EVOLUTION IS RELIGION, NOT SCIENCE
                 Institute for Creation Research
                   Dr. Henry M. Morris, Ph.D.

   Evolutionists often insist that evolution is a proved fact of
science, providing the very framework of scientific interpretation,
especially in the biological sciences. This of course, is nothing but
wishful thinking. Evolution is not even a scientific hypothesis, since
there is no conceivable way in which it can be tested.

              THE RELIGIOUS ESSENCE OF EVOLUTIONISM

   As a matter of fact, many leading evolutionists have recognized the
essentially "religious" character of evolutionism. Even though they
themselves believe evolution to be true, they acknowledge the fact
that they believe it! "Science", however, is not supposed to be
something one "believes". Science is knowledge - that which can be
demonstrated and observed and `repeated. Evolution cannot be proved,
or even tested; it can only be believed. For example, two leading
evolutionary biologists have described modern neo-Darwinism as "part
of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our
training". A prominent British biologist, a Fellow of the Royal
Society, in the Introduction to the 1971 edition of Darwin's Origin of
Species said that "belief in the theory of evolution" was "exactly
parallel to belief in special creation", with evolution merely "a
satisfactory faith on which to base our interpretation of nature".
G.W. Harper calls it a "metaphysical belief". Ernst Mayr, the
outstanding Harvard evolutionary biologist, calls evolution "man's
world view today". Sir Julian Huxley, probably the outstanding
evolutionist of the twentieth century saw "evolution as a universal
and all-pervading process and, in fact, nothing less than "the whole
of reality". A leading evolutionary geneticist of the present day,
writing an obituary for Theodosius Dobzhansky, who himself was
probably the nation's leading evolutionist at the time of his death in
1975, says that Dobzhansky's view of evolution followed that of the
notorious Jesuit priest, de Chardin. The place of biological evolution
in human thought was, according to Dobzhansky, best expressed in a
passage that he often quoted from Pierre Teilhard de Chardin:
'(Evolution) is a general postulate to which all theories, all
hypotheses, all systems must henceforward bow and which they must
satisfy in order to be thinkable and true. Evolution is a light which
illuminates all facts, a trajectory which all lines of thought must
follow.' The British physicist, H.S. Lipson, has reached the following
conclusion. In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific
religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared
to 'bend' their observations to fit in with it. The man whom
Dobzhansky called "France's leading zoologist", although himself an
evolutionist, said that scientists should "destroy the myth of
evolution" as a simple phenomenon which is "unfolding before us". Dr.
Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British Museum of
Natural History, by any accounting one of the world's top
evolutionists today, has recently called evolution "positively
anti-knowledge", saying that "all my life I had been duped into taking
evolutionism as revealed truth". In another address he called
evolution "story telling". All of the above-cited authorities are (or
were) among the world's foremost authorities on evolutionism. Note
again the terms which they use in describing evolution.

   Evolutionary dogma
   A scientific religion
   A satisfactory faith
   The myth of evolution
   Man's world view
   Anti-knowledge
   All-pervading process
   Revealed truth
   The whole of reality
   An illuminating light
   Metaphysical belief
   Story-telling

   Charles Darwin himself called evolution "this grand view of life".
Now such grandiloquent terms as these are not scientific terms! One
does not call the law of gravity, for example, "a satisfactory faith."
Evolutions' very comprehensiveness makes it impossible even to test
scientifically. As Ehrlich and Birch have said: "Every conceivable
observation can be fitted into it. No one can think of ways in which
to test it.

