Chapter 1. What is Truth? (Origins vs. Evolution)
<We are in the position of a little child entering a huge library filled with books in many different languages. The child knows someone must have written those books. It does not know how. It does not understand the languages in which they are written. The child dimly suspects a mysterious order in the arrangement of the books, but doesn’t know what it is.
That, it seems to me, is the attitude of even the most intelligent being toward God. We see a universe marvelously arranged and obeying certain laws, but only dimly understand those laws. Our limited minds cannot grasp the mysterious force that moves the constellations.*1
-- Albert Einstein
1. The Anthropic Principle
The more scientists study the universe the more it appears that things are adjusted for life in a way that defies all explanation. Even Stephen Hawking has written of this phenomenon and the conclusions one could draw from it…
<The laws of science, as we know them at present, contain many fundamental numbers, like the size of the electric charge of the electron and the ratio of the masses of the proton and the electron. We cannot, at the moment at least, predict the value of these numbers from theory -- we have to find them by observation. It may be that one day we shall discover a complete unified theory that predicts them all, but it is also possible that some or all of them vary from universe to universe or within a single universe. The remarkable fact is that the values of these numbers seem to have been very finely adjusted to make possible the development of life…Most sets of values would give rise to universes that, although they might be very beautiful, would contain no one able to wonder at that beauty. One can take this either as evidence of a divine purpose in Creation and the choice of the laws of science or as support for the strong anthropic principle.*2
Information theorist Dr. William Dembski sums up the odds of such occurring randomly…
<What happens when we try to assign a probability to the fine-tuning of these constants? Such a probability would look like 1/N (one over N). How big is N? Oxford physicist Roger Penrose concluded that if we jointly considered all the laws of nature that must be fine-tuned, we would be unable to write down such an enormous number because the necessary digits would be greater than the number of elementary particles in the universe.*3
2. Who Created the “Big Bang?”
What science currently postulates is that a giant, random explosion caused all the intricate order, and even if the odds are astronomical that life could have ever been supported, then we simply have hit the universal lottery. Even if this ridiculous thesis could be swallowed there still would be a gaping, unsolved quandary: who created the components of this explosion? Evolutionists will quickly reply, “Well who created God?” God claims to be eternal (cf. Deuteronomy 32:27; Psalm 90:2), energy does not. In fact, we know that energy cannot be eternal. How? The first and second laws of thermodynamics.
The first law dictates that energy can be changed into other forms but cannot be created nor destroyed. The second law dictates that when energy is used it loses a bit of its utility. So put these laws together: if new energy cannot be created and when energy is employed a bit of it becomes useless, then there is a finite amount of available energy, not an infinite amount.
Modern science asks the public to believe in the existence of a universe (or even multiple universes) without an original first-cause, which is of course impossible. They get away with it because no one takes them to task. Actually, the average atheistic lay person is often a lot wiser than the “cutting edge” physicist, but the atheist isn’t aware of this, so he or she trusts the physicist blindly. People don’t realize that an unbalanced intellectualism often warps the reason of “great minds” in many fields (especially those deluded by quantum mechanical indulgences). We laugh at the absurdities of ancient pagan philosophers; we have no need to look beyond our own culture to enter into fits of hysterics…
<If symmetry is perfect on a cosmic scale, the total amount of energy in the universe is actually zero. Does this mean that nothing caused the universe? If our universe is an absolute zero, absolutely nothing seems required to cause it! Is our universe such an ultimate absolute accident? Is it nothing that was caused by nothing for no reason at all? Extreme Big Accident Cosmology answers affirmatively. This cosmology is advocated by Quantum Cosmologists like Edward P. Tryon, Peter Atkins, A. Vilenkin, Victor J. Strenger, Quentin Smith, and a few others for whom the origin of the universe was a stupendous accident, having no cause whatsoever.*4
3. When Did Matter Begin to Live?
Aristotle was one of the most influential philosophers to promote the idea that some living things came about spontaneously:
<Now there is one property that animals are found to have in common with plants. For some plants are generated from the seed of plants, whilst other plants are self-generated through the formation of some elemental principle similar to a seed; and of these latter plants some derive their nutriment from the ground, whilst others grow inside other plants, as is mentioned, by the way, in my treatise on Botany. So with animals, some spring from parent animals according to their kind, whilst others grow spontaneously and not from kindred stock; and of these instances of spontaneous generation some come from putrefying earth or vegetable matter, as is the case with a number of insects, while others are spontaneously generated in the inside of animals out of the secretions of their several organs.*5
The invention of the microscope (A.D. 1590) made such ideas questionable and Louis Pasteur later (around 1860) conducted experiments that definitively proved living things don’t come about automatically, but that they can only descend from other life. Where did life originally come from then? Science’s answer is that after a cooling-down period which followed the Big Bang, despite Pasteur’s truths, somehow there was “spontaneous generation” anyway.
