Finland School Shootings: The Sad Evolution Connection
Bodie Hodge, M.Sc., B.Sc., PEI
Biblical Authority Ministries, July 1, 2025 (Donate)
“I am prepared to fight and die for my cause, . . . I, as a
natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race
and failures of natural selection. No, the truth is that I am just an animal, a
human, an individual, a dissident . . . . It’s time to put NATURAL SELECTION
& SURVIVAL OF THE FITTEST back on tracks!”[1]
Sadly, these
words were among the last things said before a self-proclaimed Social Darwinist
took action in a shooting rampage in Jokela High School about 40 miles from
Helsinki, Finland. At least eight people were reported killed by the student
gunman named Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who had an online alias “Sturmgeist89,” in a
tragic event that has shocked the country that sits in the far northern region
of Europe.[2]
The
Rise Of Evolution
Finland, like
many other European nations, used to be very Christian in its culture. They
still have a Nordic blue cross on the flag of their country. But over the
years, evolutionism
began to infiltrate in schools, universities and so on. Evolutionism is a
religious view that denies that the Bible is God’s Word and that God is the
final authority. Instead, the evolutionary religion has man as the supreme
authority. Evolutionists have made clear the meaning of evolution:
“Christianity has fought, still fights, and will fight science to the desperate end over evolution, because evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason Jesus’ earthly life was supposedly made necessary. Destroy Adam and Eve and the original sin, and in the rubble you will find the sorry remains of the son of god. Take away the meaning of his death. If Jesus was not the redeemer that died for our sins, and this is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing.”[3]
And:
“Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology
tells us loud and clear . . . . There are no gods, no purposes, no
goal-directed forces of any kind. There is no life after death. When I die, I
am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end for me. There
is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning to life, and no free
will for humans, either.”[4]
In such a religion, if God is left out, then the only other option for supreme authority is mankind. If that is the case, then each person can determine what is right and wrong in his or her own eyes (Judges 17:6). In this little town in Finland, this is exactly what the gunman did, with no regard for human life.
In today’s
culture there is a war over true history.
This war is significant, since it deals with how people live their lives. The
way people view their history affects how they live their life, i.e., their
purpose, goals, and views of morality.
Mass murderer
Jeffrey Dahmer, for example, lived his life believing evolution was true
history, and therefore, it affected his theology (believing there was no God)
and how he lived his life (without regard for other human life). Dahmer said:
“If a person doesn’t think there is a God to be accountable to,
then—then what’s the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within
acceptable ranges? That’s how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of
evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we
died, you know, that was it, there is nothing…”[5]
Fruits Of Evolution
This student
professed to be a “Social Darwinist,” which is a fancy way of saying he held to
the religion of evolution. Even his revealing quote that initiated this article
confirms his evolutionary beliefs. And like Darwin, he felt some people were
“unfit” to survive. Charles Darwin wrote:
“At some future period, not very distant as measured by centuries,
the civilized races of man will almost certainly exterminate and replace the
savage races throughout the world. At the same time the anthropomorphous apes .
. . will no doubt be exterminated. The break between man and his nearest allies
will then be wider, for it will intervene between man in a more civilized
state, as we may hope, even than the Caucasian, and some ape as low as a
baboon, instead of as now between the negro or Australian [Aborigine] and the
gorilla.”[6]
Darwin was
not afraid to admit that people may one day exterminate others. Many have
applied his ideas on a grand scale and others are doing it on smaller scales.
Hitler,
Marx, Stalin, And Others
Darwin’s
teachings have influenced many in the past, such as Hitler, who tried to get
Nazi Germany to conform to evolution. Sir Arthur Keith, a prominent British anthropologist
(and evolutionists himself), pointed out that Hitler, based on his writings,
was an evolutionist:
“The German Führer, as I have consistently maintained, is an
evolutionist; he has consciously sought to make the practice of Germany conform
to the theory of evolution.”[7]
Karl
Marx, Pol Pot, Leon Trotsky, and Joseph Stalin—to name a few—avidly held to
Darwinian evolution to justify their actions.
Now that
evolution is being taught in most parts of the world, it is logical to assume
this influence will sadly continue to bear more fruit. But after the fruit that
was born by the Marxist teachings of Hitler and Stalin, can mankind afford more
fruit like this?
