Earth Day & Evolutionists

Has anyone else but me noticed an inherent contradiction in the underlying convictions that drive annual “Earth Day” celebrations?  The vast majority of those who attend such fetes are Darwinists who believe humans have a moral obligation to protect the environment.  My question is:  Why?

For millions of years “Mother Nature” has spewed noxious fumes and poisonous gasses into the atmosphere and littered the landscape with ash and lava without our help.  She's killed species we never saw and heated and cooled the earth solo.  Indeed, the most “natural” condition in the universe is death.  As far as we know, Earth is completely unique; death reigns everywhere else.

Species have passed into extinction at a steady rate from the beginning of time, the strong supplanting the weak.  Why shouldn’t they?  Each is in a struggle-to-the-death for survival.  It is a dance of destruction that fuels the evolutionary process as every creature exploits every other creature for its own benefit.  Survival of the fittest - that’s evolution.

No locust swarm stops short of denuding a field because it ought to “leave a bit for the crickets.  After all, they all have a right to be here.”  The logic of naturalism and the rules of evolution dictate human beings rape our environment, just as everything else does, not protect it.

The moral obligations underpinning Earth Day simply do not follow from the naturalistic world view that embraces Darwinism. 

Now, I am for conservation and stewardship of the Earth.  But that follows, rather, from a theistic world view in which God has created man as unique and given him responsibility over the Earth to care for it.  Earth Day makes sense for Christians, not for Darwinists.

Comments

[Kevin W]

For many (not all), Earth Day might as well be called ‘Anti-People Day’

[Paul Scott Pruett]

The problem with secular environmentalists is that, counter to their naturalistic view about humanity, we are unique moral agents with obligations to care about other species. Sounds like a transcendent ethic to me. Where'd that come from?

But if they shy away from moral imperatives, then they might appeal to our own self-interest and self-preservation. First, that would go against their seeming general attitude that we are something of a virus on the good Mother Earth, but more than that, if it's all about personal concerns, then why can I not simply say, "Who cares about your personal ideas about how we should behave? What makes your opinions any better than anyone else's?"

[SLW]

A truly excellent point! Those who think that they got here by tooth and claw, now have pangs of conscience. I wonder what mutation brought that on. Of course you know, that even though we are animals in their estimation, what we do as animals is never natural, but what termites, beavers, or ants do is. The contradictions pile up one on top of the other. Good post!

[Jeff T]

Also...If the Earth Day people are homosexuals, it really gets wierd...how could 'natual selection' keep the 'gay gene'? Wouldn't 'natural selection' not select gay aspects, since it adds nothing to the survival of the organism?

[Mo]

The problem is that most people do not take lines of thought to their logical conclusion, and they have no consistent, coherent worldview.
They have no problem holding contradictory thoughts because the beliefs they hold do not flow naturally from a coherent set of beliefs/assumptions. It's all a mish mash, so anything goes.

That's why it is so important to teach people how to think, not just what to think.

[tony montano]

Ya i think atheist do gooders are wasting their time.

[Jay]

Can anyone explain this to me?

I just did a comparison of a ranking of states by Evangelicals per 1000 (from 2000, from the ARDA web site) with a ranking of states by violent crime and property crime per thousand (2005, US Crime stats at http://www.disastercenter.com/crime/US_States_Rate_Ranking.html)
Granted, the dates don't line up exactly, but I don't suspect things would shift that much from 2000 to 2005.
What I found was this: 68% of States that rank in the top half for evangelicals per thousand, also rank in the top half of states for either violent crime or property crime/thousand

or if you want to look at it the other way, 84% of states that rank in the bottom half for evangelicals/thousand also rank in the bottom half either for violent crime or property crime/thousand

Is it that the non-Christians are just especially bad when there are a lot of Evangelicals around?

I'm not really suggesting that Evangelicals are worse than non Christians, but I would have thought that with so many Evangelicals in them, these states statistics would have been skewed in the opposite direction.

Seriously wondering about this.

Any comments much appreciated

[SLW]

Jay,
All those evangelicals believe that "once saved always saved" so they march the ailse one Sunday in church and then spend the rest of their lives raping, pillaging, and doing minor acts of defacement.

[Alvin]

Earth day is officially April 22 so, how is anyone here going to do their environmentally friendly best to celebrate?

I will be gardening. Yes, even on a Sunday for this brings me rest. I'll be planting something nice where summer newly weds will want to pose for pictures. The idea is a celebration of both God's blessing upon man to be fruitful and multiply, and God's having placed the man in the Garden of Eden to work and take care of it. This too can be worship of God.

The Nature Conservancy is urging visits to local wildlife preserves and, of course, charitable contributions to the organization.

Also...
I'd like to know if anyone has experience at "planting an extra row" for the needy, what, apart from a green thumb, does this require? How is it best to get other people involved?

