Evolution and the Scientific Consensus

Is there really a scientific consensus in favor of macro-evolution? According to Casey Luskin, research coordinator for the Discovery Institute, such a consensus, if it still exists, is quickly coming apart:

• In 2007, Harvard chemist George Whitesides admitted he has “no idea” how “life emerged spontaneously from mixtures of molecules in the prebiotic Earth.” More recently, a paper in Complexity acknowledged, “Many different ideas are competing and none is available to provide a sufficiently plausible root to the first living organisms.” (CRJ, Vol 37/#03, 37)

This issue of “consensus” is not a minor one. Evolutionists continually appeal to this alleged consensus to argue that they represent science, while IDers and creationists do not. Therefore, in order to be in step with science, schools must use the textbooks that advance evolution. It also means that there should be no place for ID or even any criticism of evolution in the classroom.

However, this “consensus” is becoming increasingly elusive, even on Darwin’s home-turf:

• In 2008, sixteen leading biologists convened in Altenberg, Austria, to discuss problems with the neo-Darwinian synthesis. When covering this conference, Nature quoted leading scientists saying things like, “evolutionary theory has told us little about” important events like “the origin of wings and the invasion of the land.” That same year, Cornell evolutionary biologist William Provine explained that “every assertion of the “evolutionary synthesis below is false,” including: “natural selection was the primary mechanism at every level of the evolutionary process,” “macroevolution was a simple extension of microevolution,” and “evolution produces a tree of life.” (38)

The “tree-of-life” is a concept inseparable from Darwinism. If higher life-forms had evolved from lower ones, we should expect the fossil record to bear witness to this fact. We should therefore be able to observe how one form gradually morphs into another, creating a virtual tree-of-life, connecting the dots. However, such a tree has eluded its proponents:

• The following year, leading biologist Eugene Koonin wrote that breakdowns in core neo-Darwinian tenets such as the “traditional concept of the tree of life” or that “natural selection is the main driving force of evolution” indicate “the modern synthesis has crumbled, apparently, beyond repair.” (38)

• Koonin mentioned growing skepticism over the “tree of life,” and the technical literature contains numerous examples of conflicting evolutionary trees, challenging universal common ancestry. An article in Nature reported that “disparities between molecular and morphological trees” lead to “evolution wars” because “evolutionary trees constructed by studying biological molecules often don’t resemble those drawn up from morphology.” Another Nature paper reported that newly discovered genes “are tearing apart traditional ideas about the animal family tree,” since they “give a totally different tree from what everyone else wants.” A 2009 article in New Scientist observes that “many biologists now argue that the tree concept is obsolete and needs to be discarded.” (38)

It is noteworthy that the tree should be “discarded” rather than revised. This is because many have despaired of finding a tree – a biological/morphological roadmap - to demonstrate how one species evolved into another. However, it would seem that to despair that such a tree exists is also to despair of neo-Darwinism. The tree is as indispensible to neo-Darwinism as a blueprint is to an engineer.

Consistent with the idea of unguided natural selection, evolutionists had predicted that they would find leftover, now useless, genes leftover from our evolutionary ancestors. They called these genes “junk DNA.” Francis Collins had even claimed that “45 percent of the human genome” consists of “genetic flotsam and jetsam” – leftover junk! The presence of such an extensive collection of junk, would, of course, rule in favor of evolution. However, more recently, the findings have ruled against evolution:

• A major 2012 Nature paper by the ENCORE consortium reported “biochemical functions for 80% of the genome.” Lead ENCORE scientists predicted that with further research, “80 percent will go to 100” since “almost every nucleotide is associated with a function.” (39)

This prediction does not accord with the messiness of evolution and its leftover loose ends that evolutionists would expect to find, but rather with the design of Intelligence!

Is there a consensus regarding evolution among the scientific community? Hardly! Nevertheless, the vast majority still expect to find a natural explanation for the origins of life and speciation. However, in light of the above, such an expectation is the product of faith and not science. Interestingly, it is this faith that now predominates throughout our scientific institutions.

Invented Moralities: Their Inevitable Fate

The way we believe determines the way we will eventually live. If we believe that morality is merely something we invent, we will invent or delete convictions as we are confronted by new desires and pressures. Francis Collins, former head of the Human Genome Project, asked this critical question of the famous evolutionist, Richard Dawkins, in a Times Magazine debate (11/13/06, p. 55.):

·        “Do humans have a different moral significance than cows in general.”

To this, Dawkins responded, “Humans have more moral responsibility perhaps, because they are capable of reasoning.” However, prior to this, Dawkins claimed, “I don’t believe that there is hanging out there, anywhere, something called good and something called evil.”

But how then can any human be held responsible, even if we do have more intelligence than cows? It’s like reasoning about the relative merits of the good-tooth-fairy vs. the indomitable-snowman. If they don’t exist, there’s nothing to reason about. If “good” and “evil” are not “hanging out there,” then “moral responsibility” can be no more than a passing fad or an electro-chemical impulse.

It’s like indicting someone for breaking a law that doesn’t exist! If there isn’t an objective and unchanging moral principle to break, then it is not objectively possible to hold anyone to account, no matter how aware or intelligent she might be.

However, society will not survive for long in such a moral vacuum. I remember reading that the existentialist Albert Camus concluded that “a man without morals is a beast.” And he will also act like a beast if that’s all he thinks he is. Therefore, if morals don’t ontologically exist, then we have to invent them.

