Evolution: The Materialist Juggernaut—A Christian Challenge
Gregory Edward Reynolds
Extracted from Ordained Servant vol. 7, no. 4 (Oct. 1998), pp. 85-90.
Introduction
Juggernaut was an incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, whose idol was carried through the streets of ancient India on a large cart for public adoration. So blind was the devotion of the common people that many threw themselves in the path of the cart and were crushed to death. Thus "juggernaut" has come to refer to "anything that exacts blind devotion."
It is my contention that Darwinism or evolution is a theory rooted in materialism that exacts blind devotion of its adherents and their students in Western institutions of learning. This devotion explains the almost fanatical rejection not only of the idea of creation and design but also the rejection of a growing body of evidence that does not comport well with the conventional evolutionary wisdom.
This lecture is an intellectual challenge to those who believe that evolution is a "fact of science." A mounting array of evidence from cosmology, molecular biology and biochemistry is challenging Darwinian evolutionary science at its foundation. My point in this lecture is that Darwinism is a theory based on a number of unproved assumptions that do not account for a number of recent scientific discoveries. The theory itself is rooted in a philosophical commitment to Naturalism. Naturalism or Materialism assumes that all reality is ultimately physical or material. Thus mind or spirit is reducible to material reality, God and religion are banished to the land of irrelevance.
While most people are aware of the "debate" between evolutionists and creationists, few are aware that there is a raging debate within the scientific community itself over the theory of evolution. I believe that establishment evolutionary science has a vested interest in suppressing this fact.
1. My Position: Historic Christianity
Let me state at the outset that my position is historic Christianity. I believe that the revelational philosophy of Christian Theism is not only true but that it is the only philosophy adequate to the challenges of life and thought. I believe that the Bible is the infallible Word of God and that the God of the Bible created all things out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). Creeds such as the Nicene Creed and the Westminster Confession of Faith give a more detailed summary of my position.
2. My expertise: Pastor-Theologian Not Scientist
I speak to you this evening, however, not as a scientist, but as a pastor and a theologian. The current debate between creationists and evolutionists interests me on several levels. First, it of obvious interest as a matter of Christian truth. Consistent evolutionists are atheists. Christians are theists. Second, the debate is important because of the epistemological questions involved. Since I believe that historic Christianity is intellectually both satisfying and defensible I consider the dichotomy, which many make, between faith and science unacceptable. As a creationist I am enthusiastic about the scientific enterprise and find the debate in the public forum frustrating because both creationists and evolutionists are relatively ignorant of the relationship between knowledge and faith, and the relationship of both faith and knowledge to science.
Thus I intend to deal with this issue at the theoretical level, using sample evidence from various scientific disciplines. My challenge will be for you to apply what I say to your area of expertise. If I can awaken anyone from their dogmatic slumber I will consider this lecture to have been worth giving. I would be a fool to claim to have all the answers in any area of this debate. My main intention is to show that establishment evolutionary science has not allowed many of the right questions to be asked. As often as it appears to be a juggernaut it looks like an ostrich with its head firmly plunged into the sand.
3. The Thesis
Recent evidence discovered in the astronomical and biochemical scientific disciplines suggests fundamental weaknesses in the theory of evolution that most evolutionary scientists are unwilling to deal with according to the rules of their own discipline. This further suggests that a theoretical faith commitment to certain presuppositions which lies outside the realm of scientific inquiry is the foundation for evolutionary science.
4. Definitions
Evolutionist. One who believes that "life arose from nonliving matter and subsequently developed"[1] "by a naturalistic process in which parent species were gradually transformed into quite different descendent forms by long branches...of transitional intermediates, without intervention by any Creator or other non-naturalistic mechanism"[2] over long periods of time. I will use Darwinist as synonymous with evolutionist. Neo-Darwinism is simply a mid-twentieth century academic revitalization of classic Darwinism.