[chris conlin]

Tony,

concerning your question about the crime rate statistics in each State i have a theory. Keep in mind it is just a theory and i do not know this for sure. Never the less, here is my immediate thought concerning your question.
I believe one's escotology (what they believe about "end times") effects much more than one's theology but how they see the world they live in as well. For example, if one believes that the world is destined to a great tribulation with a rapture of the church preceeding this event (which would include most evangelicals today) this gives little incentive for many (not all though) to engage the communities around them. where as those holding to a preterist view of end times may have more incentive to "go out and make disciples" (cultural commission).

Again, this is just my initial thoughts, at the least it is at least something to consider; at the most, I just opened up a can of worms on a very contested issue within the evangelical community.:) Hope this helped a little for you.

[chris conlin]

Sorry, that last comment was directed toward Jay not Tony.

[alan aronson]

The Cobbler Should Stick to His Last

"Now, I am for conservation and stewardship of the Earth. But that follows, rather, from a theistic world view in which God has created man as unique and given him responsibility over the Earth to care for it. Earth Day makes sense for Christians, not for Darwinists."

Thanks to my friend John, I believe I finally have at least a rudimentary understanding of Greg's peculiar read on Earth Day. A read that has always struck me as bizarre and wrong headed. Greg is simply wrong, both on fact and theory

As these two links clearly show Earth Day is a political event and as such should be evaluated in terms of such events and movements both in the general context of human corporate action and specific, historical relationships relating to mass movements in general and conservation in particular in the United States.

http://earthday.envirolink.org/history.html

http://www.epa.gov/history/topics/earthday/02.htm

Let us ignore for a moment Greg's claim that he feels any responsibility to the conservation of the Earth's, or for that matter his nation's, natural resources as his political choices clearly contradict that claim, and let us focus on his claim that a conservation ethic can only flow out of a Christian world view.

It is easy to claim that non-Christian environmentalists are "free-loading" on Christian values but how to explain the apparent presence of a conservation ethic in non-Christian countries like India, Thailand and China?

Setting aside the inconvenient fact that many of the participants in Earth Day will be Christians, we humans form political movements in order to transcend the inherent limits of theology. There should be no mystery, and there is certainly no contradiction, that in a pluralistic, secular nation folks with different metaphysical underpinnings would come together to achieve common policy goals. That is how we continue to be a nation.

"No locust swarm stops short of denuding a field because it ought to “leave a bit for the crickets. After all, they all have a right to be here.” The logic of naturalism and the rules of evolution dictate human beings rape our environment, just as everything else does, not protect it."

And then the locusts or rabbits or deer, die off having trashed their food supply. Evolution in we East African Plains Apes has provided us with the ability to learn from the past and plan for the future - at least some of us.

"As far as we know, Earth is completely unique; death reigns everywhere else."

Does Greg know something no one else on Earth knows? One needs life before one can have death. Apparently there is life everywhere in the universe - something not even Carl Sagan claimed.

The complete lack of understanding about simple concepts like "natural selection" and "evolution" have been pointed out many times before.

Hi Tony, I guess I shouldn't have bothered to put out that burning house or untrap the person in the overturned suv or rescue the child caught in a rip tide; after all I lack the grounding necessary to make such actions "logical".

BTW, logic is fact driven and if your facts are wrong, perfect logic is still nonsense.

Hi Alvin, when I'm able to plant a garden, I find that It's easy to produce way more then i can use so rather than an extra row, a few more plants like squash and tomatoes will feed the block. I used to give some of the surplus to the guys at the firehouse.

Interesting observation Jay, as much crime is economically driven, this may be what you get when religious sentiments allow good folks to be conned into voting against their own interests.

[alan aronson]

Oh and did I mention rational self interest?

http://southwestfarmpress.com/news/041907-beekeepers-malady/

(copy line)

[chris conlin]

"It is easy to claim that non-Christian environmentalists are "free-loading" on Christian values but how to explain the apparent presence of a conservation ethic in non-Christian countries like India, Thailand and China?"

- from where did this ethic come from in China and India? note that it is only a recent development in those countries. It is no accident that it occured after western influences and beliefs ( founded upon a christian foundation) that this concern appeared.

"Setting aside the inconvenient fact that many of the participants in Earth Day will be Christians, we humans form political movements in order to transcend the inherent limits of theology. There should be no mystery, and there is certainly no contradiction, that in a pluralistic, secular nation folks with different metaphysical underpinnings would come together to achieve common policy goals. That is how we continue to be a nation.'

