Evolution: Why It’s Wrong And Why It Matters (Part 1a)

Evolution: Why it’s wrong and why it matters (Part 1a)

Last time I wrote about why evolution is wrong, and I was planning here to show why this matters. Some readers, however, were kind enough to take the time to write lengthy comments to my article, so I thought it important here to respond to their comments. Perhaps the fact that I said evolution was wrong without qualifying that statement with such mitigating phrases as, “why I believe evolution is wrong,” or, “in my opinion, ….” had something to do with the content of their comments.

One reader was thoughtful enough to include a scientific flowchart to show how science works. My article simply mentioned such things as observing, measuring, and repeatable experiments.

Science is certainly very good at what it is made to do; but after reading all the comments, I still believe it is safe to say that evolution does not fit with the scientific method.

What kind of repeatable experiment would we conduct? Fill a Petri dish half full with amino acids, top it off with water, place it on the ground where it can get adequate sunlight, and then check it in a million years or so for signs of life?

I think it is safe to say that evolution does not meet the requirement of repeatable experiment. Nor that of observation. Science can’t give an experiment of evolution. By this I mean, either the origin of life or the transition from one species to another. And even if it could, that wouldn’t prove anything, because the whole point of evolution is that all this was supposed to have happened by itself, without any intelligent help. If a scientist did think that he proved evolution by his experiment, it would actually be more of a support for the existence of God, because it would show that these things needed intelligence to put it all together, not blindless, random mutations.

And since no intelligence is involved in the process, evolution should have been going on continuously ever since it started. It wouldn’t have noted that now that we have human beings, its work is done. There is nobody to do the thinking.

And the fact that we still have all these intermediate species, like birds and fishes and reptiles, would suggest that this evolutionary process is still at work. Yet all these species appear to be finished products. If evolution were true, as I said before, every living thing now would be in some transitional state, a work in progress. Now it looks like everything is complete in its own kind.

One reader had a question about the origin of the earth. Did God create it or did it come about through entirely natural means? Neither alternative is easy. Either would require an act of faith. However, I have read too much about the wonders of the world to think that everything just came about by chance. Why would water expand when it freezes, unlike everything else that contracts, thus permitting life below the water’s surface to survive in winter?

I read that the earth possesses something like 27 properties that are essential to life. It has been described like the earth was made specifically to support life. It’s not so much a question of whether there is life on other planets, but why is there any life at all?

It was suggested that life is simply the mixing of the right ingredients. I understand that the molecules that form our DNA are constructed in ways that do not occur naturally. That is, you can get these atoms and amino acids to combine in a laboratory or elsewhere, but they won’t combine in the way that DNA is built.

Several readers use the words ‘scientific fact’ to describe the results that science purports to have. That’s not quite accurate. Science can establish facts, and it has done so quite well. But evolution is entirely out of that realm. There are no observations, no measuring, no repeatable experiments. And it precludes the possibility of God having done anything right from the start. That’s not only not fair; it’s unscientific, in the better sense of the term. Science, as I would like to think of the term, would be the search for the truth, wherever it leads, not just to naturalistic explanations for everything.

The pursuit for truth should take someone wherever the evidence leads, not make up some story to avoid the obvious conclusions. The world, everything in it, and especially human beings, is a truly wonderful place. I use the word ‘wonderful’ here in its etymological sense, full of wonder. Nothing in our experience would even suggest that order, intelligence, complexity, and design can originate apart from previous intelligence.

We use the word God for that intelligence. If you have problems with the understanding of God that you were taught when you were younger, that still should not dissuade anyone that such a thing as a God put all this together. To ascribe all this to chance is more than a typical leap of faith. A religious person feels there is evidence to push him in a certain direction. The non-religious scientist has to leap to something that is contrary to human experience and known laws of nature.

One last reader speaks of “libraries of empirical testing.” Our point here is with evolution, which cannot be tested. Human involvement would contaminate the experiment, it is unobservable, and there is no evidence that it has actually occurred.

Fact and truth are held up as the epitome of human existence. The fact is that there is much of life and existence that science cannot talk about. The meaning of life, its purpose, and, of course, whether there is a God.

There are no questions bigger than these, but science has nothing to say about them. It reduces life down to a combination of protein, carbohydrates, and fats brought together by chance. And someday it will all separate.

Is that all what life is about? Life is short. I think our first duty as human beings is to find out if there is a God. If there is, we need to find out anything and everything we can about Him. If not, then we can breathe a sigh of relief and try to make the most of what little time we have.

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