Why NOT Believe in Design? (1)
Anywhere you poke the creation, evidence of design pops out. Everything is at once orderly and complex, everywhere. That’s obvious.
That is, it is obvious if you are looking for it. Romans 1:20 states, ”For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made.” Evolutionists even admit there is an “appearance” of design but deny that it is real.
The question before us is, why would anyone reject the idea of design, and to do so passionately, as some do?
One leading evolutionist wrote, “We must be prepared for the long and costly battle of challenging every creationist statute
in every state in which it is introduced.” (Isaac Asimov, appeal letter for the ACLU) Why is the idea of design such a repulsive thought?
Romans 1 answers this question, and the words of these passionate unbelievers illustrate it.
”Because that, when they knew God, they glorified him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools.” (21-22)
“However improbably we regard this event [the spontaneous beginning of life out of nothing], given enough time it will almost certainly
happen at least once. . .Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain.
One has only to wait: time itself performs miracles.” Other evolutionists are more realistic. “Each [in a probability study] found that the odds against the spark of life igniting accidentally on Earth were . . . ‘10 to the power of 40,000.’” (C. Wickramasinghe)
”Wherefore God also gave them up to uncleanness through the lusts of their own hearts. . .” (24)
In 1984, Joseph Sobran wrote, in Human Life Review, “My guess is that the popular theory of evolution appeals precisely as an alternative to the Christian view of man, which not only demands faith but imposes moral obligations. People who adopt Evolutionism are not driven to it by consideration of the evidence; they like it without respect to the evidence, because they are passionate creatures, and it offers no moral impediment in their passions.”
In other words, only purposeless evolution lets them do what they want without feeling guilty since it eliminates accountability.
This idea is repeated by Aldous Huxley in an article entitled, “Confession of a Professed Atheist.”
Notice how transparent he is here. “I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption . . . For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom.”
We will finish this discussion next time.