EVOLUTIONISTS ADMIT THEIR PROBLEMS BUT CONTINUE IN FAITH

In his new book, Christianity for Doubters, Granville Sewell takes on natural selection (NS). Quoting Harvard paleontologist George Gaylord Simpson, Sewell questions whether the fossil record can support evolution by NS:

·       “It is a feature of the known fossil record that most taxa appear abruptly. They are not, as a rule, led up to by a sequence of almost imperceptibly changing forerunners such as Darwin believed should be usual in evolution.... This phenomenon becomes more universal and more intense as the hierarchy of categories is ascended. Gaps among known species are sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders, classes and phyla are systematic and almost always large. These peculiarities of the record pose one of the most important theoretical problems in the whole history of life: Is the sudden appearance of higher categories a phenomenon of evolution or of the record only, due to sampling bias and other inadequacies?”

If the fossil record doesn’t show it, why believe it! Sewell quotes French biologist Jean Rostand, in A Biologist's View, showing that NS lacks the muscle to bring about complex changes:

·       “It does not seem strictly impossible that mutations should have introduced into the animal kingdom the differences which exist between one species and the next... [H]ence it is very tempting to lay also at their door the differences between classes, families and orders, and, in short, the whole of evolution. But it is obvious that such an extrapolation involves the gratuitous attribution to the mutations of the past of a magnitude and power of innovation much greater than is shown by those of today.”

In short, our present understanding of random mutation and NS is unable to account for major structural changes. Nevertheless, Rostand remains a believer:

·       "However obscure the causes of evolution appear to me to be, I do not doubt for a moment that they are entirely natural."

Why does he not doubt? It is not because the evidence has relieved him of doubt.

Sewell points out another problem. The ultimate proof-criterion or rationale of evolution – commonalities prove common descent – fails repeatedly. There are many instances where commonalities do not reflect common descent, and this undermines the entire rationale of evolution. For this, Sewell quotes Wolf-Ekkehard Lönnig and Heinz-Albert Becker article on carnivorous plants in Nature Encyclopedia of Life Sciences:

·       “...carnivory in plants must have arisen several times independently of each other... the pitchers might have arisen seven times separately, adhesive traps at least four times, snap traps two times and suction traps possibly also two times.... The independent origin of complex synorganized structures, which are often anatomically and physiologically very similar to each other, appears to be intrinsically unlikely to many authors so that they have tried to avoid the hypothesis of convergence as far as possible.”

"Convergence" admits that commonalities do not have to be the product of common descent. Instead, evolutionists admit that common structures arise independently and by chance. Sewell concludes:

·       The probability of similar designs arising independently through random processes is very small, but a designer could, of course, take a good design and apply it several times in different places, to unrelated species.

Notice that evolution has rigged all the “evidence” in their favor. Where commonalities clearly do not possibly arise from common descent, the evolutionist calls it “convergent evolution” and claims a victory. Where there exists a possibility that commonalities had come from common descent, again, evolutionists claim a victory. No matter the findings, the evolutionist claims that his theory is a proven fact. Heads I win; tails you lose.

THE REJECTION OF GOD AND THE EMBRACE OF DARWIN IS A LOADED GUN

Historian Richard Weikart insists that the way we think is the way we live, sometimes with disastrous results:

·       Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who nicknamed himself “Natural Selector,” murdered eight students at a high school in Finland in 2007. In a YouTube video made shortly before the atrocity he wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the words “HUMANITY IS OVERRATED” and pointed a pistol at the camera. In his manifesto he listed what he hated: human rights, equality, “religious fanatics,” and the “moral majority.” He also listed what he loved: existentialism, freedom, truth, evolutionary biology, and eugenics. He explained why he thought humans had no special value ("The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life"):

o   “Humans are just a species among other animals and world does not exist only for humans. Death and killing is not a tragedy, it happens in nature all the time between all species. Not all human lives are important or worth saving. Only superior (intelligent, self-aware, strong-minded) individuals should survive while inferior (stupid, retarded, weak-minded masses) should perish.”

It is likely that Auvinen also had psychological problems that could account for his murders, but many have these problems and yet treat others compassionately. Even though Auvinen might have always owned a handgun, his socially-derived beliefs put the bullets in its chambers and cocked the trigger:

o   “Life is just a meaningless coincidence . . . result of long process of evolution and many several factors, causes and effects. However, life is also something that an individual wants and determines it to be. And I’m the dictator and god of my own life. And me, I have chosen my way. I am prepared to fight and die for my cause. I, as a natural selector, will eliminate all who I see unfit, disgraces of human race and failures of natural selection.”

Obviously, Darwinism had helped to load Auvinen's gun and cock its trigger. It provided a convenient rationale. Once he had rejected God, there was nothing left to stop him from pulling the trigger. 