                  RELIGIONS BASED ON EVOLUTION

   In view of the fundamentally religious nature of evolution, it is
not surprising to find that most of the world religions are themselves
based on evolution. It is certainly unfitting for educators to object
to teaching scientific creationism in public schools on the ground
that it supports Biblical Christianity when the existing pervasive
teaching of evolution is supporting a host of other religions and
philosophies. The concept of evolution did not originate with Charles
Darwin. It has been the essential ingredient of all pagan religions
and philosophies from time immemorial (e.g., atomism, pantheism,
stoicism, gnosticism and all other humanistic and polytheistic
systems). All beliefs which assume the ultimacy of the
space/time/matter universe, presupposing that the universe has existed
from eternity, are fundamentally evolutionary systems. The cosmos,
with its innate laws and forces, is the only ultimate reality.
Depending on the sophistication of the system, the forces of the
universe may be personified as gods and goddesses who organized the
eternal chaotic cosmos into its present form (as in ancient Babylonian
and Egyptian religions), or else may themselves be invested with
organizing capabilities (as in modern scientific evolutionism). In all
such cases, these are merely different varieties of the fundamental
evolutionist world view, the essential feature of which is the denial
that there is one true God and Creator of all things. In this
perspective, it becomes obvious that most of the great world religions
- Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, Hinduism, Animism, etc. are based on
evolution. Creationism is the basis of only such systems as Orthodox
Judaism, Islam, Catholicism and Protestantism, as well as most modern
pseudo-Christian cults, are all based on evolution. All of this points
up the absurdity of banning creationist teaching from the schools on
the basis that it is religious. The schools are already saturated with
the teaching of religion in the guise of evolutionary "science". In
the modern school of course, this teaching mostly takes the form of
secular humanism, which its own proponents claim to be a "non-
theistic religion". It should also be recalled that such philosophies
as communism, fascism, socialism, nazism, and anarchism have been
claimed by their founders and promoters to be based on what they
regard as scientific evolutionism. If creation is excluded from the
schools because it is compatible with Christian "fundamentalism",
should not evolution also be banned since it is the basis of communism
and nazism?

             THE SCIENTIFIC IRRELEVANCE OF EVOLUTION

   Some people have deplored the of evolution on the ground that this
is attacking science itself. In a recent debate, the evolutionist whom
the writer debated did not attempt to give any scientific evidences
for evolution, electing instead to spend his time defending such
scientific concepts as atomic theory, relativity, gravity, quantum
theory and science in general, stating tantamount to attacking
science! The fact is, however, that the elimination of evolutionary
interpretations from science would hardly be noticed at all, in terms
of real scientific understanding and accomplishment. G.W. Harper
comments on this subject as follows: It is frequently claimed that
Darwinism is central to modern biology. On the contrary, if all
references to Darwinism suddenly disappeared, biology would remain
substantially unchanged. It would merely have lost a little color.
Grandiose doctrines in science are like some occupants of high office;
they sound very important but have in fact been promoted to a position
of ineffectuality. The scientific irrelevance of evolutionism has been
strikingly (but, no doubt, inadvertently) illustrated in a recent
issue of Science News. This widely read and highly regarded weekly
scientific journal was commemorating its sixtieth anniversary, and
this included a listing of what it called the "scientific highlights"
of the past sixty years. Of the sixty important scientific discoveries
and accomplishments which were chosen, only six could be regarded as
related in any way to evolutionist thought. These six were as follows:

(1.) 1927. Discovery that radiation increases mutation rates in fruit
flies.
(2.) 1943. Demonstration that nucleic acids carry genetic information.
(3.) 1948. Enunciation of the "big bang" cosmology.
(4.) 1953. Discovery of the "double helix" structure of DNA.
(5.) 1961. First step taken in cracking the genetic code.
(6.) 1973. Development of procedures for producing recombinant DNA
molecules.

   Four of these six "highlights" are related to the structure and
function of DNA. Even though evolutionists have supposed that these
concepts somehow correlate with evolution, the fact is that the
remarkable DNA molecule provides strong evidence of original creation
(since it is far too complex to have arisen by chance) and of
conservation of that creation (since the genetic code acts to
guarantee reproduction of the same kind, not evolution of new kinds).
One of the two other highlights showed how to increase mutations but,
since all known true mutations are harmful, this contributed nothing
whatever to the understanding of evolution. One (the "big bang"
concept) was indeed an evolutionary idea but it is still an idea which
has never been proved and today is increasingly being recognized as
incompatible with basic physical laws. Consequently, it is fair to
conclude that no truly significant accomplishment of modern science
either depends on evolution or supports evolution! There would
certainly be no detriment to real scientific learning if creation in
school curricula. It would on the other hand, prove a detriment to the
pervasive religion of atheistic humanism which now controls our
schools.