Evolution Today

Mark Dunagan
12/02/07 - Sunday Evening

 

Evolution Today

 

Even though the Bible remains constant, “Thy word is truth” (John 17:17), “Forever, O Lord, Thy word is settled in heaven” (Psalm 119:89), and Jesus remains unchanged from generation to generation, “The same yesterday and today, yes and forever” (Hebrews 13:8), man-made theories are constantly in flux. This is equally true of the theory of Evolution. It keeps evolving as science exposes its weaknesses and flaws.

 

‘Until recently, the controversy over evolution has centered on design in biology. But today evidence of design is being uncovered in physics and cosmology as well. The cosmos itself is exquisitely fine-tuned to support life. Cosmologists have discovered that the universe’s fundamental forces are intricately balanced, as though on a knife’s edge. Take, for example, the force of gravity: If it were only slightly stronger, all stars would be red dwarfs, too cold to support life. But if it were only slightly weaker, all stars would be blue giants, burning too briefly for life to develop. Cosmologists speak of ‘cosmic coincidences’—meaning that the fundamental forces of the universe just happened to have the exact numerical value required to make life possible. The slightest change would yield a universe inhospitable to life. This is sometimes dubbed the Goldilocks dilemma: How did these numerical values turn out not too high, not too low, but just right?” (Total Truth, Nancy Pearcey, p. 188). While Evolutionists scramble for an answer, the Bible has had the right answer all along, “For thus says the Lord, who created the heavens (He is the God who formed the earth and made it, He established it and did not create it a waste place, but formed it to be inhabited)” (Isaiah 45:18).

 

Evolutionary Answers for Design?

 

Evolutionists are forced to admit that the fine-tuning of the universe suggests design, but they often desperately seek an answer that does not include God as the designer.

 

• Astronomer Fred Hoyle is often quoted as saying, “A common sense interpretation of the facts suggests that a superintellect has monkeyed with the physics”.¹ He then proposed that it was an alien mind from another universe.²

• Others have argued that the universe itself is intelligent, with a mind of its own. Noble-Prize winning biologist George Wald said that the reason intelligent life evolved is that “the universe wants to be known”³. Freeman Dyson adds, “It almost seems as if the Universe must in some sense have known that we were coming”⁴. Of course, this idea that the universe decided to produce intelligent life so it could be observed and known by someone, smacks of pantheism and Eastern mysticism.

• Others argue the “Many Worlds” hypothesis, that is, supposedly, the cosmos is filled with billions of universes, most are devoid of life, but out of the sheer number, some must have life. Of course, the only reason to propose such an idea is to make our fine-tuned universe seem a little less impressive. Yet, remember, all these theories are seeking to explain why there is such awesome design in the universe!

 

It does seem that scientists are reluctant to draw the necessary and common sense inference from all the evidence that “the reason that the universe seems tailor-made for our existence is that it was tailor-made” (Total Truth, p. 190). “The design inference is the simplest, most direct reading of the evidence” (p. 190). God agrees (Romans 1:20; Psalm 19:1-2).“Convoluted theories of a conscious cosmos, or of countless unknowable universes, are little more than desperate attempts to avoid the obvious evidence for design” (p. 191).

 

A Chance Based Theory?

 

“If we have an infinite number of monkeys sitting at typewriters, and an infinite amount of time, eventually they will type out the works of Shakespeare. So goes the theory, at least. But researchers in England recently put the theory to the test. They placed a computer in a cage with six monkeys to see that would happen. The monkey’s main response was to bang the computer with stones; for some reason many of them found it appealing as an outhouse. After a month the monkeys had not written anything even close to a word of human language. Ask ordinary people what the theory of Evolution is, and typically they will say it’s the theory that life arose by pure chance. Yet, among professional scientists, chance-based theories have been all but completely rejected” (Total Truth p. 193). The reason for this is that scientists have been forced to come to terms with what the common man already knew, chance processes do not produce complex information. Randomly drawing letters for Scrabble might produce “it” or “can”, but random processes will not produce Hamlet. Norman Geisler once offered this illustration, “If you came into the kitchen and saw the Alphabet cereal spilled on the table, and it spelled out your name and address, would you think the cat knocked the cereal box over?” (Total Truth p. 193).

