John Sanford and the Utter Failure of the Theory of Evolution

Plant geneticist Dr John Sanford, research scientist at Cornell University, co-inventor of the gene gun, and author of Genetic Entropy and the Mystery of the Genome, had been a true believer:

• I was totally sold on evolution. It was my religion; it defined how I saw everything, it was my value system and my reason for being. Later, I came to believe in God…I would not say that science led me to the Lord (which is the experience of some). Rather I would say Jesus opened my eyes to His creation—I was blind, and gradually I could see.

• On a personal level this was a time of spiritual awakening, but professionally I remained “in the closet”…So I felt the need to take temporary leave from academia and institutional science because of the tension I felt in this regard, and the enormous potential hostility I sensed from my academic colleagues. I think the academic environment is very hostile to the very idea of a living and active God, making it almost impossible for a genuine Christian to feel open or welcome.

Eventually, Sanford’s new-found faith led him to re-examine the “evidential foundation” for the theory of evolution, and found that it was virtually non-existant:

• Institutional science has systematically “evolutionized” every aspect of human thought. Contrary to popular thinking, this is not because evolution is central to all human understanding, but rather has arisen due to a primarily political and ideological process. Consequently, in the present intellectual climate, to reject evolutionary theory has the appearance of rejecting science itself. This is totally upside down…We cannot really explain how any biological system might have “evolved”, but we can all see that virtually everything we look at has extraordinary underlying design.

• I am not aware of any type of operational science (computer science, transportation, medicine, agriculture, engineering, etc.), which has benefited from evolutionary theory. But after the fact, real advances in science are systematically given an evolutionary spin. This reflects the pervasive politicization of science.’

He subsequently concluded that evolution into more complex forms is impossible. For one thing, mutations are the source of de-evolution (the corruption of the genome) and not evolution:

• Mutations are word-processing errors in the cell’s instruction manual. Mutations systematically destroy genetic information—even as word processing errors destroy written information. While there are some rare beneficial mutations (even as there are rare beneficial misspellings), bad mutations outnumber them—perhaps by a million to one. So even allowing for beneficial mutations, the net effect of mutation is overwhelmingly deleterious. The more the mutations, the less the information. This is fundamental to the mutation process.’

Sanford also concluded that natural selection does little to slow the de-evolution process:

• Very rarely a beneficial mutation arises that has enough effect to be selected for—resulting in some adaptive variation, or some degree of fine-tuning. This also helps slow degeneration. But selection only eliminates a very small fraction of the bad mutations. The overwhelming majority of bad mutations accumulate relentlessly, being much too subtle—of too small an effect—to significantly affect their persistence. On the flip side, almost all beneficials (to the extent they occur) are immune to the selective process—because they invariably cause only tiny increases in biological functionality.

• So most beneficials drift out of the population and are lost—even in the presence of intense selection. This raises the question—since most information-bearing nucleotides [DNA ‘letters’] make an infinitesimally small contribution to the genome—how did they get there, and how do they stay there through “deep time”? Selection slows mutational degeneration, but does not even begin to actually stop it. So even with intense selection, evolution is going the wrong way—toward extinction!’

Sanford concludes that:

• The bottom line is that Darwinian theory fails on every level. It fails because: 1) mutations arise faster than selection can eliminate them; 2) mutations are overwhelmingly too subtle to be “selectable”; 3) “biological noise” and “survival of the luckiest” overwhelm selection; 4) bad mutations are physically linked to good mutations, so that they cannot be separated in inheritance (to get rid of the bad and keep the good). The result is that all higher genomes must clearly degenerate. This is exactly what we would expect in light of Scripture—with the Fall—and is consistent with the declining life expectancies after the Flood that the Bible records.

Sanford is not alone. Many evolutionists share Sanford’s assertions about the problems with evolution. All the following quotations are taken from John Lennox’s masterful book, God’s Undertaker: Has Science Buried God:

• “There is no theoretical reason that would permit us to expect that evolutionary lines would increase in complexity with time; there is also no empirical evidence that this happens.” (John Maynard Smith, E. Szathmary)

• “In the whole experimentally accessible domain of microevolution (including research in artificial breeding and in species formation), all variations have certainly remained within the confines of basic types [species, more or less].” (Siegfried Scherer)

• Cell biologist E.J. Ambrose of the University of London argued that it is unlikely that fewer than five genes could ever be involved in the formation of even the simplest new structure, previously unknown in the organism. He then points out that only one in 1,000 mutations is non-deleterious, so that the chance of five non-deleterious mutations occurring is 1 in a million billion replications. [This means that every organism will probably die before it adds a new organ!]

