An Evolutionary Thing by Candice Watters on 10/24/2006 at 4:05 PM

While the religious faithful the world over were worshiping the Living God this past Sunday, the San Francisco Chronicle ran an article by Dinesh D'Souza about the source of such faith.

D'Souza highlighted the puzzlement over religion among some of our age's most influencial thinkers. Because faith doesn't make sense to them, biologists Richard Dawkins and E.O. Wilson, philosopher Daniel Dennett and author Sam Harris look to their patron saint, Charles Darwin, to explain why religion continues to thrive. How can one possibly account for religious belief despite -- from their perspective -- all "rational evidence"?

In the end, they conclude, it must be an evolutionary thing.

Writes D'Souza,

[I]magine two groups of people ... the Secular Tribe and the Religious Tribe.... The religious tribe is made up of people who have an animating sense of purpose. The secular tribe is made up of people who are not sure why they exist at all. The religious tribe is composed of individuals who view their every thought and action as consequential. The secular tribe is made up of matter that cannot explain why it is able to think at all.

Should evolutionists like Dennett, Dawkins, Harris and Wilson be surprised, then, to see that religious tribes are fourishing around the world?

And it's not just that the religious tribe is populated with wishful thinkers. The evidence for the existence of God -- the intelligent designer behind our irreducibly complex universe -- abounds. I was reminded of this recently while viewing an episode of the Truth Project. It's not that there's no "rational eivdence" for God, it's that intellectuals who have chosen to believe Darwin have also chosen to reject any and all evidence that undermines his theory.

Paul warned Timothy about such people who would be "always learning but never able to acknowledge the truth" (2 Timothy 3:1-7).

Thankfully those who embrace the truth are making great strides, by virtue of the way they live that truth out, toward survival of the faithful. Given the course they're on, the evolutionists may, in the end, be responsible for their own extinction.