“Can we just make peace with Darwin and move on?” That’s the poignant question that podcaster Sean McDowell asked recently of molecular biologist Douglas Axe. Professor Axe answered on his own terms. (See, “Doug Axe on Darwinian Evolution: ‘One of the Weakest, Most Pathetic Scientific Theories.’”) Many other people ask McDowell’s question, too, of course. And there are a range of answers.

Political scientist John West offered, in effect, his own response. If it were not for the weakness of Darwin’s idea as a scientific theory, if it were a plausible theory to explain how life came to be as it is, are there any reasons we should not wish to make peace with it and “move on”? Dr. West’s answer, presented at The Lyceum in Cleveland, has to do with the corrosiveness of Darwinism on any culture where it takes hold. It never produces anything good but only degrades the ideas that humans hold about what it means to be a human. 

West details this for you, and some of the most depressing consequences are a misanthropy, human self-hatred, of the type articulated by thinkers like Eric Pianka, the late University of Texas herpetologist. On Darwinian grounds, Professor Pianka argued that the Earth would benefit from culling the population of mankind by some 90 percent. Watch this and then ask a Darwinist friend if he or she can think of one way that the evolutionary perspective has ennobled or uplifted anyone. Just one way!