Creationist. One who believes that God created all things out of nothing (creatio ex nihilo). He designed all things and controls them by His Providence. Man was specially created with dominion over the creation. Note that only some creationists believe in a six day creation and a young earth. That is not what I will be arguing for here. Phillip Johnson refers to this narrower view as "creation-science."[3] I would prefer not to use that term because many Creationists are not part of the "creation-science" movement (cf. The Institute for Creation Research). The broader definition is that held by the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), a Creationist alternative to the National Academy of Sciences.
I. The Phenomenological Problem with Evolutionary Science
Due to my stated purpose, as well as time constraints, the following are meant to be provocative samples, not exhaustive discussions.
1. Evolutionary science does not have adequate hypotheses to account for the extant history of life (fossil record) and other evidence or its absence.
"Darwin’s most formidable opponents were not clergymen but fossil experts."[4] Even one of Darwin’s most loyal supporters, T. H. Huxley, found the absence of transitional intermediates in the fossil record troubling. Darwin himself asked: "Why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well defined?"[5]
The problem has only become more acute after almost a century and a half of searching. Even evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould admits that "The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1. Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth.... 2. Sudden appearance. In any local area a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’"[6] Gould considers this failure to find a "vector of progress" in the history of life to be "the most puzzling fact of the fossil record."[7] He even refers to "the extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record" as "the trade secret of paleontology." Evolutionary Paleontologist Niles Eldredge is even more candid: "We paleontologists have said that the history of life supports [the story of gradual adaptive change], all the while really knowing that it does not."[8]
Particularly telling is the reaction of evolutionists to scientists with a contrary opinion. Nineteenth-century Harvard professor and scientist Louis Agassiz responded to The Origin of Species by denying that there was any "parental descent" connecting the various species. By his death in 1873 Agassiz had long been isolated and ignored by students and colleagues alike.[9]
Presently there is a rapidly growing movement called Cladism in the area of biological classification. The "cladograms" produced by this school show relationships among living and fossil species in terms of structural and other similarities, but omit hypothetical common ancestors. In other words the diagrams only depict what we have actually observed and discovered. This new method of depiction has raised the ire of not a few committed Darwinists.[10] The missing links are still missing. As a 1980 Newsweek article so aptly put it: "The missing link between man and the apes...is merely the most glamorous of a whole hierarchy of phantom creatures. In the fossil record, missing links are the rule: the story of life is as disjointed as a silent newsreel, in which species succeed one another as abruptly as Balkan prime ministers" (Newsweek, Nov. 3, 1980, 95).
2. Evolutionary science does not have adequate hypotheses to account for new micro-scientific evidence.
It was in the arena of micro-science that Darwinians once saw such promise of confirming evolution. And it is just here that some of the most insurmountable obstacles have recently appeared. It is important to note that the Neo-Darwinian synthesis in the middle of the twentieth century occurred prior to the advent of modern biochemistry.[11] So problematic is the evidence of biochemistry to the theory of evolution that biochemist Michael Behe maintains that even if the fossil record was continuous (which it decidedly is not), evolution does not explain the micro molecular world.[12]
Kettleford’s now famous observation of "industrial melanism" in the peppered moth has, for years, been put forth as a classic example of the mechanism of natural selection at work. The problem with this observation is that the light and dark moths do not demonstrate development through mutation and natural selection, but rather adaptability within the genetic structure of a given species. For the camouflage to work both light and dark moths must exist simultaneously, rather than evolve one from the other.
