8) A CRITIQUE OF UNGUIDED EVOLUTION
Liberals
and some others oppose teaching intelligent design (ID) in public
schools, charging that it introduces religion into the classroom,
whereas teaching pure Darwinian unguided random “natural selection”
evolution does not. Actually ID does not, per se, presuppose a belief
in God, a supernatural creator or any religious belief, whereas,
unguided evolutionism, by a priori
rejecting God the Creator, presupposes atheism, which is most certainly
a religious belief. So why not substitute, in the classroom,
intrinsically religion-neutral ID for a belief in atheism? In this
connection, it is highly significant that over 90% of academic and other
Darwinian evolutionist scientists are atheists who have long imposed
their religious belief on the classrooms, taking the line that “science
only deals with material reality, whereas religion deals with the
spiritual, the moral and the ethical” and therefore it (along with ID)
has no place in science classes (or actually in any other classes). In
point of fact, scientist ID supporters accept the concept of evolution
and even the possibility of a universal common ancestor of all living
things.
The fanatical opposition to ID most probably is primarily motivated by
the fear that, heaven forbid, ID could lead to a belief in God (which.
of course, it could), which gives atheists unrelieved heartburn .This is
why there will always be a vast majority of scientists who oppose ID.
This, in turn, produces an overwhelming preponderance of “scientific
opinion”, generally taken seriously by laymen, which places ID
proponents in a very difficult and unfair position in the courts and
with school boards.
For
scientists so confident in their evolutionary beliefs, it is amusing
the extremes to which they sometimes feel compelled to go to make a
point. It must, for example, be a troubling puzzlement to these
Darwinian evolutionists that “man’s closest relatives”, the nonhuman
primates, seem entirely incapable of making or inventing anything --
totally unlike man whose ability in this regard seems (and no doubt is)
limitless. Therefore, it was with great satisfaction and enthusiasm
that, in recent years, a Darwinian-oriented scientist widely proclaimed
that “apes can use tools.” This was based solely on observing one ape
plumbing the depth of a stream with a stick (the “tool”). It gets even
better. The National Geographic (April
2008), in an article entitled “Almost Human,” reports how
anthropologist Jill Pruetz observed chimpanzees sharpening branches with
their teeth and then using them to spear bush babies, very small
primates living in trees. Published in over 300 news and science
outlets, this created a sensation in the Darwinist-oriented
anthropologic community. Imagine, then, its reaction to discovering a
group of primates building large dams, floating materials for it in
specially constructed channels and, in lakes thus created, constructing
lodges with separate rooms and underwater entrances. This would
undoubtedly cause these anthropologists to dissolve in paroxysms of
ecstasy. This, of course, is something beavers have routinely been doing
for countless centuries. Also compare the above highly touted observed
simian achievements with, for example, bees’ remarkably constructed
hives and honey production, many birds’ intricate nests and spiders’
highly effective webs and traps, relatively sophisticated “tools” for
catching unwary prey
Much
of the belief in unguided evolution largely depends on Darwin’s
observations of microevolution within single species during his short
stay in Galapagos Islands in 1835. The only possible fossil evidence of
one species evolving into another is some evidence of small dinosaurs
evolving into birds, the evidence of which is still sketchy. Generally
blind faith in believing large evolutionary gaps in the fossil record
can be overcome, still unguided evolution deserves to be labeled the leading superstition of our time.
In any case, there is a huge unbridged and, indeed, unbridgeable gap
between the most advanced animals and the most primitive humans. Humans
constantly advance in all fields, whereas animals remain frozen in time
with few, if any, advances. This alone should give pause to those who
believe in unguided evolution, but, of course, it will not. Then there
is, for example, the question of explaining the Cambrian explosion of
life forms, predominantly trilobites, over 500 million years ago. This
brings into play DNA which, according to Dr, .John West (see below)
“poses a fundamental challenge to materialist [that is Darwinian]
explanations of life because materialist explanations in principle
cannot account for the most important characteristic of [DNA]
information: its meaning.” In respect to the Cambrian explosion the
question is (quoting British scientist Stephen Meyer) “Where does all
the new information come from needed …to build these fundamentally new
forms of animals?” Speaking of DNA, 3.1 billion chemical “letters” make
up the human DNA. What an enormous input of information! How could this
occur through random selection?
