Evolution vs. Creation

"The several difficulties here discussed, namely--that, though we find in our geological formations many links between the species which now exist and which formerly existed, we do not find infinitely numerous fine transitional forms closely joining them all together;--the sudden manner in which several groups of species first appear in our European formations;--the almost entire absence, as at present known, of formations rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian strata,--are all undoubtedly of the most serious nature. We see this in the fact that the most eminent palaeontologists, namely, Cuvier, Agassiz, Barrande, Pictet, Falconer, E. Forbes, &c., and all our greatest geologists, as Lyell, Murchison, Sedgwick, &c., have unanimously, often vehemently, maintained the immutability of species. But Sir Charles Lyell now gives the support of his high authority to the opposite side; and most geologists and palaeontologists are much shaken in their former belief" (Darwin 255).

Fact:

For the hypothesis of evolution to be regarded as credible would require intermediate forms between species. Paleontology does not provide them.

The Means To An End?

"I will not enter here on these several cases, but will confine myself to one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to the whole theory. I allude to the neuters or sterile females in insect-communities; for these neuters often differ widely in instinct and in structure from both the males and fertile females, and yet, from being sterile, they cannot propagate their kind" (Darwin 203).

Darwin concluded that natural selection then "may be applied to the family, as well as to the individual, and may thus gain the desired end" (Darwin 204).

Darwin admitting to a "desired end?" Whose desired end?

Darwin claims that natural selection then may be applied to the family as well as the individual. Not good enough. This is a simple and unacceptable attempt to brush the problem under the carpet. The theory of evolution cannot be a reasonable possibility until hurdles such as these are overcome. The fact that the sterile drone does not pass on it's instincts to offspring negates natural selection in this scenario.

When Darwin speaks of a "desired end," he is admitting that the only reasonable hypothesis for an insect's ability to give birth to various sterile castes with differing physical traits and with specialized, unique instincts--none of which are shared by the parent--is that the cause of this phenomenon transcends the inadequate theory of mutation and natural selection and therefore implies the result of intent since it is consistent and recurring.

The Logic Darwin Dared Not Admit:

"Reading 'The Blind Watchmaker' by Richard Dawkins was a pivotal experience for me, I had recently started my Ph.D. program at George Mason University and eagerly signed up for a class entitled 'Problems in Evolutionary Theory', The Blind Watchmaker was required reading, and with growing enthusiasm I noted glowing endorsements printed on the cover ... After wading through all the hyperbole, I was stunned by the ideas put forward by Dawkins in The Blind Watchmaker. Rhetoric burnished the arguments with a glittering sheen, briefly giving the impression that the pebbles were gems. But once each metaphor was stripped aside, the core ideas did not support the idea that natural selection could account for the origin of life and the meaningful complexity of organisms."

" ... The evolution of a functional protein would presumably start out as a random series of amino acids one or two of which would be in the right position to do the function the protein was designed to do. According to Dawkin's theory, those amino acids in the right location in the protein would be fixed by natural selection, while those that needed to be modified would continue to change until they were correct and a functional protein was produced in a relatively short order. Unfortunately, this ascribes an attribute to natural selection that even its most ardent proponents would question, the ability to select one non-functional protein from a pool of millions of other non-functional proteins. ... What Dawkins is suggesting is that a very large group of proteins, none of which is functional, can be acted on by natural selection to select out a few that, while they do not quite do the job yet, with some modifications via mutation, can do the job in the future. This suggests that natural selection has some direction or goal in mind, a great heresy to those who believe evolutionary theory."

"Progressing in my studies, I slowly realized that evolution survives as a paradigm only as long as the evidence is picked and chosen and the great pool of data that is accumulating on life is ignored. As the depth and breadth of human knowledge increases, it washes over us a flood of evidence deep and wide, all pointing to the conclusion that life is the result of design. Only a small subset of evidence, chosen carefully, may be used to construct a story of life evolving from non-living pre-cursors. Science does not work on the basis of picking and choosing data to suit a treasured theory. I chose the path of science which also happens to be the path of faith in the Creator." (Standish)

DNA

"...Endless DNA sequence comparisons do not explain evolutionary development. Furthermore, the changes (mutations) observed on a molecular level, such as DNA are predominately disruptive, and always with loss of, not gain in, information and complexity" (Kramer).

