The Origin of Speciousness (Darwinism is an intrinsically atheistic theory. If...)

Only a small percentage of the American people support the evolutionary claim that life arose through purely material causes. Consequently, many Darwinists, recognizing that they need to win new converts lest they completely lose control over the debate, now loudly argue that Darwin's theory harmonizes with religion. As Brown professor Kenneth Miller put it in the New York Times recently, Darwin's theory isn't "anti-God." But this PR strategy of emphasizing the compatibility of Darwinism and religion is running into a problem: Darwinism's most celebrated experts -- that is, the scientists who understand the theory most purely and deeply -- admit that it is an intrinsically atheistic theory.

Edward O. Wilson's introductions to a newly edited collection of Darwin's writings, From So Simple A Beginning, is newsworthy in this respect. Wilson argues very straightforwardly that the attempt to reconcile Darwinism with religion is "well meaning" but wrong. The theory excludes God as a cause of nature, he writes, and any "rapprochement" between science and religion is not "desirable" and not consistent with Darwin's thought.

"I think Darwin would have held the same position," Wilson writes. "The battle line is, as it has ever been, in biology. The inexorable growth of this science continues to widen, not to close, the tectonic gap between science and faith-based religion."

Buttressing his argument that Darwinism is a godless account of nature, Wilson reminds readers that Darwin rejected Christianity, and that this "shedding of blind faith gave him the intellectual fearlessness to explore human evolution wherever logic and evidence took him." (Wilson's anti-religious prejudice is so strong he doesn't even consider the possibility that love of God might inspire a scientist to study carefully and reverently God's handiwork in nature.)

Theistic evolution -- the idea that an omnipotent God could use random mutations and natural selection to produce life; in other words, create not by his intellect but by chance -- is no more meaningful of a concept than a square circle. Wilson doesn't say this but he would agree with it. Natural selection necessarily means that nothing outside of nature is necessary to explain it, he writes. "Implicit" in the concept of natural selection is the "operation of blind chance and the absence of divine purpose." Nature is self-sufficient and therefore has no need for God. He writes that "we must conclude that life has diversified on Earth autonomously without any kind of external guidance. Evolution in a pure Darwinian world has no goal or purpose: the exclusive driving force is random mutations sorted out by natural selection from one generation to the next."

The earth creates itself, according to Wilson, and man is like everything else on it -- a product of a "blind force." This means that man is no more special or purposeful than anything else. Yes, he possesses interesting "adaptive devices," which include a curious inherited tendency toward religion, but he is still an accident and an animal. This is why, writes Wilson, Darwin's theory is revolutionary: "it showed that humanity is not the center of creation, and not its purpose either."

WILSON'S COMMENTS, PRESENTED in an authoritative collection of Darwin's work, make the Darwinists hawking the theory as consistent with religion look either confused or opportunistic. They either don't understand the implications of the theory or they are willfully distorting the theory in order to gull the religious into embracing it. If they are doing the latter, they are reprising a game Darwin himself played very effectively: using the rhetoric of theism to upend theism.

Lest he lose his Victorian audience, Darwin made sure to conceal his hostility to religion in his work, and even presented On the Origin of Species as an extension of the tradition of natural theology. It wasn't until his unexpurgated autobiography came out long after his death that his view of life as godless became widely known. He reminded himself once in a note that he better "avoid stating how far I believe in materialism."

In his autobiography, he notes that he came to regard Jesus Christ's apostles as simpletons for believing in miracles. People of that time were, Darwin wrote, "ignorant and credulous to a degree almost incomprehensible by us." And even as he unveiled a theory of nature as a blind and brutal force, he rejected Christianity as a "damnable doctrine" on the very sentimental grounds that if true it meant some of his family and friends were doomed: "I can indeed hardly see how anyone ought to wish Christianity to be true; for if so the plain language of the text seems to show that the men who do not believe, and this would include my Father, Brother and almost all my best friends, will be everlastingly punished."

Of course, Wilson, who praises Darwin for his fearless, unflinching, hardheaded approach to thorny matters, sees no irony in Darwin's soft and emotional dismissal of Christianity as an unpleasant doctrine. (By the way, Wilson says that anybody who thinks Darwin "recanted" his view of Christianity is mistaken. "There is not a shred of evidence that he did or that he was presented with any reason to do so.")