-the presence of christians at an earth day event is not an "inconvient fact", in fact, it should be expected (which was one of greg's implied points). I find it odd that people refer to this nation as secular when well over 70% of the population claims to be Christian. The fact that people with "diffrent metaphysical underpinnings" come together for a common policy goal is contradictory in the sense that those not holding to a christian worldview can not ACCOUNT FOR it. This is Greg's explicit point; one that you did not answer in your response. you gave instances/examples that show that people DO, but you did not give any reason WHY GIVEN THEIR WORLDVIEWS they should or would.

"BTW, logic is fact driven and if your facts are wrong, perfect logic is still nonsense."

- What drives/determines the "facts"? One does not hold and see facts in a vaccum.

[Alvin]

Alan,

Thank you fellow gardener. Yes, I know crops can very simply be shared and few things can be more rewarding when the fruits and vegetables are of the highest quality. I meant for the quotes around the phrase "planting an extra row" to indicate that the food might not necessarily come from an extra row and to at the same time refer to the conscious effort to use one's garden to help the poor by raising food to donate to homeless shelters. I have heard people propose this and I think it is an excellent way of helping the needy in that it provides the needy with food and that it can serve as a reminder to the gardener of the responsibility to care for the needy as the garden's routine maintenance is performed. I'm just wondering if shelters might typically have certain requirements and if anyone has ever managed to get their congregation to join in.

**********************

As for your last post here, Alan, there are some points of contention and I'll pick on two:

1.
"Does Greg know something no one else on Earth knows? One needs life before one can have death. Apparently there is life everywhere in the universe - something not even Carl Sagan claimed."

Greg probably knows that if one went to any on the many regions of the universe where immense gravitational fields or extreme temperatures prevail that death (immediate or eventual yet still untimely) would be the expected result for those composed such as we carbon based biological entities. The comment just features a decidedly suboptimal word choice in that "desolation" or maybe "inanimation" would have been better.

2.
I also disagree with your assertion that politics transcending theology is what makes Earth Day possible internationally. Say what you may about political choices (both you and Greg have the right to vote against or with me), the core of the argument presented by Greg is Creationism. Your political argument is unable to strike at the core of this argument because the political choice to accept Earth Day is rooted in common interests which arise from a common design which altogether points back to a Creator/Designer. If other political entities --though they are not theistic-- can accept Earth Day as a holiday, it is because of common interests which are rooted in common design even if they do not acknowledge this latter point.

If the people of other nations could not survive without the present level of pollutants in the global environment, they would have never agreed to celebrate Earth Day, at least, not as it is presently celebrated.

Recap:

common political choices << common interests << common design << Creator.

[Boyd]

Tony-
Assuming you believe in a real presence behind evil, wouldn't it make sense for it to fight its battles directly on the front lines? Why commit these acts in its own territory, at least to the same level?

I think the question you should be asking of the data is, "Are the Christians in those states committing more crimes than the non-Christians?" If the data does not show that it is, in fact, the Christians who are committing these crimes, than it would follow that it is the non-Christians are perpetrating more acts of crime (i.e more acts of rebellion).

If you asking because you are truly curious, then I think the above is one possible answer. If not, it appears as if you may be making the data work too hard to support your presupposition. Either way, I hope this helps.

[alan aronson]

Hi Chris and Alvin, the inconvenience is that Greg claimed that the "vast majority" attending Earth Day events were Darwinists, a claim for which he provides no substantiation and which reflects a profound misunderstanding of what constitutes science.

BTW you might ponder the active hostility of Christian conservatives to conservation. Save for Melinda's grudging acknowledgment that there might be something to global warming after all, what else have you seen on this blog or on any conservative Christian source that could be termed friendly to conservation? All I see is lip service to some vague assertion of "stewardship". If a conservation ethic flows out of Christianity, come glory, lots of folks reading this are going to be stoking coal.

Anyway, conservation is too new and spread too rapidly for any tradition to claim it. if Christianity, as opposed to something else is the key here, would someone please explain why it took 1,847 years to reveal itself?

Alvin, the core isn't ipso facto creationism. We humans have much in common including an aesthetic sense and an ability relate to others that cuts across species' lines. Part of the problem here is that I doubt any of you have had much experience in political movements on the left. There are lots of reasons why people support this or that cause.

Conservatives will often oppose developments that impinge on their lifestyles.

There is really something base and inhuman in this insistence on assigning a one to one correspondence from a metaphysical belief to a given public policy position.

The history of the twentieth Century was about that and the results were not pretty.

As for "dead", you may well be correct about "sub-optimal"; the problem is that the whole post reflects the same lack of thought. If one starts out not knowing the history of a movement and doesn't understand the basics re: evolution, survival of the fittest, and the how humans relate to each other in social groups then I suppose a poor choice of words is the least of our problems.

Good luck with the garden, I hope to be back in business soon.

[tony montano]

Is someone talking to me or someone else.

I see my name up there but it seems to be directed at other comments...

Lord please rectify this blog-o-nightmare that has been cast upon me.