Mathematical Odds:

The sequence of DNA must be exact in order to differentiate between biological organisms. There are millions of genes in a strand of DNA. If one gene were stacked incorrectly a viable life form would likely not be produced. To expound on the odds of life happening accidentally: with 52 cards in a deck, the odds of shuffling the cards into any specific order is 1 in 8 x 10 to the power of 67. If such a thing were to happen in a casino, the dealer would be accused of "stacking the deck." If such an occurrence were to happen more than once the casino owners would KNOW that the dealer was stacking the deck. And this is with only 52 cards as opposed to millions of genes and millions of species all of which can only exist if the other species exist, which further compounds the odds into the astronomical leaving us with virtually a zero probability of existence without someone "stacking the deck." This is a mathematical fact that too often is overlooked.

Truth:

Since low probability occurrences usually don't happen, zero probability occurrences of infinitely complicated structures DON'T happen.

Symbiotic Relationships:

There is an orchid in Australia that replicates a female ichnumid wasp which exists in the same region as the orchid. The wasp and orchid have a special relationship. The male wasps hatch 30 days before the females. This happens to be when the orchids are ready for pollenation. Mistaking the orchids for female wasps, the male ichnumids attempt procreation with the orchids, thereby pollenating them. After a month or so has passed and the orchids have had time to be pollenated, the female wasps hatch. The male ichnumids then return their attention to their own species.

If this scenario were the only symbiotic relationship of its kind it might be feasible to rationalize it's existence within the framework of evolution, however, there are literally thousands of similar relationships between species.

Another example is the Trogon bird in Costa Rica which makes it's dwelling in a hornet's nest. The hornet, known for it's ferocity, actually builds the nest with the capacity to accomodate the bird. When the Trogon finds a hornet's nest to occupy, it moves in, lays and hatches it's eggs within the nest coexisting with and feeding upon the hornets as do the Trogon bird's offspring. The hornets supply the birds with food and security.

Most hostile species don't make refuge for their predators and to do so contradicts the survival instinct inherent in all species. These Costa Rican hornets are known for their particularly violent and tenacious response to invaders. The fact that they allow one species to infiltrate and consume them raises obvious questions as to the origin, purpose, and benefit of such an instinct.

The Costa Rican hornets make it quite difficult for evolutionists to defer to the "desired end" as Darwin did when the evolutionary slope gets too slippery.

Evolution on a molecular level:

Trefil, author of "1001 Things Everyone Should Know About Science, NY: Doubleday, 1992," called the evolution of prokaryotes into eukaryotes an 'enduring mystery of evolution' because of the lack of evidence of the evolution of organelles, and the total lack of plausible links between eukaryotes and prokaryotes."

Disagreements Common in Scientific Community:

In the 1990's, a discovery was made in India which presumably pushed back the origins of species from 570 million to 1100 million years ago. An excerpt from an article by Subhadra Menon (Resetting the Clock, Oct 19, 1998, Living Media India, Ltd.):

"Some point out that Bose's sandstone twistings could very well have been formed by the general wear and tear that constantly occurs in the bowels of the earth. But there are other questions. Bose has used the Churhat rocks (which are said to be about a billion years old) to place the fossils in time. However, the very age of these rocks is in question. Says Prabha Kalia, head of the geology department, Delhi University: 'All of it is still in the realm of debate.' Bose refutes both points. 'The measurements of these twistings are consistent with multicellular organisms,' he says. 'As for the Churhat rocks, the age which they date back to is universally accepted,' he adds.

