Magnito Got It: At Least He Understood What Was Going On...
Last weekend I had a chance to check out X-Men: First Class, and this blockbuster did not disappoint. It was a good story with lots of great epic battle scenes. The whole younger versions of Charles Xavier (James McAvoy) and Erik Lehnsherr / Magneto (Michael Fassbender) recruiting the first team of X-Men to battle against Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon), a mutant set on world domination was wonderful. One of the themes explored in the movie is how the advent of the nuclear age increased the number of genetic mutations giving rise to a number of mutant people with extraordinary abilities, which would be the next stage in evolutionary development of life on earth.
Darwinian Evolution is the story’s explanatory power for mutants and why it is unnecessary to consider their powers as a condition that needs to be “fixed.” In this instance, the story villain Magneto gets it, in so far as he understands the implications of evolutionary theory—the more fit species will survive with the less fit going to extinction. Natural selection and the survival of the fittest compliment Magneto’s utopian vision of a world dominated by mutants with the rest of humanity going extinct. Professor Xavier accepts the evolutionary theory within the X-Men universe, but still wants to navigate around the harsh reality of human extinction, and maintains an idealistic desire for peaceful coexistence between mutants and humans. In my opinion, Professor Xavier must take an existential “blind leap of faith” to find some ethic that abrogates the rule set by the Darwinian Theory that demands the extinction of the lesser species.
Outside the fantasy world of the X-Men universe is the real world theory of Darwinian Evolution, which holds that all species of life evolved from a common ancestor, and through the process of natural selection the more fit species ultimately survive whereas the less fit species go extinct. Yet, the theory is more than an academic exercise that explains how a single cell amoeba evolved into a multi-cellular biological entity called a human; the implications of the theory, if true, could justify genocide. In fact, Charles Darwin believed:
Thomas Henry Huxley, likewise, wrote:
The implications of Darwinian Evolution are chilling, and certainly this is issue illustrates well how ideas have consequences. In fact, evolutionary theory became the philosophical basis for many crimes against humanity in the twentieth century, such as the Holocaust.
A sigh of relief can be let out when one considers the Darwinian Theory can no longer be held sacred in light of the growing amount of evidence against it. In reality genetic mutations in humans are life destroying as opposed to ability enhancing. The Darwinian idea of chance being the cause of the evolutionary process from single cell organisms to complex multi-cellular organisms is extremely small and practically impossible. In fact, there is simply not enough time in the universe for complex life to have simply evolved by chance.3 The Cambrian fossil record also demonstrates the sudden appearance of diverse life approximately 550 million years ago, which runs counter to the evolutionary theory of a gradual branching of diverse species over a long period of time.4 Chance alone cannot explain how complex life came into existence. Unlike the fantasy world of X-Men, and the theory of Darwinian Evolution, the reality of the universe and earth with her irreducibly complex biological life can only be explained by an intelligent designer.
Each person has intrinsic worth which transcends their circumstances and genetic makeup. Each person, therefore, deserves dignity and respect from the rest of society. The basis for this is actually rooted in a biblical worldview. It is in Genesis 1 that we discover God created man in the image of God both male and female. A person possesses intrinsic worth because they bear the imago Dei, and while mankind has fallen into sin, the image of God has not been erased. The intrinsic worth of each person is further highlighted in the New Testament Gospel—God the Father sends the Son to be incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ, who would die on behalf of sinners, rise again the third day, so that those who believe would not perish but have eternal life. Although Darwinian Evolution does not preclude discrimination on the basis of genetic makeup, the biblical worldview does allow for people to see the value in each person in spite of genetic makeup—mutants and non-mutants.
1. Charles Darwin, C. Darwin to W. Graham, July 3, 1881 in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1, ed. Francis Darwin (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1887), 316.
2. Thomas Henry Huxley, Science and Education (New York: American Home Library Company, 1902), 64
3. This point is discussed at length in Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2009).
4. Cf. Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2000).
Darwinian Evolution is the story’s explanatory power for mutants and why it is unnecessary to consider their powers as a condition that needs to be “fixed.” In this instance, the story villain Magneto gets it, in so far as he understands the implications of evolutionary theory—the more fit species will survive with the less fit going to extinction. Natural selection and the survival of the fittest compliment Magneto’s utopian vision of a world dominated by mutants with the rest of humanity going extinct. Professor Xavier accepts the evolutionary theory within the X-Men universe, but still wants to navigate around the harsh reality of human extinction, and maintains an idealistic desire for peaceful coexistence between mutants and humans. In my opinion, Professor Xavier must take an existential “blind leap of faith” to find some ethic that abrogates the rule set by the Darwinian Theory that demands the extinction of the lesser species.
Outside the fantasy world of the X-Men universe is the real world theory of Darwinian Evolution, which holds that all species of life evolved from a common ancestor, and through the process of natural selection the more fit species ultimately survive whereas the less fit species go extinct. Yet, the theory is more than an academic exercise that explains how a single cell amoeba evolved into a multi-cellular biological entity called a human; the implications of the theory, if true, could justify genocide. In fact, Charles Darwin believed:
The more civilized 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 civilized races throughout the world.1
It may be quite true that some negroes are better than some white men; but no rational man, cognisant of the facts, believes that the average negro is the equal, still less the superior, of the average white man. And, if this be true, it is simply incredible that, when all his disabilities are removed, and our prognathous relative has a fair field and no favour, as well as no oppressor, he will be able to compete successfully with his bigger-brained and smaller-jawed rival, in a contest which is to be carried on by thoughts and not by bites.2
A sigh of relief can be let out when one considers the Darwinian Theory can no longer be held sacred in light of the growing amount of evidence against it. In reality genetic mutations in humans are life destroying as opposed to ability enhancing. The Darwinian idea of chance being the cause of the evolutionary process from single cell organisms to complex multi-cellular organisms is extremely small and practically impossible. In fact, there is simply not enough time in the universe for complex life to have simply evolved by chance.3 The Cambrian fossil record also demonstrates the sudden appearance of diverse life approximately 550 million years ago, which runs counter to the evolutionary theory of a gradual branching of diverse species over a long period of time.4 Chance alone cannot explain how complex life came into existence. Unlike the fantasy world of X-Men, and the theory of Darwinian Evolution, the reality of the universe and earth with her irreducibly complex biological life can only be explained by an intelligent designer.
Each person has intrinsic worth which transcends their circumstances and genetic makeup. Each person, therefore, deserves dignity and respect from the rest of society. The basis for this is actually rooted in a biblical worldview. It is in Genesis 1 that we discover God created man in the image of God both male and female. A person possesses intrinsic worth because they bear the imago Dei, and while mankind has fallen into sin, the image of God has not been erased. The intrinsic worth of each person is further highlighted in the New Testament Gospel—God the Father sends the Son to be incarnated in the person of Jesus Christ, who would die on behalf of sinners, rise again the third day, so that those who believe would not perish but have eternal life. Although Darwinian Evolution does not preclude discrimination on the basis of genetic makeup, the biblical worldview does allow for people to see the value in each person in spite of genetic makeup—mutants and non-mutants.
1. Charles Darwin, C. Darwin to W. Graham, July 3, 1881 in The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin, vol. 1, ed. Francis Darwin (London: William Clowes and Sons, 1887), 316.
2. Thomas Henry Huxley, Science and Education (New York: American Home Library Company, 1902), 64
3. This point is discussed at length in Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2009).
4. Cf. Jonathan Wells, Icons of Evolution (Washington, DC: Regnery Publishing, 2000).
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