If Darwinists want a Church Triumphant, they need to do a better job of selling hope. The New York Times editorialized in 1925 that modern man needs "faith, even of a grain of mustard seed, in the evolution of life. . . . If man has evolved, it is inconceivable that the process should stop and leave him in his present imperfect state. Special creation has no such promise for man." Nobel laureate Hermann J. Muller said about man, "So far he has had only a short probationary period. He is just at the beginning of a great epic adventure in the course of world evolution." But I doubt if that will work -- most people want personal hope, not pie in the sky a billion years after they die.
I don't think Darwinists have truth on their side, but they also don't have anything that compares with what the Bible offers. As Francis Schaeffer points out in Genesis in Space and Time, the Bible tells us that "There was a real beginning, a beginning in a real unity in one man, one individual, differentiated from all that preceded him, and then differentiated in terms of male and female. It is this picture of man that gives strength to the Christian concept of the unity of mankind. The world today is trying to find a basis for claiming all men are one, but the Christian does not have this problem, for he understands why mankind is really united."
The Church of Darwin's only hope is to do more negative advertising on the biblical alternative. In the last century, George Bernard Shaw understood the score: "The world without the conception of evolution would be a world wherein men of strong mind could only despair" -- for their only hope would be in a God to whom Shaw would not pray. Darwinism is short on truth but also curb appeal because with it, as Schaeffer wrote, "man has lost his unique identity. . . . A Christian does not have this problem. He knows who he is. If anything is a gift from God, this is it -- knowing who you are."
Who are we? Sinners, yet specially created by God. What's our relation to our Creator? Psalm 73: "You guide me with your counsel and afterward you will receive me to glory. Whom have I in heaven but you?"
Marvin Olasky is Editor-in-Chief of World Magazine, and Provost of The King's College in New York City.
This article was published in the series on The Future of Evangelicalism. For similar articles, view the Evangelical Portal.
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