Evolving Away from Darwin
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- The following column was requested by another Hypocrisy.com writer.
That latest news item about how the Darwinists are proclaiming that their theories are beyond all doubt, since they’ve been proven by discovery and experiment, is such a can of worms! First, serious scientists never claim to have the absolute truth. They tell you that science exists for the progressive elimination of error. Secondly, Darwin flatly said that there was no evidence for a lot of the stuff that he proclaimed, but he was confident that science would eventually dig up that evidence. That hasn’t happened. The questions raised by Phillip Johnson in Darwin on Trial and his other works on the subject have not been answered adequately. About all his critics have been able to do is make personal attacks on him as a silly old troglodyte, which is about like calling Albert Einstein scientifically illiterate, since Johnson is an emeritus prof at UC Berkeley Law School and one of the world’s foremost experts on the nature of evidence.
More than incidentally, Johnson has not tried to defend creationism as such—only to demand that Darwinism present some credible proof. Among other things, even Darwinists admit that all the evidence for the evolution of humans from apes would fit in the back of a half-ton pickup truck. Not much to go on. The problem on the creationist side is that the fundamentalists muddy the waters by trying to take the first two chapters of Genesis—which are some of the world’s most beautiful poetry, for heaven’s sake—dog-literally. Apparently they feel that if not everything in the Bible is to be taken literally (as opposed to being taken seriously) their doctrine of inspiration is jeopardized. I don’t know, but I have a feeling that a certain prominent college got its world-class Old Testament man from a prestigious eastern theological seminary because he wouldn’t subscribe to the notion that the universe was created in six literal days about 6000 years ago.
To give you an idea of the scope of that problem, I was being lectured by my cousin’s semi-educated wife in Escondido one time about that 4004 BC creation scenario, and I didn’t want to make a scene, so I said, “What I’ve always wondered is, if I were able to take a camcorder back in time to when everyone would agree that the first human being emerged on the earth, what I would capture on tape.”
She said, “I don’t know. I’ve just always pictured God walking along, picking up a handful of dirt, and turning it into Adam.” At that point I had to go to the bathroom.
Besides, I can’t speak for anyone else, but I have far too little faith to believe all the mind-boggling complexity of the cosmos came about by blind chance. Yes, I know that the answer that comes back is that I then have to postulate a Creator and answer where he came from. Actually, I don’t. I subscribe to Paul Tillich’s description of God as Sein-selbst, or Being-itself. (It doesn’t translate very well into English.) You have to postulate something eternal, and for me it’s a lot easier to postulate a God who dwells in the realm of what the philosophers call Being, and that what they call existence (literally “standing out of”) is derived from him. I have lots of trouble with effects without causes.
As for the ultimate philosophical question, Why is there something and not nothing?, I try not to meditate on that without a couple of good, stiff drinks on. One ends up doing what Tillich calls peering into the abyss of nothingness.
The view of creation and evolution that I hold to is much maligned as the “God-of-the-gaps” theory, but I think it fits pretty well into what paleontologists are digging up. I believe God made a special creation of what the Bible calls each “kind” when the world was ready for that “kind.” That’s why there are gaps and the sudden appearance of new species in the fossil record.
The Darwinists are still doing nip-ups, incidentally, over the genesis of the eye. Their arguments for the gradual evolution of its parts over a lot of generations, which is out-and-out silly, or for its sudden appearance as a fully-formed organ, which is sillier, would do well in a country hick courtroom, but not in a serious scientific venue.
As a parting shot, the evolutionists are having a very hard time, given the astonishing statistics adduced, in fighting off the Intelligent Design movement.
Comment by Paul Raetz on 20 February 2009:
The Darwinists are between a rock and a hard place, that’s why they do everything in their power to stifle debate. The General Theory of Evolution states that “all originated by chance and progressed by chance. This is not science. It is blind faith, or a blind leap in the dark. Atheistic faith is a blind, refusing faith.
Science says you don’t get something from nothing; you don’t get order from chaos; you don’t get life from non-life, and you don’t get personal from non-personal. What it boils down to, is that since the evidence of what happened is not available, one is free to choose whatever method suits him personally. A classic example of this is a statement by Julian Huxley, an English evolutionary biologist, humanist and internationalist, who said, “If you put God anyplace in the formula, you don’t need chance. If you don’t need chance, you don’t need evolution, so you might as well have a Creator.” He didn’t want a Creator so he chose chance.
Comment by jason blanchard on 21 February 2009:
What if the creator was/is from an alien world, and visited our planet 800 Million Years ago to start a dinosaur farm. Dinosaur was in high demand on it’s own planet, but supply was running scarce. After finding a hospitable planet, this alien Noah seeded our planet with his cargo. There was already simple life existing, but it was his business venture that saw life explode. I understand this is completely silly to most people, but it seems as likely as any other explanation I’ve heard. In fact, it might make more sense. The animals alien Noah brought here evolved into the species we have on earth today. AND, alien Noah would be considered the creator. I figure this hypothesis satisfies both sides of the argument
jason blanchards last blog post..Hypocrisy with Inauguration Costs
Comment by Chief Hypocrite on 21 February 2009:
Hurricane: What do you think of the perhaps centuries old idea that “God” created “evolution” as a key part of the “Intelligent Design” mechanism?
Comment by Hurricane on 27 February 2009:
Chief Hypocrite– This “creative evolution” is a perfectly valid theory, and I recall that Russell Mixter of Wheaton College said many years ago that if he were driven that way by the facts he could accept it. The problem that arises is one of systematic theology. The Apostle Paul, for example, treats Adam as a real individual of whom Christ is the antitype. If the first human was actually just a type of being evolved from a lower species, the argument suffers.
Comment by richard on 27 February 2009:
The universe is so vast, complex and old as to be beyond human comprehension. The “Big Bang” theory could be the best evidence of intelligent design. Afterall if there was nothing what decided on something and how could the”decider” exist in “nothing” to decide on something? Our collective human arrogance - that didn’t figure out the most fundamenmtal ingredient of earth’d development - Tectonic Plates -until the 1960s has yet to prove any particular collective brilliance and less imagination. Rather we consistently try to force what we do not understanidn into sdhapes and thing we do.
Comment by Hurricane on 20 March 2009:
Chief Hypocrite– I believe that, no matter what theory we choose, a God-created evolution is a part of it. Species do evolve. That’s where Darwin was perfectly right. Where we differ is on the question of whether there was a progression from the first stirrings of life right up through human beings. Some believers in intelligent design think that was the case. What many of us have the most trouble with is all this happening by blind chance. Intelligent design has a lot more evidence going for it and takes a whole lot less faith to believe in.