The theory of evolution lacks scientific proof, yet is promulgated as fully substantiated scientific knowledge in scientific works, schoolbooks and popular scientific publications. Adults, school children and students probably have no idea how many doubts, how much criticism, have increasingly been voiced by scientists. W. H. Thomson, a renowned American scientist, wrote in The American Biology Teacher that it was impossible to define the theory of evolution scientifically, nor in any way to prove it scientifically, yet attempts were made to maintain credibility in the public eye by suppressing criticism and denying the many problems. Even in a democratic country it is often far from easy to find out the truth, for truth has many enemies. Almost all countries have a scientific lobby that has set up a certain system, using old, established methods to defend its hypotheses, however flawed, as though they were dogma. Any doubts in the theory are immediately labelled "heresy". Westenhoefer has pointed out that following the collapse of the theory of evolution, "The overwhelming weight of fashionable trends towards descendence theory made it impossible to draw the right conclusions from right insights gained." 74
Below, we are quoting from the statements made by many scientists that demonstrate how widely evolutionism is no longer considered a valid theory, not to speak of proven scientific knowledge. The public does of course hear little of this, and it is hard to get the truth to come out, even in Western democracies.
Pp. 320-25 of the book are missing, to shorten this chapture..
"Neo-Darwinism is a theory belonging in the feld of the philosophy of nature rather than science. There can be no question of fact." 123
In the scientific supplement of the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of December 13, 1978, it was said that looking through the literature, one noted "a growing unease with regard to neo-Darwinism." Its claim to demonstrate evolution, i.e., phylogenetic development of living beings, entirely on the basis of mutation and natural selection clearly could not be accepted indiscriminately."
Even in 1976, more than 500 scientists all over the world had recognized the untenable nature of evolution theory and formed the Creation Research Society and Institute of Creation Research at San Diego, California.
This recalls Goethe's words that "Everything that is opinion concerning things belongs to the individual and is therefore dependent on subjective convictions, and we know only too well that conviction arises not from insight but out of the will." (Theory of Colours, Polem. Section para. 30)
Students, school children, readers, listeners and television viewers are given the impression that evolutionism is an irrefutable, scientifically substantiate theory. When scientists demonstrate the untenable nature of this theory, the public hears little of this.
With reference to students, it is interesting to note the statements made by a number of university professors. Professor C. P Martin (McGill University) has said that it was not a question of their knowing about these problems and ignoring them, considering them insignificant or pointless. The fact was that they had never heard of them and were amazed at anyone actually criticizing such accepted doctrine." 124
Rostand, an evolutionist, described the long-term effects of inculcating students or school children with a doctrine, so that people were completely imbued with the theory of the evolution of species, having learned about it at school. They were mechanically repeating that life had come about through evolution, with one species changing into another. 125
Westenhoefer also considered the phenomenon of on the one hand "a great number of scientists having the feeling, quite rightly, that there had to be something wrong with the existing theory as to the evolution of man", but on the other hand, "it being all the more incomprehensible how, in spite of this, the theory continues to be taught as 'substantiated fact' at schools and universities, for decades now, with whole generations of young people eager to learn being drawn into a fatal error that later will be hard to shake off and will influence their view of the world." 126
G. A. Kerkert, Professor of Physiology and Biochemistry of Southampton University, made the remarkable statement that a student taking in evolution theory was no different from the theology students of old. He would be taking evolution theory as proven and, like a parrot, repeat the views of the principal proponents of this school. According to the professor it was even worse when on top of all this the student maintained that he was different from his (theological) predecessors, i.e., that he was thinking scientifically and abhorred dogma. 127
H. E. Hengstenberg considers the psychological reasons why it is so difficult to get the truth to win through: "Autonomistic infiltration of the categories has so much become part and parcel of it all for present-day intellectuals and particularly scientists that they no longer notice it, and are unable to imagine that it is possible to think differently.* Evolutionism fits in very well with this. Autonomism prevails also among those of Christian faith.* It should be remembered that years ago many theologians were fascinated and convinced by the Three-Stage Theory popularized in the Third Reich, particularly by Weinert (pithecanthropus, ape man, - Neanderthal man - Homo sapiens), - a theory unanimously considered complete nonsense by scientists. The situation has not much changed, however. It has been realized that there is a basic relationship with earlier forms, though these cannot be shown to be directly derived, so that evolutionism does not apply. Yet at conferences held at Catholic academies, a picture is presented that does not do justice to the facts. A shrug of the shoulders is the reply to searching questions, as one reviewer reported." 129 Some speakers refer to polygenism, considering that the view of God creating one Adam can no longer be taken for granted, and maintaining that "the statistical probablility of polygenesis is greater than that of monogenesis", 130 i,e., that man has repeatedly developed from animal bodies.
