Did you know that the theory of evolution heavily influenced how the law and the Constitution became taught and interpreted? When mankind began to adopt the theory of evolution in the nineteenth century, jurists and other legal intellectuals began to subscribe to a view that law is a mere byproduct of human will and social struggle – “survival of the fittest”. Previous to Charles Darwin the dominant view in Western legal tradition was that human laws are subject to higher law, to natural law, to God’s law – a fixed standard. And this, through the Bible and through such sources as Blackstone’s Legal Commentary, was the worldview which framed the American Constitution.
There is no basis in the Constitution for so-called “legislating from the Bench” – for activist judges. There is no basis, for example, for finding a right to abortion, and to usurp the power of states and of legislatures. Roe v Wade, which came into law on January 22, 1973, was evolutionary theory at work in our courts (you can read more about that here). Thankfully, it has finally been repealed, though many state governments still use evolutionary assumptions and fraudulent arguments to legislate the evil of abortion.
Under the influence of evolutionism and its off-shoot Social Darwinism, a powerful transformation of legal studies took place in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in Western Civilization – just as occurred in science. And it occurred for the same reason. Man’s depravity, his will to sin and rebel against his Maker, drives a resistance to God’s rule – and to the very existence of our Almighty Creator. An understanding of the fundamental depravity of mankind in relation to our Holy God is an understanding of a foundational truth of the Bible.
It has been said that the 16th Century Protestant Reformer most closely linked to the doctrine of the fundamental depravity of man, John Calvin, was the single most influential person to American Constitution. America’s founders worked hard to protect the people from the inherent sinful corruption (the inherent depravity) of those in power! The result is that the Constitution has a complex system of checks and balances to the abuse of power. In one dimension there are the three separate branches of government: legislative, executive, and judicial with independent defined powers, checking the excesses of one another. And in another dimension there are the checks and balances between federal powers and powers of the states and other local governments.
By contrast, other legal theories and systems of government assume the basic “goodness” of man, that he is morally perfectible by education and training. This is a false view supported by evolution. And this is the basis for socialism/communism - for the political “left”. Mankind is supposedly perfectible by the ongoing “progressive” dialectic struggle of communism – the clash between thesis and antithesis to get a new synthesis which becomes the next thesis in an ongoing evolution of man and society. No wonder the political left has adopted as their moniker the title “progressive”. It is more palatable these days than “communist”.
By denying the Biblical view of man as a sinner who can only be saved by God, socialism and communism subscribe to an evil lie. No wonder communist Russia was the first Western society to legalize abortion in all circumstances, under the Bolsheviks in 1920. No wonder communist China pushed forced abortions on its population for many years in its One Child policy. And the evil is compounded by the need for socialism to get its recruits to subscribe to the politics of envy, bitterness and slothfulness. Socialism must create “victim” classes for the “struggle”, and it must stoke the flames of envy and bitterness (ongoing anger and hatred) to do so.
Here are just a few of the considerations as to why it is very important to keep going to the Bible for truth - to keep “casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing every thought captive to the obedience of Christ” (2 Corinthians 10:5).
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