Richard Cohen published an article recently in the Washington Post in which he praised darwinian evolution and ridiculed those who believe in Intelligent Design. Here is an expanded version of my response to him. It is a Christian apologetic for the existence of God rooted in philosophy and logic.
Dear Mr. Cohen,
Time and space must have had a beginning, because if time were eternal, there would be an infinite number of moments preceding the present, and the present could not be reached. If you believe in the present, you must believe in a finite universe.
Once you understand that the universe had a beginning, you must face the observed fact that all things which begin to exist have a cause. There is no known exception to this rule.
From this point it is not hard to realize that it is God who caused the material world to burst into existence.
Once you understand that God is behind the origins of the material universe, it is not hard to expect, and indeed find, design in his creation.
What really takes faith is to be presented with evident and obvious design in creation -- the specialized cells which constitute heart, lungs, liver, eyes, all nicely and symmetrically arranged, the fact that fruit such as apples and oranges just happen to fit nicely in a man's hand, that horses just happen to be suitable size for a man to ride, that sheep just happen to provide wool, that flowers just happen to be pretty, that sunsets just happen to be beautiful, etc., and to deny that there is any design behind it.
Consider the incongruity of darwinism. If this world is strictly materialistic, if our brains have simply randomly evolved into their present states, then what faith can an evolutionist have in the integrity or reliability of his thoughts? They must be nothing more than meaningless chemical interactions. And why should non-material things like logic, love, conscience, consciousness, speculative thought, and mathematics exist? To the materialist, they can be nothing more than ultimately meaningless chemical reactions. To the evolutionist, the universe shows every sign of making sense, but doesn't; it's just a happenstance of ultimately meaningless random permutations. The very quest of a darwinist to classify, order, and "make sense" of the universe is contradicted by the darwinist's conclusion that the universe is random and meaningless.
Darwinian (materialistic, non-directed) evolution is a comfortable faith for many; it allows them to escape the Biblical witness that there is a God who has stamped his moral imprint upon our hearts, and to whom we must one day give an account.
As far as man evolving beyond war [a point made in Mr. Cohen's article], if a man evolved to the ultimate moral and ethical pinnacle, you would have Jesus Christ.
He lived two thousand years ago, and there hasn't been a man like him before or since. A "one-off"? A random mutation that unfortunately didn't catch on?
Or, as he himself proclaimed, the son of David, and, indeed, the Father's son?
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