Pope Pius XII quite rightly refuted this theory, pointing out that there was no substantiation whatsoever.
Two Catholic theologians, Karl Rahner and P. Overhage, have said, according to the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of January 20, 1962, that among Catholic theologians, "increasing numbers are expressly stating that biological evolutionism is compatible with church doctrine." The situation is very much the same where Protestant theologians are concerned.
The evolutionists have taken Darwin's theory beyond itself. Darwin did not exclude God the Creator and an immanent efficient force, whereas materialistic science has done so during subsequent decades and to this day. Darwin had not outlined a theory of monistic descent, and had not, in principle, excluded God as the creative spirit establishing order. That is fully evident from the final sentences in his famous work The Origin of Species (1859): "There is a grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, while this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Subsequently, evolutionists have done everything they could to avoid having to include God in the scheme. When it had become obvious that scientific research definitely refuted evolutionism, the last resource was to use foreign words to cover up their embarrassment. God's creative power was replaced with empty terms such as "metakinesis" (Haeckel), "deviation" (De Baer), "caenogenesis" (Sevetzoff), "neoteny" (Garstang), "Fetalization" (Bolk), etc. 131
It always sounds good to produce a Greek word as an empty formula when one is at one's wit's end.
The fact is that - as G. G. Simpson has said - efforts to find the origins of evolution have long since been given up.
In vain did Trofim Lysenko, the Soviet pundit on genetics, try to show in the 1960's that Lamarck's thesis of the inheritance of acquired characteristics did hold true after all. His efforts failed and he lost his position as Head of the Institute of Genetics in 1965. Even in the Soviet Union, no one today believes that a socialist environment will inevitably lead to the evolution of a
new man. 132 According to Jungk, Russia's leading biologist, Vavilov, was actually liquidated. 133
New Revelation comprehensively and convincingly describes the forces that transform species, forces evolutionists in both East and West refuse to consider. "Without God", it says in Die Haushaltung Gottes (Urgeschichte der Menschheit) (God's Household Management - The History of the Origin of Man), Vol. 1, "nothing is possible" (p. 301). "Every force that takes effect comes from God" (p. 360). The effective force is not apparent to worldly man. (Gr X 173, 9)
To gain an understanding as to why evolutionists are clinging so much to their rickety theory, despite the fact that it has long since been shown to be wrong, it will be necessary to probe deeper. The materialistic view is utterly dependent on evolutionism. That is the real reason why materialistic biologists and anthropologists in both East and West are refusing even to consider that the problem may be solved on the basis of metaphysical factors, despite the knowledge that observed facts are making this the obvious solution. Evolutionism is based on a philosophy. "From the point of view of the theory of knowledge, it must be called empirical or a form of positivism. Ontologically, it is based on biological materialism." 134
In fact, there is more than scientific interest behind this. What we are dealing with here is a major aspect of the controversy between Christian and atheist philosophy. Significantly, the following was written in the middle of the last century, as part of New Revelation: "Amidst all this activity, the to and fro between great ideas, between spiritual teachings and materialism, mankind is growing to full manhood." (Pr 65) This struggle will increase in intensity, and perhaps Goethe's words will soon come to apply: "It is easy to believe in what the masses believe, but do not allow yourself to be deprived of your own original mind."
It has always been difficult to cast doubt on what appeared to be generally valid, but many objective and courageous minds are already at work. The question as to whether evolutionism has any justification or is being deliberately used to mislead millions of people, is of key significance. A book presenting an apologia for Christianity therefore must not evade the proper consideration of this issue.
In order to get a clear picture of the philosophical element in the theory, it will be necessary to go back to the beginnings. Once these are known, much that has been shrouded in darkness so far will become clearer.
