Jane Goodall has died.
The world-famous anthropologist died earlier this month at 91. Of course, the tributes flowed. But Goodall’s overall worldview, Darwinian philosophy, did great damage to civilization. Much like the “great man” did more than a century ago.
Anyone that has read my writing for any length of time knows I am profoundly opposed to evolutionary theory. Beginning in earnest in the 19th century, attacks on the Bible set the stage for what we’re living through/enduring right now. It paved the way for 20th-century monsters Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin, and Mao. It infected our public schools after 1925, and is the ideological basis of our colleges and universities—even some Christian ones.
It’s obvious that one’s personal worldview is shaped by different things and affects different things. A person that embraces evolution essentially believes in Herbert Spencer’s dictum, “survival of the fittest.”
That worldview has shaped leaders from the Soviet Union to our own industrialists of the last century. Andrew Carnegie was basically a disciple of Spencer (who was a friend of Darwin’s), and certainly today’s hi-tech barons are just as ruthless.
Something else few understand is that one of Rick Warren’s mentors, Peter Drucker, was a thorough-going evolutionist. Drucker, a high-level business consultant, had only one goal in mind when he began befriending up-and-coming evangelical leaders in America: bury the American Church under a pile of church-growth/seeker-driven techniques. We now have churches in which people do not bring their Bibles to church—Dear Leader projects one or two verses on a giant screen, then envelopes that in his latest book focus. Small groups focus on what Dear Leader wants. The result is very, very little actual Bible study.
(Sidenote: why did the Southern Baptist Convention a generation ago pour copies of The Purpose-Driven Life into the denomination’s 45,000 churches…instead of focusing on actual study of the Bible? This was intentional and was done in conjunction with the horrifically liberal Zondervan publishing company. It was all about money and marketing.)
Back to Jane Goodall.
The British-born leader in primate study grew up in the shadow of Darwin’s evolutionary make-believe world, in which new narratives had to replace those in the Bible. Charles Darwin himself built on the work of such devilish researchers as Charles Lyell (who launched the modern field of research into geology. It was Lyell who subtly created a new “flood” theory; he speculated that rock layers around the world were actually deposited over a period of hundreds of thousands of years, as opposed to the Genesis account, which took a little more than a year in the time of Noah. Of course, those figures are now stretched to millions of years. There is no way to reconcile that with Scripture).
At the same time, liberal theologians were emerging, both in Germany and England. While the “higher critics” in Germany were claiming the Old Testament is myth—from “evidence” out of thin air—British clergy embraced all that enthusiastically. The Baptist Union (including Charles Spurgeon’s own brother!) voted to censure Spurgeon, who was almost solely holding the line on the Bible. In fact, Spurgeon wrote at the time, “The fight is killing me.” He died on holiday in France in 1892, at the young age of 58.
Today, King Charles is affirming Islam in myriad ways, compromising his own place as the “head of the Church of England.” Of course, Darwin is buried in Westminster Abbey, so there’s that.
Goodall was raised in a regular Christian family in England, but then began studying the pagan/mystical spirituality of Madame Blavatsky, theosophy. She later told reporters that she believed in some type of spiritual power, that she felt it in nature.
Upon her death, tributes flowed in, including from Prince Harry, Al Gore, Justin Trudeau, Ellen DeGeneres. Stevie Nicks’ 1990 song, “Jane,” is a tribute to Goodall. By the way, Gore is a total evolutionist and pagan. Read his book, Earth in the Balance.
Ideas have consequences, and Goodall helped soak culture in the brine of evolution.
A Ken Ham article from Answers in Genesis reveals a shocking realization from Goodall, after she became aware that chimpanzees had evil tendencies:
“It was a very dark time for me. . . . I thought they were like us, only nicer. I’d no idea of the brutality they could show. War always seemed to me to be a purely human behaviour. I’ve come to accept that the dark, evil side of human nature is deeply embedded in our genes, inherited from our primate ancestors.”
Ham’s succinct analysis of Goodall’s worldview is key:
“Because she began with the wrong starting point—naturalistic evolutionary ideas—she reached the wrong conclusion. We don’t have a ‘dark, evil side’ because we inherited it from some ape-like ancestors; we are sinful because we are descendants of Adam. You see, Adam, the first man, rebelled against God and brought sin and death into creation (1 Corinthians 15:22). The Bible tells us we all sin because we sinned in Adam and continue to sin (Romans 5:12).
“And Adam’s sin is the reason chimps can be brutal and engage in ‘war.’ Adam’s rebellion broke creation, and now everything groans, including animals such as chimps (Romans 8:22). Our world isn’t the way God made it! Creation, in the beginning, was ‘very good’ (Genesis 1:31), but, because of sin, it isn’t any more.”
Excellent!
Goodall rejected the true source of evil that is outlined in Genesis 3. From that time, a perpetual state of war between good and evil has rolled across the world. Goodall did not understand that at all. She didn’t really understand what she was seeing in nature, which was, as Tennyson wrote, “red in tooth and claw.”
Because Jane Goodall missed the truth of the Bible, especially from Genesis, she devoted her life to a fairy tale, one in which life emerged from random natural processes.
Additionally, I would maintain that all this has helped create the conditions in which Paul’s prediction in 2 Timothy 3 has found full fulfillment in our own time.
And I want to leave you with a very recent comment from Goodall, one which shows just how twisted her thinking had become.
“In a newly released interview filmed prior to her passing, Jane Goodall expressed her wish to send Elon Musk and Donald Trump on a one-way trip to outer space.
“’There are people I don’t like, and I would like to put them on one of Musk’s spaceships and send them all off to the planet he’s sure he’s going to discover… [Elon] would be the host. You can imagine who I’d put on that spaceship. Along with Musk would be Trump and some of Trump’s real supporters.’
“’And then I would put Putin in there, and I would put President Xi. I’d certainly put Netanyahu in there and his far-right government. Put them all on that spaceship and send them off.’”
You see? Her fervent belief in Darwinian philosophy led her to also attack Benjamin Netanyahu! A leftist worldview comes directly from belief in evolution. She felt kinship with monsters that led civilization, and monsters in her fantasy world of evolution.
In order to protect your children and grandchildren, I’d encourage you to check out resources from Answers in Genesis and The Institute for Creation Research. I’d also suggest my own two new books, which come at the issue of defending the Bible by focusing on astonishing Bible prophecies already fulfilled. You can find them here and here on Amazon.
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