Evolution is a driving force behind the rejection of traditional morality, Albert Mohler Jr. said in a National Public Radio online forum on evolution and religious faith.
“Evolutionary theory stands at the base of moral relativism and the rejection of traditional morality,” Mohler writes. “If human beings are not made in the image of God, and if the entire cosmos is nothing more than a freakish accident, morality is nothing but a mirage, and human beings-cosmic accidents that we are-are free to negotiate whatever moral arrangement seems best to us at any given time.”
For the Aug. 8 edition of its “Taking Issue” forum, NPR solicited the views of five experts on the question of religious faith's compatibility with evolution. Mohler is president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Ky.
Other forum participants include Brad Hirschfield, vice president of CLAL-The National Jewish Center for Learning and Leadership; George Sim Johnston, author of Did Darwin Get It Right: Catholics and the Theory of Evolution; Katharine Jefferts Schori, bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Nevada; and Sulayman Nyang, professor of African studies at Howard University and co-director of the Muslims in the American Public Square research project .
Mohler argues that a fundamental divide exists between those who argue that the universe was purposefully created by God and those who argue that the universe evolved by chance. This divide manifests itself in disagreements between Christians and secularists over a variety of issues, he writes.
“Debates over education, abortion, environmentalism, homosexuality and a host of other issues are really debates about the origin-and thus the meaning-of human life,” Mohler writes.
The biblical Book of Genesis makes it clear that humans are neither “accidents” nor “mere animals living among other animals, for human beings alone are made in God's image,” according to Mohler.
“The theory of evolution argues that human beings-along with other living creatures-are simply the product of a blind naturalistic process of evolutionary development,” he continues. “… By definition, evolution has no room for the concept of the image of God, for evolutionary theory has no room for God at all.”
Baptist Press