Evolution Warps Religious Thinking
Evolution is an old idea that has been dusted off and doctored up for modern consumption. Though unprovable by the scientific method, it is assumed to be true. Even the clergy embrace it, saying God created by means of evolution. But the Bible disagrees.
THE Bible tells Christians to follow in the footsteps of Jesus, but today the religious fad is to trail off after the scientists who copy Greek philosophers. In the fifth century before Christ the Greek philosopher Empedocles believed in spontaneous generation of life, gradual evolution of organisms and survival of the fittest. In the following century Aristotle taught that “man is the highest point of one long and continuous ascent.” Greek philosophers in general preached the evolution idea.
Included in Paul’s warning, at Colossians 2:8 (NW), against traditions would be the evolutionary philosophies of these babblers, who were so wise in their own eyes and who mocked God’s wisdom as foolishness: “Look out: perhaps there may be some man that will carry you off as his prey through the philosophy and empty deception according to the tradition of men, according to the elementary things of the world and not according to Christ.”
Christendom’s clergymen have been carried off as the prey of evolution. The ancient Greeks ensnared many in their day; the modern scientists take captive by their wisdom millions today, including many clergymen. Evolution is the club used to beat into submission those who once believed the Bible. Like the ancient Greeks, the scientists are the wise ones, they have the facts, they follow the scientific method. Any who do not agree with them because of the Bible record of creation are gullible ignoramuses. The proud clergy do not want to be classed as gullible ignoramuses. So they fall prey to evolution.
RELIGIONISTS WARPED BY EVOLUTION
The Catholic Encyclopedia says that the idea that God used evolution to produce man’s body “was propounded by St. Augustine.” In August, 1950, Pope Pius removed any objection to considering “the doctrine of evolution in as far as it inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter.” A year later he clarified this by saying that “the theory of evolution can be studied so far as it deals with origins of the human body but should not be allowed to raise questions as to the divine creation of the human soul.”
In 1947 Roman Catholic priest Hauber said, in Creation and Evolution, concerning God and evolution: “He initiated it, directs and guides it, He knows whither it is leading.” If you do not agree you are working harm: “Those who oppose sound scientific theories, such as the general theory of evolution has a right to be called, are doing harm to the cause of truth.” Like the Pharisees of old, these clergymen reject the truth themselves and hinder those who wish to accept it.
When asked, “Does evolution conflict with our Christian faith?” the Catholic Our Sunday Visitor, January 9, 1955, answered: “Christian scientists and philosophers on the whole regard evolution as merely the method which God used in causing various species of life to develop from antecedent forms. This involves contradiction neither with the Scriptures nor with any truth of the Christian faith.”
The Roman Catholic Church boasts that she has absorbed much that is related to paganism and demon worship, and she will not choke when swallowing this godless philosophy of the ancient Greeks, as shown on page 172 of the volume Catholic Cabinet: “As Rome absorbed Platonism and Aristotelianism, so will she absorb evolutionary philosophy.”
Judaism can swallow it also. Rabbi Tepfer says, as reported in an Associated Press dispatch dated August 14, 1953: “There is no contradiction, as we see it. Evolution itself may be part of God’s indirect revelation.” The same dispatch quoted Dr. Handy of Union Theological seminary as saying concerning Protestantism: “Nearly all ministers have come to see that there is no conflict between evolution and divine creation.” Life magazine, November 7, 1955, reported Baptist minister Harry Emerson Fosdick as saying: “Today the general idea of evolution is taken for granted as gravitation is.”
TOO WEAK TO RESIST WARPING
That is just the trouble. Evolution is taken for granted. What does it matter that scientists cannot prove it? Who are the clergy to demand proof for anything? They cannot prove such doctrines as trinity and immortal soul. Why demand proof for this new one they are adding to their creeds? By the din of repetition both the scientific falsehood and the religious lies are believed by millions. The blind lead the blind, the weak lead the weak, and where in the religious systems of Christendom can a hungry man find the spiritual food to build uncompromising strength? Preachers and parishioners are weaklings in righteousness and integrity, and who will exert themselves to practice the fine-sounding principles that are occasionally preached?
