The gift of reason is damaged so that man’s understanding is darkened and he is unable to grasp spiritual things or appreciate the word of God. His conscience, which used to fill him with joy in the presence of God, now accuses him continually, and because it has been suppressed, it gives him a distorted view of right and wrong. He worships gods of his own invention, which are quite incapable of providing the help that he needs from them. He lives alienated from God and from his fellow man, and he is forced to deny his own hope and to look no further than the few years that he has in this world as the totality of his existence. The theory of evolution operates to reduce man to the level of a mere animal. It sets him free from any obligation he has to fulfil God’s moral law. But this belief comes at a price and if he is after all no more than a beast, he must abandon all hope in a world to come. He lives for the present moment and when that is gone, he has nothing. But most painfully, he becomes like the animals in the respect in which Solomon describes in the next verse. He would rather deny his greatest gifts than acknowledge he is a fallen creature.