Evolution is voodoo science

What is Darwinism? – Philip E Johnson

There is a popular television game show called “Jeopardy,” in which the usual order of things is reversed. Instead of being asked a question to which they must supply the answer, the contestants are given the answer and asked to provide the appropriate question. This format suggests an insight that is applicable to law, to science, and indeed to just about everything. The important thing is not necessarily to know all the answers, but rather to know what question is being asked.

That insight is the starting point for my inquiry into Darwinian evolution and its relationship to creation, because Darwinism is the answer to two very different kinds of questions. First, Darwinian theory tells us how a certain amount of diversity in life forms can develop once we have various types of complex living organisms already in existence. If a small population of birds happens to migrate to an isolated island, for example, a combination of inbreeding, mutation, and natural selection may cause this isolated population to develop different characteristics from those possessed by the ancestral population on the mainland. When the theory is understood in this limited sense, Darwinian evolution is uncontroversial, and has no important philosophical or theological implications.

Evolutionary biologists are not content merely to explain how variation occurs within limits, however. They aspire to answer a much broader question-which is how complex organisms like birds, and flowers, and human beings came into existence in the first place. The Darwinian answer to this second question is that the creative force that produced complex plants and animals from single-celled predecessors over long stretches of geological time is essentially the same as the mechanism that produces variations in flowers, insects, and domestic animals before our very eyes. In the words of Ernst Mayr, the dean of living Darwinists, “transspecific evolution [i.e., macroevolution] is nothing but an extrapolation and magnification of the events that take place within populations and species.” Neo-Darwinian evolution in this broad sense is a philosophical doctrine so lacking in empirical support that Mayr’s successor at Harvard, Stephen Jay Gould, once pronounced it in a reckless moment to be “effectively dead.” Yet neo-Darwinism is far from dead; on the contrary, it is continually proclaimed in the textbooks and the media as unchallengeable fact. How does it happen that so many scientists and intellectuals, who pride themselves on their empiricism and open-mindedness, continue to accept an unempirical theory as scientific fact?

The answer to that question lies in the definition of five key terms. The terms are creationism, evolution, science, religion, and truth. Once we understand how these words are used in evolutionary discourse, the continued ascendancy of neo-Darwinism will be no mystery and we need no longer be deceived by claims that the theory is supported by “overwhelming evidence.” I should warn at the outset, however, that using words clearly is not the innocent and peaceful activity most of us may have thought it to be. There are powerful vested interests in this area which can thrive only in the midst of ambiguity and confusion. Those who insist on defining terms precisely and using them consistently may find themselves regarded with suspicion and hostility, and even accused of being enemies of science. But let us accept that risk and proceed to the definitions.

The first word is creationism, which means simply a belief in creation. In Darwinist usage, which dominates not only the popular and profession scientific literature but also the media, a creationist is a person who takes the creation account in the Book of Genesis to be true in a very literal sense. The earth was created in a single week of six 24-hour days no more that 10,000 years ago; the major features of the geological column were produced by Noah’s flood; and there have been no major innovations in the forms of life since the beginning. It is a major theme of Darwinist propaganda that the only persons who have any doubts about Darwinism are young-earth creationists of this sort, who are always portrayed as rejecting the clear and convincing evidence of science to preserve a religious prejudice. The implication is that citizens of modern society are faced with a choice that is really no choice at all. Either they reject science altogether and retreat to a pre-modern worldview, or they believe everything the Darwinists tell them.

In a broader sense, however, a creationist is simply a person who believes in the existence of a creator, who brought about the existence of the world and its living inhabitants in furtherance of a purpose. Whether the process of creation took a single week or billions of years is relatively unimportant from a philosophical or theological standpoint. Creation by gradual processes over geological ages may create problems for Biblical interpretation, but it creates none for the basic principle of theistic religion. And creation in this broad sense, according to a 1991 Gallup poll, is the creed of 87 per cent of Americans. If God brought about our existence for a purpose, then the most important kind of knowledge to have is knowledge of God and of what He intends for us. Is creation in that broad sense consistent with evolution?

The answer is absolutely not, when “evolution” is understood in the Darwinian sense. To Darwinists, evolution means naturalistic evolution, because they insist that science must assume that the cosmos is a closed system of material causes and effects, which can never be influenced by anything outside of material nature-by God, for example. In the beginning, an explosion of matter created the cosmos, and undirected, naturalistic evolution produced everything that followed. From this philosophical standpoint it follows deductively that from the beginning no intelligent purpose guided evolution. If intelligence exists today, that is only because it has itself evolved through purposeless material processes.

A materialistic theory of evolution must inherently invoke two kinds of processes. At bottom the theory must be based on chance, because that is what is left when we have ruled out everything involving intelligence or purpose. Theories which invoke only chance are not credible, however. One thing that everyone acknowledges is that living organisms are enormously complex-far more so than, say, a computer or an airplane. That such complex entities came into existence simply by chance is clearly less credible than that they were designed and constructed by a creator. To back up their claim that this appearance of intelligent design is an illusion, Darwinists need to provide some complexity-building force that is mindless and purposeless. Natural selection is by far the most plausible candidate.

