Norwegian terrorist “was ‘darwinian’, not ‘christian’” proclaims the headline of an article in WorldNetDaily 24 July 2011. Initial media reports claimed Anders Behring Breivik, who murdered some 77 people in Norway with a bomb and a gun, was a “fundamentalist Christian”. However Breivik’s personal manifesto specifically denies any claims to being a follower of Jesus Christ as God, or even to his being religious but does claim he is a believer in the supremacy of European culture.
According to WorldNetDaily: “Breivik hails Charles Darwin, whose evolutionary theories stand in contrast to the claims of the Bible, and affirms: ‘As for the Church and science, it is essential that science takes an undisputed precedence over biblical teachings. Europe has always been the cradle of science, and it must always continue to be that way. Regarding my personal relationship with God, I guess I’m not an excessively religious man. I am first and foremost a man of logic. However, I am a supporter of a monocultural Christian Europe.’”
Editorial Comment: No doubt there will be many evolutionists, theistic, atheistic and anything in between, who will object to the connection between evolution and an act of terrorism. However, the connection between Darwin’s evolutionary theory and Anders Behring Breivik’s views is not far-fetched.
Darwin was quiet gentleman who lived in the British countryside, and would have been horrified by mass murder, but towards the end of his life Darwin wrote: “Lastly I could show fight on natural selection having done and doing more for the progress of civilisation than you seem inclined to admit. Remember what risks the nations of Europe ran, not so many centuries ago of being overwhelmed by the Turks, and how ridiculous such an idea now is. The more civilised so-called Caucasian races have beaten the Turkish hollow in the struggle for existence. Looking to the world at no very distant date, what an endless number of the lower races will have been eliminated by the higher civilised races throughout the world.” (Letter to William Graham, 3 July 1881)
A more recent predecessor of Breivik’s, Pekka-Eric Auvinen, the young man who murdered eight people in Jokela High School, Finland, wrote in his manifesto: “I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.”
Darwin’s evolutionary theory proclaims man as just another animal, subject to the same natural selection, where the strong eliminate the weak in the struggle to survive. Darwin was being consistent to this world-view when he predicted non-European races would eventually be selected out by Caucasians (Europeans). Not only is time proving him a false prophet, but his belief, and that of Breivik, is the direct opposite of the Bible-based belief that all human beings are made in the image of God and are, therefore, equally precious in His sight.
For more details about how Darwin went from being a bright young theological graduate to an agnostic who believed the European races would eliminate the “lower races” see our article Charles Darwin: The Descent of a Man. PDFhere (Ref. Darwinism, races, criminology)
Evidence News 3 August 2011