February 12th is Darwin Day—Charles Darwin’s birthday. Many secular and humanist organizations set aside this day to honor Darwin and his legacy. According to the International Darwin Day website, a formal recognition of Darwin Day began in the 1990s with molecular and cell biologist Dr. Robert Stephens; geneticist, biologist, and philosopher Professor Massimo Pigliucci; and Amanda Chesworth, the former president of Internet Infidels and current publisher of the Skeptical Inquirer magazine.1 Skeptics commemorate the day with lectures, museum exhibits, and (supposedly) debates, although it seems ICR scientists are never invited to participate!
In fact, for thirteen years, Darwinists have also designated the prior weekend as “Evolution Weekend,” in which they encourage clergy to discuss the relationship between science and faith, and to affirm to their congregations that no conflict exists between evolution and religious faith.2
There is no conflict whatsoever between genuine empirical science and the claims of Scripture. 
Of course, there is no conflict whatsoever between genuine empirical science and the claims of Scripture. In fact, many of the founders of modern science were devout Christians. But there certainly is a conflict between Scripture and evolutionary doctrine, which, despite the incessant claims of Darwinists, is not genuine science. There is no empirical evidence that life can come from non-life, or that an organism can change into a fundamentally different kind of organism. Moreover, despite the glib assurances from some clergy, it’s hard to see how anyone can take seriously the claim the evolutionary doctrine is compatible with the Christian faith. Evolutionists themselves have repeatedly noted that evolution is incompatible with Christianity, and that evolution is itself a religion!3
ICR President Emeritus Dr. John Morris asked the question over a decade ago,
Don’t they [pastors and churches] know that the reason Darwinism exists is to explain our existence without recourse to a supernatural God to whom we are accountable for our actions? Don’t they know that “survival of the fittest” really means “extinction of the unfit,” and that Darwin’s cult of death has brought about unthinkable evil . . . ?”1
It is telling that secularists celebrate the life of Charles Darwin far more than the lives of genuinely great men of science. We don’t see proposals to celebrate or commemorate the lives of great physicists such as Isaac Newton, James Clerk Maxwell, or Michael Faraday, even though, by any objective measure, the scientific accomplishments of those men had a far more profound impact on modern science and technology than Darwin. This discrepancy is an indication that, at its heart, the celebration of Charles Darwin’s life is driven by ideology, not a dispassionate evaluation of the merits of his work. The real reason secularists celebrate Darwin’s life is because he supposedly freed them from answering to God for their actions.
Unfortunately, Darwin had a profound influence on history, but not for the better. He held ideas which are now quite “politically incorrect,” including his belief that blacks were inferior to whites.5 Furthermore, his evolutionary ideas provided the pseudo-intellectual justification for much of the barbarism of the twentieth century, including the millions killed by the Nazis and the Communists, not to mention the millions of pre-born babies who were disposed of simply because they were inconvenient.6-8
Tens of millions murdered as a consequence of Darwinian thinking. That’s hardly something to celebrate.
References
- International Darwin Day website. Accessed January 24, 2018.
- Evolution Weekend: The Clergy Letter Project. Posted on theclergyletterproject.org, accessed January 24, 2018.
- Morris, H. M. 2001. Evolution is Religion—Not Science. Impact. 30 (2): i-iv.
- Morris, J. D. 2006. Darwin Sunday Versus Resurrection Sunday. Acts & Facts. 35 (4): 2.
- Humber, P. G. 1987. The Ascent of Racism. Acts & Facts. 16 (2).
- Humber, P. G. 1987. Stalin’s Brutal Faith. Acts & Facts. 16 (10).
- Bergman, J. 2012. Hitler and the Nazi Darwinian Worldview. Ontario, Canada: Joshua Press, Kitchener.
- Guliuzza, R. J. 2016. Major Evolutionary Blunders: Survival of the Fittest, Eugenics, and Abortion. Acts & Facts. 45 (1): 12-14.
*Dr. Jake Hebert is Research Associate at the Institute for Creation Research and earned his Ph.D. in physics from the University of Texas at Dallas.