Friedrich Engels, a Marxist who also was a friend of Marx, realized soon after Darwin's Origin of Species had appeared in 1859, that it might be possible to upset the Christian teleological approach to history by putting a materialist interpretation on the theory put forward by Darwin in his book, where God was given a place as an immanent efficient cause. This emerges from a letter Engels wrote to Marx on December 12, 1859: "By the way, I am just reading Darwin, and he is really splendid. So far, teleology had not been completely destroyed in one respect, and this has now been done. * And never before has such a magnificent attempt been made to demonstrate historical progression in nature, least of all with such fortunate results. The clumsy English method is of course something we have to put up with.'' 135
Marx agreed in his reply of December 19, 1860, and proceded to misrepresent Darwin's basic thesis in the same way he had bent Hegel's Christian anthropology to suit his own purposes. As Gruetzmacher points out, the theory of evolution "became a kind of counter-religion to Christianity, the aim being to negate the specific basis Christian religion had in revelation". "The characteristic feature of modern evolutionism that has to be combated is that it insists on evolution from below, and aims at a natural explanation of the origins of evolution, without God.'' 136
It is now evident that the theory of evolution was in its very beginnings taken hold of by the atheists, manipulated to suit their purposes, and then spread all over the world with great intensity. "The word is an avalanche", New Revelation says, "small to begin with, but increasing all the time, taking everything down into the abyss with it." (Pr 49)
Evolutionism soon became a pillar of atheist philosophy, in the East as well as in the West. In the East, this unsubstantiated theory is the foundation of the whole of communist philosophy. In the West, this monistic doctrine also found many willing to help it spread widely; it came to be accepted not only in intellectual circles, but through political parties and also very much among the masses.
Although scientific research has failed to prove evolutionism correct, Neo-Darwinists are persisting in adhering to it, despite the fact that it has been shown to have no foundations. The deepest reason for this attitude is undoubtedly Luciferic hubris. Man refuses to acknowledge a God who is superior to him, and "if there has to be one", New Revelation says, "wants to be god himself." (Pr 322)
The evolutionists have formed a lobby and wield considerable influence, with the result that objective scientists find it extremely difficult to present their findings to a wider public.
Professor L. G. Tirala has put this very clearly: "A great victory parade, unequalled by anything, is sweeping aside any zoologist or botanist who expresses doubts, having considered the evidence Darwinism has become a kind of religious creed in biology." 137
"Darwin's theory has for the masses become a kind of religion, or anti-religion; for zoologists and botanists, all drawn into the whirlpool, it has actually become a sacred object. Anyone speaking out against it was putting himself in an exposed position or ended up losing his appointment!" 138 "The lack of discernment and readiness to believe anything shown by followers even in the ranks of scientists is characteristic of this mass psychotic event." "Mass psychosis may indeed be found also among scientists." 139 It is only too true that, as Goethe said, "Nothing does more harm to a new truth than an oldestablished error."
In New Revelation, the Lord predicted that modern science would deprive men of their faith (Gr IX 89), but also that the period of absence of faith would not be over long. The textbooks have been written in such a way that evolutionism has fallen upon the souls of innumerable people like a fatal hoarfrost. Westenhoefer had said, quite rightly: "Never, I think, has an inaccurate, not to say false, conclusion drawn in natural science had such devastating consequences as this doctrine. 140 There will be a change, and a science freed from falsehood "that will be compatible with my teaching" (Gr XI 90, 11) will lead out of the dead-end road of materialism, which denies the spirit, and onto the road to the transcendental.
New Revelation also says the following about the aberrations of materialistic science: #ff0000"Many scientists will stray so far that they lose sight of the spiritual aspect altogether and meander about in dead matter." (Gr VIII 96, 12)
"Yet creation, which is so great, should all the time be calling out to all thinking people: Behind these innumerable and great works there must be a master of his craft who is most wise, all
powerful and eternal." (Gr VIII 214, 7)
"Your clever materialists believe that the whole world is moved and activated only by force and matter - two things that they themselves are not really able to explain." (Pr 174)
"Yet where your scientists think they discern natural laws, exactly there nothing else but spiritual life is evolving, a spiritual life that goes far beyond anything that can be grasped, far beyond where your scientists are able to soar with their ideas and concepts. And because the spirit does not submit to their will they have decided to deny, it altogether." (LGh, p. 85)
"Every discovery in the field of science is wrongly interpreted by your scientists and exploited only for material ends (chemistry and atomic fission). Here and there individuals may discover traces of a sublime spiritual power, beyond the elements that are already well known, but they will make every effort to explain away what is there right before their noses, in very roundabout ways and using long-learned scientific terms, or they will invent their own explanation, not wanting to acknowledge that there is a God. If there has to be one, they want to be that god themselves." (Pr 322) "... for many, the whole of My creation is to this day a mute collection of matter, its laws to their minds merely arising by chance." "They would rather dispute away their own ego than declare themselves vanquished by factual proof for the existence of God." (Pr 203)
These prophetic words accurately describe the situation as it has develvped over the hundred years that were to follow.
