Evolution: Science or Religious Worldview?
June 18, 2008
History of evolution
Following is an outline of a presentation I gave recently upon the basic problems with the theory of evolution. Take time to look it over, there is a lot of general information here; it could be used as a guide to go deeper into individual areas of this huge subject.
Father of the theory of evolution, Charles Darwin (1809-1882), naturalist and author
1) He was greatly influenced by his grandfather, Erasmus Darwin, who also believed in an evolutionary process.
2) Darwin’s daughter died at a very young age. Some believe this traumatic event had a profound influence upon his ultimate rejection of God.
3) HMS Beagle/Galapagos Islands
Darwin developed his ideas over many years after his journey aboard the Beagle. The idea of natural selection was recognized by creationists before Darwin used it to remove the glory from God.
4) “Origin of Species and the Preservation of Favored Races”
“Darwin’s book, On the Origin of Species, was published in 1859. It is perhaps the most influential book that has ever been published, because it was read by scientist and non- scientist alike, and it aroused violent controversy. Religious people disliked it because it appeared to dispense with God; scientists liked it because it seemed to solve the most important problem in the universe-the existence of living matter. In fact, evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to ‘bend’ their observations to fit in with it.”
H P Lipson of Professor of Physics, University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology, UK], “A physicist looks at evolution,” Physics Bulletin, Vol. 31, No. 4, May 1980, p.138.
5) Darwin’s theory of evolution was rooted more in a rejection of God than a scientific discovery.
a) “There seems to me too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the (parasitic wasp) with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that the cat should play with mice.” Charles Darwin
b) “He (Darwin) quoted the Romans passage where Paul revels in God’s eternal power and how it is reflected in creation but not the passage where creation groans (Romans 8:20-22) because God subjected it to futility. He quoted the psalmist’s proclamation that creation declares God’s glory but not Isaiah’s prophecy of how God creates calamity.” Cornelius Hunter, “Darwin’s God”
What is evolution?
1) Defining Terms: Science, Macroevolution and Microevolution
a) Science today has two definitions that are often used interchangeably, but do not have the same meaning. Take a moment to ask, “Does the definition of the second definition have any proofs that would fall under the first definition?”
i) Science refers to a method of investigation involving things like careful measurements, repeatable experiments, and especially a skeptical, open-minded attitude that insists that all claims be carefully tested.
ii) Science also has become identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation must not have included any role for God. Phillip Johnson, The Church of Darwin
As Christians, we must understand that a rejection of evolution is not a rejection of science. Evolutionists will often attempt to place the Christian, who opposes evolution, as one being against science; a science verses religion battle. This should not be, for science done under the authority of God and His Word is a friend and a supporter of our Christian faith.
b) Macroevolution: this term refers to large-scale evolution or species to new species changes. This is ultimately what we simply call evolution; this is the focus of this study and the battle lines of this fight.
c) Microevolution: this term refers to small-scale changes or variations within species. Scientist can see differences within species, but one species changing to another species has never been proven. (More information to follow)
One of the key differences in these two positions is the direction in which we see change occurring. Macro claims that life is improving and micro identifies that life is actually not improving and “created kind” information is being lost. (For more information on “created kind” look for information on “baramin.”
Evolution Basics:
1) Definitions (Following are different definitions of evolution and how it is supposed to work based upon a secular perspective.)
a) In a general sense, evolution means, “change through time.” This concept has been broadly applied not only to biology, but also in the fields of geology, astronomy, economics and history. Biological evolution, as understood today refers to cumulative changes in gene frequency that occur within populations through time. Over time, inherited genetic changes in populations can produce entirely new species. The central idea of biological evolution is that all life on Earth shares a common ancestor.
b) “How Stuff Works” (http://science.howstuffworks.com/evolution1.htm)
Evolution is fascinating because it attempts to answer one of the most basic human questions: Where did life, and human beings, come from? The theory of evolution proposes that life and humans arose through a natural process.
i) It is possible for the DNA of an organism to occasionally change or mutate.
ii) The change brought about by a mutation is beneficial, harmful or neutral.
iii) As mutations occur and spread over long periods of time, they cause new species to form.
