If, according to Social Darwinism, our cognitive faculties
only tell us what we need to survive, and not what is true, why trust them
about anything at all?
And yet there may indeed be a rational explanation from
evolution for the persistence of belief. The Reverend Randy Alcorn sometimes
presents his audience with two creation stories and asks them if it matters which
one is true:
In the secular account, “You are the descendant of a tiny
cell of primordial protoplasm washed up on an empty beach three and a half
billion years ago. The arbitrary product of time, chance, and natural forces. You
exist on a tiny planet in a minute solar system in an empty corner of a
meaningless universe. At death you will cease to exist. In short, you came from nothing and are going
nowhere.”
In the Christian account, “You are the special creation of
a good and all-powerful God. Created in His image, with capacities to think,
feel, and worship that set you above all other life forms. You differ from the
animals not simply in degree but in kind. Not only is your kind unique, but you
are unique among your kind.”
Now imagine two groups of people – a secular tribe and a
religious tribe. Which of these tribes
is more likely to survive, prosper and multiply? To quote Charles Darwin’s The Origin of
Species, “The vigorous, the healthy, and the happy survive and multiply.”
[The preceding is taken almost verbatim from What’s so Great about Christianity by
Dinesh D’Souza]
Next time: Summing up the ironies of those-who-don’t-know-God. In Christ…
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