The boy who’s proud to be a killer
Will Cornick murders teacher in front of classmates in Leeds, England

Published: 22 January 2015 (GMT+10)
The horrendous stabbing murder1 of an English high school teacher and the comments the perpetrator made afterwards are a potent reminder of the possible effects of evolutionary thinking on impressionable minds.
Some of the sickening comments the teenage student made after the killing included:
“I wasn’t in shock, I was happy. I had a sense of pride. I still do.
“I know it’s uncivilised but I know it’s incredibly instinctual and human. Past generations of life, killing is a route of survival.
“It’s kill or be killed. I did not have a choice. It was kill her or suicide.
“I know the victim’s family will be upset but I don’t care. In my eyes, everything I’ve done is fine and dandy.”1
He had previously said of the teacher on Facebook that “she deserves more than death, more than pain and more than anything that we can understand”.1
The details of the killing make disturbing reading. It happened at Corpus Christi Catholic College in Leeds, England, when the teenager walked up behind a 61-year-old female teacher, winked at fellow students and then fatally stabbed her.
The boy, Will Cornick, has since been jailed, and details of his planned attack and callous attitude were revealed in court. While it’s impossible to know what influences impacted the killer and resulted in such psychopathic tendencies, his statements that “it’s incredibly instinctual and human” and “killing is a route of survival”, have inescapable evolutionary overtones.
After all, at the heart of Darwin’s philosophy that overwhelms the education system and the wider community is the belief that we are nothing more than biochemistry—that all our thoughts, feelings and actions are simply the result of our genes and the environment.2
As well, Cornick’s statements are somewhat similar to those of the notorious American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer who once said: “After all, 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 behaviour 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…”3
After the shooting massacre in 1999 in America in which teenagers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold killed 12 students and a teacher before turning their guns on themselves, people were asking, ‘How could they do such a thing?’4 The killers were obsessed with blood-drenched video games and violent death. They were also fascinated by the German Nazi belief, fuelled by ideas of Darwinian struggle, in a ‘master race’.5
Only a moral and legal code based on Christian morality will act as some sort of restraint to such tendencies. But once there is the justification that it’s ‘natural’ to kill, this will happen more. The analogy can be made with depression/suicide; even if depression in a culture remains at a constant level, the percentage of those who then give in to their impulse to self-destruct will be higher when people think life has no meaning and there is no afterlife.
The fact that Cornick’s attack happened at a Catholic college also speaks of the way in which much of the church has embraced evolution over the creation account in Genesis. Science, some churches say, has shown the Genesis account of creation to be wrong, so it is appropriate to take a different view.2
So, even in church-run schools children are told that man is just an animal, that death and violence are a natural part of evolution, and that ‘only the fittest survive’, so it is no wonder that young people are wallowing in utter hopelessness.5
At CMI, we argue that science and Scripture do not collide, and that there is no need to compromise either—a view which numerous articles on this website show to be entirely reasonable.2 The Bible can be trusted absolutely in what it says about earth history. And it can be trusted in what it says about everything else too, particularly that it is wrong to kill another human despite a mindset like that of this troubled individual who subscribes to the notion that ‘it’s incredibly instinctual and human’ to carry out such an act.
Related Articles
Further Reading
References and notes
- Rayner, G., Boy, 16, winked at fellow student before stabbing teacher Ann Maguire to death as she tried to flee, telegraph.co.uk, 3 November 2014. Return to text.
- Statham, D., The slippery slope, 20 October 2011; creation.com/slippery-slope. Return to text.
- Interview with Stone Phillips, Dateline NBC, 29 November 1994. Return to text.
- Catchpoole, D., Inside the mind of a killer, 9 November 2007; creation.com/killer. Return to text.
- Catchpoole, D., How to build a bomb in the public school system, Creation 22(1):17, December 1999; creation.com/bomb. Return to text.
(Also available in Czech).
Readers’ comments
My point was that Will Cornick, whose behaviour seemed to be the topic of this article, didn't really have his survival threatened by the teacher in question, or it would be considered self defense and we wouldn't be condemning his actions. It was his own psychoses that lead him to think of it that way. Had he staunchly believed in the Bible he may well have warped notions in regards to Biblical teaching, just as he had delusions about his teacher's supposed effect on his survival. A boy of this mental state wasn't likely to have developed sound doctrine regardless of whether he believed in a literal interpretation of Genesis or not.
As it happens I am a young earth creationist myself and, honestly, your response seemed a bit discouraging, or perhaps patronising. The article does mention some other cases, but it's initially about the action taken by Will Cornick and what he said at the time or in court, which is what I was talking about. So I see no problem with discussing that specifically, and I have a good reason for doing so...
