A kind of optical illusion?
Jeremy DeSilva has edited a useful volume which considers the current state of evolutionary thinking on the descent of man (A Most Interesting Problem). The book celebrates 150 years since Darwin published Descent of Man, and this book works chapter by chapter of that volume, various contributors considering what Darwin got right, and what he got wrong.
The book provides a good look at how evolutionists think about the kind of being humans are and how we came to be such. Any notion that people were created by God is dismissed outright; only the latest fossil findings and research are allowed to inform the “most interesting problem” being considered here.
The problems with this interesting book are the problems of naturalistic science as a whole, and of evolutionary science in particular: a starting-point taken up as an act of faith, and biased only to physical evidence; a method for discerning truth which cannot be applied to confirming its own basic assumptions; a tendency to invade domains beyond the reach of physical evidence; insistence that the only meaning in the vast cosmos is that which human beings impose; and an unwillingness to consider or dialog with other frameworks and disciplines in seeking to understand the world. These all work together “to drive a steady demotion of the human tribe” (p. 142).
Lewis got it right when he opined, “The modern acquiescence in universal evolutionism is a kind of optical illusion…”[1] But, as the writers in A Most Interesting Problem demonstrate, it is a powerful illusion, dismissing all dissenting views of life, and blinding adherents to an ever-reduced view of the complexity, wonder, beauty, and mystery of humankind, the image-bearers of God.
[1] Excerpt From: C. S. Lewis. “Weight of Glory.” Apple Books. https://books.apple.com/us/book/weight-of-glory/id360623945, p. 162.