Question Evolution!: The Beauty of Evil

Thursday, March 14, 2013

The Beauty of Evil

The beauty of evil? My title may seem contradictory. The Bible speaks of the beauty of holiness, and I love that phrase. But evil can display beauty sometimes, and that’s what I’d like to discuss. I remember in particular pictures of YasirArafat. the terrorist. lovingly fondling his grandchildren. A granddaddy loving his little ones is a beautiful picture in anybody’s mind. Pol Pot, the Cambodian mass murderer, was a kindly grandfather.

Those who hold to Evolution greatly admire Charles Darwin, and make lavish claims about his kind and gracious nature while ignoring the evil that was inherent in his life. Most of the books written to praise Mr. Darwin have been positive: how he advanced science; how he was a good family man, and friend. The novelist Samuel Butler, when he learned of Darwin’s death wrote:

I have partaken of his hospitality, and have had too much experience of the charming simplicity of his manner not to be among the readiest to at once admire and envy it.” He added, "It is unfortunately true that I believe Mr. Darwin to have behaved badly to me; this is too notorious to be denied; but at the same time I cannot be blind to the fact that no man can be judge in his own case, and that after all Mr. Darwin may have been right, and I wrong." (Evolution, Old & New Or, the Theories of Buffon, Dr. Erasmus Darwin and Lamarck, as compared with that of Charles Darwin By: Samuel Butler (1835-1902), second edition).

It was left to his granddaughter, Nora Barlow, to add the family truths about Mr. Darwin’s life. It is pretty well known that most of Darwin’s family, notably his wife, was unhappy about his agnostic life. Had Mr. Darwin lived in modern times, no doubt he would have been short one wife. His granddaddy and daddy, however, were jolly old sinners. In his most famous quote, in my opinion, he revealed the motivation of his life work: to destroy the Christianity that sent his daddy and granddaddy Irasmas to Hell.

There has been more than one Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde abroad in the lands through the ages. In fact, my assessment bring me to think we all are to a lesser or greater extent. Like a man who is kind on the job, and a raging monster at home, or a sweet little lady in the classroom, who is a mad lioness at home. I have been guilty of the J & H syndrome, myself, haven’t you? I have seen gangster movies in which the gangsters were very fond of their families. Dope pushers hold their children in high regard, and treat them kindly. Beauty in evil is a contradiction of terms, but there is some truth in it.

Mr. Darwin was not only an observer of nature but a very effective salesman. He recruited many influential men to his cause. Mr. Thomas Henry Huxley was among these. He was born in England in 1825. He dedicated much of his life to preaching the dogma of Evolution both in England and America. Of Mr. Huxley, Samuel Butler has an entry headed “Personified Science” in his “Notebooks”. “Science is being daily more and more personified and anthropomorphized (sic) into a god. By and by they will say that science took our nature upon him, and sent down his only begotten son, Charles Darwin, or Huxley, into the world so that those who believe in him, etc.”¹On this same page he is called “the prophet of science.”

From the beginning, then, Evolution was recognized as a religion. It was a religion that required skilled evangelists who could persuade people that one critter could turn into another. This was a challenge of no small intellect. Of course, it is easier to persuade people that there is no God, than to persuade them that there is – especially if this God is to be feared and obeyed. Men have a head start in unbelief. Mr. Thomas Huxley was “an apostle of veracity”² among these early evangelists. In fact he says in his autobiography, “I can recall the strong clerical affinities which my friend Mr. Herbert Spencer has always ascribed to me.”³ He broadcast the “development theory” far and wide by every means possible in the nineteenth century.

Since the Creator completed His work on the sixth day, there have been those who have aspired to rule it. Throughout the ages men have taken up swords of various sorts to thrown God off His throne. The just shall live by faith, says the Almighty, and those who live by faith find a joy in living that does not lend itself readily to descriptions or explanations by puny words. In the midst of the deepest sorrow, this joy gleams through the gloom. There is an assurance that God is standing there radiating the positive forces that are needed when the lights go out. There is joy in wisdom that transcends the fruits of higher learning. There is a joy in knowing that our soul is of greater worth than the balance of Satan’s bank account. The nobility of being a door keeper in the house of the Lord exceeds that if an aged potentate.

Man demonstrates the dearth of his character when he refuses to bow before the One who created him. Failing to show thanks or appreciation is the ultimate selfishness. The greatest display of failing gray matter is to claim that nothing has a beginning, and this display is usually found in the most intellectual of minds. Why is this? God knew it would be so for he said that man must come to Him as a little child. The noble character bows before God, and offers him his brain and his accomplishments. A man’s life consisteth not in the things which he knows.

Desmond, Hooker, Moore, Huxley, and all the rest of the evangelistic team devoted to Mr. Darwin and his new religion all failed the final test: where, why, when, how did it all begin? The science that they claimed supported their ideas was only a series of sand castles. It really didn’t matter whether what they preached was true or not – who was going to question their lofty knowledge? Who had the expertise to check when false information was disbursed: Eugene DuBois and his phony Java Man (Homo erectus); or Sir Arthur Keith and his Piltdown Man (Eoanthropus dawsoni), etc., plus all the phony plaster of Paris bones in the museums. If ever a religion was founded on deception and lies, it was Evolution. If ever a religion was practiced by more Ph.D.’s, Lords, and Sirs, it was certainly Evolution. Talk about prestige! Talk of the beauty of evil!.

Is evil more beautiful than when it is clothed in ecclesiastical and educational and governmental garb? How can the robe compete when it is in competition with such garments and jewelry? Why would the crowds listen to the Man of Galilee when the silver tongue of Thomas Henry Huxley was sounding over their heads? Should I sit on a hot hillside and listen to a Carpenter when I can sit in a great cathedral, and listen to the learned tongue? Why should I listen to a country preacher when a great scholar is caressing my ears with soft words? Is it possible for a man in a seventy dollar suit to know something more than a man in a nine hundred dollar suit? All my preacher offers as proof is the Word of God while the man in the nine hundred dollar suit offers the Grand Canyon as proof of his dogma.

When accounts are settled there is no beauty in evil. The silk and satin will be stripped away, leaving only the skeleton. The skeleton of Marilyn Monroe or Clark Gable looks pretty much like anybody else’s. Skeletons aren’t especially pretty. A skeleton, however, is all we have if we strip all the accouterments off religion. Religion says it created god, and it did, for the God of faith rises above the morass of men’s claims, and takes His own with Him.

Man is no greater than when he kneels before His Creator.

1. Hazelton Spencer, Walter E. Houghton, and Herbert Barrows, British Literature: from Blake to the Present, 2nd ed. (Boston: D. C. Heath and Company, pg. 596

2. Ibid, pg. 595.