The intention of my comment was to clarify that this - the murder by Will Cornick - is a poor example of the moral effect of naturalism, due to how rife with inconsistencies it is. That's why I contrasted it with neo-Nazism, which shows more direct and consistent effects on society. CMI has an 'Arguments-we-think-creationists-should-NOT-use' page, so I was hoping you would see the value of this distinction within the context of 'social evidence'.
I wasn't disagreeing with the value of Creationist teaching in the general sense.
However, I question whether being taught creationism would have prevented him from killing. I don't think so, given the obsessive, sociopathic tendencies Will showed. We'll never know, in all honesty, but I think he would have found some other way to justify his actions even had he believed in Scriptural truth and a young Earth. Not to suggest his mental state was irredeemable, just that there are plenty of ways to distort the Bible without invoking evolution.
I'm not saying I think there is anything healthy about a naturalist ideology, just that I don't see much about this case to suggest it was motivated by race or hereditary factors, so it's not exactly based upon any sort of neo-Nazi principals or something similar. It seems more like a means to defend and promote his evil act.
If he had claimed God 'told him to kill her' you would be on the defensive, instead denying any genuine connection.
You should have asked him if his statement that there is no absolute truth is absolutely true.
the roots are part of the tree....its actually affected by the chemicals as averse to minerals in the soil. In the past the minerals was what was naturally available. However, man has decided to 'inject' the soil with fertiliser and super foods etc., This fact is what makes MEN ALWAYS CHOOSE TO EAT OF THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE...OF GOOD AND EVIL. However he missed eating the fruit of the tree of LIFE.
Today is your choice - "Do YOU choose LIFE or knowledge of good/evil or right/wrong ?"
I am of the opinion that all people everywhere will choose 'knowledge' and like Adam hide behind "you put that 'sinful' tree there in the first place!!" -cop out excuse of don't blame me! -I am just following instincts! natural, fertilised, pesticides/poisoned or otherwise!
Thank you for considering my recent post worthy of a reply. To your reply I have this comment:
Darwin never completely lost his faith in what we may call a "higher power", or "God", if you will. There were times in his life when he slipped into feelings of despair and despondency, especially during his grieving over the loss of his beloved daughter. The same happens to even the very best of us Christians. Darwin did eventually renounce the beliefs which he had been brought up with and churched upon, such as many of the dogmas and teachings of traditional Christianity. Darwin's concept of God became transformed in the belief in an invisible force imbued within all creatures, a force of instinct by which they select the traits and attributes most likely to insure their
survival in future generations. Sometimes instinct makes the wrong choice. Wrong choices result in extinction. Evolution is not purposeless. It has a purpose. The purpose is to survive. One of the strongest indicators that Darwin believed in a higher power is that he never let his life to become given over to any kind of debauchery. He lived an exemplary and upright life. You have to have God with you in order to do that.
Thanks for your reply. The real issue is not over whether it is possible to live an upright life without debauchery absent Christianity (one certainly can; I have atheist cousins who do) but ultimately over whether one believes that God is (God being the personal, infinite God of the Bible), and that He is as He has revealed, which is not a matter of the 'dogmas and traditions' of any religion but boils down to whether you accept the Bible for what it claims to be, revealed propositional truth from God. Because if it is not, then one can invent a god of one's imagining and also can define a moral life any way one wants. Why should debauchery be wrong in that case? Yes, we all feel that it is, but God has revealed that this is because we have His moral law written on our hearts.
If the Bible is what it claims to be, then by definition, it will be inerrant (because otherwise one would have no yardstick for determining which of its propositions are in error and which are not, plus of course the irrationality of assuming that an inerrant divinity incapable of lying would willingly disguise truth within a quagmire of error). So from that inerrant propositional truth, we can claim unequivocally (Romans 3:23) that "all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God". That’s Darwin, you, me, whether involved in debauchery or not. Our righteousness, says God is "as filthy rags". In the face of His holiness, we all stand condemned. It is only as Christ's righteousness is imputed to us after we appropriate (by God's grace, though faith) His sacrifice on our behalf; the just for the unjust—that we can put on His robe of righteousness and become worthy (justified in His sight) to be received into God's heaven to life everlasting. This is love; not that we loved Him, but that He loved us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us. Will you grasp hold of that,Sam? Will you turn from this belief that an ‘upright life’ can possibly count in the face of His holiness, admit your lost sinful condition before God (not my judgment but His on all of us), and give up imagining that anything any of us do (or abstain from) can save us from eternal lostness? Then you will know what it is to be not some nominal vague Christian, but a child and heir of the Father’s, set free to more abundant life and eternal fellowship with Him? By the way, if you write again I undertake to respond personally, not publicly...
