For example, the evolutionary account of the origin of the universe has given us a variety of logical developments. Hitler’s National Socialism sought to aid natural selection in the creation of a master race. Eugenics, the “bio-social” side of evolutionary theory, is concerned with genetic composition of populations, and was also popular in the United States.

Other logical developments include the polar opposites of abortion and animal rights, or behavioral psychology, which claims that human freedom is a meaningless concept (B.F. Skinner, Beyond Freedom and Dignity). All of these are equally rooted in the evolutionary theory of origins.

Turning to questions of civil government, we also find a manifest view of origins. In the evolutionary universe, civil government is a creation of man.

Man is conceived of as having “natural rights,” and government is “of the people, by the people and for the people,” as President Abraham Lincoln insisted. This is to say that civil government is man’s creation for man’s purposes. It is to be exercised by men who are its chosen agents, supposedly doing the will of the people who have invested them with authority.

In such a system, the people and their wishes are the only measure of what the government may undertake. Since evolutionary man has all authority in himself originally, he may delegate as much of that authority as he sees fit.

If there are to be limitations in such a system, they are related only to the original grant of authority — in the United States, supposedly the Constitution. The problem with this is evolutionary man is autonomous as an agent, and the Constitution in his hands is no barrier to his exercise of power.

Daniel J. Elazar, an influential political scientist in both the United States and Israel,explains: “Emphasis on the integrity of the constitution is prelude to its re- interpretation ... reaffirming that there can be no changes and then proceeding with the new interpretation as if it were not new.” The process explains the abuse of the Constitution by governments in modern America.

Men who place the origin of civil authority in the will of man are already well on the road to political slavery. There has never been a free government erected on human autonomy as a working hypothesis.

The origin of free governments is in the Word of God, which makes governors the “ministers of God” and sets limits upon what governments may legitimately undertake as their work. Governors are instructed, “Let it suffice you ... remove violence and spoil, and execute judgment and justice, take away your exactions from my people, saith the Lord God” (Ezek. 45:9).

Thus, what is sufficient in God’s sight is to protect the population from criminal activity and to provide a ministry of justice in cases of litigation. The re-allocation of lands popular in communist governments, and the cradle-to-grave provision for man’s livelihood popular in socialist nations are both illegitimate in God’s sight.

The Founders of our nation used a Biblical foundation to address many of the questions of law and justice currently posed by today’s social engineers. For example, “eye for eye and tooth for tooth,” sometimes interpreted as meaning that the punishment must fit the crime, is spoken concerning the legal status of the pre-born child (Exod. 21:23-25). For hundreds of years, colonial and U.S. law recognized the Scriptural principle that one who hurts a child in the womb has hurt a legal person.

Other “social” issues also were codified based on Scripture. The early colonists erected their governments with reference to these laws. The Fundamental Orders of Connecticut (1639) required an oath of the governor and magistrates that justice would be administered “according to the righteous rule of God’s word.” The Massachusetts Body of Liberties (1641), the first legal code established in New England, includes capital laws which are direct paraphrases of the Biblical law. Annexed to the paraphrases are the appropriate citations from Scripture.

In God’s social order, the family is responsible for health, education and welfare. The

church is a backup institution in ministering to the poor and to widows. If you don’t work, you don’t eat — and no man who refuses to work has an agency in the state that can compel others to feed him at their expense.

There are social provisions for “gleaning,” which required hard work by the poor in order to feed themselves with the leftovers in the farmers’ fields and vineyards. The landowner provided the opportunity, but the poor were expected to work to feed themselves — no paycheck in the mail for doing nothing.

The Founders based the foundation for free government and of liberty for individual man on the Bible — establishing the proper functions, laws and division of powers among institutions in society. Each institution in society — family, church and state — must know its proper sphere of activity, and do what it is called by God to do.

Without a view of origins that points us to the Word of God, we are a nation without direction, breaking down the restraints and barriers that preserved liberty in prior generations.