A Pig's Philosophy
by Gary DeMar

Evolutionists don’t believe in theology. I should say that those making the most noise about evolution and the encroachment of Intelligent Design and the overall Creation movement into the realm of evolutionary dogmatism do not believe in God and therefore have no use for theology. These evolutionary scientists believe that science is a neutral enterprise, that it does not need guidance from ideologies, especially religious ideologies. So then, how does the evolutionary scientist account for morality within his closed system? He can’t.

This does not mean that scientists don’t practice morality; it only means that given the basic assumptions of evolutionary theory, evolutionists cannot account for morality. It does mean that a technically well trained scientist could create a super killing machine and unleash it on the world. Given evolutionary assumptions, why would this be wrong? Why was it wrong for Nazi scientists to perform medical experiments on Jewish prisoners? So then, when evolution advocate Phillip Sloan maintains that “It’s not the business of theology to dictate the business of science,”1 he has created an unsolvable moral dilemma. Once the absolutes of a scientific theory have been dogmatized, where are the moral breaks to be found on how the science might be used? Some will say that these issues should be settled in religion classes. Again, evolutionists like Richard Dawkins and Daniel Dennett are atheists. It’s their works that are driving the anti-design debate. Lawrence Krauss, who teaches physics at Case Western Reserve University, says that he is “fine with religion in religion classes, not in science.” But religion as moral dogma cannot be taught in public schools. Students cannot be taught that some things are morally right or wrong based on religion.

Robert Lewis Dabney (1820–1898) understood the ethical implication of Darwinism soon after the publication and public absorption of On the Origin of the Species (1859):

If mine is a pig’s destiny, why may I not hold this “pig philosophy”? Again, if I am but an animal refined by evolution, I am entitled to live an animal life. Why not? The leaders in this and the sensualistic philosophy may themselves be restrained by their habits of mental culture, social discretion and personal refinement (for which they are indebted to reflex Christian influences); but the herd of common mortals are not cultured and refined, and in them the doctrine will bear its deadly fruit.2

Marxism and Nazism were built on Darwin’s theory. “Given the close relationship between Darwinism and the horrific crimes committed by Mussolini, Hitler, Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge Regime we are forced to conclude that ours has been the Darwinian century.”3

Darwin believed that the various races were at different evolutionary levels, all distant from the apes, with Blacks at the bottom and Caucasians at the top. Thomas H. Huxley, an ardent defender of Darwin who garnered the nickname “Darwin’s Bulldog,” believed that “No rational man, cognizant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the white man.” Huxley described whites as “bigger-brained and smaller-jawed.”4 According to Raymond F. Surburg, Richard Hofstadter, in Social Darwinism in American Thought, demonstrated “that Darwinism was one of the chief sources of racism and of a belligerent ideology which characterized the last half of the 19th century in Europe and America. . . .”5 Raymond F. Surburg continues by declaring that:

The theory of evolution became the philosophy of life for militant atheism in the 20th century. Few people realize that Hitler, in bringing about World War II, merely put into practice what he believed was human evolution. Darwin and Nietzsche were the two philosophers studied by the National Socialists in working out the philosophy set for in Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In this work Hitler asserted that men rose from animals by fighting. It was the contention of the Fuehrer that this struggle, wherein one being feeds on another and the blood of the weaker is the life of the stronger, has continued from time immemorable and must continue until the most highly advanced branch of humanity dominates the whole earth.6

The biology text used in the Dayton school system was George William Hunter’s Civic Biology (1914), the best-selling text at the time. Hunter’s work was “heavily laced with the scientific racism of the day. According to Hunter, ‘simple life forms of life on earth slowly and gradually gave rise to those more complex.’ Humans appeared as a progressive result of this evolutionary process, with the Caucasian race being ‘finally, the highest type of all.’”7

Racism has been with man since the dawn of sin. We cannot claim, therefore, that evolution gave rise to racism.8 Evolution only made the practice respectable because it justified racial attitudes and practices on the basis of “science.” Darwin’s defenders don’t like to talk about Darwinism’s dirty little secret. “Darwin’s racial and sexual views permeated his discussion of the origin of species and especially of the descent of man. His contemporaries were shocked by the notion that human beings had evolved from primates. Now many people are shocked by his racism.”9

For more information on this topic, get Gary's Religion of Evolution DVD. It includes a 25-page study guide and analyzes the religious nature of evolution, using the evolutionists' own words.

1. Quoted in Frank Bentayou, “Scientists Press Pope to Clarify Position on Evolution,” Newhouse News Service (August 26, 2005): http://www.newhousenews.com/archive/bentayou082605.html

2. Robert L. Dabney, “The Influences of False Philosophies upon Character and Conduct,” in Discourses (Harrisonburg, VA: Sprinkle Pub., 1979), 4:574.

3. F. W. Schnitzler, “Darwinian Violence,” Christianity and Society, 4:3 (July 1994), 28.

4. Thomas H. Huxley, Lay Sermons, Addresses and Reviews (New York: Appleton, 1871), 20. Quoted in Morris, The Long War Against God, 60.

5. Raymond F. Surburg, “The Influence of Darwinism,” in Darwin, Evolution, and Creation, ed. Paul A. Zimmerman (St. Louis, MO: Concordia 1959), 196.

6. Surburg, “The Influence of Darwinism,”196.

7. George William Hunter, A Civic Biology: Presented in Problems (New York: American, 1914), 194–96, 405. Quoted in Edward J. Larson, Summer for the God’s: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (New York: Basic Books, 1997), 23–24.

8. Richard Hofstadter, Social Darwinism in American Thought, rev. ed. (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, [1944, 1955] 1967), 171–72.

9. Joyce Appleby, Lynn Hunt, and Margaret Jacob, Telling the Truth About History (New York: W.W. Norton and Co., 1994), 184.