" questions must surely be, "Why?" Why was it "necessary to prove beyond reasonable doubt that the living world as we see it is a product of the evolutionary process?" The German Biblical critic David Strauss answered that evolution was irresistible to those who thirsted for truth and freedom:

Here at least We shall be free; th' Almighty hath not built Here for his envy, will not drive us hence: Here we may reign secure; and, in my choice, To reign is worth ambition, though in Hell: Better to reign in Hell than serve in Heaven.: John Milton, Paradise Lost, I, l 262

Vainly did we philosophers and critical theologians over and over again decree the extermination of miracles; our ineffectual sentence died away, because we could neither dispense with miraculous agency nor point to any natural force able to supply it, where it had seemed most indispensable. Darwin has demonstrated this force, this process of nature; he has opened the door by which a happier coming race will cast out miracles, never to return. Everyone who knows what miracles imply will praise him, in consequence, as one of the greatest benefactors of the human race.

The biologist Karl Pearson also recalled "the joy we young men then felt when we saw that wretched date BC 4004 replaced by a long vista of millions of years of development." Why is the "neutral" date BC 4004 "wretched"? Is this "objectivity"? What do miracles "imply"? Is this merely a "dispassionate search for truth?"

With the cataclysmic judgment of the Flood in back of us, the inevitable judgment of God looms threateningly on the horizon. But Darwin's confession of faith was sure: "As all forms of life are the lineal descendants of those which lived long before the Cambrian epoch, we feel certain that the ordinary succession by generation has never been broken, and that no cataclysm has desolated the world. Hence we may look with some confidence to a secure future of great length." Sir Julian Huxley also demonstrated the truth of 2 Peter 3 when he affirmed, "The past of life has been steadily increased by science until it now [1958] exceeds the staggering figure of two and one-half billion years. And in place of an imminent Last Judgment Life on this planet can now envisage at least an equal span of evolutionary time in the future." No doubt his belief produced great relief.

Did the "objective facts of scientific pursuit" compel acceptance of an evolutionary Weltanschauung? Or was and is it a desire to escape the Living God of the Bible? George Bernard Shaw answered: "If you can realize how insufferably the world was oppressed by the notion that everything that happened was an arbitrary personal act of an arbitrary personal God of dangerous, jealous and cruel personal character, you will understand how the world jumped at Darwin." The Bible was clearly known to all, but its truth was "suppressed in unrighteousness." History and the world around us, however, testify against Mr. Shaw's implied justification, demonstrating with unmistakable clarity that it is the arbitrary rule of man over man that has created slavery, tyranny and oppression; the rule of God's Law brings justice and security. But, as Milton might write today, "Better to rule in an impersonal world of would-be gods than to serve in a personal world of responsibility under God's Law."

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