Stephen E. Jones

Creation/Evolution Quotes: Religion #3 - Evolution & God

[Quotes] [Religion, #1, #2, #4, #5]

Religion #3 - Evolution & God:

1. Evolution can be a substitute for God
• Evolution can be ascribed the attributes of God
• "This idea of a Master Breeder infinitely wise and patient .... could be little less than God Himself"
• Evolution can be an object of religious devotion"
• "evolution is ... for many [biologists] ... an object of genuinely religious devotion"
• Evolution can be loved in the place of God
• To believe and to serve was not enough ... it is ... imperative literally to love evolution"
2. Evolution can be worshipped in the place of God
• Evolutionary mechanisms can be worshipped
• Chance directed by selection becomes a sort of providence, which is secretly worshipped
• Darwin is spoken of as though he was a god
• Evolutionists have spoken of rendering "their homage to Darwin"

Religion #3 - Evolution & God:

1. Evolution can be a substitute for God
• Evolution can be ascribed the attributes of God
• "This idea of a Master Breeder infinitely wise and patient .... could be little less than God Himself"

"Darwin asked his imaginary reader to suppose the existence of: `a Being with penetration sufficient to perceive differences in the outer and innermost organization quite imperceptible to man, and with forethought extending over future centuries to watch with unerring care and select for any object the offspring of an organism produced under the foregoing circumstances, I can see no conceivable reason why he could not form a new race (or several were he to separate the stock of the original organism and work on several islands) adapted to new ends. As we assume his discrimination, and his forethought, and his steadiness of object, to be incomparably greater than those qualities in man, so we may suppose the beauty and complications of the adaptations of the new races and their differences from the original stock to be greater than in the domestic races produced by man's agency.... With time enough, such a Being might rationally (without some unknown law opposed him) aim at almost any result....Seeing what blind capricious man has actually effected by selection during the few last years, and what in a ruder state he has probably effected without any systematic plan during the last few thousand years, he will be a bold person who will positively put limits to what the supposed Being could effect during whole geological periods' (Darwin F., ed. "The Foundations of the Origin of Species, Two Essays Written in 1842 and 1844, by Charles Darwin," Cambridge UK, 1909, pp.85-87). A striking conception, this idea of a Master Breeder infinitely wise and patient, with infinite time at his disposal, who, carefully selecting from among the variations in nature those which suited his purposes, molded organic nature to his own wise ends. Such a Being could be little less than God Himself." (Greene J.C., "The Death of Adam: Evolution and its Impact on Western Thought," [1959], Mentor: New York, 1961, reprint, pp.261-262. Ellipses Greene's). [top]

• Evolution can be an object of religious devotion"
• "evolution is ... for many [biologists] ... an object of genuinely religious devotion"

"The concept of organic Evolution is very highly prized by biologists, for many of whom it is an object of genuinely religious devotion, because they regard it as a supreme integrative principle. This is probably the reason why the severe methodological criticism employed in other departments of biology has not yet been brought to bear against evolutionary speculation." (Thompson, W.R.*, "Science and Common Sense: An Aristotelian Excursion," [1937], Magi Books: Albany NY, 1965, reprint, p.229). [top]

• Evolution can be loved in the place of God
• to believe and to serve was not enough ... it is ... imperative literally to love evolution"

"Reduced to the initial and still crude form in which it is now emerging in the modern world, the new religious spirit appears, as we have said (cf. I), as the impassioned vision and anticipation of some super-mankind ... To believe and to serve was not enough: we now find that it is becoming not only possible but imperative literally to love evolution." (Teilhard de Chardin P., "Christianity and Evolution," 1971, pp.183-184, in Bird Wendell R., "The Origin of Species Revisited", Regency: Nashville TN, Vol. II, 1991, p.264) [top]

2. Evolution can be worshipped in the place of God
• Evolutionary mechanisms can be worshipped
• Chance directed by selection becomes a sort of providence, which is secretly worshipped

"Directed by all-powerful selection, chance becomes a sort of providence, which, under the cover of atheism, is not named but which is secretly worshipped...To insist, even with Olympian assurance, that life appeared quite by chance and evolved in this fashion, is an unfounded supposition which I believe to be wrong and not in accordance with the facts." (Grasse P-P., "Evolution of Living Organisms Evidence for a New Theory of Transformation", [1973], Academic Press: New York NY, 1977, p.107) [top]

• Darwin is spoken of as though he was God
• Evolutionists have spoken of rendering "their homage to Darwin"

"Meanwhile, Juliette and I had been invited to attend the celebration of the centenary of the publication of Darwin's Origin of Species, at the University of Chicago ... The preparations for the centenary celebrations were now in full swing, people arriving from many countries to render their homage to Darwin..." (Huxley J.S., "Memories II," [1973], Penguin Books: Harmondsworth, Middlesex UK, 1978, reprint, pp.181-182) [top]

* Authors with an asterisk against their name are believed not to be evolutionists.