If we assume that random genetic mutations provided the new genetic information needed, say, to give a small mammal a start towards wings, and if we assume that each tiny step in the process of wing-building gave the animal an increased chance of survival, then natural selection ensured that the favored creatures would thrive and reproduce. It follows as a matter of logic that wings can and will appear as if by the plan of a designer. Of course, if wings or other improvements do not appear, the theory explains their absence just as well. The needed mutations didn’t arrive, or “developmental constraints” closed off certain possibilities, or natural selection favored something else. There is no requirement that any of this speculation be confirmed by either experimental or fossil evidence. To Darwinists just being able to imagine the process is sufficient to confirm that something like that must have happened.

Richard Dawkins calls the process of creation by mutation and selection “the blind watchmaker,” by which label he means that a purposeless, materialistic designing force, substitutes for the “watchmaker” deity of natural theology. The creative power of the blind watchmaker is supported only by very slight evidence, such as the famous example of a moth population in which the percentage of dark moths increased during a period when the birds were better able to see light moths against the smoke-darkened background trees. This may be taken to show that natural selection can do something, but not that it can create anything that was not already in existence. Even such slight evidence is more than sufficient, however, because evidence is not really necessary to prove something that is practically self-evident. The existence of a potent blind watchmaker follows deductively from the philosophical premise that nature had to do its own creating. There can be argument about the details, but if God was not in the picture something very much like Darwinism simply has to be true, regardless of the evidence.

That brings me to my third term, science. We have already seen that Darwinists assume as a matter of first principle that the history of the cosmos and its life forms is fully explicable on naturalistic principles. This reflects a philosophical doctrine called scientific naturalism, which is said to be a necessary consequence of the inherent limitations of science. What scientific naturalism does, however, is to transform the limitations of science into limitations upon reality, in the interest of maximizing the explanatory power of science and its practitioners. It is, of course, entirely possible to study organisms scientifically on the premise that they were all created by God, just as scientists study airplanes and even works of art without denying that these objects are intelligently designed. The problem with allowing God a role in the history of life is not that science would cease, but rather that scientists would have to acknowledge the existence of something important which is outside the boundaries of natural science. For scientists who want to be able to explain everything-and “theories of everything” are now openly anticipated in the scientific literature- this is an intolerable possibility.

The second feature of scientific naturalism that is important for our purpose is its set of rules governing the criticism and replacement of a paradigm. A paradigm is a general theory, like the Darwinian theory of evolution, which has achieved general acceptance in the scientific community. The paradigm unifies the various specialties that make up the research community, and guides research in all of them. Thus, zoologists, botanists, geneticists, molecular biologists, and paleontologists all see their research as aimed at filling out the details of the Darwinian paradigm. If molecular biologists see a pattern of apparently neutral mutations, which have no apparent effect on an organism’s fitness, they must find a way to reconcile their findings with the paradigm’s requirement that natural selection guides evolution. This they can do by postulating a sufficient quantity of invisible adaptive mutations, which are deemed to be accumulated by natural selection. Similarly, if paleontologists see new fossil species appearing suddenly in the fossil record, and remaining basically unchanged thereafter, they must perform whatever contortions are necessary to force this recalcitrant evidence into a model of incremental change through the accumulation of micromutations.

Supporting the paradigm may even require what in other contexts would be called deception. As Niles Eldredge candidly admitted, “We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports [the story of gradual adaptive change], all the while knowing it does not.”[ 1] Eldredge explained that this pattern of misrepresentation occurred because of “the certainty so characteristic of evolutionary ranks since the late 1940s, the utter assurance not only that natural selection operates in nature, but that we know precisely how it works.” This certainty produced a degree of dogmatism that Eldredge says resulted in the relegation to the “lunatic fringe” of paleontologists who reported that “they saw something out of kilter between contemporary evolutionary theory, on the one hand, and patterns of change in the fossil record on the other.”[ 2] Under the circumstances, prudent paleontologists understandably swallowed their doubts and supported the ruling ideology. To abandon the paradigm would be to abandon the scientific community; to ignore the paradigm and just gather the facts would be to earn the demeaning label of “stamp collector.”

As many philosophers of science have observed, the research community does not abandon a paradigm in the absence of a suitable replacement. This means that negative criticism of Darwinism, however devastating it may appear to be, is essentially irrelevant to the professional researchers. The critic may point out, for example, that the evidence that natural selection has any creative power is somewhere between weak and non-existent. That is perfectly true, but to Darwinists the more important point is this: If natural selection did not do the creating, what did? “God” is obviously unacceptable, because such a being is unknown to science. “We don’t know” is equally unacceptable, because to admit ignorance would be to leave science adrift without a guiding principle. To put the problem in the most practical terms: it is impossible to write or evaluate a grant proposal without a generally accepted theoretical framework.

The paradigm rule explains why Gould’s acknowledgment that neo-Darwinism is “effectively dead” had no significant effect on the Darwinist faithful, or even on Gould himself. Gould made that statement in a paper predicting the emergence of a new general theory of evolution, one based on the macromutational speculations of the Berkeley geneticist Richard Goldschmidt.[ 3] When the new theory did not arrive as anticipated, the alternatives were either to stick with Ernst Mayr’s version of neo- Darwinism, or to concede that biologists do not after all know of a naturalistic mechanism that can produce biological complexity. That was no choice at all. Gould had to beat a hasty retreat back to classical Darwinism to avoid giving aid and comfort to the enemies of scientific naturalism, including those disgusting creationists.

