If there were ever any doubts that Darwinism is first and foremost a religion, Eddie Colanter provides the two quotes that lay them to rest. Colanter has written “Philosophical Implications of Neo-Darwinism and Intelligent Design” for a book edited by Wayne House entitled Intelligent Design 101.

The first quote is by Sir Julian Huxley, the grandson of T. H. Huxley (who was known as “Darwin’s bulldog” for his pugnacious advocacy of Darwinism). At a centennial celebration in 1959 on the 100th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species, Huxley declared the following:

“[A]ll aspects of reality are subject to evolution, from atoms and stars to fish and flowers, from fish and flowers to human societies and values-indeed, that all reality is a single process of evolution…. In the evolutionary pattern of thought, there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created; it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion…. Finally, the evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern, however incompletely, the lineaments of the new religion that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era.”

Colanter provides a second, this one by evolutionary biologist Richard Lewontin, which is even more remarkable:

“Our willingness to accept scientific claims that are against common sense is the key to an understanding of the real struggle between science and the supernatural. We take the side of science in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community of unsubstantiated just-so-stories, because we have a prior commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but on the contrary, that we are forced by our apriori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that Materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”

Notice that Lewontin admits two things: 1) The scientific enterprise itself does not require an acceptance of materialism; and 2) his absolute allegiance to materialism causes him to reject the concept of design in nature, no matter how compelling the evidence. With these words Lewontin reveals that he is not a dispassionate scientist, but a religious fanatic. Please pray for Mark Rooker and me as we continue to labor together on our book project—40 Questions on Creation and Evolution (Kregel Publications). It is an exciting topic at a crucial time, and we desire the book to be a benefit to those who read it.