The veriest creationist does not find genetic variation within species boundaries problematic.[13] Creationists of all stripes have always maintained adaptability and change among the "kinds" of animals spoken of in Genesis 1. Micro-evolution is no proof of macro-evolution. Johnson asks: "Why do other people, including experts whose intelligence and intellectual integrity I respect, think that evidence of local population fluctuations confirms the hypothesis that natural selection has the capacity to work engineering marvels, to construct wonders like the eye and the wing?"[14] Johnson later on gives a hint: "The trick is always to prove one of the modest meanings of the term, and treat it as proof of the complete metaphysical system."[15] This is precisely the nature of "industrial melanism" in the Darwinian scheme. It must be remembered that the claim of Darwinism is not that relationships exist among living things, but that "those relationships were produced by a naturalistic process in which parent species were gradually transformed into quite different descendent forms by long branches...of transitional intermediates, without intervention by any Creator or other non-naturalistic mechanism."[16]
Mutational change among fruit flies is in the same category. What is absent in such experiments is a change of species. The changes, however dramatic they may in some cases be, always yield only fruit flies. The invocation of vast time periods, as we shall see, is another all-purpose explanation that explains nothing. The mechanisms for such changes have simply not been discovered. The added fact of the presence of the experimenter in attempting to demonstrate natural selection by random mutations is no small problem for the Darwinist. The surreptitious inclusion of a "design agent" in the process is telling.
The problem really comes into focus when we compare what we know now about microbiology compared to what was assumed in Darwin’s day. Fellow scientist (biologist) and admirer Ernst Haeckel once declared that a cell is "a simple little lump of albuminous carbon."[17] This is what biologist Michael Behe refers to as Darwin’s Black Box. Haeckel could not have been further from the truth. The complexity of a single cell, not to mention every element in that cell, is nothing short of mind boggling. That very complexity represents a gigantic obstacle to evolutionists. Evolutionary theory simply cannot explain either the origin of life or its development to its present state of irreducible complexity.
Evolutionary science makes the classic simplistic mistake of assuming that the whole is the sum of its parts (the fallacy of composition). Take, for example, the eye. How could the parts develop by "infinitesimally small inherited variations, each profitable to the preserved being?" Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould posed the question: "What good is 5 per cent of an eye?" He answers that it might be useful for something other than sight or more likely, though not as good as 100 per cent vision it would be better than no sight at all. Phillip Johnson responds as a good lawyer: "The fallacy in that argument is that ‘5 per cent of an eye’ is not the same as ‘5 per cent of normal vision.’ For an animal to have any useful vision at all, many complex parts must be working together."[18] An automobile cannot function at all with partially-developed parts or without all of the parts.
It is often forgotten that there was articulate scientific dissent to Darwin’s theory in Darwin’s day. In 1871 St. George Mivart opined: "What is to be brought forward [against Darwinism] may be summed up as follows: That ‘Natural Selection’ is incompetent to account for the incipient stages of useful structures. That it does not harmonize with the coexistence of closely similar structures of diverse origin. That there are grounds for thinking that specific differences may be developed suddenly instead of gradually. That the opinion that species have definite though very different limits to their variability is still tenable. That certain fossil transitional forms are absent, which might have been expected to be present...That there are many remarkable phenomena in organic forms upon which ‘Natural Selection’ throws no light whatever."[19]
Angus Campbell notes: "In Darwin’s day, the chemistry of sight and how the body fights disease were all black boxes. In the face of ignorance it is forgivable to assume that there might be some simple explanation. Only since the 1950s, when the structure of the first protein molecule was resolved, have we understood the unforgivable exactitude of protein sequencing. Professor Mike Behe has argued that in the case of the cilium and many other structures we are dealing with ‘irreducible complexity.’ Darwin had argued that if a single structure could be shown that in principle could not have been formed by intermediate structures his theory ‘would absolutely break down’ (Darwin, 189)."[20] Darwin himself said, "To suppose that the eye...could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest possible degree" (The Origin of Species).[21]
Co-discoverer of DNA, Francis Crick, has written: "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life appears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have been satisfied to get it going."[22] Crick has been reduced to positing the theory of "directed panspermia." "The basic idea is that an advanced extraterrestrial civilization, possibly facing extinction, sent primitive life forms to earth in a space ship."[23] Besides the purely speculative nature of this hypothesis, it simply begs the question.
