'A religion is essentially an attitude to the
world as a whole. Thus evolution, for example, may prove as powerful a
principle to co-ordinate men's beliefs and hopes as God was in the past.
Such ideas underlie the various forms of Rationalism, the Ethical movement
and scientific Humanism.'
Ed. Sir Julian Huxley, 1965, pp. 99,336.
In other words, evolution =
religion.
People (not God) set whatever rules they want.
'Evolution is promoted by its practitioners as more than mere science. Evolution is promulgated as an ideology, a secular religion — a full-fledged alternative to Christianity, with meaning and morality. I am an ardent evolutionist and an ex-Christian, but I must admit that in this one complaint — and Mr [sic] Gish is but one of many to make it — the literalists are absolutely right. Evolution is a religion. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today. .. Evolution therefore came into being as a kind of secular ideology, an explicit substitute for Christianity.'
Ruse was the leading anti-creationist philosopher whose (flawed) arguments seemed to convince the biased judge to rule against the Arkansas 'balanced treatment' (of creation and evolution in schools) bill in 1981/2. At the trial, the anti-creationists loftily dismissed the claim that evolution was an anti-god religion.
'I had motive for not wanting the world to have a meaning; consequently assumed that it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics, he is also concerned to prove that there is no valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, or why his friends should not seize political power and govern in the way that they find most advantageous to themselves. ... For myself, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation, sexual and political.'
"I suppose the reason we leaped at The Origin of Species was because the idea of God interfered with our sexual mores"
"The sense of spiritual relief which comes from rejecting the idea of God as a super-human being is enormous"
"One is forced to conclude that many scientists and technologists pay lip-service to Darwinian theory only because it supposedly excludes a creator."
Quadrant, October 1982, page 44.