Nor is there any experimental evidence to counter-balance these assessments:

• In his book, Grasse observed that fruit flies remain fruit flies in spite of thousands of generations that have been bred and all the mutations that have been induced in them…More recent work on the E. coli bacterium backs this up. In this research no real innovative changes were observed through 25,000 generations of E. coli bacterium. (Lennox, 108)

Lennox also informs us that the fossil record, citing many evolutionists, “gives no good examples of macroevolution.” Perhaps it’s time to reconsider the design hypothesis!

Evolution and the Church: A Dysfunctional Marriage

Although none of its followers would call it a religion, evolution has become the religion of the university. Instead, they call it science, even though none of it can be verified in the laboratory. However, even a growing number of atheists are challenging this theory. The late theoretical physicist, Fred Hoyle, dismissed this theory:

• Darwinian theory is wrong because random variations tend to worsen performance as indeed common sense suggests. (CRJ, Vol. 36, #02, 47)

• Biomaterials [the materials of the cell] with their amazing measure of order must be the outcome of intelligent design.

Even Lynn Margulis, the late biologist and wife of the famous atheist Carl Sagan, finally rejected this theory:

• Neo-Darwinists say that new species emerge when mutations occur and modify an organism. I was taught over and over again that the accumulation of random mutations led to evolutionary change – led to new species. I believed it until I looked for evidence. (44)

Other atheists, Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini confessed that:

• There is something wrong – quite possibly fatally wrong – with the theory of evolution.

• We have been told by more than one of our colleagues that, even if Darwin was substantially wrong to claim that natural selection is the mechanism of evolution, nonetheless we shouldn’t say so. Not, anyhow, in public. To do that is, however inadvertently, to align oneself with the Forces of Darkness, whose goal is to bring science into disrepute. (44)

Nevertheless, the power and prestige of the university has been able to push evolution into the church. Evolutionists are just as evangelistic about their faith as we are and they have even enlisted Christians to do their bidding, and they have been quite successful at this.

Ordinarily, what people believe about biological change does not have a direct impact upon faith and the Bible. However, when Christians adopt Darwin, the consequences are disastrous to the faith. Here are some examples:

Christian evolutionists (CEs) unbiblically elevate evolution to the level of Scripture. Instead of Scripture critiquing all other truth claims evolution now stands in judgment over Scripture. Paul claimed that we have to bring all thoughts and worldviews into conformity to the Gospel (2 Cor. 10:4-5). In reverse to this teaching, Christian evolutionists tend to bring biblical thinking into conformity evolution.

Jesus had warned against serving two masters (Mat. 6:23-24), arguing that one would eventually take the place of the other. In all of my conversations with Christian evolutionists, it has been apparent that it was the Bible that got replaced. It was always coerced to conform to Darwin and not the other way around. Consequently, when “science” is allowed to trump Scripture, there is no end to the compromises that Scripture is forced to make.

Evolution introduces a competing and entirely alien worldview. The message of Genesis, and the rest of the Scriptures, is that God had made everything “very good”(Gen. 1:31) and we screwed it all up, requiring a future Savior (Gen. 3:15) to bring about a “restoration” (Acts 3:21).

According to evolution, life was always a dog-eat-dog, survival-of-the-fittest struggle from the beginning. Amazingly, cunning and death were God’s glorious tools. Consequently, Adam and Eve screwed-up nothing, and sin and death had their origins from the inception of life, in contrast with Genesis 3.

As a result of this unholy marriage between the Scriptures and evolution, Jesus, the “second Adam,” has to be re-evaluated. He is no longer the Savior from the effects of the Fall – sin and death, the work of Adam – but the Savior from God’s own “glorious” but bloody evolutionary plan.

There can be no “restoration,” because a restoration would be a restoration to our dog-eat-dog beginnings – not a very pleasant prospect.

