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by Steve Risner

Evolution is not a scientific study. It's a religion. Some will argue otherwise (most, I would guess, who believe in evolution) but the case is fairly well closed. Evolution (meaning the idea that life emerged from non-life billions of years ago and slowly, over eons of time, became more and more complex and specialized, changing from pond scum to, eventually, people through a series of mutations and natural selection) is a belief system. As much as evolutionists want it to be based on evidence, it's not at all—not at all! If I had a dollar for every time an evolutionist told me about the mountain of “hard evidence” for universal common descent, I'd be fairly wealthy. Yet, when asked for just a pebble from this mountain there is most often no response. On occasion, things that do not support common ancestry are given as a portion of that mountain, or evidence shared by creationists to support their models is shown. But evidence that is incorporated into the creation model and the evolution model is not appropriate to use as evidence monopolized by evolution.

Here is a little fact for everyone to chew on: evolution as an explanation for the origin of life and the diversity of life from some most recent common ancestor has no scientific evidence whatsoever. None. Evidence for slight (often epigenetic) changes are given as proof for single common ancestry, but that is disingenuous. They are not the same thing. Let's take a quick look at why belief in evolution is BELIEF in it and why evolution can easily be called a religious faith. It's pretty straight forward, really.

I'm going to throw in atheism here for fun because, in reality, atheism naturally leads to a belief in evolution. The two go fairly hand in hand (which is another reason theistic evolutionists make me sad). Religion has several major components. The first is stories—primarily stories about origins of the universe and life. Atheism via the Big Bang and abiogenesis gives us its myth about origins. This even can lead to us knowing, from the atheist's perspective, what man's place in the universe is. According to the tale, man is just a smart animal and is, therefore, not really special at all. There is then experience. How many atheists have said how “liberated” they felt when they decided to deny the existence of God? Darwin had his time on the beagle that changed his perspective (not really—his grandfather wrote about universal common descent long before Darwin did). From the social perspective, atheism is as much a missionary minded religion as any other. Richard Dawkins says, “If this book [The God Delusion] works as I intend, religious readers who open it will be atheists when they put it down.” Atheism is taught to children under the guise of evolution (as I said, the two go hand in hand). Scientists are often looked at as the source of truth in the world. Some we would call them the priests of evolutionism or atheism.

Then there is the written source of the religion. Atheism has several manifestos that give it its substance, and there are numerous authors who have proclaimed its various truths. Whether an atheist knows what these documents claim or not, they likely believe what these pages state to one degree or another. Each religion has some sort of standard of conduct by and large. Atheism adopts relativism in terms of morality, although it really has no standard at all for morality as prominent atheist authors have stated. Ritual, I would say, is the weakest of the traits in atheism for religion. But it exists, for sure. Darwin's Day was just celebrated 2 weeks ago and has gained popularity over the last few years. There are other examples, but Darwin's Day is probably the biggest example. The material side of atheism includes nature herself. She's considered our mother by atheists. You can read in more detail about the 7 characteristics of religion and how it pertains to atheism here.

Evolutionism is a belief. People will foolishly put their faith in “experts” or those “at the top of their field” to give them answers to questions no scientist could possibly answer. Have you ever heard Neil deGrasse Tyson say, “The universe is almost 14 billion years old, and, wow! Life had no problem starting here on Earth! I think it would be inexcusably egocentric of us to suggest that we're alone in the universe.” This is a philosophical statement and has no basis in science. Some try to suggest that denying that evolution is a thing means you're rejecting science. That's nonsense—totally and utterly nonsense. Science and evolution are not just NOT synonyms, they're hardly related.

Here's the thing: show me a single piece of evidence that shows evolutionism is a reality. Be careful! I'm not asking for you to show me that a life form can change slightly under environmental pressures. That's not representative of universal common descent and it does not support that man shares an ancestor with apes or that birds evolved from dinosaurs. It means life can adapt. Nothing more. There is no evidence that supports this and can only mean Darwin was right. The mountain of evidence is a sham. It's a farce. There is not only not a mountain, there is not even a pebble. And reading what a Ph.D. says about events he doesn't understand, wasn't around for, and couldn't possibly have real knowledge on and then concluding that you've read the facts means you have no idea what science is or what it can do. Science –real science—can help us cure diseases or put satellites into orbit. It gives us cell phones and ballistic missiles. Universal common descent does none of those things. It's historical and literally nothing else. It's a story of past events and is unsupportable with real data.

Evolutionism is a religion. It's about faith in the word of a man who claims to know things he can't possibly know. And what of the “experts” who have studied God's Word their entire lives and say there is no way to marry Christianity's Genesis account with Darwin's origins myth? Are they not qualified enough to be taken seriously? Why is the evolutionist's “expert” more qualified than the Christian's? Because of predetermined outcomes that are selected for by the evolutionist.

What is exponentially worse is a Christian who will completely disregard what the Bible clearly says about origins and, instead, accept the currently popular origins myth of atheists (that we know will be different next year or 10 years from now). This, of course, is what the theistic evolutionist has done. Then they will hold hands with people who hate God and attack brothers and sisters in Christ using the God hater's arguments and tactics. The fact is, once a person has determined in their mind what they believe about origins, all data will be interpreted to support that idea… like it's a belief. Atheism is the active belief that there is no God (although some will try to say it's merely the absence of belief in God). Atheism makes claims only an omniscient being could make, setting the atheist up as his own god. If an atheist has made up in his mind that there is no God, when he is presented with data about the universe or allegedly about origins, how else will he interpret that evidence but in a way that will support his belief? To quote creation.com’s article Atheism Needs Evolution: “So all of the core elements of the grand theory of evolution (cosmological, geological, chemical, biological and human evolution) are simply a logical, philosophical outworking of the basic concept of classical atheism applied to the world we live in. All of these conclusions could be derived from a simple general belief that God does not exist (atheism), prior to influence from specific physical evidence whatsoever. From that point forward every fact one sees could be interpreted according to that view. These would then be correlated to create a history about the universe that supports those beliefs.”

And what of atheists who doubt the Darwinian mechanism for explaining life and its diversity? They BELIEVE something else, which is weird since they claim it's a fact.

“Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion—a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint... the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today… Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.” Michael Ruse, Ph.D. and anti-creationist philosopher of science.

Take a moment to read creation.com's article “Evolution a Religion.” It's a short read and outlines a number of particulars as to why Darwinism is a belief system.

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