From Where Did Morality Come?

Morality is a difficult problem for the evolutionary worldview.  This is not to say that evolutionists are somehow less moral than anyone else.  Most evolutionists adhere to a code of behavior.  Like the biblical creationist, evolutionists do believe in the concepts of right and wrong.  The problem is that evolutionists have no logical reason to believe in right and wrong within their own worldview.  Right and wrong are Judeo-Christian concepts which go back to the Book of Genesis.  By attempting to be moral, therefore, the evolutionist is being irrational because he must borrow biblical concepts which are contrary to his worldview.

The Bible teaches that God is the Creator of all things, found in Genesis 1:1 and John 1:3.  Psalm 24:1 tells us that all things belong to God, and thus, God has the right to make the rules.  So, an absolute moral code makes sense in a biblical creation worldview.  However, if the Bible was not true, if human beings were merely the outworking of millions of years of mindless chemical processes, then why should we hold to a universal code of behavior?  Could there really be such concepts as right and wrong if evolution were true?

Some might respond, “Well, I believe in right and wrong, and I also believe in evolution; so, obviously they can go together.”  But this does not ring true.  People can be, and are often irrational.  They can profess to believe in things that are contrary to each other.  The question is not about what people believe to be the case, but rather what actually is the case.  Can the concepts of right and wrong really be meaningful apart from the biblical God?  To put it another way, is morality justified in an evolutionary worldview?

Are There Vestigial Organs?

Vestigial organs are often used as evidence to argue in favor of Darwinian evolution.  These organs are supposedly left over from our ancestors but are no longer useful or needed. Proponents of evolution typically put forward that such structures are best explained as remnants of evolutionary history.  Supposedly, the best explanation for these non-functional traits is that they once served a purpose in our ancestor but now they no longer do.

In an article for New Scientist, Laura Spinney discussed five vestigial organs in the human body and refers to them as “useless relics of our evolutionary past.”  Five organs that humans no longer need are provided to counter the claims of creationists who supposedly deny that vestigial organs exist at all.

The classic definition of a vestigial organ is an organ or structure in an organism that is not functional, but is derived from an ancestor that had a use for that organ or structure.  Creationists understand that there has been degeneration and mutation since the Fall of Adam.  We also expect that there would be a significant loss of information for many genes. The loss of genes for organs that do not significantly impact survival in a negative way could be quite prevalent.  Thus, for the creationist, there should be no problem with an organ or structure in man that has lost some functionality.  However, another possibility is that we have just not determined or understood the function properly yet.

Creationists do not deny that there are organs in man that have lost some of their functionality.  However, they do reject the notion that those organs were inherited from a common ancestor with apes or other animals.  Evolutionists typically point to these presumed non-functioning organs and insist that they are evidence that we evolved from a common ancestor with more primitive organisms.  Just because humans have organs with reduced functionality does not really count as evidence of common ancestry.  This is perhaps because God created Adam and Eve with those organs, but they have lost some functionality in their descendants.

Evolutionist Quote of the Month

"One interesting idea [of why dinosaurs went extinct] put forward in 1962 supposes that the evolution of those flowering plants was followed by the first appearance of the butterflies and moths … The caterpillars of butterflies and moths feed almost entirely on plants: today their numbers are kept down by natural enemies, notably birds, but when the caterpillars first appeared on the scene the birds had not yet realized how good they were to eat. For some time, therefore, the caterpillar population increased without check. They ate so much plant food that none remained for the plant-eating dinosaurs; the plant-eating dinosaurs died of starvation, and so the meat-eating dinosaurs which preyed on them also without food.”