...why having correct beliefs is important. Our whole lives are inevitably affected by the real world around us, so what we believe about it is of the utmost importance.... What we believe about reality does not change the truth, nor its effect upon us. Correct belief, however, enables us to know the truth as it is, and then to take appropriate action, so that it will have the best possible effect upon our lives. Having correct beliefs is also necessary because of the large amount and variety of incorrect beliefs which are about (1992, pp. 12,13)

 

What effect has the world around us had on our lives?  Our upbringing?  Were we raised with any sense of values?  Were we even taught the basics of the Bible?  Perhaps we were, and again maybe not.  This could depend on which era we were raised in.  And who you were raised by!

 

H.H. Farmer put it like this: “There can be no question that many people find belief in Elohim difficult because there is in their mind a bias which predisposes them against it” (1942, p. 129).

 

What about one of the most famous persons to promulgate anti-belief, Darwin?  Did he at one time have some form of faith?  Belief?

 

James Bales states “For some reason or another, Darwin was determined not to believe in Elohim. Although he admitted more than once that it is reasonable to believe in Elohim, and unreasonable to reject Elohim, yet so determined was he not to believe that he slew reason when reason led him to Elohim” (1976, p. 17). See also:

[James Moore’s definitive biography: Charles Darwin: The Life of a Tormented Evolutionist is a notable exception as well as the volume by Clark and Bales (Why Scientists Accept Evolution) and that of Sunderland (Darwin’s Enigma).]

Bales’ bases the following on Darwin’s own comments.

He wrote:

This follows from the extreme difficulty or rather impossibility of conceiving this immense and wonderful universe, including man with his capacity for looking far backwards and far into futurity, as the result of blind chance or necessity. When thus reflecting I feel compelled to look to a First Cause having an intelligent mind in some degree analogous to that of man; and I deserve to be called a Theist. This conclusion was strong in my mind about the time, as far as I can remember, when I wrote the Origin of Species; and it is since that time that it has very gradually, with many fluctuations, become weaker. But then arises the doubt, can the mind of man, which has, as I fully believe, been developed from a mind as low as that possessed by the lowest animals, be trusted when it draws such grand conclusions? (as quoted in Francis Darwin, 1898, 1:282).

 

What happened that turned Darwin away from having any faith? In 1850, Charles and Emma Darwin’s oldest daughter, Annie, fell ill. On April 23, 1851, she died at the tender age of ten. Darwin was devastated. Although Emma was a devout believer in Elohim and Chr--tianity, with Annie’s death her husband no longer could stomach such concepts. In their massive, scholarly biography, Darwin, Desmond and Moore wrote:

This was the end of the road, the cru--fixion of his hopes. He could not believe the way Emma believed—nor what she believed. There was no straw to clutch, no promised resurrection. Ch--stian faith was futile.... For him the death marked an impasse and a new beginning. It put an end to three years’ deliberation about the Ch--stian meaning of mortality; it opened up a fresh vision of the tragic contingency of nature.... Annie’s cruel death destroyed Charles’s tatters of belief in a moral, just universe. Later he would say that this period chimed the final death-knell for his Ch--stianity, even if it had been a long, drawn-out process of decay.... Charles now took his stand as an unbeliever (1991, pp. 384,386,387, emp. in orig.).

 

 

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Putting this is in proper context, Charles Darwin lost his faith in Elohim after this tragic event!

 

 

 Who will separate us from the love of Messiah? [Will] affliction or distress or persecution or famine or nakedness or peril or sword?
 Just as it has been written, "For Your sake we are being put to death the whole day; we were accounted as sheep for slaughter." [Psalm 44:22]
 _But_ in all these [things] we are completely victorious through the One having loved us.
 For I have been persuaded that neither death nor life nor angels nor rulers nor powers nor [things] present nor things about to be
 nor height nor depth nor any other created [thing] will be able to separate us from the love of Yahweh, the [one] in Messiah Yahshua our Master!  Romans 8:35-39

 

 

Darwin eventually admitted: “But I found it more and more difficult, with free scope given to my imagination, to invent evidence which would suffice to convince me. Thus disbelief crept over me at such a slow rate, but at last was complete. The rate was so slow that I felt no distress” (as quoted in Francis Darwin, 1898, 1:277-278; cf. also Greene, 1963, pp. 16-17).

 Bales therefore concluded:

Darwin, so far as my research shows, never used doubt as to the reliability of human reason to discredit other positions. He did not say that since Darwinism was the product of his mind, therefore it could not be trusted. It was only when reason led him to Elohim that he destroyed reason. What a strong bias against Elohim he must have had. Is it not strange? Darwin said that the animal origin of man’s mind keeps man from being fully able to trust his reasoning, and yet he said that he fully believed that man originated that way. Darwin should either have doubted all reasoning, including Darwinism, or have admitted that the human mind is not wholly an untrustworthy instrument. There are other things which could be said about these quotations from Darwin, but our purpose here is to show that he had a powerful bias against Elohim.... [Ibid ]

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Little by little Darwin's disbelief swept over him, until he completely lost any semblance of faith or belief.  His daughters death was the wedge that drove him away from any relationship with Elohim.

 

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In his book, If There’s a Elohim, Why Are There Atheists?, R.C. Sproul  wrote:

...unbelief is generated not so much by intellectual causes as by moral and psychological ones... Though people are not persuaded by the evidence, this does not indicate an insufficiency in the evidence, but rather an insufficiency in man. This insufficiency is not a natural inability that provides man with an excuse. Man’s failure to see this general and universal revelation of Elohim is not because he lacks eyes or ears or a brain with which to think. The problem is not a lack of knowledge or a lack of natural cognitive equipment but a moral deficiency.... The problem is not that there is insufficient evidence to convince rational human beings that there is a Elohim, but that rational human beings have a natural hostility to the being of Elohim.... Man’s desire is not that the omnipotent, personal Judeo-Ch--stian Elohim exists, but that He not exist (1978, pp. 57,58, emp. added).

 "For from [the] creation of [the] world His invisible [attributes] are plainly seen, being understood by the [things] made, both His eternal power and holiness, so that they are without excuse." Romans 1:20 (ALT)

 

Mankind's penchant for denying things beyond his realm, has plagued society from the beginning of time, as we know it.  The rejection of Yahweh's commandments by Adam and Eve, resulted in their expulsion from Gan Eden. This is followed by the murder of Abel by Cain, and  the violent history of man begins.  Coupled with rejection of Yahweh's way of life and then substituting the carnal desire for physical pleasures, the human race is on course for destruction.  In order for the carnal man to exist, any suggestion of a spiritual one, must be denied and abandoned...

This will end part three. 

 

Next we will look at the book we discussed in the Hawke File. 

PART FOUR

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Yours in Yahshua, Hawke

 

 

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