This is an outlandish assertion. When considered on a miniature scale the simple building blocks of life are just as spectacular as the galaxies. One of the most well-travelled quotes of Richard Dawkins is where he states that the nucleus of a cell has a “database larger, in information content, than all 30 volumes of the Encyclopaedia Britannica put together” (originally from The Blind Watchmaker).
And not only is such information present, but it is living…
<The genome is not just a simple string of letters spelling out a linear series of instructions. It actually embodies multiple linear codes, which overlap and constitute an exceedingly sophisticated information system, embodying what is called ‘data compression’…plus multiple, overlapping, linear, language-like forms of genetic information [with] countless loops and branches -- like a computer program. It has genes that regulate genes that regulate genes…genes that sense changes in the environment, and then instruct other genes to react by setting in motion complex cascades of events that can then modify the environment.
Some genes actively rearrange themselves…changing portions of the instruction manual…!
The bottom line is this: the genome’s set of instructions is not a simple, static, linear array of letters; [it] is dynamic, self-regulating, and multi-dimensional. There is no human information system that can even begin to compare to it.
The genome’s highest levels of complexity and interaction are probably beyond the reach of our understanding…All this mind-boggling information is [located] within a genomic package that is contained within a cell’s nucleus -- a space much smaller than the smallest speck of dust (from J.C. Sanford, a Cornell University professor and plant geneticist).*6 {some of the quotes throughout this book have been taken from secondary sources, so I apologize for passing on any typos, etc.}
Yet there must have been simple organisms before natural selection could begin to have any sort of effect, so the original kernel of this wonderful microcosm could only have come about by chance. We are going to see how unlikely this is.
Let’s briefly consider the enormous complexity of one of the most important components of living matter. Darwinists don’t think proteins came first; nevertheless, they had to be present before the first real cell could have existed…
<Proteins themselves are built from amino acids. A protein molecule is actually a long chain of linked amino acids…In nature there are 80 types of amino acids; however, only 20 of these are found in living organisms. If any of the other 60 amino acids would be in the chain, it would actually make the protein not viable for use in a living organism. It takes about 100 or so correctly “selected” amino acids to assemble one protein molecule.
To make things more complex: amino acids come in equal amounts of so called right- and left-handed orientation…So, any primordial soup would not only contain a random distribution of the 80 different amino acids, but also each amino acid would be present in a random distribution of right- and left-handed orientations. For some, not yet scientifically understood reason, proteins found in viable living organisms only contain left-handed amino acids.
…A calculation for the chance of one functional protein molecule forming randomly would be:
1/80 (select the right amino acid, one out of 80 possible choices) multiplied by 1/2 (only left-handed amino acids are usable) = 1 in 160. This is the probability of selecting the correct first amino acid for the protein. This needs to be repeated 100 times, since there are about 100 amino acids required to assemble one protein molecule. This chance is: 1/160 times 1/160…(one hundred times) = 1/160 to the power 100 = 2.6 x 10 {to the power} 220.
Compare this to the fact that there are only 10 {to the power} 80 atoms in the whole universe.*7
4. Dependency
Even if against all odds a basic ingredient somehow formed at the most primary of levels, it wouldn’t have been useful. Other properties would have had to come about by chance around the same time and then somehow all of these different elements would have needed to combine. Jerry Bergman, a man who has earned five degrees, including a PhD in biology, sums it up like this…
<Oversimplified, life depends on a complex arrangement of three classes of molecules: DNA, which stores the cell’s master plans; RNA, which transports a copy of the needed information contained in the DNA to the protein assembly station; and proteins, which make up everything from the ribosomes to the enzymes. Further, chaperons and many other assembly tools are needed to ensure that the protein is properly assembled. All of these parts are necessary and must exist as a properly assembled and integrated unit. DNA is useless without both RNA and proteins, although some types of bacteria can combine the functions of the basic required parts.
The problem for evolution caused by the enormous complexity required for life is quite well recognized, and none of the proposals to overcome it are even remotely satisfactory (Spetner, 1997)…For life to persist, living creatures must have a means of taking in and biochemically processing food. Life also requires oxygen, which must be distributed to all tissues, or for single-celled life, oxygen must effectively and safely be moved around inside the cell membrane to where it is needed, without damaging the cell. Without complex mechanisms to achieve these tasks, life cannot exist. The parts could not evolve separately and could not even exist independently for very long, because they would break down in the environment without protection (Overman, 1997).