Critics of evolution who observe that Darwin's theory is an account of nature that negates any role for God in life stand on very solid ground. They are not twisting the theory; they are stating it. Theistic evolutionists like Kenneth Miller, who has said that his Catholicism gives his Darwinism "strong propaganda value," are misrepresenting the theory for rhetorical reasons. Were they really serious about their position, they wouldn't spend their time browbeating figures like Austrian cardinal Christoph Schonborn for stating that Darwinism and religion are incompatible; they would spend their time debating fellow Darwinists on the theory's real meaning. Schonborn merely understands evolutionary theory the same way its most exalted exponents do.

IT WAS DARWINIST William Provine, not a critic of evolution, who said that Darwinism is the "greatest engine of atheism devised by man." Richard Dawkins, Thomas Henry Huxley, John Maynard Smith, and a host of other Darwinian experts, have made similar declarations of evolutionary theory's essentially atheistic character.

That evolutionists are downplaying this for PR reasons is understandable. What's not understandable is why certain religious are helping them. The modern religious who eagerly embrace random mutation and natural selection as an explanation of nature look as dim and craven as the hollowed-out Anglican ministers at Darwin's burial at Westminster Abbey.

If nature is not the work of divine intelligence but of blind chance, God does not exist. Darwinsim is a "universal acid" that burns through "just about every traditional concept," says evolutionist Daniel Dennett. This is illustrated by the increasingly wan and risible theology evolutionists within the Catholic Church are producing. Jesuit George Coyne, head of the Vatican observatory, is straining so hard to work God into his evolutionary schema that he has written that God is like a parent standing on the sidelines speaking "encouraging words" to earth. Kenneth Miller has declared, in a statement that would come as a great surprise to the doctors of the Church, that "randomness is a key feature of the mind of God."

Nietzsche wouldn't need to revise his view that "God is dead" were he to hear these descriptions of God. "Theistic evolution" is producing a theology of God as powerless and mindless, a God who is dead in man's thinking about life on earth. In separating God from nature, theistic evolutionists end up with a distorted view of both. And for what? To salvage a theory that Darwin's disciples like Edward Wilson have said is unavoidably atheistic?

DID LIFE EVOLVE? DEFINING EVOLUTION
In recent weeks the debate over intelligent design has intensified. School districts all across the country are debating the question: should evolution be taught as a scientific fact? Some scientists and educators and parents say that the study of evolution is necessary for understanding many biological processes. Others argue that evolution is a humanistic belief system that has been promoted as science. Both statements could be considered correct, even if you believe Bible's account of creation, it all depends on what people mean by the term "evolution".

There are a number of different concepts that can be used when talking about evolution. Unfortunately, many people do not stop to define the terms they are using when getting into discussions on evolution and teaching "evolution" in the classroom. Because of this, educators and parents and students can easily misunderstand one another. Below are some general terms often involved in discussions about evolutionary theory. Sorting these out can help one keep definitions straight when discussing origins and the value of "evolutionary" education in the classroom.

Change over time: The most basic definition of evolution is simply "the process of change or development over a period of time". Hence, music, cultures, sports teams all "evolve". In biology, classes of animals and plants have experienced marked change over dozens or hundreds or thousands of years. At one time, beavers were as big as today's bears, and ancient ground sloths once grew to be the size of oxen. There were once little three-toed horses and large cats with monstrous saber-like fangs. Over time, groups of animals diversify, as shown by the fossil record and common observation. This definition is extremely broad, and says nothing about what caused the change or where the beavers or sloths came from in the first place.

Descent with Modification: This term that Darwin used basically means that living creatures have the ability to create offspring like themselves, but with the potential for variation. Today, descent with modification is explained through the field of genetics and studies involving DNA, the coding mechanism of life. Through the code of DNA, creatures can produce offspring like themselves, yet with room for variation. Brown-eyed parents who have recessive gene coding for blue eyes can produce blue-eyed children. Cats can give birth to kittens with a range of characteristics, all in one litter, depending on the specific DNA coding passed on to each kitten by its mother and its father.

Adaptation: Sometimes an offspring receives certain traits or characteristics from its parents that allow it to survive in certain situations better than in others. Large-beaked finches adapt better to eating hard, large seeds, because their beaks are strong enough to crush them. Finches with long, thin beaks adapt better to getting food out of hard-to-reach places.