School
Shootings and Mass Murders in the US
School
shootings in the US often now only invoke brief headlines because so many have
occurred. Amish children were killed, and in a Cleveland-area school, a
shooter opened fire killing four while cursing.[8]
Few forget the evolutionary kids who made news in Columbine, where one of the
two gunmen was even wearing a “natural selection” T-shirt while racing through
the school shooting fellow classmates on April 20, 1999.[9]
Who
Has A Right To Be Upset?
Our thoughts
and prayers are with the families affected by any shooting tragedy like this,
though nothing can replace those they have lost. As Christians who hold that
people are made in the image of God, there is a basis for the value of human life and for
absolute morality.
If evolutionists
are upset about this tragedy in Finland (or any other school shooting), then on
what basis could they make a case to condemn it? On the basis of their
materialistic beliefs, what they just observed was a random set of chemicals
reacting with another random set of chemicals. Do evolutionists get upset with
baking soda reacting with vinegar?
Often,
however, even evolutionists are outraged by the school shootings, but in order
for them to justify being outraged, they have borrowed from the
Christian worldview to acknowledge that such things are wrong.
But the fact
remains that these murderers were living a life consistent with the real
teachings of atheistic evolutionism. Children catch on quickly and eventually
put two and two together. When they are taught that there is no God, no right
and wrong, people are animals, etc., then they may reason: “Why not kill or
steal?” and so on. It is a logical connection.
So long as
evolutionism is forced onto children (no God, people are animals, no right and
wrong, etc.) and so long as they believe it and reject accountability to their
Creator, then we can expect more of these types of gross and inappropriate
actions.
Did
God Make The World Full Of Suffering And Death?
In today’s
culture, when news like this hits, one of the most common questions people ask
is this: “If there really is a loving God, then why did he make the world like
this?” It disheartens me to hear the wrong answer to this question—and
Christians even, more often than not, are giving the wrong answer.
The answer is
to death
and suffering is simple. God didn’t make the world like this. He originally
made it perfect (Genesis 1:31; Deuteronomy 32:4). There was no death, pain
or suffering (Genesis 1:29–30). But due to man’s sin (Adam and Eve)
against God, death and suffering entered into creation (Genesis 3). Death is the punishment for sin (Genesis 2:17). We all sin and fall short of God’s holiness
and glory (Romans 5:12, 3:23). Thus, according to a holy and righteous
God who gave us life to begin with, we all deserve death.
Yet God loved
us enough to send His Son to die in our place to offer salvation and peace with
God. John 3:16–17 says:
For
God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever
believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life. For God did not
send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through
Him might be saved.
Image from Presentation Library
God truly is
a loving God to have offered Himself a perfect sacrifice to pay the penalty of
our sin and to offer us the free gift of salvation. One day those who have put
their trust in Jesus Christ as Savior and Lord will experience a world where
there is no longer any death or pain and where the tears will be wiped from our
eyes by God Himself (Revelation 21:1–4). When we see sad news like this, it
should be a reminder that sin is serious and has consequences, but in the same
respect the good
news of Jesus
Christ can set us free from the eternal consequence of sin. When viewing
the world’s history and life either through an evolutionary or biblical
perspective, only the biblical view has any real hope.
If you don’t
know that your sins are forgiven and you are reconciled to God, can I encourage
you read the book of John (Link) in the New Testament part of the Bible. And then turn from your sin, tell God you are
sorry and that you gratefully trust in what Jesus did on the cross to pay for
your sins. Then find a church where the
Bible is taught and believed as the authoritative Word of God.
Originally
here: http://www.answersingenesis.org/stage/articles/2007/11/08/finland-fruits-of-humanism;
Edited; Republished by permission.
[1] As reported by Sami Torma,
“Seven killed at Finland School after YouTube Post,” Yahoo! News; “Finland
School Gunman Dies,” AOL News; Anonymous [missionary in Finland], email message
to author from a missionary that listed the shooters recent post in detail,
November 7, 2007.
[2] Ibid.
[3] G. Richard Bozarth, “The
Meaning of Evolution,” American Atheist, 20 Sept. 1979, p. 30.
[4] William B. Provine,
Origins Research 16.1 (1994), p.9.
[5] Jeffrey Dahmer, interview
with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, Nov. 29, 1994.
[6] Charles Darwin, The
Descent of Man (New York: A.L. Burt, 1874, 2nd ed.), p. 178.
[7] A. Keith, Evolution
and Ethics, Putnam, NY, USA, 1947, p. 230.
[8] “Police: Suspended Boy
Shoots 4 at Ohio School,” MSNBC, October 10, 2007.
[9] D. Catchpoole, How to build a bomb in the public school
system, Creation 22(1) December 1999, p. 17.