We know from New Revelation that there is more to evolution than blind chance without aim or purpose and a mechanical compulsion, and that the whole process gives expression to God's intentions, as Morgan put it. 141
The gradual evolution to higher levels has teleological purpose, there is a goal to it. From this point of view, evolution is wholly compatible with the work of God. New Revelation describes a continuous process of creation, its purpose and God's plan of salvation, intended from time immemorial, and this provides a plausible explanation for the mysterious process; it is a grand design before which the constantly changing and questionable hypothesis of the evolutionists fade into insignificance.
Science will have to recognize the limits set to it; it will have to admit that there are powers that lie beyond empiricism, beyond observation. The evolutionists have altogether abandoned the foundation of experience based on observation, having been forced to go back into the depths of palaeontology as far as the Miocene and Eocene, where hardly any fossils are to be found.
The time when doubts in the dogma of evolutionism are considered "heresy" is coming to an end. There are now too many "heretics", as has been shown. More and more scientists are referring to evolutionism as a deviation from the truth. Some of their statements are downright annihilating and may well be the torch to signal further progress. That applies for example to the words of Professor W. H. Thomson, formerly head of the Biological Institute in Ottawa, in his Introduction to the 1959 Edition of Darwin's Origin of Species. He wrote that Darwinism was successful at the cost of abandoning honesty in science, that men of science were joining forces to defend a doctrine, but were at the same time unable to determine it scientifically, or even bring strict scientific proof. They thus found themselves in an abnormal and downright undesirable situation.
Another remarkable statement has been made by J. B. S. Haldane, atheist and protagonist of the mechanistic view. He wrote that a wise man took his bearings as much from the theories of religion as from those of science, yet he would not regard such theories as the final truth concerning elementary facts, but as art forms." 142
The many statements made by prominent scientists give rise to the hope that the predictions of New Revelation may be fulfilled and that science will soon find its way out of the dead-end road of materialism. Already it can be said that "Unbelief can no longer claim to have science on its side". (Pascual Jordan." 143
The words of P. A. M. Dirac, English Nobel Prize Winner, spoken in the course of a paper read to the Lindau Conference of Nobel Prize Winners in 1973, make us prick up our ears, for he said that scientists knew how difficult it was to arrange atoms in such a way as to produce life, and that with causality not everywhere apparent, it might well be that there was a God who looked after quantum transitions.
The words of A. Portmann also show that a change is about to occur when he says that scientists are on the point of completely changing their approach, though this would require great effort. In his view, the heart of the change now occurring was the estimation of the human spirit. In its early days, theory of evolution had quite onesidedly considered technical intelligence to be a kind of source field for mind and spirit, with the origin of
man seemingly being the evolution of an animal capable of making tools. Today, he has written, there is no longer such certainty that human evolution proceeded in just that manner. 144
"New things take their beginnings only in individuals, and
they are now working on these problems. The majority of textbooks and popular presentations offer the theory of evolution as a 'mutation theory', a field of research where every detail has been substantiated. At the same time a comprehensive view of nature is evolving where the validity of present-day mutation theory is considered to be severely limited, and the origin of the great forms of life lies before us as an unsolved mystery." "... the first outlines are emerging of a new image of man" 145
"Direct your attention to the religious movements that are
coming", New Revelation says, "and you will see like-minded spirits finding and approaching one another." (Pr 55)
"The keenest theorists, scientists and investigators of matter
will in the end all come to the point, and have to come to it, however great their resistance, that high above matter there lives a great spirit who unites the smallest of atoms as well as the largest of universes to form a whole..." (Pr 221)
"All are compelled towards maturity of mind and spirit; even
the greatest materialists, the most stubborn of unbelievers, and the indifferent are not left in peace." (Pr 170)
"And this is what has to happen, so that it shall be recognized
everywhere on your earth that matter (the things of the world)
was created only for the sake of the spirit." (Pr 118)
"Nothing, whatever you may consider, indeed not even the movement of a mote in the sun, depends on what is called blind chance. All this has been most accurately worked and meted out
by Me from eternity." (Hi I, p. 137)
"Your learned men see only what is visible, but the quiet
power and intelligence that constructs the vessels with equal
perfection in even the smallest detail and gives the life, this
intelligence is unknown to them, for dissection will not reveal
it." (LGh, p. 235)
"Your learned men usually base their whole system on a
hypothesis which may be correct or wrong; they then are able to use this hypothesis to build a theory, with grand words and keys that seem rational." (LGh, p. 234)
"Refusing to accept a Creator and Law Giver, they endow matter with intelligence, saying: we are merely following one impulse or another." "... they do not wish to find the
spirit."