Therefore, in The Selfish Gene, Dawkims becomes the inventor:

• Let us try to teach generosity and altruism, because we are born selfish.

But will moral invention sustain society without an adequate rational basis? Truly society needs generosity and altruism so it doesn’t unravel, but ultimately, if it’s all about human selfishness without moral absolutes, why shouldn’t it unravel? Why “teach generosity and altruism?” If we’re selfish to the core, then why not be true to that core and live it out?

Ultimately, secularism cannot answer these questions. What makes us any more valuable than the bovine? Why should our admittedly selfish concerns trump their concern for their own skins? And what if we’re more intelligent than cows? Does a higher IQ make us more valuable? If there is no God who created us in His image, then “value” is nothing more than a transient feeling, a social construct or a chauvinistic bias.  

Why not instead live according to the “survival of the fittest,” as past evolutionists candidly proclaimed? Historian Richard Weikart cites German pathologist Hugo Ribbert as a representative spokesman for the evolutionists of his day - the beginning of the 20^th century:

• The care for individuals who from birth onwards are useless both mentally and physically, who for themselves and their fellow creatures are a burden merely, persons of negative value, is a function altogether useless to humanity, and indeed positively injurious. 

According to this construct, some humans are winners, while some are losers, and your neighbors and your friendly family physician will ultimately decide this for you. There is nothing that can rule out eugenics in a world that deems some as “useless.” What happens to those who fail the IQ or popularity test? What reasoning can be brought against Ribbert’s assertion that those who society deems “useless” are not entitled to care? None!

What then of our cherished “Bill of Rights?” Why should it pertain equally to everyone, whether useful or useless? If we follow the logic of Dawkins and Hibbert, it shouldn’t! What then will be the fate of the vulnerable members of our society? Should we even care?

There can be little doubt about the answer to these questions. National Socialism and Atheistic Communism have given us compelling testimony to this fact - that whenever our God is replaced by an “ism,” humanity, stripped naked of His protective, value-imparting image (Genesis 1:26), becomes an object to be manipulated or even exterminated by the overriding interests of the “ism.”

When moral absolutes are eliminated, we eventually become mere objects to serve the corporate “good.”  Colson and Pearcey, How Shall We Now Live?, write about the demise of the Christian worldview:

• Denial of sin may appear to be a benign and comforting doctrine, but in the end, it is demeaning and destructive, for it denies the significance of our choices and actions. It reduces us to a pawn in the grip of larger forces…Social planners and controllers then feel perfectly justified in trying to control those forces, to remake human nature and rebuild society according to their own blueprints—and to apply any force required toward that end. (pg. 183)

Dawkins has another problem. If he denies everything he can’t touch and smell, then he should also deny that reason and logic are “hanging out there.” Admittedly, reason and logic produce results, but the lack of moral absolutes also produces results – cynicism and contempt for any moralizing, anything that slows us in the pursuit of our lusts.

The German poet Heinrich Heine was able to see the approach of Hitler’s National Socialism from afar:

• "It is to the great credit of Christianity that it has somewhat attenuated the brutal German lust for battle...And should ever that taming talisman break--the Cross--then will come roaring back the wild madness of the ancient warriors...For thought goes before deed as lightening before thunder. There will be played in Germany a play compared to which the French revolution was but an innocent idyll." (cir. 1830) 

If thought goes before deed, then our modern secular moral relativists are paving the way for another great horror – perhaps even a series of them.

Dogs, “Junk” DNA and Design

Intra-species variation doesn’t mean evolution. To put it another way, even though we find tremendous variation among dogs – this includes wolves, coyotes and foxes – it doesn’t mean that all of the assembly information (DNA) evolved through random mutation. In fact it couldn’t have! Bruce Malone, Search for the Truth Ministries (TRUTH@SEARCHFORTHETRUTH.NET), writes in his newsletter:

• All biologists and geneticists now know that every dog on the planet originated less than 10,000 years ago as a result of the selection of information contained within the genetic code of a wild grey wolf…Absolutely no evolution of information has happened – just a sorting of the many characteristics needed to produce the various breeds of dogs and wild canines of today.

This means that the great variation noted within various emerging sub-species does not require a lengthy process and a macro-evolutionary explanation. Instead, variation – as in the case of the canine family – can be explained as a product of the design and genetic inheritance of the original wolf. If so much information can be packed into one genome, perhaps Noah’s Ark was big enough!

Within the same newsletter (Winter 2012) Malone writes about the fallacy of “junk DNA”:

• For over twenty years, it has been widely reported that less than 2% of the coded information on the human DNA molecule is used to produce proteins…Thus 98% of the DNA sequence was assumed to be useless leftover junk from our evolutionary past. This was accepted evolutionary dogma for many years…Even within the last 5 years, Dr. Francis Collins (head of the human genome project), stated in his book, The Language of God, that roughly 45% of the human genome is made up of repetitive flotsam and jetsam and that this junk provides “compelling” evidence for the evolutionary origin of humanity. Yet we can now conclusively show that essentially all the DNA’s coded sequence (including repetitive sections) serves multiple purposes and functions.

If the presence of “junk” DNA – leftover non-functioning DNA from ancestral life-forms – argues in favor of evolution, then the lack of such should argue against evolution! This absence of junk DNA should also argue that we aren’t the result of a mindless, purposeless process but of Intelligent design!

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