After exploring the popular appeal of evolutionary theory we consider its weaknesses.....
Weakness #1: No rivals are allowed or seriously explored
Every scientist and every member of the public ought to be alarmed that no other integrating theory is allowed debate and discussion. When evolutionary scientists discuss for example Intelligent Design they do so without the kind of seriousness they would give to any other theory. They simply write off any explanation that may require an Intelligence and give it no further serious thought. Even those scientists who display a surface sympathy with Intelligent Design, such as Stuart Kauffman refuse to engage with it deeply. The approach is: "this idea is by definition wrong, by starting point; but I guess we'd better look as though we are taking it seriously".
Weakness #2: There is no evolutionary solution to complex systems
The Intelligent Design community have legitimately pointed out the complex systems demand intelligence. The classic problem of the flagellar motor is a case in point.....
Evolutionists explain this away by saying that the various parts can be found elsewhere in nature and all that happens is that those components are being used together in a new way. It takes very little mental effort to find holes in this idea, but this mental effort is simply not expended by evolutionists who wave off the flagellar motor with talk of Darwinian pre-adaption.
Here is the problem and it is simply insurmountable: suppose you decide to make a new machine - a TV for example - out of pre-existing machine parts from say a radio, a microwave and an oscilloscope. First of all you will need to adjust the properties of each component so that they can work together: you can't throw pre-existing parts together and expect it to work. Secondly, it takes intelligence to re-configure and assemble these components to fit the new purpose. No tornadoes in a junkyard of old electronic equipment will ever give rise to a a new machine: intelligence is required. And this is exactly the problem, so deeply is design and intelligence ingrained in our thinking, it is possible to overlook its role and blithely suggest it could all come together by itself.
Weakness #3: Evolution cannot ever explain the origin of the incredibly complex factory we call a cell
It is evolution-speak to call single-celled creatures 'primitive' or 'simple'. Darwin could be excused, but not we. Each cell is a complex factory, and one that builds itself to double the wonder. There is no non-intelligent explanation for the origin of a Samsung, Toyota or Cell factory which self-builds.
Law plus chance can give rise to a certain amount of complexity, but no more. Sand dunes and salt crystals all exhibit a certain amount of spontaneous complexity. But there is a clear limit to the complexity that naturally arises in nature. On a scale of 1 to a million, the complexity of a cell is at the top, the complexity nature spontaneously builds is say 1.
Weakness #5: Riding against the second law of thermodynamics is possible, but it requires a (designed) machine
Someone may protest, "Isn't it possible to ride against nature's natural tendency to disorder in a thermodynamically open system?" The second law of thermodynamics teaches that all systems tend to disorder (your car and your house fall apart as time advances). The answer is yes you can buck that trend, but only by courtesy of a machine (a designed machine). Take the heat pump, which many Americans use to heat their homes with. Normally heat travels from hot to cold, but actually you can make heat travel from a freezing Minnesota winter into a warmer house. To do this you need a machine. And guess what? Machines need intelligence.
Weakness #6: Common Descent and Common Designer integrate the same data with equivalent power
The theory of evolution derives its explanatory power from its observation that similar structures seem to point to common origin. This works not only at the level of similar limb-structures but at the level of the regulatory genes which build eyes and limbs. It turns out that the same toolbox of genes are used to build different limbs and different eyes: evidence of common Something, but what? Common descendant or common designer? Both are equal explanations. In the case of common Designer, it points to economy of design: why re-invent a limb when tweaking a regulatory gene in another direction will do the trick? Clever stuff.
This explanatory rug is therefore pulled from under the feet.
Weakness #7: Evolutionary theories work in the same way that conspiracy theories do: they construct meaning out of an infinite sea of facts
Conspiracy theories arise for two reasons: (a) an event (e.g. murder of JFK or 9/11) generates an enormous body of data, (b) the investigator (who has an axe to grind - every investigator has an axe to grind) in making sense of infinite data has no option but to pick and choose. What is picked and what is left behind depends on the investigator. In exactly the same way the number of facts in the universe are nigh on infinite (at least to us puny humans). Somehow we have to arrange them into some order, and the method we choose will depend on the philosophy we start out with.