Having to defend a dead theory tooth and nail can hardly be a satisfying activity, and it is no wonder that Gould lashes out with fury at people such as myself, who calls attention to his predicament.[ 4] I do not mean to ridicule Gould, however, because I have a genuinely high regard for the man as one of the few Darwinists who has recognized the major problems with the theory and reported them honestly. His tragedy is that he cannot admit the clear implications of his own thought without effectively resigning from science.

The continuing survival of Darwinist orthodoxy illustrates Thomas Kuhn’s famous point that the accumulation of anomalies never in itself falsifies a paradigm, because “To reject one paradigm without substituting another is to reject science itself.”[ 5] This practice may be appropriate as a way of carrying on the professional enterprise called science, but it can be grossly misleading when it is imposed upon persons who are asking questions other than the ones scientific naturalists want to ask. Suppose, for example, that I want to know whether God really had something to do with creating living organisms. A typical Darwinian response is that there is no reason to invoke supernatural action because Darwinian selection was capable of performing the job. To evaluate that response, I need to know whether natural selection really has the fantastic creative power attributed to it. It is not a sufficient answer to say that scientists have nothing better to offer. The fact that scientists don’t like to say “we don’t know” tells me nothing about what they really do know.

I am not suggesting that scientists have to change their rules about retaining and discarding paradigms. All I want them to do is to be candid about the disconfirming evidence and admit, if it is the case, that they are hanging on to Darwinism only because they prefer a shaky theory to having no theory at all. What they insist upon doing, however, is to present Darwinian evolution to the public as a fact that every rational person is expected to accept. If there are reasonable grounds to doubt the theory such dogmatism is ridiculous, whether or not the doubters have a better theory to propose.

To believers in creation, the Darwinists seem thoroughly intolerant and dogmatic when they insist that their own philosophy must have a monopoly in the schools and the media. The Darwinists do not see themselves that way, of course. On the contrary, they often feel aggrieved when creationists (in either the broad or narrow sense) ask to have their own arguments heard in public and fairly considered. To insist that schoolchildren be taught that Darwinian evolution is a fact is in their minds merely to protect the integrity of science education; to present the other side of the case would be to allow fanatics to force their opinions on others. Even college professors have been forbidden to express their doubts about Darwinian evolution in the classroom, and it seems to be widely believed that the Constitution not only permits but actually requires such restrictions on academic freedom. To explain this bizarre situation, we must define our fourth term: religion.

Suppose that a skeptic argues that evidence for biological creation by natural selection is obviously lacking, and that in the circumstances we ought to give serious consideration to the possibility that the development of life required some input from a pre-existing, purposeful creator. To scientific naturalists this suggestion is “creationist” and therefore unacceptable in principle, because it invokes an entity unknown to science. What is worse, it suggests the possibility that this creator may have communicated in some way with humans. In that case there could be real prophets-persons with a genuine knowledge of God who are neither frauds nor dreamers. Such persons could conceivably be dangerous rivals for the scientists as cultural authorities.

Naturalistic philosophy has worked out a strategy to prevent this problem from arising: it labels naturalism as science and theism as religion. The former is then classified as knowledge, and the latter as mere belief. The distinction is of critical importance, because only knowledge can be objectively valid for everyone; belief is valid only for the believer, and should never be passed off as knowledge. The student who thinks that 2 and 2 make 5, or that water is not made up of hydrogen and oxygen, or that the theory of evolution is not true, is not expressing a minority viewpoint. He is ignorant, and the job of education is to cure that ignorance and to replace it with knowledge. Students in the public schools are thus to be taught at an early age that “evolution is a fact,” and as time goes by they will gradually learn that evolution means naturalism.

In short, the proposition that God was in any way involved in our creation is effectively outlawed, and implicitly negated. This is because naturalistic evolution is by definition in the category of scientific knowledge. What contradicts knowledge is implicitly false, or imaginary. That is why it is possible for scientific naturalists in good faith to claim on the one hand that their science says nothing about God, and on the other to claim that they have said everything that can be said about God. In naturalistic philosophy both propositions are at bottom the same. All that needs to be said about God is that there is nothing to be said of God, because on that subject we can have no knowledge.

Our fifth and final term is truth. Truth as such is not a particularly important concept in naturalistic philosophy. The reason for this is that “truth” suggests an unchanging absolute, whereas scientific knowledge is a dynamic concept. Like life, knowledge evolves and grows into superior forms. What was knowledge in the past is not knowledge today, and the knowledge of the future will surely be far superior to what we have now. Only naturalism itself and the unique validity of science as the path to knowledge are absolutes. There can be no criterion for truth outside of scientific knowledge, no mind of God to which we have access.

