Given Darwin’s mantra of “survival of the fittest,” it is clear that Darwinian evolution is a worldview that intrinsically requires a “conflict of interest.” In point of fact the whole notion of a “harmony of interests,” would be bad news in a climate that insisted that advance is only achieved by the survival of the fittest. When one combines this with the reality that there is no mind behind the unwinding of evolution one must add that the survival of the fittest is a survival that happens completely by chance in a random universe.
Further, because of the randomness necessary in a mindless universe all “facts,” are uninterpreted facts and therefore are brute meaningless facts with no stable meaning. These brute facts, like the survival of the fittest, are facts without relation to any other facts as they likewise struggle to exist. Facts can be wiped out just as species can be wiped out.
Conflict is thus inherent and is the substance of worldview Darwinian evolution. Whether the conflict for survival among the fittest or the conflict among various facticities conflict of interest is the mother’s milk of Darwinian evolution.
But here we come face to face with another key doctrine of humanism and that is the idea of the inevitability of progress. If “conflict of interest” is characteristic of worldview Darwinism then how can progress be inevitable? Indeed, in a mindless world governed by time + chance + circumstance how can progress even be measured or determined? In a mindless world where fact itself is in a contest of survival, how can humanists even be sure that the inevitability of progress is a warranted good to be desired?
If evolution is mindless and governed only by time + chance + circumstance then any notion of progress is itself subject to evolution. Progress at one point of the march of evolution might be Stalin’s Holodomor while progress at another point of the march of evolution might be Huxley’s “Brave New World.” Because of this to speak of the inevitability of progress is an automatic non-sequitur in Evolution’s own world and life view.
Only Christianity posits a sovereign creator God who orders all things to the end and purpose of a harmony of interest found in glorifying God in all things (Romans 11:33-36). Only Christianity holds to all of the creation longing to glorify God (Romans 8:19f). Only Christianity envisions all things enjoying the service of the interests of God anticipating that day when Christ so reigns so that all things are put under His feet so that all things serve His interests. This is the inevitability of progress that Christianity presupposes.
So, advance by the conflict of interests is contrary to Christianity except as that advance is characterized by defeating those interests which are in conflict with God’s harmony of interests. Since those things that make for conflict of interests in God’s cosmos are doomed for failure we can anticipate the one-day dawning of the postmillennial vision where the harmony of interests that is a metaphysical reality by nature of God’s rule will overcome the conflict of interests introduced into God’s reality by man’s ethical attempt to overthrow Christ’s Kingship. This is the Christian reason for embracing the inevitability of progress.