The CE claim that the Bible is about the spiritual world, while evolution is about the physical. Therefore, there cannot be any contradiction between Darwin and the Bible, since the Bible is just concerned about the spiritual and Darwin about the physical – two entirely distinct realities! CEs make this insupportable distinction in order to defend themselves against any verse that might contradict Darwinism. Where there is an apparent contradiction, like the biblical assertion that animals had originally been herbivores, the CE claims that this teaching is a spiritual one, not one about the physical creation of the animal world. How convenient, but how inaccurate!

This alien worldview also undermines morality in many ways. If the “survival-of-the-fittest” is God’s glorious plan to bring us onto the scene, then we should regard this God-given methodology as normative – a model for our guidance. Consequently, who can blame Cain for killing the naïve and less well-adapted Abel! Besides, if there is no absolute distinction between us and the beasts, then there can be no absolute distinction between the way we treat man and beast.

Evolution disparages the Biblical accounts. In order to make room for Darwin, Scripture – at least the first several chapters of Genesis – has to be relegated to non-historical allegory. For instance, Genesis 1:30 states that God gave the birds and beasts green herbs to eat. However, this contradicts evolution’s insistence regarding the bloody struggle of the survival-of-the-fittest. Therefore, the CE dogmatically asserts that the Bible “isn’t a science or history text,” but a theology text - the way to find salvation.

In this manner, evolution illegitimately separates theology from its necessary historical foundations. However, we cannot separate the theology of the cross from the history of the cross. To remove the historical fact that Christ died on the cross is to deny the Gospel – that Jesus died for our sins. No history, no theology!

We also find this inseparable relationship between history and theology in Genesis. Peter reasons that God means business about a future judgment. He cites His past (historical) judgments as evidence – the flood and Sodom (2 Peter 2:4-9). However, if these accounts were merely parabolic or allegorical, then we’d have no reason to believe that the future judgment is any more than an allegory. Clearly, this was not Peter’s intention.

Closer to home, Jesus bases His teachings on marriage on the historical events of Genesis 1 and 2:

·        "Haven't you read," he [Jesus] replied, "that at the beginning the Creator 'made them male and female' [Genesis 1:26-27] and said, 'For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh' [Gen. 2:24]? So they are no longer two, but one. Therefore what God has [historically] joined together, let man not separate." (Matthew 19:4-6)

If God hadn’t actually created them and historically joined the two together, Jesus’ argument against divorce would be insupportable. (If God hadn’t historically joined them together, then there is no need to keep them together!) Therefore, if Genesis isn’t history, then Jesus was mistaken.

Many CEs deny that Adam and Eve were historical people. However, if we deny their historicity, then we have to deny everything that the New Testament says about them. However, Paul clearly affirmed the historicity of the Genesis 3 account:

·        Therefore, just as sin entered the world through one man, and death through sin, and in this way death came to all men, because all sinned—(Romans 5:12)

Without any doubt, Paul made an historical claim and based a lot of other theology on the historical Adam (1 Tim. 2:14-16; 1 Cor. 15:21-22, 45).

The many genealogies also assert that Adam was an historical person. Besides, if Adam isn’t historical, then Cain and Abel aren’t historical, and Abraham and David aren’t historical – all the way up to Jesus. Consequently, if Adam wasn’t historical, the genealogies would lead us to believe that all of his so-named descendents are likewise unhistorical. Therefore, to compromise the first chapters of the Bible is to compromise everything else.

The CE worldview kills apologetics – the defense of the faith. Proofs build upon what is clear and generally accepted in order to prove what has been unclear and disputed. This also pertains to apologetics – theistic proofs and proofs that the Bible is actually God’s Word. Consequently, we start with what we can see and touch – the physical world (evidences of miracles, fulfilled prophecy, extra-Biblical testimony…) – and apply these areas of agreement to areas of disagreement. Jesus performed miracles and fulfilled prophecies to provide a foundation for our faith. However, the CE claims that the Bible is both mistaken and unconcerned about events in the physical world. This undercuts the possibility of any comprehensive proof.

The CE also disparages ID as science and proof. This too goes against the testimony of Scripture that we are “without excuse” (Romans 1:18-20) when we deny the physical evidence for the existence of God, because God has given us this evidence. Consequently, the CE worldview has limited the Christian faith to only subjective/personal appeals – “taste and see that the Lord is good” (Psalm 34:8)

When I challenge CEs about their inconsistencies, they will tell me that we have to be humble about our interpretation of the Bible. If only they were equally humble about their belief in Darwin!