[Kevin Winters]

I think the contradiction comes because you are reifying "Mother Nature" and "evolution," which seems to be a common enough mistake in many conversations I've seen talking about it.

[alan aronson]

Hi Kevin, yeah, Greg does seem to be doing that. I don't know any environmentalist who does. Most of us understand that evolution is a process and that theory is going to be continuously modified as more is learned.

Oh, Chris wrote: "- What drives/determines the "facts"? One does not hold and see facts in a vacuum."

Of course Chris, while we East African plains apes are born into a culture and hence are never in a conceptual vacuum, if I observe the sky is "blue", that is going to be driven by an active visual consciousness and a culture that defines the terms for given wavelengths of the electromagnetic spectrum.

Now, if we consider the "why" of our "sky is blue" fact, it would be sufficient for most of us to assert "God created it so", however if we are a physicist dealing in optics, that explanation of our fact simply won't do.

Yet again, another "but", suppose our believer and scientist both value blue skies. Suppose that this is a mere aesthetic preference for both of them and being citizens in a free republic that guarantees them the right of assembly and petition, they come together with other citizens, some with yet other reasons based on other facts to encourage passage of the Clean Air Act.

Now do you see that perhaps, in terms of public policy and the day to day lives of real people, Presuppositionalism is so much dangerous nonsense?

[alan aronson]

Apologies for the off-topic post but it seems the good folks at STR have let an important day go by without noting it and I hereby correct the ommission:

http://lefarkins.blogspot.com/2007/04/worst-american-birthdays-vol-xii.html

(copy to include at least part of this line and the link will work)

[red rabbit]

This post is hilarious. Supposing that Earth Day had anything to do with either creationists or Darwinists, the idea that due to the theory of the survival of the fittest, humans as the top of the food chain are OBLIGED to rape the earth is utterly absurd.

It could not have been written by ONE stupid person. You must be twins.

[Bill]

Name calling - now that's intelligent!

Not to change the subject here of "Greg-bashing", but how do those of you who are evolutionists continue to "believe" your theory in the face of evidence like the complete lack of transitional forms in the fossil record that Darwin himself acknowledged (and believed that it was a case that the fossil record was simply incomplete). Gee - somehow all those transitional animals showing how over millions of years through gradual changes we have evolved to the superior higher thinking creatures that came out of the primordial soup have not yet been discovered. Oh well. What about the fact that life itself down to its simplest forms is more complex than anyone ever imagined including Darwin? Doesn't matter. Does the "fact" that evolution is a process explain these problems. What about the small problem of creating life from non-life?

[tony montano]

Bill,

There are some mildly impressive transitional forms here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils

personally, that's not enough for me to believe 'molecules to man'. But it's a start.

I lean toward the view mathematician Stephen Wolfram takes - that darwinian evolution is not enough to account for the complexity we see today - but that future research will reveal more about systems interaction and the origins of complexity.

But I only ask that you apply the same skepticism you apply to evolution - to the book of genesis.

[Bryce]

There seems to be no contradiction. The problem, Mr. Koukl, is that you assume that darwinists think humans are animals is the same sense as the other beasts of the earth. Of course animals do not care about the environment. They lack the level of consciousness to do so. Luckily our God-given, or nature-given (whichever it is) mind recognizes that the environment needs to be protected if we want to see the continuation of our race. That brings up another point. It still fits the mold of "survival of the fittest". Our minds are better than other animals and we are using our minds to prolong our own lives as well as the lives of others. I hope that you recognize this logical flaw as it may turn away those who seek the God that you worship.
-Bryce

[SLW]

Tony,
That list is crap. It says of itself it's very tentative. That's an understatement--it's wishful thinking!

[tony montano]

ah its not so bad

its got pretty pictures

[Paul A]

Jay wrote: "Can anyone explain this to me?"

Yes, possibly, and then perhaps we can all stop spouting off with our contrived theories concocted to satisfy our pre-conceived political agendas...

First, the way you set up your comparison -- "68% of States that rank in the top half for evangelicals per thousand, also rank in the top half of states for either violent crime or property crime/thousand" -- seems a bit ham-fisted. I don't mean that in a derogatory (to you) way, I'm simply pointing out that attempting to draw correlations between data and only looking at the "top half" and "bottom half" of a given chart, seems to be a recipe for poor statistical analysis and conclusions.

Second, it is not enough to observe two data-sets and from that conclude a cause-effect relationship. Both could be effects of another cause, or there could be no relation whatsoever. In other words, using the method you devised, I could probably come up with several lists, where X% of the states in the top 50% for violent crime also fall in the top 50% of such a list, but there is clearly no connection. E.g., if I found that 70% of the states on the top half of the violent crime list also are on the top half for opening the most chocolate shops, it doesn't follow that chocolate makes people commit violent crime.