This way of understanding things persists even when scientific naturalists employ religious-sounding language. For example, the physicist Stephen Hawking ended his famous book A Brief History of Time with the prediction that man might one day “know the mind of God.” This phrasing caused some friends of mine to form the mistaken impression that he had some attraction to theistic religion. In context Hawking was not referring to a supernatural eternal being, however, but to the possibility that scientific knowledge will eventually become complete and all-encompassing because it will have explained the movements of material particles in all circumstances.

The monopoly of science in the realm of knowledge explains why evolutionary biologists do not find it meaningful to address the question whether the Darwinian theory is true. They will gladly concede that the theory is incomplete, and that further research into the mechanisms of evolution is needed. At any given point in time, however, the reigning theory of naturalistic evolution represents the state of scientific knowledge about how we came into existence. Scientific knowledge is by definition the closest approximation of absolute truth available to us. To ask whether this knowledge is true is therefore to miss the point, and to betray a misunderstanding of “how science works.”

So far I have described the metaphysical categories by which scientific naturalists have excluded the topic of God from rational discussion, and thus ensured that Darwinism’s fully naturalistic creation story is effectively true by definition. There is no need to explain why atheists find this system of thought control congenial. What is a little more difficult to understand, at least at first, is the strong support Darwinism continues to receive in the Christian academic world. Attempts to investigate the credibility of the Darwinist evolution story are regarded with little enthusiasm by many leading Christian professors of science and philosophy, even at institutions which are generally regarded as conservative in theology. Given that Darwinism is inherently naturalistic and therefore antagonistic to the idea that God had anything to do with the history of life, and that it plays the central role in ensuring agnostic domination of the intellectual culture, one might have supposed that Christian intellectuals (along with religious Jews) would be eager to find its weak spots.

Instead, the prevailing view among Christian professors has been that Darwinism-or “evolution,” as they tend to call it-is unbeatable, and that it can be interpreted to be consistent with Christian belief. And in fact Darwinism is unbeatable as long as one accepts the thought categories of scientific naturalism that I have been describing. The problem is that those same thought categories make Christian theism, or any other theism, absolutely untenable. If science has exclusive authority to tell us how life was created, and if science is committed to naturalism, and if science never discards a paradigm until it is presented with an acceptable naturalistic alternative, then Darwinism’s position is impregnable within science. The same reasoning that makes Darwinism inevitable, however, also bans God from taking any action within the history of the Cosmos, which means that it makes theism illusory. Theistic naturalism is self-contradictory.

Some hope to avoid the contradiction by asserting that naturalism rules only within the realm of science, and that there is a separate realm called “religion” in which theism can flourish. The problem with this arrangement, as we have already seen, is that in a naturalistic culture scientific conclusions are considered to be knowledge, or even fact. What is outside of fact is fantasy, or at best subjective belief. Theists who accommodate with scientific naturalism therefore may never affirm that their God is real in the same sense that evolution is real. This rule is essential to the entire mindset that produced Darwinism in the first place. If God exists He could certainly work through mutation and selection if that is what He wanted to do, but He could also create by some means totally outside the ken of our science. Once we put God into the picture, however, there is no good reason to attribute the creation of biological complexity to random mutation and natural selection. Direct evidence that these mechanisms have substantial creative power is not to be found in nature, the laboratory, or the fossil record. An essential step in the reasoning that establishes that Darwinian selection created the wonders of biology, therefore, is that nothing else was available. Theism is by definition the doctrine that something else was available.

Perhaps the contradiction is hard to see when it is stated at an abstract level, so I will give a more concrete example. Persons who advocate the compromise position called “theistic evolution” are in my experience always vague about what they mean by “evolution.” They have good reason to be vague. As we have seen, Darwinian evolution is by definition unguided and purposeless, and such evolution cannot in any meaningful sense be theistic. For evolution to be genuinely theistic it must be guided by God, whether this means that God programmed the process in advance or stepped in from time to time to give it a push in the right direction. To Darwinists evolution guided by God is a soft form of creationism, which is to say it is not evolution at all. To repeat, this understanding goes to the very heart of Darwinist thinking. Allow a preexisting supernatural intelligence to guide evolution, and this omnipotent being can do a whole lot more than that.

Of course, theists can think of evolution as God-guided whether naturalistic Darwinists like it or not. The trouble with having a private definition for theists, however, is that the scientific naturalists have the power to decide what that term “evolution” means in public discourse, including the science classes in the public schools. If theistic evolutionists broadcast the message that evolution as they understand it is harmless to theistic religion, they are misleading their constituents unless they add a clear warning that the version of evolution advocated by the entire body of mainstream science is something else altogether. That warning is never clearly delivered, however, because the main point of theistic evolution is to preserve peace with the mainstream scientific community. The theistic evolutionists therefore unwitting serve the purposes of the scientific naturalists, by helping persuade the religious community to lower its guard against the incursion of naturalism.

We are now in a position to answer the question with which this lecture began. What is Darwinism? Darwinism is a theory of empirical science only at the level of microevolution, where it provides a framework for explaining such things as the diversity that arises when small populations become reproductively isolated from the main body of the species. As a general theory of biological creation Darwinism is not empirical at all. Rather, it is a necessary implication of a philosophical doctrine called scientific naturalism, which is based on the a priori assumption that God was always absent from the realm of nature. As such evolution in the Darwinian sense is inherently antithetical to theism, although evolution in some entirely different and non-naturalistic sense could conceivably have been God’s chosen method of creation.

