Page 586 - Atlas of Creation Volume 3

The Damage Wreaked by Darwinism in the Business World

Most businessmen who supported unrestrained capitalism had actually been raised as believers in

God. Later, however, under the influence of Darwinism's false suggestions, they abandoned their be-
lief. For example, the American industrialist Andrew Carnegie, one of the foremost names in the steel
industry in the 19th century, had first been devoted to Christianity. In his autobiography, Carnegie

openly described how he and many of his friends had fallen under the deceptions of Darwinism.
However, the theory of evolution that Carnegie regarded as a fact, consisted of falsehood in its en-
tirety. In the years that followed, advances in the world of science revealed the true face of that de-
ception. Yet at that time, other businessmen who made the same error as Carnegie accepted savage
capitalism as a result of Darwinist suggestion. This led them into regarding ruthless competition as

perfectly justified to make even more money, and into attaching no value to altruism and human life.
Carnegie thought that competition was an inevitable law of life and constructed his entire philos-
ophy upon that error. He maintained that, although the law of competition made it difficult for some

people, it was best for the race, because it ensured the survival of the fittest in every department. 27
Those who first introduced Carnegie to Darwinism were a number of so-called free and enlight-
ened thinkers seeking a new "religion of humanity," whom he met at the home of a New York
University professor. 28 One of the members of Carnegie's intimate circle was Herbert Spencer, the fol-
lower of Darwin and one of the most important figures in Social Darwinism. These businessmen

adopted the twisted thinking of Spencer and Darwin, but were unable to calculate the impasse into
which it would drag both them and their society.
Richard Milner, an anthropologist from the American Museum of Natural History and author of

The Encyclopedia of Evolution, describes how Carnegie fell under the influence of Darwinism:

Carnegie rose in business to become a powerful, ruthless tycoon who exploited man and Earth, crushed
competition, and justified his actions by a philosophy of Social Darwinism. Entrepreneurial competition,
he believed, does a service to society by eliminating the weaker elements. Those who survive in business
are "fit," and therefore deserve their positions and rewards. 29

Carnegie and those who thought like him made a grave error to assume that being powerful and
ruthless was part of business life. It is perfectly natural that people should earn a living in order to live

at ease and in comfort. However, it is completely unacceptable to cause harm to others, to turn a blind
eye to people in difficult circumstances for the sake of one's own interests, or to oppress the weak in
order to increase one's own power still further. God has commanded people to be honest in business,

as in all other spheres, and to protect the rights of the needy. It is an enormous lie to suggest that by
oppressing the weak and even seeking to eliminate them altogether, one is aim-
ing for the good of society.
In his later years, Carnegie always used Darwinist expressions in his
conversations, statements and writings. In his book Andrew Carnegie,

the historian Joseph F. Wall says this:

Not only in his published articles and books but also in his personal letters
to business contemporaries, Carnegie makes frequent and easy allusions
to the Social Darwinist credo. Phrases like "survival of the fittest," "race
improvement," and "struggle for existence" came easily from his pen and

presumably from his lips. He did see business as a great competitive strug-
gle... 30

Another of those taken in by Darwinist suggestions was the famous
American industrialist John D. Rockefeller, who said that: "growth of a
large business is merely a survival of the fittest ... the working out of a law
Andrew Carnegie

584 Atlas of Creation Vol. 3