Even if they existed, the many parts needed for life could not sit idle waiting for the other parts to evolve, because the existing ones would usually deteriorate very quickly from the effects of dehydration, oxidation, and the action of bacteria or other pathogens. For this reason, only an instantaneous creation of all the necessary parts as a functioning unit can produce life. No compelling evidence has ever been presented to disprove this conclusion, and much evidence exists for the instantaneous creation requirement, such as the discovery that most nucleotides degrade rather fast at the temperatures scientists conclude existed on the early earth (Irion, 1998).*8
If scientists would be sensible and cause mind-numbing speculation and charlatan philosophical models of probability to cease they would realize that every cell in every organism fulfils Darwin’s own curse upon himself…
<If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.*9
5. The Exclusivity of Selection
As we saw above, it is impossible to think that a simple cell formed because there are too many processes that would have had to develop simultaneously by chance. When we start talking of complex organisms we can begin to factor in natural selection, but this actually hurts instead of helps.
First of all, let’s give a simple definition for natural selection. If a small number of giraffes exist, half having short necks and half having long necks, and the only available leaves are high up in trees, obviously only the long-necked giraffes will survive. This is a basic principle found in nature that both evolutionists and creationists regard as legitimate. We must be aware of this however, and I definitely think this is where so many go wrong -- natural selection is simply a term for a mindless process, not a tangible force. Modern science must prove how something as complex as the pituitary gland with its amazing array of hormones evolved and not just say “natural selection did it” or speculate via some imaginative story. All the term describes is the very predictable idea that the fit survive {if it even does that}.
It was stated that natural selection actually hurts the odds of evolution instead of helping it, and this is why: when it is factored in, non-essential structures are more than likely to vanish off the scene.
<It may be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life {Darwin}.*10
The classic example is the eye. Unless the eye is complete (or nearly complete) it isn’t useful. If it did begin to develop, natural selection would have cancelled it out for being a wasteful anomaly in its early stages.
Think about the engineering feat of reproductive organs. How did male and female reproductive organs evolve separately and yet be compatible? Natural selection couldn’t have had the foresight to “create” the different sexes for some sort of beneficial end. Also, selfish genes (which neo-Darwinists think rule the world in order to copy themselves) would not want to go down that path, for it instigates an unnecessary struggle for duplication.
6. Helpful Glitches?
Another logic problem is the means of evolution. The only real hope Darwinists have is that beneficial mutations take place at high rates and that they cause there to be new features which are retained by natural selection. The hindrance is that mutations of the genetic code are nearly always harmful, not helpful. This is why medical science takes precautions to protect people from radiation that could cause mutations. Add a random letter to this sentence or take one away. What are the odds of making an improvement so blindly (given that my writing skills are subpar the odds are probably higher than they should be)?
Over time a wolf could perhaps be turned into a Boston Terrier through breeder-induced selection because of the genome that’s already there. Due to adaptation through natural selection a bear will be white at the Arctic Circle and brown in North American woodlands. Neither the dog nor the bear however can gain all sorts of new features to “progress” to another creature.
Neo-Darwinists don’t really believe in progression anyway, and this is one of their more dangerous ideas. The erasing of the line between humans and animals has serious implications in the precarious world of genetic engineering. Scientists are already inserting human genes into animals. It doesn’t take much imagination to foresee the worst sort of horror movie becoming reality if the sanctity of human life is completely undermined.
Given this fact, it’s amazing that sociobiologists are so eager to erase the line anyway. Are they misanthropic? Or are they just obtuse, being blind to the law of cause and effect? They certainly do not understand this rule as it applies to cosmology and biology, and it’s becoming obvious that they don’t understand it when it comes to sociology either.
<So glibly do the phrases ‘higher animals’ and ‘lower animals’ trip off our tongues that it comes as a shock to realize that, far from effortlessly slotting into evolutionary thinking as one might suppose, they were -- and are -- deeply antithetical to it. We think we know that chimpanzees {our nearest ancestors according to evolutionists} are higher animals and earthworms are lower, we think we’ve always known what that means, and we think evolution makes it even clearer. But it doesn’t. It is by no means clear that it means anything at all. Or if it means anything, it means so many different things as to be misleading, even pernicious {Dawkins}.*11
Humanism is living on borrowed time. It is a relic of Judeo-Christianity. In reality, if Dawkins is right, than there can be no purpose for life and no worth in morality of any sort, including basic respect for humanity.