Such speculations indicate a faith commitment to the evolutionary theory. Dr. Hubert P. Yockey in an article titled "A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory" in the Journal of Theoretical Biology concluded, "One must conclude that, contrary to the established and current wisdom, a scenario describing the genesis of life on earth by chance and natural causes which can be accepted on the basis of fact and not faith has not yet been written."[24] Since 1977 the facts have proved to be even more elusive.
Stephen Meyer’s article titled "The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism" (Intercollegiate Review, Spring 1996) is a brilliant survey of present origin of life theory and research. The gist of his conclusion is that the only explanation for the origin of the information encoded in DNA is "agent causation." The order of the chemical makeup of DNA does not explain the presence of the highly complex information encoded therein, which is not dependent on the medium in which it is encoded. As chemist Michael Polyani has said: "Whatever may be the origin of a DNA configuration, it can function as a code only if its order is not due to the forces of potential energy. It must be as physically indeterminate as the sequence of words is on a printed page.... To illustrate the distinction between order and information compare the sequence ‘ABABABAB’ to the sequence ‘Help! Our neighbor’s house is on fire!’ The first sequence is repetitive and ordered, but not complex and informative. The second sequence is not ordered, in the sense of being repetitious, but it is complex and also informative."[25] In other words "The information in DNA also transcends the properties of its material medium."[26] "The information-carrying capacity of any symbol in a sequence is inversely proportional to the probability of its occurrence."[27]
"While many outside origin-of-life biology may still invoke ‘chance’ as a causal explanation for the origin of biological information, few serious researchers still do."[28] Meyer uses probability research to consider the "probabilistic hurdles that must be overcome to construct even one short protein molecule of about one hundred amino acids in length" by chance.[29] Conclusion: 1 chance in 10130. Biochemist Michael Behe has compared these odds to "a blindfolded man finding a single marked grain of sand, hidden in the Sahara Desert, not once, but three times."[30] Sir Fred Hoyle, Michael Denton and Henry Quastler have come to similar probability conclusions.[31]
Meyer concludes: "During the past forty years, every naturalistic model proposed has failed to explain the origin of information—the great stumbling block for materialistic scenarios. Thus, mind or intelligence or what philosophers call ‘agent causation,’ now stands as the only known cause capable of creating an information-rich system, including the coding regions of DNA, functional proteins, and the cell as a whole. ...Consequently, a growing number of scientists now suggest that the information in DNA justifies making what probibility theorist William Dembski and biochemist Michael Behe call ‘design inference.’ ... The materialistic science we have inherited from the late nineteenth century, with its exclusive conceptual reliance on matter and energy, could neither envision nor can it now account for the biology of the information age."[32]
Even Darwinist Cairns-Smith displays doubts when describing the genetic evidence, "After all what impresses us about a living thing is its in-built ingenuity, its appearance of having been designed, thought out—of having been put together with a purpose ... The singular feature is the [enormous] gap between the simplest conceivable version of organisms as we know them, and components that the Earth might reasonably have been able to generate ... But the real trouble arises because too much of the complexity seems to be necessary to the whole way in which organisms work."[33]
Notably absent from Ruse’s history of biological evolution, written in 1996, in his chapter "Contemporary Debates," is any mention of Behe or his biochemical challenge to evolution. He does, however, note that with reference to the idea of "Absolute progress" in "professional evolutionary biology...no satisfactory epistemic criterion of such progress has yet been given."[34]
Behe comes to a startlingly comprehensive conclusion: "The impotence of Darwinian theory in accounting for the molecular basis of life is evident not only from the analyses in this book (Darwin’s Black Box), but also from the complete absence in the professional scientific literature of any detailed models by which complex biochemical systems could have been produced ... In the face of the enormous complexity that modern biochemistry has uncovered in the cell, the scientific community is paralyzed."[35] "The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell—to investigate life at the molecular level—is a loud, clear, piercing cry of ‘design!’ The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science."[36]
3. Evolutionary Science does not have adequate hypotheses to account for new macro-scientific or astronomical evidence.
Brandon Carter’s Anthropic Principle was first publicly articulated in his now-famous lecture to the International Astronomic Union in 1974. In that lecture Carter "pointed to what he called a number of astonishing ‘coincidences’ among the universal constants—values such as Planck’s constant, h, or the gravitational constant, G. It turns out that infinitesimal changes in the values of any of these constants would have resulted in a universe profoundly different from our own, and radically inhospitable to life."[37] Ever since the emergence of the Big Bang theory a host of technical observations has pointed to a universe that has been intricately designed to support human life.
