Sunday, October 12th, 2008...8:10 pm
Against Darwin – Introduction
I once had an evolutionist state that she was puzzled that many Christians perceive evolution as an attack on the religion of Christianity and didn’t understand how there could be so much conflict between a religion and a particular scientific theory. My answer was and remains that Darwinism isn’t science—it’s a religion.
Because Christianity and Darwinism are competing religions or worldviews, there can be no harmony between the two of them. The Bible teaches rather plainly that God created the heavens and the earth over the course of about six days, approximately six thousand years ago. (There are many Christians who will dispute this, but I think they aren’t reading the text of Scripture honestly and are self-consciously capitulating to Darwinism at the outset.)
More importantly than the age of the earth is the fact that the Bible teaches that there was no death before the sin of Adam and Eve. This is not a passing detail but one that is absolutely essential to Christian doctrine. You could not have had billions or even millions of years of natural selection where the preferred races are preserved in the struggle for life. In principle there can be no harmony between the Bible’s theory of origins and Darwin’s. If Darwin is true, then the Bible is not and vice versa. This does not mean that every particular bit of scientific reasoning performed by Darwinists is false or that all of the scientific reasoning of the Creationists is correct. However, it does mean that every bit of true scientific knowledge tangled within the mess of the evolutionary framork supports Creation by the Triune God according to the scriptures.
The job of the Christian in these debates is to remain faithful to the teaching of scripture and then to perform an internal critique of Darwinism that shows that if it were true it would undermine the possibility of gaining scientific knowledge.
We have nothing to fear from actual experiments in the natural sciences. These experiments must be within the limits of the scientific method by being repeatable, with measurable data. Anything that cannot be tested by experiments using this method is beyond the bounds of natural science. It is precisely because of these restrictions that Darwinism is not science but religion.
Darwinism is afraid of the evidence. Darwinism attempts to build immunity to evidence into its theory structure. (For an example of this, look at the idea of Punctuated Equilibrium as advanced by Stephen Jay Gould.)
Darwinism uses the coercive arm of the state in order to suppress opposition to its theories. If you don’t think this is the case, then you’re still living in 1925. Evolutionists essentially have a monopoly over academia. Non-evolutionist scientists are ostracized by this establishment. They are denied admission to graduate school. Professors who oppose evolution are not granted tenure. Their papers are neither peer reviewed nor published. There is a large political party (the U.S. Democratic Party) that has maintaining the mandated, exclusive teaching of evolution in government schools with compulsory attendence laws as one of the main tenets of their political platform. What we have today is the Scopes trial in reverse. Darwinism doesn’t just act like any religion; it acts like a very insecure religion that must suppress any oppositon to it by force. To phrase the question in Yoda’s syntax: If so confident you are in your theory, why hide behind the government instead of defending it?
I plan on building upon my critique of Darwinism in the coming days. If you would like to learn more about this debate, I recommend the following resources: Answers in Genesis, Michael Dention’s Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Michael Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box, and two lectures by Greg Bahnsen titled “Is Evolution Scientific?” I’d go with Bahnsen first.
4 Comments
October 13th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Far out! Another person without a clue. Of course, thousands of working biologists would take issue with your attempt to define evolutionary theory (not Darwinism!) as religion, but I am sure such niggling details as facts would not stop you from continuing to spout incoherent statements. Oh well…
October 13th, 2008 at 11:08 pm
Jorg,
And “thousands of working biologists” couldn’t be wrong… If these “working biologists” are so confident that evolution is true, then why are they so afraid to debate it? (And why so touchy for that matter?) I will continue to call Darwinism by its name. You and your thousands of working biologists can cry about it.
October 21st, 2008 at 7:54 am
Hello,
I can agree with much you have said here. I have recently found myself writing on evolution and associated topics, but with a slightly different tack and a slightly more humble a tone (I hope). I invite you to read at http://talk.thinkingmatters.org.nz the article I wrote called “Argument from Evolution.” I also recommend the recent podcasts on the “Doctrine of Creation” at http://www.reasonablefaith.org where Dr. William Lane Craig surveys the different interpretations of the Genesis creation account, and then looks at the merits of each. I found these very interesting and worthwhile.
February 26th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Charles Darwin V ‘The Angler fish’
‘Mr Darwin, could you please explain to us ..err.. laymen. How it is that your theories of evolution via natural selection explain the existence of the angler fish?’
‘Err yes, the angler fish… ‘Fishyorum Fishinrodum’.
Now, as we all know that evolution is driven by the survival of the fittest, or as I have coined the term, ‘Natural Selection’. We see that in an environment where grubs, a food source for birds, are hiding under tree bark. It then comes to pass that the long beaked birds fair better than their short beaked rivals. This, as they can retrieve the grubs and prosper. The longer the beak the better equipped the bird, and so through selective survival and subsequent breading of successful candidates, the bird develops a longer beak. Although this theory does suggest that white men should have died out in the face of competition of black men but then I digress,,,,’
‘I understand the principle Mr Darwin, but I am asking you to explain how the angler fish evolved in the way it did?’
‘Indeed! Well the origin of that species was called the big nose fish. The fish did originally have fairly big noses you see. And they also had various excretions exuding from the nose, the layman’s term is the ‘bogie’ or ‘booger’ I believe. Now, smaller fish would mistake these bogies for tasty morsels, you know in the same way the children do! And of course the angler fish snapped the smaller fish up as they came close to the mouth, which is situated under the nose. Thus the fishes with the biggest noses and most succulent bogies survived where as the flat face or ‘boxer fish’ died out. Of course now the angler fish’s nose has ‘evolved’ into something that resembles a fishing rod and worm. I suggest that after a few more million years it may well add a reel and line with clutch, and the fish will also develop a tendency to exaggerate as to the size of it’s lunch.’
‘You see I have a problem Mr Darwin. It seems to me, a layman, that the fish has adapted in a way that can’t be accounted for by your theory. And as fish aren’t known for their intelligence it seems that evolution has given the fish a slight nudge. And it also seems to me that ‘evolution’ has itself a capability for adaption over and above the species it affects.’
‘Are you talking about God good sir?’
‘Call it what you will, but I am saying that there seems to be intelligence behind nature, and I’m simply pointing out that your theories although looking feasible on first sight, cannot explain the development of numerous species, the stick insect family immediately springs to mind.’
‘My God Sir! You sound like my wife, but she has an excuse being a woman in that her brain is smaller as evolution did not require women to be intelligent only attractive..’
‘Aha, another flaw in your theory! Have you seen my wife?!?’
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