Below is another devotion from my friend Angel Torres. I pray it blesses you!
Many are familiar with the general concept of Darwinian evolution (the idea that all life arose through random natural processes)—often described as “molecules-to-man” evolution or macroevolution—but how many have considered just how inconsistent it is with what we read in the Declaration of Independence? In light of 2026 being the 250th anniversary of America, we would be wise to take a critical look at such a discrepancy. Consider this well-known passage from the Declaration:
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”1
Though Charles Darwin would not be born for another 30 years, the ideas he popularized were not entirely new. The belief that life could arise through natural processes, apart from direct divine creation, goes back to the ancient world. In Acts 17:18, for example, the Apostle Paul encountered Epicurean thinkers in Athens, Greece. They believed that life emerged from our planet; one of their poets, a man named Lucretius, even described the earth as a kind of “mother.”2
By the time of the Declaration of Independence, these kinds of naturalistic explanations for human origins were already out there in the world. Yet the signers didn’t connect human worth to blind natural processes. Instead, they claimed that all men “are created equal” and are “endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights.” Interestingly, in the evolutionary worldview, man possesses no more innate value than that of a cockroach or maple leaf. See what Jean-Paul Sartre, a 20th century secular humanist with Marxist leanings, wrote in his book Existentialism Is a Humanism: “Man simply is. Not that he is simply what he conceives himself to be, but he is what he wills… Man is nothing else but that which he makes of himself.”3
A core claim within Darwinian evolution is that human beings came about through unplanned processes, rather than as a distinct act of special creation, and thus without any inherent value or ultimate eternal destiny. How such an idea is compatible with the intentions and conclusions put forth in the Declaration is difficult to see at all, especially when we know from Scripture that “… God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them” (Genesis 1:27). The reality of man being a special creation of God was affirmed by the Creator Himself, the Lord Jesus Christ: “But from the beginning of the creation God made them male and female” (Mark 10:6).
If the evolutionary worldview is correct, then we are not special creations. Within that framework, where do “unalienable Rights” come from? And who defines what these rights are? By the same token, Christians have a foundation (the Bible) for such things as logic, natural rights, and religious freedom (see Genesis 9:6, Isaiah 1:18, and Romans 13). The non-Christian has no such foundation and, in an ironic twist, must borrow from the Bible to attack the Bible! Why decry the tyranny of kings? Why did the Founders call for checks and balances in government? The answer is simple yet powerful: Every human being bears the image of God, has the divine law written on his heart, and will be held accountable by his Creator who died and rose again in his stead.
Likewise, the widespread popularity and acceptance of evolutionary philosophy is actually a fulfillment of Bible prophecy:
“Knowing this first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers, walking after their own lusts, And saying, Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the creation. For this they willingly are ignorant of, that by the word of God the heavens were of old, and the earth standing out of the water and in the water: Whereby the world that then was, being overflowed with water, perished: But the heavens and the earth, which are now, by the same word are kept in store, reserved unto fire against the day of judgment and perdition of ungodly men” (2 Peter 3:3-7; emphasis added).
The Apostle Peter, by the grace of the Holy Spirit, said that people would be “willingly” ignorant of Creation and the Flood. Since the first eleven chapters of the Book of Genesis are the historical foundation for the rest of the Bible (Mark 10:1-9, Romans 5:12-19, 1 Corinthians 15:45), attacking these pillars ultimately undermines the gospel message (which is based upon the history of the Old Testament). Thus, as we look to celebrate America’s great heritage in the coming months, may we remember to “… Fear God, and give glory to him; for the hour of his judgment is come: and worship him that made heaven, and earth, and the sea, and the fountains of waters” (Revelation 14:7b).
1 https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript
2chrome-extension://efaidnbmnnnibpcajpcglclefindmkaj/https://johnstoniatexts.x10host.com/lucretius/lucretiusall.pdf
3 https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/sartre/works/exist/sartre.htm