Intelligent
design foes constantly condemn ID as “unscientific.” Here, however, is
an irrefutable mathematical, therefore scientific, proof of ID as it
appeared in a letter (from me) in London’s The Economist (August 27th –September 2nd 2005) which is hardly conservative. (I.e., it supported Kerry in the 2004 election.):
“The
human brain has one hundred billion extremely complex neurons connected
by one thousand trillion synapses. It is mathematically impossible for
anything this unimaginably complex to have been the product of any kind
of unguided evolution, even over limitless aeons. One doesn't have to
know the rules of mathematical probability to recognize this. The brain
could only have been created by a limitless intelligence, call it what
you may.”
(To
demonstrate an easily graspable idea of mathematical probability, the
odds against a very simple random selection like drawing a royal flush
in five card poker, are 689,739 to one.) As Lehigh University
biochemistry professor Dr. Michael Behe put it, some biochemical systems
are so “irreducibly complex” that they are better explained as
products of intelligent design rather than a Darwinian process of
unguided natural selection (from Darwin Day in America cited
below.). It is important, therefore, that ID proponents explain that
the “intelligent designer” must well, at times, have used an
evolutionary process in creating. The proof of a common
micro-evolutionary process is evident within species. For example, in my
lifetime, Americans have evolved into being substantially taller and
into living significantly longer. Darwinists seek to discredit ID by
wrongly associating it with those fundamentalist Christians who believe
in the “new earth” concept (i.e., that the earth is only some 6000 years
old) and in a literal interpretation of Genesis 1 and 2 in respect to
creation. This allegation is patently untrue. In contrast with these
fundamentalist beliefs, on the other hand, the oldest and largest
Christian Church, the Roman Catholic one, is open-minded about a 4.6
million year old earth and about the possibility of an evolutionary
process in Divine creation. (See below.) It maintains that, while the
Genesis concept of divine creation is, in principle, theologically
correct, it could be regarded as being more allegorical than literally
factual, as fundamentalists claim. Incidentally, a Belgian
Catholic priest, Father Georges Lemaitre, in 1927, first came up with
the Big Bang
theory, often discredited by fundamentalist creationists, and he was
certainly not reprimanded by the Church for it. However, for sometime,
Albert Einstein disagreed with Father Lemaitre until famed astronomer
Edwin Hubble finally brought him around on this.
For
those who believe in God, one could cogently argue that God may well
have created using an evolutionary process. The Bible says that “God
created man in his own image…” (Genesis 1:27) That being so, since man
creates using an evolutionary process, for example, a hammer first from
stone, then bronze, then iron and finally steel, why couldn’t God do the
same? When man was finally created he was obviously endowed with
properties enjoyed by no other creature on earth, as noted above. A
religious person would say that he was, in first instance, endowed with
an immortal soul. The Catholic Church seems inclined towards God’s
possibly using an evolutionary process in creating. Both Pope John Paul
II and Pope Benedict XVI have, for example, stressed the Catholic
principle that faith and science are compatible. Pope Pius XII, in 1950,
sanctioned “research and discussions…with regard to the doctrine of
evolution.” Pope John Paul II opined that evolution was “more than a
hypothesis.” However, Austrian Cardinal Christoph Schoenborn, who is
close to Pope Benedict XVI, wrote, in 2005, that “neo-Darwinian dogma is
not “compatible with Christian faith.” He later explained that he did
not reject the theory of evolution, but rightly pointed out that
neo-Darwinists deny the divine creation which is fundamental to
Christian belief. As explained, in 2009, by Reverend Marc Leclerc, in
the official Vatican organ L’Osservatore Romano,
“Evolution and creation do not represent the least opposition between
them…On the contrary they reveal themselves as entirely complementary.”
The
pernicious widespread dehumanizing influence of Darwinian-inspired
scientific materialism was described in great detail in an
extraordinarily thoroughly researched and documented book entitled Darwin Day in America
(ISI Books 2007, Wilmington, DE.) by Dr. John G. West of the Discovery
Institute (in Seattle WA). This materialism runs starkly counter to
Christianity’s exaltation of the human being as created “in the image of
God.” This materialistic debasement of the human being poses a grave,
little recognized, threat in many facets of our society, as explained in
great detail, case-by-case by Dr. West. For example, he quotes
biologist Bruce Alberts, former president of the National Academy of
Sciences as stating “…we have come to realize humans are more like worms
than we ever imagined…the worm represents a very simple human.” British
scientist Jane Rogers is quoted as stating, “…we share 99 percent of
our genes with mice and we even have genes that could make a tail.” This
is why, as noted above, Darwinian-oriented anthropologists eagerly seek
anything that makes us seem more like “other primates.” Their bottom
line is that, if humans are essentially no different from animals, why
should they be regarded differently? This erodes the entire ethical,
philosophical and moral foundation of our society, as Dr. Bell so
tellingly documents.
