It’s about 2 am Saturday night, or Sunday morning rather. The rest of the house is sound asleep, but there is a light on under my door. On the other side of that door, I lie wide awake in bed, unable to sleep. My emotions vibrate somewhere between horror stricken and shocked to confusion. I had just finished listening to the BBC radio drama of H.G. Wells’ War of the Worlds. I was deeply troubled by what I had heard.
But before I continue, a brief summary of War of the Worlds is in order: The story begins with a British astronomer by the name of Henry Nickleson. Nickleson has a theory that life - and possibly life of intelligence far superior to that of man - has arisen on Mars by the same evolutionary process by which life is said to have evolved on earth. Adding to this the assumption that Mars is older than the earth and quickly cooling, he speculates that the Martian race must either go extinct or seek a younger, warmer planet to inhabit in the near future.
His theory is shown to be all too true when a Martian spacecraft makes landfall in the suburbs outside of
From this point the plot spirals down into a nightmarish account of Nickleson’s struggle to survive, evade capture, and retain his sanity as the Martians transform
Wandering dazed through this wilderness of death and carnage, Nickleson stumbles on the hiding place of an army pilot who also escaped the slaughter. He is the first living human Nickleson has seen in days. As they crouch together in hiding, Nickleson and the Pilot discuss the new state of things. Man is no longer Lord of the Planet. The arrival of these higher life forms has reduced the human race to hunted vermin on level with rats. The future of humanity looks black, but the steely Pilot resolves that it is their “duty to go on living for the sake of the race.”
Driven by desperation to survive and duty to race, the two of them begin formulating plans to organize an underground resistance against the Martians. But before they are able to act, the Martians suddenly and inexplicably begin to die out on their own. With no immunity to terrestrial diseases, the Martians rapidly sicken and die. Ironically, not man, but bacteria becomes the hero.
There is a basic outline of War of the Worlds. Unlike what you may expect after such a description of the story, it was not the inhuman cruelty of the alien invaders that troubled me so deeply, although indeed, Wells’ descriptions are lurid enough to turn ones stomach. Rather it was Wells’ conclusion that bothered me. I did not tell you the final conclusion of War of the Worlds in the summary above.
Here it is: Sometime later, after the dead have been buried, towns and villages rebuilt, and Martian weapons safely displayed behind glass in the
Do you see the implications of this reasoning? Wells’ essentially says Man should do to Venus exactly the same thing that the Martians tried to do to our own earth!
That is how the book ended. And that is why I could not sleep. My senses reeled as I tried to seize on what had caused the author of that book to come to such an appalling deduction. The images of carnage and brutality he had so skillfully created earlier in the story lent themselves to any conclusion but this. It was as wrong as if he had just finished a history of the Holocaust with the statement “Hitler was right,
Or had it?
Several days later, I found out that Wells’ was a committed Darwinist. Below are listed the core tenants of Darwinian Evolution:
1. There is no God and there is no spiritual reality. The material universe is all there is or ever will be.
2. Life arose by way of natural processes and chance.
3. All life is descended from a common ancestor. Therefore, man is just an animal.
4. Natural Selection. Only the strongest do (and should) survive. Therefore, morality is determined by strength.
5. As a corollary of Natural Selection, one race of humans is superior to the rest.
6. The ultimate purpose and duty of man is to reproduce himself.
It seems then, that Wells’ was more logical than I had given him credit for. You see, he was only taking Darwinism to its logical extreme. That was how he was able to come to the conclusion he did. By Darwinian philosophy, it is natural, reasonable, and even right, for a stronger (i.e. more advanced or more intelligent) race to destroy another, in view of their own interests. According to this same logic, racism, genocide, euthanasia, and abortion suddenly become permissible. Actually, this is exactly the sort of “advancement of the human race” that Wells’ advocates in many of his more technical writings. Compared to some of the plans Wells’ proposed, Hitler would appear a moderate. Here are a few of them:
Ÿ The universal practice of eugenics, that is, selective breeding of human beings.
Ÿ Mercy killings, meaning the murder of anyone he considered unfit to live. By the way, in case you are wondering, Wells’ considered anyone with a transmittable disease, mental disorder, physical deformity, criminal record, or alcohol addiction unworthy of life.
Ÿ Sterilization and birth control to prevent races he deemed ‘inferior,’ specifically darker skinned ethnicities, from having children.
Ÿ Voluntary suicide of so called unfit persons in the name of the greater good of humanity.
Ÿ A worldwide government controlled by an ‘enlightened’ scientific elite. These would be the ones to determine who was fit to survive and who was not.
Sound like Nazi Germany, anyone?
But wait a second, Neo Darwinism (which is simply the modern version of the same Darwinism Wells’ adhered to) is the doctrine that underlies
There are many reasons, not the least of which being the fact that any government that tried to implement such measures would be overthrown by an angry and terrified population. No government yet existing has the power to put Wells’ plans into action. Only a global “world domination” would have the power to do that.
But the most important reason is the reality that few people actually think about what they believe and how it should affect the way they live. We can be grateful fewer students put in the mental effort to work out the implications of what they are told in the classroom, otherwise tragedies like Columbine or Virginia Tech would occur much more frequently. On the other had, there are some who do think, and that is where abortion clinics, planned parenthood, the euthanasia movement, and Neo Nazism originate.
It is not just Evolutionists, either. Few Christians seriously think about what they believe. If they did, who knows how the Kingdom might advance and how many lives might be saved for eternity? A note needs to be made here. We have to be extremely careful about what worldview we chose to believe because what we believe determines our behavior, and actions have consequences. Darwinian philosophy is not a stable worldview to act upon because it is neither logically nor scientifically sound (for more information on that, check out the Intelligent Design or Creationist counter arguments). Unlike Darwinism however, Christianity, real Christianity based on the Bible, is both logically and scientifically solid (again, if you would like to learn more on that, check out some of the links on our blog).
In conclusion, although H.G. Wells was fundamentally wrong in his worldview, at least he was consistent, terrifyingly so. The world has been saved much trouble by Evolutionists not acting on their beliefs. I only wonder how much harm has been done by Christians not acting on theirs.