WHAT WE BELIEVE IS HOW WE ACT

Historian Richard Weikart argues that will follow our thoughts:

• Eric Harris, the co-conspirator behind the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, confided to his journal just a few months before his rampage, “I just love Hobbes and Nietzche [sic].” On the day of the shooting he wore a T-shirt that proclaimed “Natural Selection,” and in his journal he stated that he loved natural selection and thought we should return to a state of nature where everyone had to fend for themselves. He wanted the weak and sick to die; his solution was to “kill him, put him out of his misery.” He also expressed utter contempt for humanity and dreamed of exterminating the entire human population. Although Harris had personal reasons for his hatred of humanity—he felt belittled and left out socially—he had also absorbed ideas prominent in our society today. It seems clear from his musings that Harris thought life was meaningless and death was natural, so why worry about it? On the same day that he wrote in his journal, “I say, ‘KILL MANKIND’ no one should survive,” he also remarked, “theres no such thing as True Good or True Evil, its all relative to the observer. its just all nature, chemistry, and math. deal with it.” Earlier he had written, “just because your mommy and daddy told you blood and violence is bad, you think its a law of nature? wrong, only science and math are true, everything, and I mean everything else is man made.” ("The Death of Humanity: And the Case for Life")

Others had been social outcasts, but they did not kill. However, our secular society had virtually handed Harris a collection of deadly weapons:

1. The denial of a “true good or true evil”
2. “Natural Selection”
3. Survival of the Fittest
4. Denial of Human Exceptionalism
5. “Only science and math are true, everything, and I mean everything else [including God] is man made.”

When we kill God, only death remains. We are both dignified and destroyed by our beliefs. If we think of humans as mere animals, we will inevitably treat them accordingly. If we believe that there is no “true good and no true evil,” our behavior will eventually catch up with our beliefs, and the results will be costly.

HOW DID DARWIN AFFECT NAZI THINKING, AND HOW WILL EVOLUTION IMPACT TODAY’S MORALITY?

The SS representative at the “Final Solution” meeting (Wannsee Conference, 1942) was General Reinhard Heydrich, one of Himmler's top deputies.  Although genocide was already underway in the occupied portions of the Soviet Union and in Serbia, Nazi officials discussed the need for a more comprehensive program to exterminate European Jews. From the article published by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum:

·       Heydrich announced that "during the course of the Final Solution, the Jews will be deployed under appropriate supervision at a suitable form of labor deployment in the East. In large labor columns, separated by gender, able-bodied Jews will be brought to those regions to build roads, whereby a large number will doubtlessly be lost through natural reduction. Any final remnant that survives will doubtless consist of the elements most capable of resistance. They must be dealt with appropriately, since, representing the FRUIT OF NATURAL SELECTION. 

It is inevitable that evolution devalues humanity, a mere animal, albeit talented, and will continue to do so. We kill and eat animals. Why make any exception for humanity!

In contrast, the biblical revelation sets humanity apart from the animal kingdom as God’s special creation, each created in his image, not just those esteemed more highly by society.

Consequently, our Declaration of Independence asserted that we are all endowed with certain unalienable rights, something evolution is not capable of endowing.

The Naturalist and his Religious Commitments

I have found that dialoguing with atheists can be very tedious and unsatisfying. Perhaps this is because they too have religious commitments, but they refuse to acknowledge them and yet cling to them as tenaciously as we cling to ours. This small piece of a dialogue reflects this problem and my exasperation.

I am saddened that we don’t seem to be able to find agreement on even the most obvious points. You again claim:

• Naturalism is not a religion, and you know it is not. We've had that debate already. And naturalism is not imposed on the public - if by that you mean public school kids. Teaching evolution by natural selection does not in any way "impose" naturalism on kids.

Darwinism rests upon “natural selection” and “random mutation,” neither of which is provable. In fact, you lack even the slightest shred of evidence to support this claim that selection is just natural and mutations are just random. You have repeatedly failed to offer any evidence that these processes are not divinely guided.

This is merely an unsupported – and I would add insupportable – belief. As such, I call this a religious belief. However, it is a belief that is being pushed on our youth in the name of science, while science has nothing directly to say about it. If I am wrong and there is scientific evidence to the contrary, please show me.

Ironically, naturalism is an incoherent belief. It invokes “natural” processes when, as yet, there were none! Instead, our laws of physics give many indications – their elegance, immutability, universality - that they were intelligently designed and operate transcendently.

Where do these laws come from? How does naturalism account for them? The naturalist can only appeal to a vain hope – the multiverse – that there are an almost infinite number of universes. He reasons that, if this is the case, it is reasonable that one of them should have just the right set of laws – our laws. However, there are countless problems with such a theory/religious belief:

1. There is no evidence for even a second universe, let alone an almost infinite number of universes.
2. Besides, even if there are an infinite number of universes, it would still remain a mystery how a universe could generate immutable laws.
3. There is no known mechanism to generate a universe.
4. The laws are elegant and immutable. Explosions and their necessary molecules-in–motion nature fail to explain their creation and stability. Besides, temporal causes are always changing. Thus, they fail to explain our laws can be unchanging.

Recently, Scientific America commented about the vain attempt to explain the origin our universe naturalistically:

• The real criticism of cosmological natural selection as a scientific hypothesis is its lack of direct evidence at this point. There is no direct evidence that the universe reproduces. Without that, no natural selection, even before issues of variation and selection come into play. True enough. But keep in mind that from a direct evidence perspective, cosmological natural selection is no worse off at this point than proposed scientific alternatives. There is no direct evidence that universes are created by quantum fluctuations in a quantum vacuum, that we live in a multiverse, that there is a theory of everything, or that string theory, cyclic universes or- brane cosmology even exist.

As such, the “multiverse” cannot be considered a scientific theory, but a religion. I am therefore surprised and saddened that you continue to claim that naturalism does not represent a religious commitment foisted upon us as science.