by Keith Cantrell

Created on: January 09, 2009

No, absolutely not! Why not? Well, that's the crux of the matter, isn't it? Simply put, God doesn't exist but Darwinism does.

Let's look at Darwinism first. Charles Darwin was a true scientist. He looked at the world, observed natural phenomena and tried his best to understand what he saw. That's what scientists do. They observe the world and try to come up with a reasonable explanation of what they are seeing. This is the very essence of the scientific method.

So what he saw was that organisms tended to change over time as a response to environmental pressures. In other words animals adapted to their environment in order to improve their chances for survival. Those who couldn't change in response to environmental requirements, died. Those who could, survived and were able to pass on their DNA to their offspring who exhibited the new characteristics and in some cases became a whole new species. He used reason, logic and rationality to come to his conclusions.

Of course this is a rather simplified version of what happened but it gets the point across. Now let's compare that scientific method of doing things with the religious way of doing things.

Theologians and other religious constituents don't see the world this way. They acquire beliefs first based on what they have been told or how they have been raised or because of delusions and then they go out looking for evidence to support their beliefs. This is completely backwards to the scientific method. Therefore it cannot be trusted to get us anywhere close to the truth.

Take the concept of God. In the early days God or gods were invented to help early humans understand what they had no explanation for. As time went on our concept of God changed as we learned more and more about the world around us. Eventually our knowledge began to increase to the point that some supernatural explanations were simply discarded in favor of ideas based on direct observation and advanced understanding. In other words, religion was invented to help us understand the universe until science could be invented to tell us the truth.

In fact, it is rather surprising that in this world of secularism that religion even exists at all. It really has no purpose any longer. Many scientists have come and gone since Darwin and given us brand new concepts about how the world works. And we've learned to use those discoveries to make our world a better place through the development of technology. This technology revolutionized medicine, transportation, communications, commerce, agriculture and even politics. Our very quality of life has been vastly improved by discoveries in science and there's no going back now.

On the contrary, religion and an archaic belief in an invisible deity has contributed to war, ignorance, hatred, intolerance and everything we find detestable about human nature.

The differences between Darwinism and belief in God are the same as the differences between reason and ignorance. Faith and fact are not the same thing and never will be. If we are to improve this planet for the sake of our descendants we need to openly embrace truth, reason, logic and rationality. On the other hand, a continued belief in God and other myths and superstitions will only lead to destruction.

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