In 1874, the great Presbyterian theologian Charles Hodge asked the question I have asked: What is Darwinism? After a careful and thoroughly fair-minded evaluation of the doctrine, his answer was unequivocal: “It is Atheism.” Another way to state the proposition is to say that Darwinism is the answer to a specific question that grows out of philosophical naturalism. To return to the game of “Jeopardy” with which we started, let us say that Darwinism is the answer. What, then, is the question? The question is: “How must creation have occurred if we assume that God had nothing to do with it?” Theistic evolutionists accomplish very little by trying to Christianize the answer to a question that comes straight out of the agenda of scientific naturalism. What we need to do instead is to challenge the assumption that the only questions worth asking are the ones that assume that naturalism is true.

Notes
[1] Niles Eldredge, Time Frames (Heinemann, 1986), 144.
[2] Ibid., 93.
[3] Stephen Jay Gould, “Is a New and General Theory of Evolution Emerging?” Paleobiology, 6 (1980), 119-130, reprinted in Maynard Smith, ed., Evolution Now: A Century After Darwin (W. H. Freeman, 1982).
[4] See Stephen Jay Gould, “Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge,” Scientific American, (July 1992), 118-122. Scientific American refused to publish my response to this attack, but the response did appear in the March 1993 issue of Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, the journal of the American Scientific Affiliation.
[5] Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions 2d ed., (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970), 79.

This paper was originally delivered as a lecture at a symposium at Hillsdale College, in November 1992. Papers from the Symposium were published in the collection Man and Creation: Perspectives on Science and Theology (Bauman ed. 1993), by Hillsdale College Press, Hillsdale MI 49242.

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Richard Dawkins answered from Scripture

Mat 11:25  At that time Jesus answered and said, I thank thee, O Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes.
Mat 11:26  Even so, Father: for so it seemed good in thy sight.

Praise God!

The atheist’s leap of faith

According to the News Bureau at the University of Illinois, “Life did not begin with one primordial cell. Instead, there were initially at least three simple types of loosely constructed cellular organizations. They swam in a pool of genes, evolving in a communal way that aided one another in bootstrapping into the three distinct types of cells by sharing their evolutionary inventions.”

I have some news for the University News Bureau. If you talk about life beginning as a “loosely constructed cellular organizations” that swam “in a pool of genes,” then it wasn’t the beginning at all, because loosely constructed cellular organizations swimming in a pool of genes already existed.

Ex-atheist, Lee Strobel said, “Essentially, I realized that to stay an atheist, I would have to believe that nothing produces everything; non-life produces life; randomness produces fine-tuning; chaos produces information; unconsciousness produces consciousness; and non-reason produces reason. Those leaps of faith were simply too big for me to take . . .”

For the beginning to be the beginning, there must be nothing. Zilch. If you disagree, in simple language, explain to me where I am going wrong. Tell me what was in the beginning–what was it that began the evolutionary process? Let me guess your answer. You don’t know what it was, but you know that it wasn’t God.

Source

Scientific evidence against evolution (short and concise)

Definition

The word ‘evolution’ is used in the following contexts:

• Stellar / Planetary Evolution – An explosion (the ‘Big Bang’) supplied non-living material and over billions of years, supposedly this material became organized into planets and stars
• Cellular Evolution – At some point, non-living matter supposedly become living, forming cells that could reproduce
• Evolution of living things – Supposedly over time, living things appeared which include fish, reptiles, birds and mammals. Human beings are said to be the last to appear in this process. According to evolutionary theory, this change in living things was achieved using time, chance, natural selection (‘survival of the fittest’) and mutation (random changes in genetic code)

This evolutionary process is said to have taken place without an outside intelligence, plan or guiding force.

1. Living things never come from non-living things

To produce a living thing you must start with a living thing.

Evolution requires non-living matter to turn into a living thing and this has never been observed.

A Biology textbook puts it like this: “As we have seen, the life of every organism comes from its parents or parent. Does life ever spring from nonliving matter? We can find no evidence of this happening. So far as we can tell, life comes only from life. Biologists call this the principal of biogenesis.” 8

So when it comes to science (i.e. things we can establish by observation and experiment) life always comes from life. Evolutionists say life came from nonliving matter. But just saying something doesn’t make it true!

More information (external link)
Why Is Abiogenesis Impossible?

2. The missing links are still missing

If evolution was true, there should be large numbers of intermediate fossil organisms present in the fossil record. These ‘links’ are conspicuous by their absence.

After well over a hundred years of intensely studying the fossil record the ‘missing links’ are still well and truly ‘missing’.

Evolutionists such as Stephen Jay Gould concede this when they say, “The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not based the evidence of fossils.” 2

More information (external link)
What does the fossil record teach us about evolution?
Who’s who & what’s what in the world of “missing” links?

Is there fossil evidence of ‘missing links’ between humans and apes? Did ancient humans live millions of years ago?

3. Complex systems never evolve ‘bit by bit’

No mechanism has been put forward that even begins to explain how something like the human eye could have been produced by time, chance, natural selection and mutation.