Darwin and the Growing Gaps in the Fossil Record

If marijuana use leads to harder drugs, then we should be able to document this progression in the case histories of hard core drug users. If we can’t do this, then we should abandon this theory. If polyps lead to cancer, we should be able to demonstrate this lethal progression. If we can’t, then it is time to reconsider our theory. If natural selection leads to macroevolution – the appearance of higher life forms from lower – we should also be able to document this as well. However, the overwhelming consensus of leading paleontologists is that this cannot be done.

I will merely present a very partial list of quotations from these paleontologists:

• "The point emerges that if we examine the fossil record in detail, whether at the level of orders or of species, we find' over and over again' not gradual evolution, but the sudden explosion of one group at the expense of another." (Paleontologist, Derek V. Ager)

• "A major problem in proving the theory has been the fossil record; the imprints of vanished species preserved in the Earth's geological formations. This record has never revealed traces of Darwin's hypothetical intermediate variants - instead species appear and disappear abruptly, and this anomaly has fueled the creationist argument that each species was created by God." (Paleontologist, Mark Czarnecki)

• "There is no need to apologize any longer for the poverty of the fossil record. In some ways, it has become almost unmanageably rich and discovery is outpacing integration. The fossil record nevertheless continues to be composed mainly of gaps." (Professor of paleontology - Glasgow University, T. Neville George)

• "Evolution requires intermediate forms between species and paleontology does not provide them." (David Kitts – Paleontologist)

• "The long-term stasis, following a geologically abrupt origin, of most fossil morphospecies, has always been recognized by professional paleontologists" – (Stephen Jay Gould – Harvard)

• "The sweep of anatomical diversity reached a maximum right after the initial diversification of multicellular animals. The later history of life proceeded by elimination not expansion." (Stephen J. Gould, Harvard, Wonderful Life, 1989, p.46)

• "Given the fact of evolution, one would expect the fossils to document a gradual steady change from ancestral forms to the descendants. But this is not what the paleontologist finds. Instead, he or she finds gaps in just about every phyletic series." – (Ernst Mayr-Professor Emeritus, Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University)

• "What is missing are the many intermediate forms hypothesized by Darwin, and the continual divergence of major lineages into the morphospace between distinct adaptive types." (Robert L Carroll – Paleontologist)

• "Now, after over 120 years of the most extensive and painstaking geological exploration of every continent and ocean bottom, the picture is infinitely more vivid and complete than it was in 1859. Formations have been discovered containing hundreds of billions of fossils and our museums now are filled with over 100 million fossils of 250,000 different species. The availability of this profusion of hard scientific data should permit objective investigators to determine if Darwin was on the right track. What is the picture which the fossils have given us? ... The gaps between major groups of organisms have been growing even wider and more undeniable. They can no longer be ignored or rationalized away with appeals to imperfection of the fossil record." (Luther D. Sunderland, Darwin's Enigma 1988, Fossils and Other Problems, 4th edition, Master Books, p. 9)

• "The evidence we find in the geological record is not nearly as compatible with Darwinian natural selection as we would like it to be .... We now have a quarter of a million fossil species but the situation hasn't changed much. The record of evolution is surprisingly jerky and, ironically, we have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than in Darwin's time ... so Darwin's problem has not been alleviated". (David Raup, Curator of Geology at Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History)

The fossil record provides us with no more reason to suppose Darwinian evolution, no more than to suppose that placing teeth under pillows brings the good tooth fairy. Perhaps it is due time to question the theory of evolution!

Meanwhile, theists are accused of believing “creation myths.” However, can the evolutionist say this with a straight face while they have their own creation myth – that everything sprang into existence uncaused out of nothing? Some do!