I wonder if Richard Dawkins and his evolutionary colleagues are proud of this young man for acting out their beliefs?"|
A very poor decision of CMI to publish an asinine and nasty comment like that. Ask yourselves a question: do any of you actually believe for a second that Richard Dawkins would be "proud" or pleased that an act of violence has occurred? If so, you have a seriously disturbed personality, and twisted views on the human condition. Richard Dawkins is a decent and kind man. I have my own opinions on creationism and CMI, but I will not articulate them here, except to say that in publishing comments like Dan M's CMI does itself no good whatsoever.
Here's the one that saddens me:
What does one do when they interject God and his laws through grace that we are supposed to obey, I.e. theistic evolution? Thus surmising what was wrong with this young man was not evolution, but the missing component - God and the Bible, ugh!
Had he applied God's moral code to his life, he would not have interpreted evolution this way in his unregenerate mind.
Will fits the profile of a serial killer.
The fact that evolution is taught in Uk biology classes has absolutely nothing to do with with this vicious sociopath who is a great danger to other people.
It is ridiculous to believe that because of one chapter in his biology class he decided to murder the teacher. Every kid in the UK takes biology. Do they decide that the theory of evolution gives them the right to kill someone in front of 25 or more other people. No?
I've read some of the anti evolution material. It is interesting and makes a lot of sense. But really, one chapter in one class caused the kids to kill the teacher? The writer did the anti evolution cause no good when he wrote this nonsense.
I just noticed that you "select" comments for publication. I assume you won't select mine because I don't agree that one chapter in a biology class caused this murder.
I doubt Will was a good student or pondered the theory of evolution when it came up in biology. He probably slouched in the back of the class and paid no attention whatsoever. Given the type of vicious sociopath he is he may have skipped school the 2 days evolution was taught.
Why?
In a Computer game, the enemy doesn't shoot back!
Self control is one of the biggest problems facing the human race today.
And now the US Military are using drones to eliminate the 'bad guys' without these humans beings ever appearing before a Judge and Jury.
I'm sorry, but I think that Computer games or TV are more to blame for this young mans distorted ideas than his hearing about the theory of Evolution.
our culture is too far gone down the road of Godlessness for "creation evidence" alone to have any real or significant impact in radically changing people's behaviour;
*only the FEAR of Almighty God* stops men from doing evil.....
that means: the fear of being cast into HELL-fire by Almighty God's righteous judgement...
Jesus Christ spoke more about HELL than any-thing else....if you are not relaying Jesus' words about this important but, admittedly, uncomfortable issue then you are a *false* Christian and liable for judgement your-self...
that's like saying issac newton and his collegues should be proud that people are jumping off buildings because "what goes up must come down", also George from Canada you are making the same mistake that Dan makes
that kind of justification is logically impossible to produce, you might as well say since its natural for lightning to strike metal poles, we should tie ourselves to flag poles during thunderstorms
When I speak to young people's groups about evolution, I make the point that if evolution is true there is really nothing wrong with bullying; it is just the natural consequence of survival of the fittest.
Great article.
"And [the Bible] can be trusted in what it says about everything else too, particularly that it is wrong to kill another human."
The Bible is full of justification for killing people:
Deuteronomy 17:12
Exodus 22:18
Leviticus 20:13
Leviticus 20:10
Leviticus 21:9
Isaiah 13:15-18
And many, many more.
I am glad that CMI are among the remnant of those who are actively promoting truth, shining a light on this sort of error and the causes of it and being prepared to cop the abuse that I'm sure that you do (as do I).
I am also glad that this can be turned around if the Gospel and God's word is faithfully preached, not just from out pulpits, but by all Christians in every sector of society, in word and deed.
We live in very perilous times and are very close to completely losing all our freedoms so carefully won over many centuries.
And for those secularists who think that there was a dark ages when the church ruled [CMI: pls feel free to insert link -and delete this] (even though it is clear that medieval Europe was probably the freest, least dark area of the world at the time as even secular historians now admit and even assert), wait until you see the darkness coming as a result of secularism and other forces that threaten the hard-fought Western freedoms that have resulted from a biblical (i.e. Christian) worldview and foundation.
Again, as sad as this story is, worse is to come unless we repent, including Christians. And including ME!
Oh Lord, please forgive us for our foolishness, arrogance, carelessness and hubris.
If my people who are called by My name, God told Israel, will humble themselves, and pray, and seek My face, and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and forgive their sins and heal their land. And while that doesn't apply the same way to Christians, or nations today, I'm sure it's still good instruction.
When God asked Cain where his brother was, he replied: Am I my brothers keeper?
When asked, "Why?", they basically give Cain's answer.
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