2) Evolutionary Formulas
a) Universe: Nothing + nothing = 2 elements + time = 92 natural elements + time = all physical laws and a completely structured universe of galaxies, systems, stars, planets and moons orbiting in perfect balance and order.
b) Life: Dirt + water + time = living creatures
http://evolution-facts.org/Evolution-handbook/E-H-1.htm
Elements of the Evolutionary Model
1) Big Bang Theory
a) Claim: The Big Bang theory is an effort to explain what happened at the very beginning of our universe. Discoveries in astronomy and physics have shown beyond a reasonable doubt that our universe did in fact have a beginning. Prior to that moment there was nothing; during and after that moment there was something: our universe. According to the standard theory, our universe sprang into existence as “singularity” around 13.7 billion years ago. What is a “singularity” and where does it come from? Well, to be honest, we don’t know for sure. Singularities are zones, which defy our current understanding of physics. http://www.big-bang-theory.com/
b) Problem: Big Bang theory is not a theory of origins. It does not explain the beginning of matter, energy or life; it starts with something called “singularity” in which all matter and energy are supposed to have been encapsulated. It’s subsequent explosion sent matter and energy all over the universe. After billions of years it began to organize itself into stars, suns and planets. There is no known scientific theory, which allows for this process to have occurred. Genesis 1:1, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.”
2) Fossil Record
a) Claim: The fossil record is supposed to contain the record of life throughout the history of the world. Its record is supposed proof of transitional life forms serving as proof of evolution.
b) Problem: The fossil record does not show a record of transitional life forms.
i) Events like the Cambrian explosion show life appearing rapidly and fully complete without record of an evolutionary transition either before or after it.
ii) According to Darwin, the absence of intermediate fossil forms “is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” In the 150 years since Darwin penned these words, not one transitional fossil has been produced.
iii) The late Stephen Jay Gould conceded this point, “The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils.”
3) Natural Selection
a) Claim: Natural Selection is the process by which individuals possessing a set of traits that confer a survival advantage in a given environment tend to leave more offspring on average that survives to reproduce in the next generation. Natural selection is an observable process that falls into the category of operational science. We have observed mosquitoes, birds, and many microorganisms undergoing change in relatively short periods of time. New species have been observed to arise.
b) Problem: Biblical creationists agree with evolutionists on most of the ideas associated with natural selection, except the idea that natural selection leads to molecules-to-man evolution. Natural selection does not generate new species. The definition of the “fittest” individuals makes the notion of natural selection true based on circular reasoning. The fittest are the ones that survive, and you can tell which are the fittest by seeing which ones survive. (The fact that survival of the fittest is based on circular reasoning does not necessarily mean that the idea is false.) Fitness is controlled by many factors that allow the organism to survive and reproduce. The fastest zebra may be deaf and have a poor sense of smell. This combination would tend to eliminate his genes from a population. The only way to understand fitness is to study the first generation and then track the presence of those traits through time as successive generations are born. http://www.answersingenesis.org
4) Genetic Mutations
a) Definition:
i) Genetics is the field of science that examines how traits are passed from one generation to the next. Simply put, genetics affects everything about every living thing on earth. An organism’s genes, snippets of DNA that are the fundamental units of heredity, control how it looks, behaves, and reproduces. http://www.dummies.com/
ii) In biology, mutations are changes to the nucleotide sequence of the genetic material of an organism. Mutations can be caused by copying errors in the genetic material during cell division, by exposure to ultraviolet or ionizing radiation, chemical mutagens, or viruses, or can occur deliberately under cellular control during processes such as hypermutation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutation
b) Genetic mutations can either be neutral or harmful.
i) Neutral
ii) Harmful
(1) Obviously Harmful
Loss of information at the DNA level will impact the viability of the organism. Physical characteristics, mental capacity and handicaps are some of the harmful mutations.
(2) No apparent harm (Also called helpful, but in the end even this is still a loss of information and not new information.) Occasionally a ‘destructive’ change will have a limited usefulness. For example, if we knock out a sentence such that there is a decrease in leg length in sheep (and there is such a mutation), this is useful to stop them jumping over the farmer’s fence. A beetle on a lonely, wind-swept island may have a mutation, which causes it to lose or corrupt the information coding for wing manufacture; hence its wingless successors will not be so easily blown out to sea and will thus have a selective advantage.
c) Created Kind: Baramin
i) Genesis 1:21, 24-25
5) Homologous Structures
a) Claim: Homology has come to mean any similarity between characters that is due to their shared ancestry.
b) Problem: Similar design means common designer, not common ancestor.
