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Is Darwinism and belief in an omnipotent God compatible? For PR reasons, many evolutionists say yes. To gull believers into an atheistic account of nature, they've made this a chief talking point. But to see the dishonesty of this PR campaign, all one needs to do is read the writings of the Darwinists' celebrated lights. The scientists who understand the theory most purely insist on this incompatibility: no external cause accounts for nature, they argue; unguided material processes alone explain it.

Take a look at Edward O. Wilson's introduction to From So Simple A Beginning: The Four Great Books of Charles Darwin. He writes that "we must conclude that life has diversified on Earth autonomously without any kind of external guidance. Evolution in a pure Darwinian world has no goal or purpose: the exclusive driving force is random mutations sorted out by natural selection from one generation to the next." And then this: "we were descended from animals by the same blind force that created those animals, and we remain a member species of this planet's biosphere...humanity is not the center of creation, and not its purpose either."

The opportunistic evolutionists who appear on TV debates and glibly say to try and score a point and sooth gullible theists, "Sure, religion and Darwinism are compatible," should really be debating scientists on their own side. Do they think Edward Wilson is wrong? Do they think Richard Dawkins is wrong? They can't dismiss the incompatibility of religion and Darwinism as a straw-man argument when their own leaders are the ones who constructed it.

topics:
Religion, Books