[Paul A]

SLW wrote: "All those evangelicals believe that 'once saved always saved' so they march the ailse one Sunday in church and then spend the rest of their lives raping, pillaging, and doing minor acts of defacement."

First, not all evangelicals subscribe to "once saved always saved". Second, those that do would not equate "marching the aisle one Sunday" with salvation. See Greg's article on "The Magic Prayer":
http://www.str.org/site/News2?page=NewsArticle&id=6111

[Patrick]

Alan,
all the really smart people have given you the best arguements against your position. I just wanted to add my gut response to what you said:

WWWWHHHAAAHHAAAHHAAAHhaaahhaah-oh ho-oho-o-waaahhaaahaahhaahhaahhaahhhaahhhashhwwahhahhahhahaa-stop it stop it Im dy, Im dy--wahhahhhahhhhahhhhahhhhaahhaaahhhhhhhhhhaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhGASOP whahhahahahhaahha

That thorn im my side is actually from laughter. I get it!

[alan aronson]

Hi Bill, you miss the point. The validity of evolution is besides the point. it is simply absurd to assert that you need a specific theological grounding before you can logically justify not destroying your house.

What Greg is putting forth is merely an excuse for Christianists to ignore their responsibilities while continuing to vote for some really bad people.

[alan aronson]

Now Patrick, I think you are plenty smart too. If you have a contribution, go ahead.

Paul,

Well put with the statistical reasoning and without a lot of statistical lingo; something similar to not using church jargon to explain the faith.

I'm actually interested in a Chocolate shop and crime study now.

[Jay]

Thanks Tony,

You make a good point. It's probably worth looking at a lot of other factors, like education, income, living standard, and others I'm not thinking of at the moment to see if there's a correlation there.

Interesting, though, that there seems to be something out there that correlates both to evangelicalism and crime.

[alan aronson]

Hi Jay, keep in mind that correlation doesn't necessarily mean causation.

[chris conlin]

"Oh, Chris wrote: "- What drives/determines the "facts"? One does not hold and see facts in a vacuum."
"... if I observe the sky is "blue", that is going to be driven by an active visual consciousness and a culture that defines the terms..."

- I believe you are assuming too from the beginning. GIVEN NATURALISTIC PRESUPPOSITIONS, how can "you" trust anything that is observed? What is"I"? What is doing the observing you speak of?Furthermore, where did this thing called consciousness come from; how can it be accounted for in a naturalistic worldview? Is conscousness a material or physical thing?

"Now, if we consider the "why" of our "sky is blue" fact, it would be sufficient for most of us to assert "God created it so", however if we are a physicist dealing in optics, that explanation of our fact simply won't do."

- I understand what you are saying but the fact is, is that the field of optics and the modern day concept of science did not originate from a naturalistic foundation.

"Yet again, another "but", suppose our believer and scientist both value blue skies. ...
Now do you see that perhaps, in terms of public policy and the day to day lives of real people, Presuppositionalism is so much dangerous nonsense?"

-Again, the fact that both "believer" and non-believer value simular things is not as important as asking HOW each ACCOUNTS for the value placed with certain objects and issues, such as human "rights", ect... No, it is not nonsense, it is important to know what underlying presuppositions influence people's interpretation of the "facts" which in turn effects certain public policy. Both sides would appear to be appealing to some universal objective standard outside of human observation to determine policies about the environment and other issues. Such MORAL convictions can not be adequately explained from both naturalistic and theistic camps. If you do not see the importance of knowing which one can ultimately account for such trust worthy observations and convictions, then I believe you are missing the more important foundational issue behind ANY public policy.

[chris conlin]

Tony wrote :"There are some mildly impressive transitional forms here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_transitional_fossils

personally, that's not enough for me to believe 'molecules to man'. But it's a start."

- So are you are saying that you are placing some amount of faith in evolution or some other natural cause?

"I lean toward the view mathematician Stephen Wolfram takes - that darwinian evolution is not enough to account for the complexity we see today - but that future research will reveal more about systems interaction and the origins of complexity."

- again, evolution does not explain everything we observe today, especially the purposeful complexity, but you still have faith that some naturalistic explanation will be shown to be the cause someday.

"But I only ask that you apply the same skepticism you apply to evolution - to the book of genesis."

- Why should he? You do not appear to be really that "skeptical" toward naturalism (at least from what I can tell from what you wrote here).

[theobromophile]

Environmentalism can follow from evolution.

The adaptive traits that have allowed humans to survive and dominate are foresight and the ability to change our environment to suit our needs. The latter trait is often maladaptive (species that become too powerful cannot be supported by the environment and die off).

Taxol, an ovarian cancer drug, was made from a plant that was used in the ancient times to treat stomach pains in women. We have no idea which species of plants or animals will one day be helpful to us in making drugs, fighting diseases, cleaning the air, or helping the soil. Our survival does not exist in a vacuum: we know (that whole foresight thing) that we cannot rape and pillage the earth, lest we want to also be relegated to the same group as the Dodo bird.