Back to the point, in an attempt to prove that mutations could eventually cause macroevolution, Richard Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker described a computer program he designed that sharply brought down the odds of a monkey randomly typing a short line from Shakespeare. Yet the program included features of intelligent design, as each guess from the monkey was weighed against what the final outcome was supposed to be, with any successes along the way being retained. Thus the process wasn’t blind at all; it had a goal while guarding its “improvements” towards that goal. Randomness is an inescapable reality for atheists no matter how much abstract reasoning is offered to the contrary…
<…Some students and teachers at Plymouth University actually decided to put the monkeys-typing-Shakespeare theory to the test. In 2003, they placed six Sulawesi crested macaques in Paignton Zoo along with a computer and allowed them to get creative for four weeks.
The first monkey whacked the computer with a rock. Others urinated and defecated on the keyboard. In that time, the monkeys produced the equivalent of five typed pages but not a single word in the entire text. The text contained mainly strings of Ss and the occasional A, L, M, and J. The literary efforts of the six monkeys have been printed in a limited edition book entitled ‘Notes Toward the Complete Works of Shakespeare.’*12
7. The Inner Being
Darwin recognized the danger to his theory that instincts posed yet did little to answer them. Read his introduction to a section where he attempts to discuss the issue in a very shallow and unsatisfying way…
<The subject of instinct might have been worked into the previous chapters; but I have thought that it would be more convenient to treat the subject separately, especially as so wonderful an instinct as that of the hive-bee making its cells will probably have occurred to many readers, as a difficulty sufficient to overthrow my whole theory. I must premise, that I have nothing to do with the origin of the primary mental powers, any more than I have with that of life itself.*13
He then goes on to describe instincts as habit or necessity for the most part, which is ludicrous. A spider spinning a web from birth skilfully with no teacher or a butterfly navigating a two thousand mile migration route without a guide can’t be fobbed off so easily. All these things underline the fact that there is more to the world than material elements; there must be an inner being.
Instinctual behaviour is just one proof among many that points to the existence of non-material inner processes, such as spiritual realities or consciousness, as the Nobel Prize winning John Eccles said…
<The modern Darwinian theory of evolution is defective in that it does not even recognize the extraordinary problem that is presented by living organisms acquiring mental experiences of a non-material kind that are in another world from the world of matter-energy, which formerly was globally comprehensive…
It is disturbing that evolutionists have largely ignored the tremendous enigma that is presented to their materialistic theory by the emergence of mentality in the animal evolution…
Popper (1982; 150) states that: ‘The emergence of consciousness in the animal kingdom is perhaps as great a mystery as the origin of life itself. Nevertheless, one has to assume, despite the impenetrable difficulty, that it is a product of evolution, of natural selection.’
I believe that the emergence of consciousness is a skeleton in the cupboard of orthodox evolutionism.*14
If the butterfly’s mind is a mystery, then how much more is the human’s? What could push a human being to become so advanced mentally? Evolutionists do not believe “Lucy” appreciated music, wrote books, mixed paint, or could even discuss such concepts. Darwin says it is the struggle for life, the struggle to reproduce that rose man to new heights. The philosopher David Stove rings in clearly on the insufficiency of Darwin to explain the current state of humankind:
<A biological error, or error of heredity, is an organism which does not have as many descendents as it could have, or a characteristic of an organism which prevents it having as many descendents as it otherwise could.
Among plants there is no biological error at all, and in most species of animals there is none worth mentioning. A cockroach, a fish, or a snake, hardly ever has fewer descendents than it could. They do not waste their time or their health on biology, or philosophy, or religion, or art, or social reform, or any such foolishness. They don’t smoke, drink, or gamble either, nor yet do they practice contraception, or fret themselves about over-population or the environment. They concentrate all their efforts, from the earliest possible moment, on having as many descendents as they can…*15
Why does our species fall so short in comparison? The upward swing towards reproduction should be greater in beings that are high in terms of ability. We should therefore be consumed, obsessed, and unbelievably successful at making babies {at least in comparison to chimpanzees}. Does that seem like an accurate picture? If it were there would be no homosexuality, no abortions, no monogamy, no bad habits, no putting off having children for career or altruistic missionary efforts or caring for a sick relative, or anything else. Breed and bread would be our lives, but such is not the case.
Only a society of remarkable stupidity could ardently believe in the scientific reality of homosexuality via Darwinistic evolution!
8. Fossils Don’t Bear Evidence to Gradualism
Fossils are normally evoked as the great saviour of evolution. Even if all else fails, surely the bones uncovered from the earth point to a gradual increase in complexity over vast stretches of time, don’t they? No. If they did there wouldn’t have been any need for the “punctuated equilibrium” nonsense of a few decades ago.