In this new evidential environment several notable physicists have been challenging the Atheistic assumptions of evolutionary physicists. British-born physicist Paul Davies has enlarged on the "questions raised by the Anthropic Principle in a series of books, without attempting to draw firm conclusions (and who was rewarded with the prestigious Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion in 1995)."[38] Tulane University physicist Frank J. Tipler and astrophysicist and cosmologist John D. Barrow have published a large volume of reflections on the scientific, philosophical and theological implications of the Anthropic Principle. In The Physics of Immortality (1994) Tipler attempted a scientific proof of God complete with complex equations. Even several prominent theologians such as Ted Peters, Arthur Peacocke, and John Polkinghorne, the latter two of which are also scientists, have used Carter’s observations to bolster traditional arguments from design for the existence of God.[39]
In light of this sampling of the phenomenological problems challenging evolution’s explanatory power, I quote Jerry Coyne of the Department of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Chicago: "We conclude—unexpectedly—that there is little evidence for the neo-Darwinian view: its theoretical foundations and the experimental evidence supporting it are weak."[40]
Endnotes
[1] Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box (New York: The Free Press, 1996), ix.
[2] Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Washington, DC: Regnery Gateway, 1991), 89.
[3] Ibid., 4, fn. 1.
[4] Ibid., 45.
[5] Ibid., 46.
[6] Ibid., 50.
[7] Ibid., 58.
[8] Ibid., 59.
[9] Ibid., 166.
[10] Ibid., 134, fn. 1.
[11] Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, 24.
[12] Ibid., 22.
[13] cf. Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 68.
[14] Ibid., 27.
[15] Ibid., 151.
[16] Ibid., 89.
[17] Thomas Bethell, "A New Beginning: Darwin revisionism goes mainstream," The American Spectator (September 1996), 17. Cf. Stephen C. Meyer, "The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism," The Intercollegiate Review (Spring 1996), 25.
[18] Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 34.
[19] Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, 30.
[20] John Angus Campbell, "John Stuart Mill, Charles Darwin, and the Culture Wars: Resolving a Crisis in Education," The Intercollegiate Review (Spring 1996), 48.
[21] Ibid., 51, fn. 8.
[22] Stephen C. Meyer, "The Origin of Life and the Death of Materialism," The Intercollegiate Review (Spring 1996), 28.
[23] Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 108.
[24] Hubert P. Yockey, "A calculation of the probability of spontaneous biogenesis by information theory," Journal of Theoretical Biology (Vol. 67, 1977), 398.
[25] Meyer," The Origin of Life," 37.
[26] Ibid., 38.
[27] Ibid., 43, fn. 76
[28] Ibid., 32.
[29] Ibid.
[30] Ibid., 33.
[31] Slick, Matthew J., "The Odds Are Against Evolution," Internet: Christian Apologetics and Research Ministry.
[32] Meyer, "The Origin of Life," 39, 40.
[33] Johnson, Darwin on Trial, 109, 110.
[34] Michael Ruse, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1996), 534.
[35] Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, 187.
[36] Ibid., 232-233.
[37] Patrick Glynn, "Beyond the Death of God," National Review (May 6, 1996), 28.
[38] Ibid., 30.
[39] Ibid.
[40] Behe, Darwin’s Black Box, 29.
Gregory E. Reynolds is presently serving as regional home missionary for the Presbytery of New York and New England. He is currently located in Manchester, New Hampshire. The second and concluding portion of this essay will be included in the next issue of Ordained Servant.