The evolutionist assumes that the present great diversity of species can be arranged from simple to complex and that this arrangement can then be transposed back in time to indicate how living things arose: from uncomplicated to complex. So they discover eyes, from simple light sensitive to complex eagle eyes and with the evolutionary paradigm firmly fixed in the mind, naturally suggest "this is primitive" "that is late". There is of course a wholly alternative explanation for the diversity of species and eyes: the amazing creativity of a Designer who delights in creating not one way of seeing but ten.
Imagine an alien inspecting all "wheeled vehicles" in England, from simple to complex. He puts them in an evolutionary sequence: wheelie bins and bicycles are primitive he says, since they are simple, while cars and trucks are late since they are highly developed. Actually, Mr Alien, your theory is upside down. Wheelie bins came after cars. The point is that simplicity/complexity is no necessary sign of age/history, it may be nothing more than a sign of appropriateness: why give a flatworm an eagle's eye when all it needs is a light sensitive cell?
Weakness #9: Darwin's fatal step: micro to macro
I will never forget the first time I read Darwin's Origins. Darwin begins with the incredible way human breeders can produce certain features in animals by selective breeding. Anyone who has seen the amazing variety pigeon fanciers can produce will know exactly what I am talking about. It is helpful to call this micro-evolution rather than macro-evolution (though evolutionists like to blur the distinction) because it never produces new species or novel features, but merely works on what is already there: put all those pigeons back together without the creative hand of the selector and these novel features would disappear. Darwin then makes the fatal step in his book of arguing from these wonderful small changes to massive man-mouse changes. But there is a world of difference between the two. The former are merely yet another instance of the remarkable way the Creator has built into his creatures a certain amount of flexibility so that foxes can survive in both hot climes and the Arctic; so that finches can survive a drought when there is nothing but hard nuts to crack. Darwin, without faith in a gracious and kind God, interpreted these small changes wrongly.
Weakness #10: We now know the edge of evolution
Michael Behe in his marvelous book The Edge of Evolution, shows that we now have knowledge from both mathematics and experiments with microbes (where reproduction rates are so fast that the effect of mutations over millions of generations can be explored) which show that there is a clear limit to what evolution can do: "Despite huge population numbers and intense selective pressure, microbes... yield minor evolutionary responses.." (p.140)
Weakness #11: Many great scientists refuse to buy into it
There are a great number of scientists from many different disciplines who simply will not buy into evolutionary theory. These are not dimwits, but men and women at the top of their game, who totally refuse to accept the theory. There must be a reason for their refusal....
Weakness #12: Evolutionary theory can explain away anything
No matter what the problem, evolutionary theory can come up with a hypothetical solution. The trouble is that since it is a historical science, it doesn't have to, it can't, prove the hypothetical suggestion that happened way back when....
Weakness #13: Evolutionary Paradigms hold back science
In his wonderful book "Endless Forms Most Beautiful" Sean Carroll again and again says - clearly unwittingly - that certain findings were totally unexpected by the biological community. When for example it was discovered that the same gene toolbox is used to build many different kinds of eye, researchers were surprised, because they had assumed that eyes had been invented from scratch (his word, invented - implying a designer) 40 different times (p.66). In other words, their evolutionary paradigm prevented them from seeing connections between eyes. A creationist scientist in the same lab would have made far faster progress, because he or she would have been looking out for likenesses across the species, knowing that the same Designer built them all. Discoveries may have been made years or even decades earlier were it not fro Darwinian dogma. This is the problem when we are blinkered by a paradigm.
For all of these reasons and more, no-one should feel bullied into accepting the theory of evolution.
Christians, who take the Bible seriously, have additional reasons for questioning the theory. The doctrine of creation and the doctrine of the fall cannot be squared with evolutionary theory. But we are not ostriches who put our heads in the sand, ignoring the data around us, for we can't see evolution in science, and nor can we see it in theology.
No comments:
Post a Comment