Darwin vs. Christ

Marx and Engels assumed that science had explained — scientifically — the astronomical universe — it discovered its scientific laws. Thus Newton had discovered the Universal Law of Gravitation: the Sun, the Earth, and other planets as well as stars or any other objects exert a gravitational force of attraction on one another.

This is why the astronomical universe holds together and works as a single mechanism. You see, it was all scientific, and Newton was a great scientist. Though it has not been clear why objects exert a gravitational force of attraction on one another. Are they in love?

Yet this question never occurred to Marx and Engels as well as to our teachers of physics in our Soviet school, and one of them would say in such cases: “Comrade Navrozov, please stop clowning!”

But while the astronomical universe had been explained scientifically in the opinion of Marx and Engels, the origin of living beings had been not. Until there appeared Darwin.

The word “evolution” was known in the English language in 1622, while Darwin was born in 1809. Well, how do living beings “evolve”?

In 1828, the 19-year-old Charles Darwin went to Christ’s College, Cambridge, to become a clergyman. He took his degree in 1831, and sailed on the government ship Beagle. Every such ship needed a clergyman for general religious services such as funeral rites, and to make use of his spare time, such a clergyman “observed nature” — was “a naturalist.”

In 1838, the naturalist Darwin read the essay “The Principles of Population” by professor Malthus, who belonged to a prosperous English family and asserted that a country became healthier if its poor, sick, and others unfit for survival die off, while the rich, strong, healthy survive, prosper, and multiply, making the nation as a whole fitter for survival.

The idea of Malthus, borrowed by Darwin, was as old as cattle breeding. If wool is the rancher’s purpose then sheep with not enough wool are slaughtered for meat, while the woolly sheep go for breeding. Thus, the species improves from that farmer’s point of view.

Accordingly, Darwin’s book was entitled: “On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life.”

But can this farm selection be the basis for evolution in nature? The development of the eye in mammals could be understood better after a photocamera had been invented (by creative human brains!), reproducing the live eye (complete with lenses). Obviously, the evolution of the eye in nature was creative just as was the construction of the photocamera.

The wool of sheep can accumulate gradually in a succession of generations of sheep with more and more wool. But the eye (of a sheep!) cannot “evolve” the way the growth of wool does in successive generations of sheep. The eye originates as a whole instrument. There can be no half an eye or a quarter of an eye unless it is a birth defect.

This is why Henri Bergson, a Nobel Prize laureate, entitled his book “Creative Evolution.”

“Evolution vs. Creationism Home Page” of “Yahoo!” with reference to Syracuse University, placed on one side of the heading of its article a tall rectangle (Darwin in black with a big beard against a black background), and on the other side a Renaissance painting (God extending his hand across heavenly space to Adam). The inscription between the two illustrations says: “Evolution vs. Creationism.”

You see? On one side, it is evolution, Darwin, science, and on the other side it is a painting — creationism!

Henri Bergson did not publicly announce that he had converted to Christianity. The Nobel Prize–winning author of “Creative Evolution” did not announce it because the worst era of annihilation of Jews was about to begin in Germany, and he had been born of Irish-Jewish parents.

He wanted no religious flight from the destiny of Jews. But his personal destiny made a salto mortale of his Jewishness. The Nazis believed that among the Jews there are exceptions: honorary Aryans, exempt from persecution. Bergson was valued in Germany. So, when Paris had been occupied by the Nazis in 1940, they did not touch the author of “Creative Evolution.”

Marx and Engels were delighted that finally Darwin explained the origin of species as scientifically as Newton did the astronomical universe. Indeed, while Newton was part of our Soviet textbook of physics, there was a special class, “Darwinism.” As for Malthus, who started Darwin on his pseudo-science, his name was the worst curse of Engels and of Soviet science.

Yet Malthus-Darwin had a predecessor as their opposite. To Malthus-Darwin, the more human beings perished as “unfit for survival,” the more splendid would be the future of their country or mankind as a whole. Christ’s most important acts ascribed to him in the New Testament are:

Curing a sick child who was near death.

Curing a lame man, a man with a virulent skin disease, and a paralyzed man.

Giving sight to a man born blind.

In 2002, Alvin J. Schmidt, professor of sociology, read my articles about Christ and sent me his 423-page book, entitled “Under the Unfluence” and subtitled “How Christianity Transformed Civilization.” The headlines of the following chapters are worth quoting: “The Sanctification of Human Life.” “Charity and Compassion: Their Christian Connection.” “Hospitals and Health Care: Their Christian Roots.”

Another chapter headline is worth quoting here: “Women Receive Freedom and Dignity,” since in the recent news from the Islamic world, a woman was gang-raped, and the court sentenced her to 17 lashes, which were augmented to 200 lashes, that is, to death from lashes for having been gang-raped. A heinous crime punished by torturing its victim to death.

Only the horror of the West led to the repeal of the monstrous “sentence.” The number of Muslims is believed to exceed 1 billion: this is not a tiny island lost on a world map — this is a continent.

* * *

You can e-mail me at navlev@cloud9.net.