"Yet nature is everywhere calling out to you: We are! but not by
chance, nor knit together according to your 'laws', but out of
and through a higher power, brought into form..." "We are!
but not 'force' and 'matter', as you believe in your blindness;
we are 'spirit'!" - i.e., bound "spirit, dissolved spirit, spirit
creative in form, and again destroying its forms, so that in the end we
shall emerge from all the struggle transformed into spirit, to show you that everywhere in nature everything is spirit, and that you merely lack the spirit to comprehend, refusing, despite revelation in visible and invisible nature (atom) to come round to the admission: Yes, we realize that we know nothing." (LGh,
p. 81)
"All life is constituted such as to be able to grow and increase
constantly, because there is unceasing inflow from Me." (Ha I
185, 20)
"Everything arises from and consists in God, everything is in
Him, everything is the endless abundance of His thoughts and
ideas, from the smallest to the greatest." (Gr VI 226, 8> "Nothing in the sphere of material creation can arise and continue to exist unless it is based on the spirit." (Gr VIII 96, 4)
"Never yet has a blind force produced even a tiny moss that
constantly recurs in the same, absolutely selfsame form for thousands and thousands of years." (Gr VI 87, 7)
"All matter takes form and decomposes again. This is no
other impulse than that of the spirit awakened from being
bound and asleep in matter. There could be no progression from
stage to stage, no progress towards perfection, if at the very
heart of matter there were not the spirit, aroused by external
circumstance." (Pr 314)
"There are countless things which I allow to be fashioned by
the hand of man. In the same way, I allow the power of love and
wisdom of My angels and spirits to fashion the things on earth
and also on other bodies in the universe that men are unable to
make." (EM 42, 2)
"For instance, what scientists call instinct is not the intelligence of the animal, but indeed direction, orientation given by higher spirits." (EM 42, 5)
"Everything that has been created is designed to pass through a long sequence of all kinds of forms and finally into free and independent life." "Every form represents a certain level of intelligence ... and in this way intelligence increases until man is reached." "The forms are for a limited period the
collectors and bearers of a life that is all the time becoming more consolidated and intelligent." (Gr VI 53, 5-9)
"You do perceive what is there and occurs in the world of matter, but where the spirit is concerned, its realm and its working, this is alien to you, and you therefore are also unable to grasp
and feel how God is working in man." (Gr I 222, 5)
There is evolution - no one denies this, - but there is no evolutionism, i.e., no random chance with no end to it, no descent of one from another, in innumerable small transitions. There is merely succession, out of the creative power of God, His angels and spirits. Creation is the work of wisdom beyond comprehension, not the outcome of mindless, blind chance apparently always picking out just the right one from among millions and millions of possibilities. Nor do new types arise through selection. Selection will eradicate what is weak, but never create a new design and a new apecies. Scientists have had to admit that there is no continuous line of transition, but only succession.
New, higher species appear suddenly, with no direct link to
what went before. Higher and lower types are separated by a gap of millions of years, when no living creatures were present.
The whole is the work of a divine Creator who had an end in
mind, based on a grandiose plan that has arisen from the unfathomable love of God, as described in an earlier chapter. This plan extends over millions of years and reaches its culmination in Adamite man. The goal is to bring home the Prodigal Son to the house of his divine Father.
"The world perceptible to our senses is the one we recognize, the world beyond sense perception holds our roots:' (Fichte)
The plan comes to expression in the process of evolution. Yet scientists will probably never succeed in wholly illuminating the labyrinth of evolutional and creative processes. According
to New Revelation, no human eye will ever be able to penetrate this. "Only the most ancient witness of all that is and comes into being, God Himself, is able to survey it all."
* Hengstenberg defines "autonomism" as follows: "Autonomism is considered to be an attitude of mind where the aim is to see all finite facts as being causally related, to the effect that it seems superfluous to go back to divine transcendence."
** Teleology = the explanation of natural phenomena as being due to definite purpose or design. Every teleology points to God.