Darwin said: “To suppose that the eye with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different distances, for admitting different amounts of light and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree.” 3

In spite of this high degree of absurdity, Darwin clung to his theory but he should of rejected it because the formation of the eye by natural selection is absurd!

A baby needs a number of very complex, interdependent systems to live and survive. These systems include the nervous, digestive, excretory, circulatory, skeletal, muscular and an immune system. For the baby to survive and live each system requires all the other systems to be functioning. Therefore all these systems must be in operation at the same time and could not have evolved slowly over millions of years. Think of the male reproductive system coming about by time, chance and mutation! Now this alone would be of no use unless the female reproductive system had evolved at exactly the same point in time!

There is no evidence (in the fossil record etc.) of the evolution of such systems. More than that, not even an imaginary process can be thought of to explain how something like the brain and the digestive system could have evolved bit by bit over time!

More information (external link)
Can evolution be the source of life in all its complexity?

4. Second Law of Thermodynamics says ‘no’

The Second Law of Thermodynamics tells us that a system will always go from order to disorder unless there is a plan or outside intelligence to organize it.

World-renowned evolutionist Isaac Asimov when discussing the Second Law of Thermodynamics said:
“Another way of stating the second law then is: ‘The universe is constantly getting more disorderly!'” Viewed that way we can see the second law all about us. We have to work hard to straighten a room, but left to itself it becomes a mess again very quickly and very easily. Even if we never enter it, it becomes dusty and musty. How difficult to maintain houses, and machinery, and our own bodies in perfect working order: how easy to let them deteriorate. In fact, all we have to do is nothing, and everything deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself – and that is what the second law is all about.” 1

As Isaac Asimov says, everything becomes ‘a mess … deteriorates, collapses, breaks down, wears out, all by itself’. Now in complete opposition to one of most firmly established laws in science (the Second Law of Thermodynamics), people who support the theory of Evolution would have us believe that things become more organised and complex when left to themselves!

Some people argue that the earth is an open system and therefore the Second Law of Thermodynamics does not apply. Simply pouring in energy (sunlight) into the earth does not override the Second Law of Thermodynamics. As shown in Isaac Asimov’s quote above, the Second Law still applies on earth. Pouring energy into a system makes things more disordered!

The brilliant scientist Lord Kelvin who actually formulated the Second Law of Thermodynamics says for very good scientific reasons; “Overwhelming strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us … the atheistic idea is so non-sensical that I cannot put it into words.” 9

As Dr John Ross of Harvard University rightly states: “… there are no known violations of the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Ordinarily the second law is stated for isolated systems, but the second law applies equally well to open systems. …” 7

Evolution has no plan or outside intelligence and according to the Second Law of Thermodynamics can never take place.

More information (external link)
Second Law of Thermodynamics – Does this basic law of nature prevent Evolution?

5. Mutation never produces evolution

Natural selection (better adapted organisms surviving to pass on genetic material) cannot produce evolution because it produces no NEW genetic material. Mutations are random changes in the genetic makeup of organisms. Evolutionists say that mutations supply the new genes needed for evolution to proceed.

For over 1500 generations, fruit flies have been subjected to radiation and chemicals.4 This caused mutations in the flies. If you take a human generation to be 25 years, this is equal to around 37 500 years (1500 x 25) in human terms. What happened to these mutated flies over this time? Firstly, they were still flies and had not evolved into anything else! Secondly the flies as a population were worse off with many dying, having curly wings or stubby wings.

Mutations are an example of the Second Law of Thermodynamics (when things are left to themselves they become more disordered over time). It is amazing that evolutionists would put forward mutations as the mechanism by which evolution could somehow take place!

A person with one sickle-cell anaemia gene (a mutation) and malaria has more chance of surviving malaria than a person without the mutated gene. Evolutionists point to this as evolution in action. Now if evolution is the introduction of a debilitating potentially fatal disease like sickle-cell anaemia into the the human race, I think we can well do without this so called ‘evolution’! Read more on malaria / sickle-cell anaemia

Evolution (things becoming more ordered) and mutations (things becoming more disordered) are processes going in opposite directions!

Mutations are not a friend of evolution but an enemy that ultimately cuts the theory down and destroys it!

More information (external link)
Can genetic mutations produce positive changes in living creatures?

6. Probability says ‘no’ to evolution

Evolutionists such as Sir Fred Hoyle concede this when they say “The chance that higher life forms might have emerged in this way (time and chance) is comparable with the chance that ‘a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the materials therein.'” 5
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In a desperate attempt to override the very powerful argument that life could never arise by chance, Richard Dawkins conjectures that “If the odds of life originating spontaneously on a planet were a billion to one against …” 10 A billion to one is only (yes only!) 1 in 10.

BUT the probability of even one single protein molecule consisting of 200 amino acids arising spontaneously by chance is 1 in 10260. This is calculated by raising 20 (the number of different types amino acids available) to the power of 200 (the number of amino acids in the protein chain). Even if the whole universe was packed with amino acids combining frantically for billions of years, it would not produce even one such protein molecule let alone produce a living cell.

