Benjamin Wiker teaches science and theology at Franciscan University. His book Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists gives a detailed account of Darwin's "theory of evolution" as a latter-day version of the materialist philosophy of the Greek thinker Epicurus and his Roman counterpart, Lucretius.

Darwin followed these two philosophers in writing in detail about such unscientific ideas as:

1 Nature is a system that regulates itself.

2 Among living creatures, there is a merciless struggle for life and this leads to evolution by means of natural selection.

3 It should be avoided to give a "teleological" (the idea that they came into being for a purpose) account of nature and living things.

What is striking is that these ideas are not scientific. Neither Epicurus nor Lucretius conducted scientific experiments or made observations; they just used logic completely in line with their own wishes. Moreover, their logic had an interesting starting point. Epicurus rejected the existence of a Creator, saying that it entailed belief in an afterlife, for which reason he felt himself circumscribed. He clearly stated that his whole philosophy developed from his unwillingness to accept this proposition. In other words, Epicurus chose atheism for his own psychological comfort and later, undertook to construct a worldview based on this choice. For this reason he endeavored to explain the order of the universe and the origins of life in terms of an atheist system and with this purpose in mind, adopted ideas that would later prove basic to evolution.

Benjamin Wiker gives this detailed interpretation of the relation between Epicurus and Darwin:

The first Darwinian was not Darwin, but a rather notorious Greek, Epicurus, born on the Island of Samos about 341 B.C. It was he who provided the philosophical underpinnings of Darwinism, because it was he who fashioned an entirely materialistic, [atheistic] cosmology, where the purposeless jostling of brute matter over infinite time yielded, by a series of fortunate accidents, not only the Earth, but all the myriad forms of life thereon. . . .

After stating that Epicurus fashioned the cosmology, not out of evidence but from his desire to abstract the world from the idea of a Creator, Wiker goes on to say:

...This common disdain for religion unites Epicureanism and modernity because we moderns [Darwinists] are the heirs of Epicurus. Through a long and winding path, a revived form of Epicurean materialism became the founding creed of modern scientific materialism-the very materialist cosmology that Darwin assumed in the Origin and that still grounds the materialist dismissal of design in nature.

Today, those motivated to stubbornly defend the theory of evolution are not on the side of science, but on the side of atheism. Like their precursor Epicurus, their attachment to atheism stems from the awareness that accepting the existence of Allah would clash with their own selfish desires.

What is in the heavens and in the Earth belongs to Allah. Allah encompasses all things. (Surat an-Nisa':126)

There is a verse in the Qur'an in which Allah completely describes the situation of non-believers: "And they repudiated them wrongly and haughtily, in spite of their own certainty about them." (Surat an-Naml: 14) And in another verse, He reveals, "Have you seen him who has taken his whims and desires to be his deity?" (Surat al-Furqan: 43)

The Epicurus-Darwinist "clan" rejects the existence of Allah only because His existence conflicts with their personal desires and passions; in this, they are very much like those described in the verse above. Therefore, it is very deceptive to regard the evolution-Creation argument as a conflict between science and religion.

Evolution and Creation, two different explanations of the origins of life and the universe, have existed from ancient times. In order to understand which of these explanations is scientifically correct, we have to consider the discoveries of science. Here, as in our other books, we will once again see how all findings prove that the theory of evolution is erroneous, and that Creation is true.

It is False that Science Must Be Atheistic

There is no compulsion for science to be atheistic, that is, to believe in and to maintain the dogma that the universe is composed of matter only, and that there is no consciousness apart from matter. Science must investigate its discoveries and go wherever true discoveries may lead.

Today various branches of science such as astrophysics, physics and biology clearly demonstrate the examples of creation in the universe and in nature, which are impossible to explain in terms of random events. All proofs point towards a Creator. This Creator is Allah Whose eternal power and intelligence has created the heavens, the Earth and all things animate and inanimate that lie between.

The unproven "faith" is atheism. The following pages will show that atheism's most important support-that is, Darwinism-has collapsed.