Breaking Down the Science
1) No crossover from one species to another.
a) Carolus Linnaeus (1707-1778) was a scientist who classified immense numbers of living organisms. An earnest Creationist, he clearly saw that there were no halfway species. All plant and animal species were definite categories, separate from one another. Variation within species was possible, but there were no crossovers from one species to anther. (Encyclopedia of Evolution, 1990, p.276)
2) First Law of Thermodynamics
a) In 1847, Heinrich von Helmholtz stated the law of conservation of energy. The sum total of all matter will always remain the same. The Big Bang Theory states that all matter and energy had a beginning, but nowhere do we see evidence of matter creating itself.
i) Isaiah 45:9, 12
ii) Romans 9:20-21
3) Second Law of Thermodynamics
a) In 1850, RJE Clausius stated the law of entropy. All systems will tend toward the most mathematically probable state, and eventually become totally random and disorganized. In other words, everything runs down, wears out, and goes to pieces. This law totally eliminates the basic evolutionary theory that simple evolves into complex.
i) Romans 8:22, “the whole creation groaneth and travaileth in pain”
4) Law of Biogenesis
a) Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) established the fact that life cannot arise from non-living materials. Pasteur concluded from his work that only God could create living creatures.
i) Genesis 1:1, John 1:1-3, Hebrews 11:3
ii) The Apple, like all forms of life cannot explain its own existence.
5) Information/Intelligent design
a) As we look at the world today we see amazing complexity and design. Logic alone would tell us that a book has an author and a building has an architect; this world has a Creator, God.
i) Colossians 1:16
b) DNA, the blueprint of life
c) “It does do what it does do and it does it very well don’t you think?” Ken Ham
d) Expelled, No Intelligence Allowed, by Ben Stein is a good movie to better understand the battle that occurring on this front. http://www.expelledthemovie.com/
6) Irreducible complexity
a) Bacterial Flagellum, Molecular Machines
b) Eye
i) Proverbs 20:12
c) Heart, lung, blood vessels, nervous system
d) Reproduction
i) Single cell life to copulation
ii) Evolution not only requires new information, but a same species animal, evolving at the same rate, as different sexed animals and at the same geographic location.
7) Metaphysics, How do you explain those things you cannot test?
a) Love
b) Beauty
8) Laws of Logic and Reason
a) God established a world in which logic and reason are, well, logical and reasonable. The Bible admonishes us to know and to think about the various aspects of life, both seen and unseen. Logic is a process of thinking in which we can follow a common understood flow of reason and facts. If A = B and A = C, then we can deduce that B = C.
b) If evolution is true, then were did logic and reason come from. Their formula for the way this world came about is TIME + CHANCE = EVERYTHING. In other words, given enough time, anything can happen. Is this logical?
Evolution is a Religious Worldview
Definition: Worldview
“A worldview is, first of all, an explanation and interpretation of the world and second, an application of this view to life. In simpler terms, our worldview is a view of the world and a view for the world.” William E. Brown and W. Gary Phillips, Making Sense of Your World: A Biblical Worldview (Sheffield Publishers, 1996), 29.
1) Empty Philosophy
a) “Evolution is the creation-myth of our age. By telling us our origin it shapes our views of what we are. It influences not just our thought, but our feelings and actions too, in a way which goes far beyond its official function as a biological theory.” Mary Midgley [former Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK], “The Religion of Evolution”
b) “Now, one of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, well, let’s call it non-evolutionary, was last year I had a sudden realization. For over twenty years I had thought that I was working on evolution in some way. One morning I woke up… it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. That was quite a shock, to learn that one can be so misled for so long.” Colin Patterson, presentation at the American Museum of Natural History http://www.arn.org/arnproducts/audios/c010.htm
c) Colossians 2:8 “Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.”
d) Romans 1:20-25 “Professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, And changed the glory of the uncorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and fourfooted beasts, and creeping things.”