Darwin himself was very apprehensive about the subject of fossils. He tried to come up with excuses and possible scenarios to explain the overt problems, yet the doubts he expressed intermittently are very candid and intriguing. A hundred and fifty years later, the major obstacles that Darwin specifically touched on have never been overcome.
The following is an article by a creationist (John Morris) with Darwin’s doubts intermixed. Also, in the portion of the writing that I’ve used from Morris he is just focusing on the marine section of fossils, which indeed make up well over 99% of them all [note the following numbers…
<*95% of all fossils are shallow marine organisms, such as corals and shellfish.
*95% of the remaining 5% are algae and plants.
*95% of the remaining 0.25% are invertebrates, including insects.
*The remaining 0.0125% are vertebrates, mostly fish. (95% of land vertebrates consist of less than one bone, and 95% of mammal fossils are from the Ice Age after the Flood.)*16
This is exactly what one would expect if the account of Noah’s flood is taken seriously.].
(Morris) -- <For decades students have been shown a representation of the fossil record appearing as a vertical column with marine invertebrates on the bottom, overlain by fish, then amphibians, reptiles, and mammals, with man on the top. The column is a column of time, they are told, with the long ago past on the bottom and the present on top. The fossil column (or similar figure) is presented without question as if it were true -- as if it were real data. Students are led to believe that the order of first appearance of the fossils over time proves evolution.
I suggest that it does no such thing, for several reasons. First, the fossils do not occur in this order, simple to complex from bottom to top. The fossils at the bottom (i.e., long ago) are equally as complex as any animal today, and are essentially the same as their modern counterparts.
…Diverse forms continue up the column (i.e., throughout time) with much the same appearance possessed at the start. The term stasis describes the tendency to “stay” the same, remain “stationary” or “static.” Some body styles go extinct as you come up the column, but no new basic styles are introduced.*17
(Darwin) -- <Geological research, though it has added numerous species to existing and extinct genera, and has made the intervals between some few groups less wide than they otherwise would have been, yet has done scarcely anything in breaking down the distinction between species, by connecting them together by numerous, fine, intermediate varieties; and this not having been effected, is probably the gravest and most obvious of all the many objections which may be urged against my views.*18
(Morris) -- <Second, the evolutionary presentation in the textbook column implies that all life has come from one (or perhaps a few) common ancestor(s). But the Cambrian System, the lowest (i.e., oldest) level containing extensive multicellular fossils, exhibits a virtual explosion of life. Suddenly (by this I mean without the necessary ancestors lower in the column), every phylum of life is found -- every basic body style, including vertebrate fish. The abrupt appearance of diverse forms of life does not match with evolutionary predictions of one form descending into many.*17
(Darwin) -- <The abrupt manner in which whole groups of species suddenly appear in certain formations, has been urged by several palaeontologists, for instance, by Agassiz, Pictet, and by none more forcibly than by Professor Sedgwick, as a fatal objection to the belief in the transmutation of species. If numerous species, belonging to the same genera or families, have really started into life all at once, the fact would be fatal to the theory of descent with slow modification through natural selection.
…There is another and allied difficulty….I allude to the manner in which numbers of species of the same group, suddenly appear in the lowest known fossiliferous rocks. Most of the arguments which have convinced me that all the existing species of the same group have descended from one progenitor, apply with nearly equal force to the earliest known species. Consequently, if my theory be true, it is indisputable that before the lowest Silurian stratum was deposited, long periods elapsed, as long as, or probably far longer than, the whole interval from the Silurian age to the present day; and that during these vast, yet quite unknown, periods of time, the world swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find records of these vast primordial periods, I can give no satisfactory answer. The case at present must remain inexplicable; and may be truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained.*18
9. Consider the Source
Let’s look at a few of the quotes that prove Darwin was a disgusting racist…
<Man is liable to numerous, slight, and diversified variations, which are induced by the same general causes, are governed and transmitted in accordance with the same general laws, as in the lower animals. Man has multiplied so rapidly, that he has necessarily been exposed to struggle for existence, and consequently to natural selection. He has given rise to many races, some of which differ so much from each other, that they have often been ranked by naturalists as distinct species…
There is, however, no doubt that the various races, when carefully compared and measured, differ much from each other, -- as in the texture of the hair, the relative proportions of all parts of the body, the capacity of the lungs, the form and capacity of the skull, and even in the convolutions of the brain…Their mental characteristics are likewise very distinct; chiefly as it would appear in their emotional, but partly in their intellectual faculties…
With civilized nations, the reduced size of the jaws from lessened use -- the habitual play of different muscles serving to express differe