As you may have noticed, not everyone is in agreement regarding what are presumed by some to be constants. For instance the date of the rocks in the above scenario. One of the problems with the "science" of the origins of man is the assumption that certain formations represent earth at specific time periods. Some of these assumptions have been accepted (not proven) and act as templates for further speculation. In many cases a consensus within the scientific community is elusive in the most elemental aspects of classification, as in the above instance, whether the fossil is even of an animal. Dating standards have been contrived and accepted by the scientific community as the result of debate in the absence of provable theories. When several of these assumptions are accepted as fact, one upon the other, the resulting conclusions could well be far from the truth.

An Honest Evolutionist:

"We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door" (Lewontin 31).

My Commentary

You may have noticed by the design of this website that I believe the shroud to be the burial cloth of Christ. Mostly because the only argument against the cloth's validity is it's age and carbon dating has proven itself to be imperfect.

It seems that many who doubt the existence of God have been influenced a great deal by man's hypocrisy in the name of God: religious wars, fanatical revivals, exploitation motivated by greed, lust and aspirations of power.

The accounts of Jesus Christ however, do not reveal a man who even went to church except on rare occasion. As a matter of fact, the churches hated Him and generally conspired to kill Him because He too saw through their hypocrisy. The same would be true today.

Most psychologists/psychiatrists would agree that anyone believing themselves to have divine, omnipotent power would either be a paranoid schizophrenic or would have some other psychological affliction equally as debilitating; though, even skeptics today would not portray Christ as a schizophrenic, or even deluded.

By today's standards, the documentation regarding Christ's healings would be more than sufficient to authenticate the validity of those actions. However, even in the scientific theatre, prejudice and bias prevail when confronted with the reality of Christ and His relationship to God and to the world. While few will label Christ a liar or schizophrenic when He admitted that He was the son of God, skeptics will undoubtedly contrive a more quaint description of the only man in history whose behavior and values were truly god-like (even excluding the miracles).

If one looks closely at the science of paleantology or anthropology, it takes little logic to see how scientists fill the holes in their hypotheses with conjecture and speculation. Instead of a specific species of dinosaur resembling another species for instance, it is instead often portrayed as a missing link or some other equally dramatic participant in an evolutionary chain. Aside from speculation regarding human origins, this is especially evident when the subject is birds. Paleantologists are confounded by birds' highly specialized design for flight. So much so, that they continually scramble and theorize using many labels unknown to the layperson to explain birds' role in a hypothetical chain of evolution. When fossil remains are found of a species of dinosaur which had wings but probably couldn't fly, instead of categorizing the remains as being something like an ostrich, penguin or dodo bird, the remains are labelled as "The Missing Link" between terrestrials and birds--not an objective conclusion considering the absence of intermediary fossils.

Whether or not evolution actually played a role in our existence is irrelevant and doesn't necessarily support or refute the existence of a creator, but scientists driven to disprove creationism exploit their expertise in labelling and categorizing objects as an understanding of our origins much the same as a priest or clergy might exploit their knowledge of the bible as an exclusive understanding of death. Both types of people are dangerous and mislead many.

In life, nature rewards the physically strong and the mentally cunning. Death however, returns us all to babes--ignorant and helpless. It's unfortunate that so many wait until death is imminent before crying out to God. It behooves us to seek the truth without prejudice and to accept who we are before we are forced into accepting it in death.

Table of Contents

cited

Darwin, Charles. (1859). "The Origin of the Species by Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation...." The Modern Library, New York.

Kramer, John, Ph.D. Univ. of Minnesota - Biochemistry; one of the core scientists who evaluated canola oil for human consumption

Bergman, Jerry R., Ph.D. Wayne State Univ. - Evaluation and Research; Ph.D. Columbia Pacific Univ. - Human Biology

Standish, Timothy, Ph.D. Univ. of Virginia - Biology and public policy

Lewontin, Richard. (Jan 9, 1997). "Billions and Billions of Demons," The New York Review