Survival of the Fittest: This basic concept promoted by Darwin argues that those organisms that are best able to adapt to a particular environment will live to produce more offspring. For instance, when there is plenty of food, all the finches on an island can do well. However, during times of drought, only the finches with the strongest beaks will be able to eat the hardest seeds, enabling them to survive and reproduce. If other finches with longer, thinner beaks can get seeds from places the rest of the finches can't, these will survive and reproduce. The other finches that can't compete for the food supply will die out. Soon, the "specialized" finches are reproducing more "specialized" offspring like themselves, so that obvious variations start showing up between the different groups of finches.

Natural Selection: Adaptation and Survival of the Fittest work together to create success among certain groups of creatures with certain genetic variations. "Nature" selects which ones survive based on which ones are best adapted to their environment and best able to overcome the competition. Natural Selection includes both ecological selection (overcoming competition for food, safety, shelter) and sexual selection.

Genetic Drift: This refers to the way small populations of creatures end up reproducing and passing on their genetic information and becoming specialized even if they are not the best adapted to an environment. If all the competition got killed by a lightening storm or flood or avalanche, those left behind would continue to reproduce and survive, whether or not they were the best suited to survive otherwise.

Most of the above concepts can be seen regularly in nature and are largely beyond dispute. However, the following ideas start creating heavy debate:

Speciation: This term refers to the formation of new "species" over time, generally through the mechanisms of natural selection and survival of the fittest. When many people talk about "evolution", they often mean "speciation", arguing that through natural selection, entirely new species have been formed.

Whether this can be proven actually depends on the definition of the term "species" (there is still a great deal of arguing among scientists on this subject). Usually, a species is considered to be a group that does not reproduce with other groups. Finches may become so specialized that they no longer mate with other kinds of finches. These can be considered a new "species" of finch.

Yet, evolutionists often extrapolate to argue that through these processes thousands or millions of years ago, finches evolved from some more generic form of bird, which evolved from some more generic form of vertebrate. The line should be drawn at the DNA evidence. What does the DNA allow for? How much genetic variation was originally available in the DNA of the earliest finches, and how can we determine it? Natural Selection can only work with the DNA code already present, and cannot create new DNA coding that did not previously exist. The specialized finches are still finches, and are not turning into some other kind of bird.

Mutation: To deal with this obvious problem of DNA coding, some evolutionary scientists have argued that through small mutations, new information can be added to the genetic code.

However, there is much debate over this issue. Mutations are naturally destructive and cause damage, and evolutionary scientists have been hard pressed to find "beneficial mutations". On rare occasion, a mutation can help a creature survive when it would otherwise not be able to, but only because the mutation has caused a malfunction. For instance, children with sickle-cell anemia are more resistant to malaria, but this is because their red blood cells are not functioning properly, (and large numbers still die from the sickle-cell anemia). Many "super bugs" in hospitals are immune to antibiotics -because they are actually mutated, sickly bacteria and can't function properly to take in the antibiotics. When put in competition with normal bacteria outside of a hospital setting, these "super bugs" can die off quickly.

The General Theory of Evolution: This is the popular but controversial idea that all life on earth started in a primordial soup, and that all the variation of life on earth arose through gradual evolution by way of mutation, adaptation, and survival of the fittest.

This is where the heavy argumentation over "evolution" is often focused. The general theory that all life on earth evolved from primordial microbes is based on philosophical beliefs about the nature of nature, on models, on extrapolations, and on guesswork – because it deals with theories about things that cannot be directly observed or reproduced. The best scientists can do is create models and work to fit the observable evidence to their models. In this sense, evolutionary theory is absolutely a "work in progress".

While many concepts in "evolutionary" science are useful in understanding genetics and the variations between species, it is important to recognize where observation ends, and where extrapolation and theorizing begin. Those in the information sciences recognize the vital importance of focusing on information and the genetic code, and of determining where the DNA code originated in the first place. Without a mechanism for adding information to the genetic code, natural selection and adaptation can only produce more specialized finches or dogs or horses, but they cannot tell us how finch or dog or horse DNA was programmed in the first place.
Related Links:
• Who's really pushing 'bad science'? - Answers in Genesis>
• Definitions of "evolution" - SIU Department of Zoology
• Evolution and Creation Resources - Koinonia House
• Intelligent design evolving into hot issue - Indy Star
• 'Intelligent design' backers lose in Pennsylvania - USA Today

Reprinted from

K-House eNews For The Week Of November 15, 2005

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