2) Evolution’s Religious Structure
a) Church= public schools and liberal colleges
b) Priests/clergy= science teachers and professors
c) Parishioners= students
d) Sacrament= abortion and ethnic cleansing
e) Holy Scripture= science textbooks
3) Impact of Evolution’s Worldview
a) Nazism and Hitler
i) Adolf Hitler pushed for a master race. That would eliminate all inferior people.
ii) “The evolutionary philosophy is the intellectual basis of all anti-theistic systems. It served Hitler as the rationale for Nazism and Marx as the supposed scientific basis for communism. It is the basis of the various modern methods of psychology and sociology that treat man merely as a higher animal and which have led to the misnamed “new morality” and ethical relativism. It has provided the pseudo-scientific rationale for racism and military aggression.” Dr. Henry Morris
iii) “The support which I receive from Germany is my chief ground for hoping that our views will ultimately prevail.” Charles Darwin, “The Life and Letters of Charles Darwin” Volume 2, pg 270
(1) Charles Darwin was not a Nazi, but his thoughts, ideas and teaching ushered in a thinking that encouraged people like Adolf Hitler.
iv) Holocaust
b) Marxism, Socialism and Carl Marx, Father of Communism
c) Murder for Convenience
i) Forced Sterilization (Eugenics)
Eugenics was a social movement that presumed to divide the human race between the so-called “fit” and the so-called “unfit.” In other words, decide which humans where better than other humans. This movement was a push to eliminate the “bad” genes. “Darwin’s Deadly Legacy
ii) Planned Parenthood, Margaret Sanger
(1) She was a supporter of the eugenics movement and through this movement sought to stop the wrong people from breeding.
iii) Abortion
iv) Ethnic Cleansing
v) Euthanasia
d) Moral Relativism
i) Freedom is what the fallen nature of humanity desires freedom from God, freedom from rules and restrictions and freedom from absolute truth. But to remove the absolute authority of morality that God delivers to us through the Bible brings not freedom, but captivity. If there is no absolute morality, then everything becomes permissible and no one is free to life with in the shelter and protection that absolute truth and morality bring.
ii) Spiritual pluralism
e) Free Sexuality
i) Homosexuality
ii) Fornication and adultery
*At the heartbeat of evolution are not scientific discoveries, but a rejection of God and His Holy Word.
Evolution’s Victories and Defeats
1) Scopes Monkey Trial
Dayton, TN, July 1925 Even though at that time the outcome of the trial did not immediately over turn the law that only creation could be taught in schools, one thing was accomplished; the authority of the Bible could be openly questioned and scrutinized.
2) Prayer out of schools
a) In America’s drive to eliminate religion from the classroom, we have not actually eliminated religion from the classroom. We have shifted from a Judeo-Christian foundation to a secular humanist religion.
b) “In my opinion, using creation and evolution as topics for critical-thinking exercises in primary and secondary schools is virtually guaranteed to confuse students about evolution and may lead them to reject one of the major themes of science.” Eugenia Scott, National Center for Science Education
3) Roe v Wade, 1973
Over 40,000,000 unborn babies aborted in the United States since 1973.
4) Science textbooks
With the largest purchasers of science textbooks coming from liberal states like California, what choices are available?
5) Darwin Sunday
a) Next year 2009 will be the 150th anniversary of the release of the book “Origin of Species.”
b) Next year will also be the 200th anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birthday.
c) Charles Darwin is buried in Westminster Abbey.
Is Evolution or Darwinism the real problem?
No, sin is. Is there a teaching, in the Bible, about the root of evolutionary thinking?
The deep seeded message of evolution is explaining life without God. In Genesis 3, Satan seems to saying to Eve, “You can become more then you are without God.”
Genesis 3:1-7
The great lie of evolution is that we are God and we can become more than God created us to be. Evolution tolerates religion, but it does not tolerate God.
Resources for more information:
Shattering the Myths of Darwinism, Richard Milton
The Evolution of a Creationist, Dr. Jobe Martin
Creation & Evolution 101, Bruce Bickel and Stan Jantz
Darwin’s God, by Cornelius Hunter
The Lie, by Ken Ham
The Case for a Creator, by Lee Strobel
Darwin on Trial, by Phillip Johnson
Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, by D. James Kennedy (DVD)