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Evolution and Anomie

Updated: Aug 24, 2023



If evolution is true, then it is solely responsible for producing all the anomie in the world.


Do you know what anomie is? Does it sound like a small organism, perhaps the first living organism on earth?


If it was the name of the organism that led to all of current life, it would aptly explain the actual meaning of the term. But it is not an organism created by evolution. It is a condition, which (if evolution is true) is also created by evolution.


According to Brittanica, the term anomie refers to:

… in societies or individuals, a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals. https://www.britannica.com/topic/anomie

What a wonderful description of life on earth today. Right?


And, if evolution is true, anomie is a perfect word for what should be an unsurprising condition of life. After all, evolution is a process that itself lacks any purpose or ideals or values.


Here is what is surprising: that anomie is a word in the English language (and similar words in other languages) spoken by human beings.


Do giraffes look around their world and experience anomie? Do snakes slither around in an unsettled condition of unstability in the world around them? Do eagles soar despite having lodged deep in their hearts a lack of purpose or ideals?

If all the animals could talk, would they ever have reason to come up with a word like anomie?


Why, then, to humans use such a term?


Further, according to Brittanica, the the French sociologist Émile Durkheim introduced the term anomie in his study of suicide.

Imagine that.


Interestingly, Brittanica further reports:

According to Durkheim, such a society produces, in many of its members, psychological states characterized by a sense of futility, lack of purpose, and emotional emptiness and despair. Striving is considered useless, because there is no accepted definition of what is desirable. Ibid.

Imagine that again.


What is evolution, but a futile, senseless process lacking any purpose? If evolution is true, there is no accepted definition of desirable because there is no definition of desirable at all.


“Desirable” is not a word that fits an evolutionary process. Random mutations do not produce what is desirable, but only what occurs randomly. Natural selection does not produce what is desirable, but only what is efficient.


If evolution is true, the widespread anomie we see in the world today, including the high rates of suicide, should not only be unsurprising, it should be ho-hum.

Evolution does what evolution does.


But, what if evolution is not true? Is it possible that entire generations of human beings have believed the anomie-producing lie of an anomie-producing process?


It is time to stop molly-coddling evolution and its purveyors. It is time for those who push evolutionary theories of purposeless, meaningless existence to pay their freight in terms of owning much of the evident societal breakdown.


If evolution is not the explanation for human beings, then every evolutionist who has pushed this lie onto an impressionable young person should be held to account. Because the naturally occuring corollary lie is that he or she (the impressionable young person) is likewise purposeless and meaningless in this world.


What else could possibly be true?


But also be sure: If evolution is not the explanation for human beings, then every evolutionist who has pushed this lie onto an impressionable young person will be held to account.


For the sake of future generations of teachers and students alike, let’s take back the creation narrative.


Think about it.


NOTE: We first learned of anomie from a great weekly newsletter: One Little Word, by Dan Darling. The particular newsletter, entitled The Great Unsettling, was a guest post on April 27, 2022 by Jay Height, a Christian leader doing extraordinary work serving his neighbors on the ground in Indianapolis.


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