[John]

Five Questions Evolutionists Would Rather Dodge
By William A. Dembski
Evolutionists are masters at covering the flaws and weaknesses of
their theory. Here's how you can clean house.
Most evolutionists give the impression that evolution is a settled fact of science, on the
order of the Earth being round or revolving around the Sun. Evolution, we are assured,
has been overwhelmingly confirmed. Only rubes and ignoramuses debate evolution. Any
resistance to it is futile and indicates bad faith or worse.
For instance, Oxford biologist Richard Dawkins accuses those who refuse to accept
evolution with being “ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider
that).” To this he recently added: “I don’t withdraw a word of my initial statement. But I
do now think it may have been incomplete. There is perhaps a fifth category, which may
belong under ‘insane’ but which can be more sympathetically characterized by a word
like tormented, bullied, or brainwashed.”
Despite such bluster, evolutionary theory is in sad shape. Cambridge paleontologist
Simon Conway Morris, writing for the premier biology journal Cell, recently remarked:
“When discussing organic evolution the only point of agreement seems to be: ‘It
happened.’ Thereafter, there is little consensus....” To the public, the evolutionary
establishment presents a united front. But this illusion of consensus quickly evaporates
once you know where to look and what questions to ask.
What follows are five key questions you can use to lay bare the inflated claims of
evolutionists. Evolutionary theory is not a slamdunk. It is an exercise in storytelling that
masquerades as a scientific theory.
1. The Fossil Record
According to Darwin, the absence of intermediate fossil forms “is the most obvious and
gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.” What new fossil finds, if any,
have occurred since Darwin wrote these words nearly 150 years ago? Do they overturn
Darwin’s bleak assessment of evolutionary theory? If the absence of intermediate fossil
forms holds as much today as it did back then, why should anyone accept evolution?
Dodge: Evolutionists have gotten quite good at sidestepping this question with
what looks like an answer but really isn’t. Typically they’ll lay out a bunch of
organisms or biological structures and say, “Look at how similar these are.
They’ve obviously descended from a common evolutionary ancestor.”
Evolutionists will then ply you with a mass of details about supposedly wellconfirmed
evolutionary transitions (like those supposedly describing the evolution
of horses, whales, or reptiles into mammals).
2
Comeback: Don’t get lost in the details. Yes, the fossil record contains organisms
that can be placed in a progression suggesting gradual change. But most of these
progressions result from arbitrary picking and choosing among the totality of
fossils. With millions of fossils to choose from, it is likely that some gradual
progressions will be found.
Also, such progressions invariably come from organisms with the same basic
body plan. In the “evolution” of the horse, we are always dealing with horse-like
organisms. And even with the “evolution” of reptiles into mammals, we are
dealing with land-dwelling vertebrates sharing many common structures. What
we don’t see in the fossil record is animals with fundamentally different body
plans evolving from a common ancestor. For instance, there is no fossil evidence
whatsoever that insects and vertebrates share a common evolutionary ancestor.
The challenge that here confronts evolution is not isolated but pervasive, and
comes up most flagrantly in what’s called the Cambrian Explosion. In a very brief
window of time during the geological period known as the Cambrian, virtually all
the basic animal types appeared suddenly in the fossil record with no trace of
evolutionary ancestors. The Cambrian Explosion so flies in the face of evolution
that paleontologist Peter Ward wrote, “If ever there was evidence suggesting
Divine Creation, surely the Precambrian and Cambrian transition, known from
numerous localities across the face of the earth, is it.” Note that Ward is not a
creationist.
Evolutionists sometimes argue that the necessary transitional fossils are there but
haven’t been found or that they’ve all been destroyed. But this is wishful thinking.
The challenge of the fossil record that Darwin identified 150 years ago has not
gone away. To his credit, the late evolutionist 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.”
The point you need to press is whether this inference is reasonable at all.
2. Natural Selection
According to evolutionist Richard Dawkins, the “evidence of evolution reveals a universe
without design.” Yet he also states, “Biology is the study of complicated things that give
the appearance of having been designed for a purpose.” How does Dawkins know that
living things only appear to be designed but are not actually designed?
Dodge: Evolutionists pretend that the design of living things is a dead issue.
Accordingly, they tell us that before Darwin, scientists mistakenly viewed the
living world as the product of design but that afterward they came to their senses
3
and rightly rejected it. For Dawkins and most evolutionists, Darwin’s idea of
natural selection, in which nature weeds out the less fit and allows the more fit to
survive and reproduce, is supposed to be all that’s needed to explain the
appearance of design in biology.
Comeback: The great fallacy of evolution is that it claims all the benefits of
design without the need for actual design. In particular, evolution attributes
intelligence, the power of choice, to a fundamentally irrational process, namely,
natural selection. But nature has no power to choose. Real choices involve
deliberation, that is, some consideration of future possibilities and consequences.
But natural selection is incapable of looking to the future. Instead, it acts on the
