• A fundamental rift occurred in the West in the
relationship between science and religion after the publication of Charles
Darwin’s On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection in 1859, in
which he argued that all life is the product of purely undirected natural
forces – time, chance, and a process he called ‘natural selection and random
mutations.’
• According to Charles Darwin, natural selection
explained the appearance of design without a designer and order without
arrangement. Natural selection became a kind of God-substitute by which
unplanned, unguided natural forces brought about all the variety and complexity
of the living world. On these grounds, to invoke an intelligent Designer for
the architecture of the universe was dismissed as unnecessary or impossible.
• The impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution was very
profound. It fundamentally changed not only science, but the way many Western
people viewed themselves, their world, and their significance in it.
• In the decades that followed, God was virtually
eliminated from scientific articles and textbooks, and the scope of science was
restricted to a search for naturalistic explanations for all phenomena. In this
way, reality became limited to just matter. Nature replaced God, the laws of
nature replaced God's Will, and evolution replaced creation as the most widely
accepted explanation for human origin. This negated any special position of
human beings in creation, along with their special responsibilities.
• Many Western scientists today refuse to acknowledge
God as Creator, and attribute the awesome, sophisticated creativity of the
world solely to physical laws, such as gravity. One of the world’s most
prominent scientists, Stephen Hawking, stated, “Because there is a law such as
gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous
creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the universe
exists, why we exist.” He added: “It is not necessary to invoke God to light the
blue touch paper and set the universe going.”