Sometimes the clergy complain of the listless apathy of their flocks, but how can the starving be strong? It is the Bible, not science, that contains spiritual water, but these supposed people of God hunger and thirst: “My people have committed two evils: they have forsaken me, the fountain of living waters, and hewed out cisterns for themselves, broken cisterns, that can hold no water.” The religious leaders do not stick to God’s Word but turn to the broken cisterns of evolutionary science. The result is a spiritually starved clergy, and how can the starved feed the starving? Jehovah foretold the famine conditions in Christendom’s religious systems: “The days come, saith the Lord Jehovah, that I will send a famine in the land, not a famine of bread, nor a thirst for water, but of hearing the words of Jehovah.”—Jer. 2:13, RS; Amos 8:11, AS.
Christendom’s clergy still pose as Christian, still claim belief in the Bible. But they are like weathercocks that turn with the wind of public opinion, lining up with what is currently popular, being swept along like fall leaves on a windy day. And in it all they try to drag God’s Word along, bending and twisting it to fit the popular whims that bend and twist them. Molded by evolution themselves, they wish to mold the Bible into conformity also.
THEY CANNOT WARP THE BIBLE!
It will not bend to their will, it will not fit their scientific philosophy. The Bible cannot be made to say that man’s body evolved from lower animals, because each created family kind was made to reproduce only its own kind, “according to its kind.” Evolution says just the opposite, that one kind brings forth a new and different kind. But science has no proof, no evidence for this. Not only is the evolutionary chain missing its first link of spontaneous generation of life as a starting point, but it is missing thousands of links. This fictional chain is unsupported by the fossil record. Genetic changes, called mutations, cannot bridge the gaps between family kinds. Mutations supply great variety within the family kind, yes; but a new family kind, no. The compromising clergy may bed down with evolution, but the uncompromising Bible will not join such unscriptural relations.—Gen. 1:11, 12, NW.
Moreover, when the clergy try to split man into two pieces, a living human body and an immortal spiritual soul, and say the body evolved but the soul was directly implanted by God, they are again warped in their religious thinking. The human body was made directly from the dust and God started the living, breathing processes and man became a living soul, just as animals before him had been similarly made into living souls: “Then Jehovah God proceeded to form the man out of dust from the ground and to blow into his nostrils the breath of life, and the man came to be a living soul.” “God proceeded to create the great sea monsters and every living soul that glides.” “Let the earth put forth living souls according to their kinds, domestic animal and creeping animal and wild beast of the earth according to its kind.”—Gen. 2:7; 1:21, 24, NW.
Man does not have a spiritual, immortal soul separate from the body, that lives on after the body dies. Man himself is a soul, and the human “soul that sins shall die.” Even in the case of the sinless soul of Jesus we read: “He poured out his soul to death.” Men who have died may have a hope of resurrection, but death itself is the same for man as for any other animal, and to think differently is vanity: “I said in my heart with regard to the sons of men that God is testing them to show them that they are but beasts. For the fate of the sons of men and the fate of beasts is the same; as one dies, so dies the other. They all have the same breath, and man has no advantage over the beasts; for all is vanity. All go to one place; all are from the dust, and all turn to dust again.”—Ezek. 18:4; Isa. 53:12; Eccl. 3:18-20, RS.
DO NOT YOU BE SHAMEFULLY WARPED!
True Christians will follow in the footsteps of Jesus, who said God’s Word is truth and that it is made void by human traditions. Blind clergymen and the blind flocks they mislead into the evolutionary philosophies of ancient Greeks and modern scientists are not following in the way of God or in the footsteps of Christ or the teachings of the Bible. Like green timber in the sun, those who soak up the speculations of the shining lights of evolutionary thinking have their religious thinking warped out of line with God’s Word. To say God created by means of evolution is to reject the Bible for human wisdom, and it leads to shame: “The wise men are put to shame, they are dismayed and taken: lo, they have rejected the word of Jehovah; and what manner of wisdom is in them?”—Jer. 8:9, AS.
Why should you let your thinking be warped by unprovable theories of men? Why should you let weak clerical leaders who are misshapen by human speculations make you spiritually deformed also? Why should you reject Jehovah’s Word and be put to shame with them? Do not be fearful of men and be pressured into conformity with warped men. Conform to God’s Word.