Chapter Summaries
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CHAPTER SUMMARIES There are two opposing theories of natural selection: gradualism and punctuated equilibrium. Most theorists have abandoned gradualism because the fossil record refutes it: after 140 years and a billion fossils, the transitional species which Darwin predicted have not been found. On the other hand, many evolutionists still cling to gradualism because there is no evidence whatsoever for punctuated equilibrium - except for the lack of evidence for gradualism. In short, there is no mechanism for natural selection supported by evidence strong enough to command a consensus, even among evolutionists. CHAPTER SUMMARIES How I came to my subject
Naturalistic science claims much more than that species originated by a process of natural selection; it claims that human personality is illusory. There are two opposing theories of natural selection: gradualism and punctuated equilibrium. Most theorists have abandoned gradualism because the fossil record refutes it: after 140 years and a billion fossils, the transitional species which Darwin predicted have not been found. On the other hand, many evolutionists still cling to gradualism because there is no evidence whatsoever for punctuated equilibrium - except for the lack of evidence for gradualism. In short, there is no mechanism for natural selection supported by evidence strong enough to command a consensus, even among evolutionists. The changes which evolutionary theory posits occur at the molecular level, and it is at this level that explanations must be offered; yet paleontologists have never addressed evolution at this level. Biologists have begun to attempt to identify plausible evolutionary pathways at the molecular level, but so far have failed to identify any. Since the technology to study life at this level was invented about 50 years ago, the origin of species by any process of natural selection has been shown to be categorically impossible.1 The pervasive presence of information in both living and non-living things infallibly signifies design.
The evidence for Darwinism consists in largely in two things: microevolution - the adaptation of organisms through slight genetic change - and the similarities among organisms.2 It is a gigantic leap from microevolution to the conclusion that random mutation can produce a wing, or an eye, or a mammal from a reptile. And design theory accounts for similarities among organisms at least as well as natural selection theory. In short, macroevolution remains an unproven theory.
140 years and a billion fossils after Darwin presented his theory, the transitional forms he predicted are nowhere to be found in the fossil record. There are two schools of natural selection theory - classical Darwinism (or gradualism), and punctuated equilibrium. Many scientists have abandoned gradualism because of the lack of evidence in the fossil record, while others refuse to embrace punctuated equilibrium - even though it is now the majority view - because it has no supporting evidence at all other than the failure of gradualism. Despite the continued popular acceptance of the "prebiotic soup" myth, scientists acknowledge that no solution is known to the problem of the origin of the first living organisms, and no breakthrough is expected any time soon.
The complexity of living things precludes accidental origin. Complexity is of three kinds: the degree of complexity, irreducible complexity, and the complexity of information. The degree of complexity in living things is an insurmountable obstacle to evolution because the probability that the simplest living organism would arise by chance is many orders of magnitude too small for it to occur as a result of random events, even after billions of years longer than was available. Irreducible complexity is another insurmountable obstacle to evolution; many biological systems have been shown to contain great numbers of interworking proteins, all of which are essential to the system: step-by-step development is impossible. Finally, information has never occurred, so far as anyone knows, without active intelligence; therefore, the mountains of information contained in living systems also preclude accidental origin.
Life did not arise at a random location or at a random time in the universe, but at a specific time and place - present-day Earth, the only planet in the universe when or where the hundreds of conditions necessary to life have ever occurred simultaneously. The degree of this "fine-tuning" of the universe is so great that it can confidently be said that it would never occur anywhere in the universe by chance.
Since the findings of molecular biochemistry were presented by Michael Behe in his 1996 book, Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, many attempts have been made to identify a plausible evolutionary pathway to what otherwise would be an apparently irreducibly complex biochemical system. None have been found. The theistic implications of "the fine-tuning of the universe" are not significantly denied.
Quantum mechanics and relativity show that the ultimate nature of matter and of the cosmos remain fundamentally mysterious. Therefore, any conclusion that the universe arose through any impersonal process must be seen as premature. Additionally, the authenticity of human consciousness, reason and language are insoluble problems for any impersonal view.
The widespread acceptance of impersonal views of reality in spite of the flood of evidence against it, can be understood in the light of the intellectual history of the Western world, which took at least six identifiable ideological wrong turns. Subsequently those watershed ideas have been acknowledged as mistakes, but the momentum they created toward naturalistic thinking continues to carry us.
Science has produced several metaphysically neutral and scientifically ordinary methods for recognizing mental activity in other arenas, such as archeology, psychology, sociology, forensic science, the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), and cultural anthropology. Application of those same methods to the problem of origins leads to one conclusion: design.
The evidence is overwhelming that nothing exists which does not have a personal ultimate cause. ENDNOTES 1The nature of scientific proof is such that one can never say that anything is resolved with such finality as to preclude reconsideration in light of discoveries that have not yet been made. Also, in the spirit of science all of our conclusions must be provisional. Nevertheless, there is no plausible alternative to this conclusion, given the present state of the evidence. 2There is one other prominent line of evidence: negative theology. Beginning with Darwin through to the present time, evolutionists have appealed to their view of the character of God and insist that God could not have been responsible for a natural order in which inefficiency, waste, and violent death prevail. Since those conditions do prevail, they argue, that order must have arisen through some impersonal means. This thesis is carefully explored in Cornelius Hunter's Darwin's God: Evolution and the Problem of Evil (Grand Rapids: Brazos Press, 2001). I was unaware of the importance of evolutionists' reliance on negative theology when finishing this essay, but at my first opportunity I shall add an appendix recapitulating Hunter's thesis more fully. © 2002 Thomas O. Alderman |
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