Page 469 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

Harun Yahya

of the opposition movement against the theory of evolution and believes that the origins of life cannot be
explained by evolution, only by creation.

The Legacy of Dogmatism, from Epicurus to Darwinism

Benjamin Wiker teaches science and theology at Franciscan University. His book Moral Darwinism:
How We Became Hedonists gives a detailed account of Darwin's "theory of evolution" as a latter-day ver-

sion of the materialist philosophy of the Greek thinker Epicurus and his Roman counterpart, Lucretius.
Darwin followed these two philosophers in writing in detail about such unscientific ideas as:
1 Nature is a system that regulates itself.
2 Among living creatures, there is a merciless struggle for life and this leads to evolution by means of

natural selection.
3 It should be avoided to give a "teleological" (the idea that they came into being for a purpose) ac-
count of nature and living things.
What is striking is that these ideas are not scientific. Neither

Epicurus nor Lucretius conducted scientific experiments or made ob-
servations; they just used logic completely in line with their own
wishes. Moreover, their logic had an interesting starting point.
Epicurus rejected the existence of a Creator, saying that it entailed be-

lief in an afterlife, for which reason he felt himself circumscribed. He
clearly stated that his whole philosophy developed from his unwilling-
ness to accept this proposition. In other words, Epicurus chose atheism
for his own psychological comfort and later, undertook to construct a

worldview based on this choice. For this reason he endeavored to ex-
plain the order of the universe and the origins of life in terms of an
atheist system and with this purpose in mind, adopted ideas that
would later prove basic to evolution.

Benjamin Wiker's book

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