Page 47 - The Religion of Darwinism

45

invented by ancient philosophers around a table.
Aristotle rejected the existence of a Creator who created all things
from nothing and instead presented the view of gods having evolved
from human beings. With this unsound deduction Aristotle greatly
influenced Greek materialist philosophers. The period in which the
Scala Naturae came into western thought coincides with advent of
humanism and the Renaissance. At the beginning of the 15th century
Greek and Latin works were brought into Europe and entered the
current of western thought and philosophy. Foremost in these texts
was the concept of materialism and denial of the existence of a
Creator.
In the godless way of thinking, human beings have full capacity
to control themselves and the world they live in, and it denies that
there is another life after death. So the Great Chain of Being formed
the basis of this belief by stating that human beings had come into
being by chance as a result of an evolutionary process and were
essentially nothing more than a lump of matter. Thus, moral values
and human feelings have no importance; a person should simply
enjoy each day he lives and feel responsible to no one. In time,
Aristotle's concept of divinity at the top of the Scala Naturae was

Facing: According to the idea of the Great Chain of Being, which goes back to
Aristotle, living things evolved from the smallest creatures to larger ones. However,
modern science has shown that this claim is invalid; that the similarities among living
things is not proof of evolution; that the creatures illustrated in the picture did not
evolve from other creatures but every one was created in its present form.
Bottom: A picture illustrating the evolutionist story of the supposed transition from
water to land.