Page 751 - Atlas of Creation Volume 2

Harun Yahya

DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN SCIENCE AND MATERIALISM

he information we have considered throughout this book has shown us that the theory of evolution
has no scientific basis, and that, on the contrary, evolutionist claims conflict with scientific facts. In

T other words, the force that keeps evolution alive is not science. Evolution may be maintained by
some "scientists," but behind it there is another influence at work.
This other influence is materialist philosophy. The theory of evolution is simply materialist philosophy
applied to nature, and those who support that philosophy do so despite the scientific evidence.
This relationship between materialism and the theory of evolution is accepted by "authorities" on these

concepts. For example, the discovery of Darwin was described by Leon Trotsky as "the highest triumph of
the dialectic in the whole field of organic matter." 333
The evolutionary biologist Douglas Futuyma writes, "Together with Marx's materialist theory of history
and society…. Darwin hewed the final planks of the platform of mechanism and materialism." 334 And the
evolutionary paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould says, "Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of material-
ism to his interpretation of nature." 335

Materialist philosophy is one of the oldest beliefs in the world, and assumes the absolute and exclusive
existence of matter as its basic principle. According to this view, matter has always existed, and everything
that exists consists of matter. Materialism denies the evident existence of a Creator.
So the question becomes one of why the materialist point of view is false. One method of testing whether

a philosophy is true or false is to investigate the claims it makes about science by using scientific methods.
For instance, a philosopher in the tenth century could have claimed that there was a divine tree on the sur-
face of the moon and that all living things actually grew on the branches of this huge tree like fruit, and then
fell off onto the earth. Some people might have found this philosophy attractive and believed in it. But in the
twentyfirst century, at a time when man has managed to walk on the moon, it is no longer possible to seri-
ously hold such a belief. Whether such a tree exists there or not can be determined by scientific methods, that

is, by observation and experiment.
We can therefore investigate by means of scientific methods the materialist claim that matter has existed
for all eternity and that this matter can organize itself without a supramaterial Creator and cause life to
begin. When we do this, we see that materialism has already collapsed, because the idea that matter has ex-
isted since the beginning of time has been overthrown by the Big Bang theory which shows that the universe

was created from nothingness. The claim that matter organized itself and created life is the claim that we call
the theory of evolution—which this book has been examining—and which has been shown to have col-
lapsed.
However, if someone is determined to believe in materialism and puts his devotion to materialist phi-
losophy before everything else, then he will act differently. If he is a materialist first and a scientist second,
he will not abandon materialism when he sees that evolution is disproved by science. On the contrary, he

Adnan Oktar 749