Read more on the question of impossibility of producing life by chance at How Antony Flew (an atheist for 60 years) came to believe there is a God.

More information (external link)
Probability Arguments in Why Is Abiogenesis Impossible?

Great scientists from the past speak out

“Overwhelming strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us … the atheistic idea is so non-sensical that I cannot put it into words.” (Lord Kelvin)

“I am a Christian … I believe only and alone … in the service of Jesus Christ … In Him is all refuge, all solace.” (Johannes Kepler)

“The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.” (Louis Pasteur). Pasteur strongly opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution because he felt it did not conform to the scientific evidence.

Robert Boyle believed in Jesus Christ’s “Passion, His death, His resurrection and ascension, and all of those wonderful works which He did during His stay upon earth, in order to confirm the belief of His being God as well as man.”

“Order is manifestly maintained in the universe … the whole being governed by the sovereign will of God.” (James Prescott Joule)

“There are those who argue that the universe evolved out a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of man or the system of the human eye?” (Werhner Von Braun)

“Almighty Creator and Preserver of all things, praised be all Thou has created.” (Carl Linnaeus)

“I am a believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.” (Sir Joseph Lister)

“Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.” “The true God is a living, intelligent and powerful being.” (Sir Isaac Newton)

Michael Faraday was careful to “Thank God, first, for all His gifts.”

If you believe that “Christians can’t think for themselves” we encourage you to read “21 Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible” by Ann Lamont published by Answers in Genesis, P.O. Box 6302, Acacia Ridge D.C., Queensland, 4110, Australia, 1995. (The above 6 quotes were taken from this book.)

Present day PhD. scientists speak out

“The evidence points to an intelligent designer of the vast array of life, both living and extinct, rather than to unguided mindless evolution.” (Nancy M Darrall, Speech Therapist at the Bolton Community Health Care Trust in the UK. She holds a PhD in Botany from the University of Wales.)

“Evolutionary theories of the universe cannot counteract the above arguments for the existence of God.” (John M Cimbala, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University. John holds a PhD in Aeronautics.)

“The correspondence between the global catastrophe in the geological record and the Flood described in Genesis is much too obvious for me to conclude that these events must be one and the same.” (John R Baumgardner, Technical Staff Member in the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory. John holds a PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLU.)

“We have already seen that no such system could possibly appear by chance. Life in its totality must have been created in the beginning, just as God told us.” (John P Marcus, Research Officer at the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Plant Pathology, University of Queensland, Australia. John holds a PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of Michigan.)

“The fossil record is considered to be the primary evidence for evolution, yet it does not demonstrate a complete chain of life from simple forms to complex.” (Larry Vardiman, Professor from the Department of Astro-Geophysics for Creation Research, USA. Larry holds a PhD in Atmospheric Science from Colorado State University.)

“I … have no hesitation in rejecting the evolutionary hypothesis of origins and affirming the biblical alternative that ‘in six days the Lord God created the heavens and earth and all that in them is’. (Dr Taylor is senior lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University of Liverpool. Dr Taylor has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and has authored over 80 scientific articles.)

“I believe God provides evidence of His creative power for all to experience personally in our lives. To know the Creator does not require an advanced degree in science or theology.” (Timothy G Standish is an Associate Professor of Biology at Andrews University in the USA. Dr Standish holds a PhD in Biology and Public Policy from George Mason University, USA.)

“At the same time I found I could reject evolution and not commit intellectual suicide, I began to realise I could also accept a literal creation and still not commit intellectual suicide.” (AJ Monty White, Student Advisor, Dean of Students Office, at the University of Cardiff, UK. Dr White holds a PhD in the field of Gas Kinetics.)

“So life did not arise by natural processes, nor could the grand diversity of life have arisen through no-intelligent natural processes (evolution). Living things were created by God, as the Bible says.” (Don Batten, a research scientist for Answer in Genesis in Australia. Dr Batten holds a PhD in Plant Physiology from the University of Sydney and worked for 18 years as a research scientist with the New South Wales Department of Agriculture.)

“In the words of the well-known scientist, Robert Jastrow, ‘for the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story [of the quest for the answers about the origin of life and the universe] ends like a bad dream. He has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” (Jerry R Bergman, Instructor of Science at Northwest State College, Archbold, Ohio. He holds a PhD in Evaluation and Research from Wayne State University and a PhD in Human Biology from Columbia Pacific University.)

Read why 50 PhD scientists from all around the world choose to believe in creation in the book “In Six Days (why 50 scientists choose to believe in creation)” edited by John F Ashton PhD, New Holland Publishers, 1999. (The above 10 quotes were taken from this book.)

Conclusion

Darwin said, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.” 6

After well over a hundred years of intense scientific research and investigation, we must conclude that no-one has shown how the human eye could have come into existence by numerous, successive slight modifications.

By using Darwin’s own criteria and viewing the other aspects of science that relate to evolution we can conclude that Darwin’s theory has broken down.

“For since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities—his eternal power and divine nature—have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse” (Romans 1:20).