spur of the moment, based solely on what the environment right now deems fit. It
cannot plan for the future. It is incapable of deferring success or gratification. And
yet, so limited a process is supposed to produce marvels of biological complexity
and diversity that far exceed the capacities of the best human designers.
There’s no evidence that natural selection is up to the task. Natural selection is
fine for explaining certain small-scale changes in organisms, like the beaks of
birds adapting to environmental changes. It can take existing structures and hone
them. But it can’t explain how you get complex structures in the first place. That’s
why cell biologist Franklin Harold writes, “there are presently no detailed
Darwinian accounts of the evolution of any biochemical or cellular system, only a
variety of wishful speculations.”
Remember the phrase “wishful speculations” whenever anyone starts touting the
wonder-working power of natural selection.
3. Detecting Design
The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI) is a scientific research program that
looks for signs of intelligence from distant space. Should biologists likewise be looking
for signs of intelligence in biological systems? Why or why not? Could actual intelligent
design in biological systems be scientifically detectable?
Dodge: Evolutionists admit that intelligent design is scientifically detectable in
many areas of science, such as archeology, forensics, and cryptography. They
even admit that nonhuman intelligence could be scientifically detectable, as with
SETI. But they reject out of hand the possibility of detecting design in biological
systems. Any intelligence responsible for biological complexity would have to be
an unevolved intelligence, and for evolutionists there is no such thing as an
unevolved intelligence. For them, intelligence is always the product of evolution.
Comeback: The double-standard here is obvious. There are reliable methods for
identifying the effects of intelligence. These methods apply in many areas of
science already. They even apply to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, in
4
which the intelligence detected would be nonhuman. It is therefore completely
arbitrary to say that such methods of design detection apply only to evolved
intelligences but not to unevolved intelligences.
Usually evolutionists attempt to get around this double-standard by saying that we
have experience of human intelligence but no experience with the sort of
intelligence that would be involved in the formation of life. That’s why SETI is
such a powerful response to the evolutionists’ double-standard. If an
extraterrestrial intelligence communicated with Earth via radio signals, we would
have no more experience of the extraterrestrial intelligence than we do of any
intelligence responsible for the formation of life. In each case, we would know
nothing about the actual workings, motivations, and purposes of the intelligence.
But we would still recognize the intelligence from its effects.
Recall the movie Contact, based on a novel by Carl Sagan. In that movie, SETI
astronomers discovered a radio signal consisting of a long sequence of prime
numbers (these are numbers divisible only by themselves and one). Because the
sequence was long, it was complex and thus hard to reproduce by chance. Also,
the prime numbers are mathematically significant and thus represent an objective,
independently given pattern, or what is called a specification.
There is now an increasing scientific literature that takes the joint occurrence of
complexity and specification as a reliable marker for detecting design. My books
The Design Inference (Cambridge University Press) and No Free Lunch (Rowman
& Littlefield) lay out such methods. These methods are very widely employed in
science as well as in ordinary life. There is nothing to prevent their legitimate use
in biology.
4. Molecular Machines
Do any structures in the cell resemble highly intricate machines designed by humans?
Evolutionists claim that these structures evolved. But if so, how? Could such machines
have features that place them beyond the reach of evolution?
Dodge: Evolution is a divide-and-conquer strategy. It tries to explain the complex
in terms of the simpler. Thus, when confronted with a molecular machine or any
other complex structure in biology, evolutionists merely point out that the
structure has components that are simpler and thus could be the target of natural
selection. Hard to believe, but from this unremarkable observation, evolutionists
blithely conclude that natural selection is able to build all complex biological
structures.
Comeback: You really need to hold the evolutionists feet to the fire here. The
important thing is not to let them retreat into generalities. There are structures in
the cell that don’t just resemble humanly built machines—they actually are
machines in every sense of the word. Don’t focus on how such machines might
5
have originated in the abstract. Focus on a specific machine and force the
evolutionist to try to explain in detail how it might have evolved.
Take, for instance, the bacterial flagellum, which is now referred to as the “Icon
of Intelligent Design” by some evolutionists because it has been so effectively
used to criticize evolution. The bacterial flagellum is a marvel of nanoengineering.
Biologist Howard Berg at Harvard refers to it as “the most efficient
machine in the universe.” The flagellum is a little bi-directional motor-driven
propeller that sits on the backs of certain bacteria and drives them through their
watery environment. It spins at 20,000 rpm and can change direction in a quarter
turn. It requires approximately 40 protein parts for its construction. If any of the
parts are missing or not available in the right proportions, no functional flagellum
will form. So, how did it evolve?
Despite thousands of research articles that have been written about the structure