Ashamed of the Gospel and Trying to Fix it

One highly esteemed Neo-Orthodox theologian wrote that:

• Even if biblical critics proved that the person of Jesus is unhistorical…this would not affect the content of God’s revelation, since His truth is revealed even through fallible words spoken or written by human instruments, such as the apostles. “By all means we must ascertain the fallibility of the [Scripture] texts and thereby recognize the miracle, that we always hear the Word of God from this human word.” (Richard Weikart, Christian Research Journal, Vol. 35/Number 6, 41)

The “miracle” is that Scripture can be so factually wrong and yet so right at the same time. Oddly, according to Neo-Orthodoxy, Jesus can be entirely “unhistorical” - the Word of God can be in serious error about historical things – and yet it can be spiritually infallible. The same theologian claimed that:

• The sentence: Christ is risen and present, strictly understood only as testimony of Scripture, is true only as the word of Scripture [and not as history]. (41)

In light of this, facts are irrelevant to the Christian faith. What then is relevant and why? At best, it’s hard to say. At worst, these words are entirely meaningless.

In contrast, the Apostle Paul insisted that an historically Christ-less faith is a meaningless faith:

• And if Christ has not been raised, our preaching is useless and so is your faith. More than that, we are then found to be false witnesses about God, for we have testified about God that he raised Christ from the dead…If only for this life we have hope in Christ, we are to be pitied more than all men. (1 Cor. 15:14-19) 

According to Paul, historical and theology – the facts and the faith – could not be separated. A faith in the clouds could not address needs on the earth. If Christ didn’t historically die and rise, we are bereft of any spiritual benefit.

How then could this brilliant, Christ-preaching theologian have concocted such foolishness? How could he separate the historical Christ from the essence of the Christian faith? And how was it that he had been so popular?

Well, he was a product of his time and reflected what was broadly believed within educated circles. The church had been ravaged by the scholars – the Biblical critics – of that day. The brightest had come to the conclusion that these scholars were correct and that the Bible’s statements of fact couldn’t be trusted. However, they did value the Christian faith and wanted to somehow salvage its central tenants.

How could this be done in light of the Biblical criticism that had taken captive the universities and seminaries? Somehow the Bible’s spiritual core had to be safeguarded from critical scrutiny. A fence had to be erected between the fruits of biblical criticism and the Christian faith.

The Swiss German theologian Karl Barth had perceived the spiritual poverty of Christian liberalism and wanted to find a way to return to basics. Weikart explains:

• Barth insisted that all Scripture is the Word of God. However, by this he did not mean that Scripture was historically accurate…Barth divided knowledge into two separate realms – religious and empirical [physical], and the Bible is religious truth, not empirical truth…he thought that the historical accuracy of Scripture was irrelevant. (40)

Barth had thought that his reformulation had saved the church by protecting its spiritual message. However, history has passed a different verdict. It has shown that his reformulation has failed to revitalize the church. How could a revelation that could not be trusted in factual matters ever be trusted in spiritual matters? It couldn’t!

However, we are still surrounded by well-meaning Christians who believe that it is their calling to save the Christian faith, at least for the educated, professional and culturally-sensitive.

They feel that a Christianity equated with creationism cannot be sold or salvaged. Instead, it must be reformulated to make it appealing to the educated who believe that macro-evolution is a fact. One campus youth pastor put it this way:

• I deal with confused Christian students all the time. They are at a loss how to reconcile their fundamentalist faith with what they are learning in the university. I have been able to comfort many of them by showing them how to reconcile the Bible with evolution.

Sadly, comfort is not the same as Christianity or even any form of truth. Often, comfort is no more than a drug, which pays diminishing dividends. In this case, the drug is Barth’s drug – the division of the Bible into statements about the physical world – and these have to be taken tentatively and figuratively – and those all-important statements about the spiritual world. Therefore, if evolution is about the physical world and the Bible is about the spiritual, well then, all of the conflicts have been neatly “resolved.”

However, as with all drugs, this one hides its costs in the fine-print. It does not tell its prey that comfort is a deceptive veneer for an aggressive cancer.

I have little doubt that the campus pastor thinks that he is doing the right thing. He sees confusion and contempt for the Christian faith and thinks that he has the answer. However, despite the diminishing influence of Christianity in the West, Scripture has a different answer:

• I am not ashamed of the gospel, because it is the power of God for the salvation of everyone who believes: first for the Jew, then for the Gentile. (Romans 1:16)

Nor should we be ashamed. Interestingly, my unnamed Neo-Orthodox theologian almost entirely ceased reading his Bible once imprisoned. He confesses:

• "Once again I'm having weeks when I don't read the Bible much."

Such is the fruit of Neo-Orthodoxy!