Source

Famous Christian Scientists

“Overwhelming strong proofs of intelligent and benevolent design lie around us … the atheistic idea is so non-sensical that I cannot put it into words.” (Lord Kelvin)

“I am a Christian … I believe only and alone … in the service of Jesus Christ … In Him is all refuge, all solace.” (Johannes Kepler)

“Order is manifestly maintained in the universe … the whole being governed by the sovereign will of God.” (James Prescott Joule)

“There are those who argue that the universe evolved out a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of man or the system of the human eye?”  (Werhner Von Braun)

“Almighty Creator and Preserver of all things, praised be all Thou has created.” (Carl Linnaeus)

“I am a believer in the fundamental doctrines of Christianity.” (Sir Joseph Lister)

“The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator. Science brings men nearer to God.” (Louis Pasteur). Pasteur strongly opposed Darwin’s theory of evolution because he felt it did not conform to the scientific evidence.

Robert Boyle believed in Jesus Christ’s “Passion, His death, His resurrection and ascension, and all of those wonderful works which He did during His stay upon earth, in order to confirm the belief of His being God as well as man.”

Sir Isaac Newton said, “Atheism is so senseless. When I look at the solar system, I see the earth at the right distance from the sun to receive the proper amounts of heat and light. This did not happen by chance.” and also “The true God is a living, intelligent and powerful being.”

Michael Faraday was careful to “Thank God, first, for all His gifts.”

If you believe that “Christians can’t think for themselves” we encourage you to read “21 Great Scientists Who Believed the Bible” by Ann Lamont published by Answers in Genesis, P.O. Box 6302, Acacia Ridge D.C., Queensland, 4110, Australia, 1995.

After six decades of promoting athiesm, the world’s most notorious athiest (Antony Flew) writes a book entitled “There is a God”.

Present day PhD. scientists speak out

“The evidence points to an intelligent designer of the vast array of life, both living and extinct, rather than to unguided mindless evolution.” (Nancy M Darrall, Speech Therapist at the Bolton Community Health Care Trust in the UK. She holds a PhD in Botany from the University of Wales.)

“Evolutionary theories of the universe cannot counteract the above arguments for the existence of God.” (John M Cimbala, Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Pennsylvania State University. John holds a PhD in Aeronautics.)

“The correspondence between the global catastrophe in the geological record and the Flood described in Genesis is much too obvious for me to conclude that these events must be one and the same.” (John R Baumgardner, Technical Staff Member in the Theoretical Division of Los Alamos National Laboratory. John holds a PhD in Geophysics and Space Physics from UCLU.)

“We have already seen that no such system could possibly appear by chance. Life in its totality must have been created in the beginning, just as God told us.” (John P Marcus, Research Officer at the Cooperative Research Centre for Tropical Plant Pathology, University of Queensland, Australia. John holds a PhD in Biological Chemistry from the University of Michigan.)

“The fossil record is considered to be the primary evidence for evolution, yet it does not demonstrate a complete chain of life from simple forms to complex.” (Larry Vardiman, Professor from the Department of Astro-Geophysics for Creation Research, USA. Larry holds a PhD in Atmosperic Science from Colorado State University.)

“I … have no hesitation in rejecting the evolutionary hypothesis of origins and affirming the biblical alternative that ‘in six days the Lord God created the heavens and earth and all that in them is’. (Dr Taylor is senior lecturer in Electrical Engineering at the University of Liverpool. Dr Taylor has a PhD in Electrical Engineering and has authored over 80 scientific articles.)

“I believe God provides evidence of His creative power for all to experience personally in our lives. To know the Creator does not require an advanced degree in science or theology.” (Timothy G Standish is an Associate Professor of Biology at Andrews University in the USA. Dr Standish holds a PhD in Biology and Public Policy from George Mason University, USA.)

“At the same time I found I could reject evolution and not commit intellectual suicide, I began to realise I could also accept a literal creation and still not commit intellectual suicide.” (AJ Monty White, Student Advisor, Dean of Students Office, at the University of Cardiff, UK. Dr White holds a PhD in the field of Gas Kinetics.)

“So life did not arise by natural processes, nor could the grand diversity of life have arisen through no-intelligent natural processes (evolution). Living things were created by God, as the Bible says.” (Don Batten, a research scientist for Answer in Genesis in Australia. Dr Batten holds a PhD in Plant Physiology from the University of Sydney and worked for 18 years as a research scientist with the New South Wales Department of Agriculture.)

“In the words of the well-known scientist, Robert Jastrow, ‘for the scientist who has lived by faith in the power of reason, the story [of the quest for the answers about the origin of life and the universe] ends like a bad dream. he has scaled the mountains of ignorance; he is about to conquer the highest peak; as he pulls himself over the final rock, he is greeted by a band of theologians who have been sitting there for centuries.” (Jerry R Bergman, Instructor of Science at Northwest State College, Archbold, Ohio. He holds a PhD in Evaluation and Research from Wayne State University and a PhD in Human Biology from Columbia Pacific University.)

Read why 50 PhD scientists from all around the world reject evolution on scientific grounds and choose to believe in creation in the book “In Six Days (why 50 scientists choose to believe in creation)” edited by John F Ashton PhD, New Holland Publishers, 1999. (The above 10 quotes were taken from this book.)

Expelled: No intelligence allowed