and function of the flagellum, biologists don’t have a clue how it could have
evolved. Evolutionists have only one straw at which they continually grasp when
trying to explain how the flagellum might have evolved, namely, that the
flagellum contains within it a structure similar to a microsyringe found in some
bacteria. Having found this sub-structure, evolutionists merrily conclude that the
microsyringe must have evolved into the flagellum.
Such pathetic lapses in logic are everywhere in the evolutionary literature. The
challenge for evolutionary theory is not to find components of such systems that
could be grist of natural selection’s mill. Rather, it is to provide detailed, testable,
step-by-step scenarios whereby such components could reasonably have come
together to bring about the marvels of nano-engineering that we find in systems
like the flagellum.
What exactly had to happen to that microsyringe to transform it into a flagellum?
To see what’s at stake, consider what exactly has to happen to a motor to
transform it into a motorcycle. Sure, there are a number of steps that can
transform a motor into a motorcycle. And there probably are a number of steps
that can transform a microsyringe into a flagellum. But what are those steps? How
gradual is the progression? And is it reasonable to think that those steps could be
taken apart from design? Not having a clue about how these systems did or might
have evolved, evolutionists never answer such questions.
5. Testability
What evidence would convince you that evolution is false? If no such evidence exists, or
indeed could exist, how can evolution be a testable scientific theory?
Dodge: In the theory of evolution, organisms gradually transform as the result of
purely material factors such as natural selection and random genetic changes.
What would it take, therefore, to refute such a theory? Darwin sidestepped the
6
question as follows: “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed,
which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight
modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no
such case.” Although Darwin here seems to be opening evolution up to criticism,
in fact he is doing the opposite. Indeed, he is protecting evolution from all
effective challenges and rendering it untestable.
Comeback: To see this, consider the following reply to Darwin by University of
Texas philosopher Robert Koons: “How could it be proved that something could
not possibly have been formed by a process specified no more fully than as a
process of ‘numerous, successive, slight modifications’? And why should the
critic [of evolution] have to prove any such thing? The burden is on Darwin and
his defenders to demonstrate that at least some complex organs we find in nature
really can possibly be formed in this way, that is, by some specific, fully
articulated series of slight modifications.”
It’s important here to see the big picture. The evolutionist J. B. S. Haldane, when
asked what would convince him that evolution was false, replied that finding a
rabbit fossil in pre-Cambrian rocks would do quite nicely. Such a fossil would, by
standard geological dating, be out of sequence by several hundreds of millions of
years. Certainly such a finding, if rigorously confirmed, would overturn the
current understanding of the history of life. But it would not overturn evolution.
Haldane’s rabbit is easily enough explained as an evolutionary convergence, in
which essentially the same structure or life form evolves twice. In place of a
common underlying intelligent design, evolutionists invoke evolutionary
convergence whenever confronted with similar biological structures that cannot
reasonably be traced back to a common evolutionary ancestor.
So long as some unknown or unexplored evolutionary pathway might have led to
the formation of some biological structure or organism, evolutionists prefer it over
alternative explanations such as intelligent design. And since the unknown and
unexplored allow for an infinity of loopholes, the committed evolutionist regards
Darwinian and other materialist explanations of life’s origin and subsequent
development as always trumping alternative explanations, regardless of the
evidence.
Note that intelligent design does not stack the deck in this way. Unlike evolution,
intelligent design is refutable. To refute intelligent design, it is enough to display
specific, fully articulated Darwinian pathways for the complex systems that,
according to intelligent design, lie beyond the reach of the Darwinian mechanism
(systems like the bacterial flagellum in question four). Though evolutionists
mistakenly charge intelligent design with being untestable, it’s their theory that in
fact is untestable.

[harpcat]

SLW…

“Jay,
All those evangelicals believe that "once saved always saved" so they march the aisle one Sunday in church and then spend the rest of their lives raping, pillaging, and doing minor acts of defacement.”

Wow, that was a HUGE leap of logic. I myself belong to a church that is Calvinistic, and I have found reformed thinkers to be more concerned with Holiness and conduct, not less as you assert.

Going back to the original post by Jay there is a lot more that can be asked first, like populations. Is that data per capita or by pure numbers? Further more, the verbal alignment of oneself with a stated belief system does not equate to actual saving faith. Every thing with a Calvin Klein label is not necessarily a Calvin Klein product. So then while the survey could say that 75% of the populace is “evangelical” does that coincide with the actual number of those who are saved?

There are a lot more angles to this discussion but approaching truth by statistics of morality is misguided. If we were all hugely immoral it would not prove that God is wrong, or that the gospel is not real. Just that men are sinful, but the Bible tells us that, doesn’t it?