 

Evolution Affects Everything

 

“In the past, social scientists tried to limit the implications of evolution by erecting a wall between biology and culture. Evolution created the human body, they said, but then humans created culture, which is independent of biology. Today, with the rise of evolutionary psychology, that wall is crumbling” (Total Truth p. 215). One reason why this wall was erected is because evolutionists understood that while 96 percent of the population continues to believe in God, many of these people did not mind evolution in biology class as long as no applications were made to other realms, such as morality. Yet, with the deterioration of the culture, some evolutionists have become emboldened and have argued that the culture needs to own up to the real consequences of embracing Evolution. “Biologist William Provine of Cornell travels the lecture circuit telling university students that the Darwinian revolution is still incomplete because we have not yet embraced all its moral and religious implications. What are those implications? Provine lists them: ‘There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will’” (Total Truth p. 214). What this means is that if you really are honest enough to connect the dots of evolutionary theory, then one must conclude:

 

• There is no right and wrong. Evolution and Evolutionary Ethics are a package deal.

• Any behavior that survives today must have conferred some evolutionary advantage, otherwise it would have been weeded out by natural selection. This means that according to evolution there must be some benefit in child abuse, murder, theft, and every other sin.

• In the book Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence, the authors insist that even the September 11^thattacks had nothing to do with moral “evil”, rather they merely show that a predisposition to violence is “written in the molecular chemistry of DNA”. In other words, their genes made then do it.

• The opposite would be equally true – that is, the heroes on 911 were not attacking selfishlessly out of their own choice but were rather entering the Twin Towers just like ants and bees operate by instinct to defend the ant hill or hive when disaster hits.

 

Did “Evolution Evolve”

 

“The logical flaw in the theory, however, is that it undercuts itself. For if all our ideas are products of evolution, then so is the idea of evolutionary psychology itself. Like all other constructs of the human mind, it is not true but only useful for survival.Once when I was presenting these ideas at a Christian college, a man in the audience raised his hand and said, ‘I have only one question: These guys who think all our ideas and beliefs evolved – do they think their own ideas evolved? The audience burst into laughter, because of course the man had nailed the crux of the matter in a single, punchy question. If all ideas are products of evolution, and not really true but only useful, then evolution itself is not true either. And why should the rest of us pay it any attention?” (Total Truth pp. 216-217). Yet there is another question. If religion has survived, especially the Bible and Christianity, then, even according to the theory of Evolution, the mere fact that they have survived for so long proves that they are useful.

 

The Test

 

“Another way to evaluate a theory is by submitting it to the practical test: Can we live by it? Does it fit our experience of human nature? Many proponents of evolutionary psychology admit that it is a dark doctrine, with repugnant implications. After all, if humans are nothing more than ‘gene machines’ or ‘robots’ programmed to behave in certain ways by natural selection, then what becomes of moral freedom and human dignity?” (Total Truth p. 217).

 

• Actually, instead of making us “gods”, evolution makes us slaves.

• Evolution is nothing more than genetic predestination and there is no true free will. Therefore, the criminal was predestined to commit the crime, and the hero was predestined to sacrifice himself. Evil means nothing and should never been punished and goodness should never be praised.

• Evolution is equally a secular Calvinism, where we are inherit depravity, not from a literal Adam, but from ancestors and even the animals.

 

Yet, at this point, evolutionists take a “leap of faith” and exhort their readers to overcome and declare independence from our genetic masters. “The reason people are compelled to take an irrational leap is that no matter what they believe, they are still made in the image of God. Even when they reject the witness of Scripture, they still face the constant witness of their own human nature. At some point, even the most adamant scientific materialists find that their own humanity resists the deterministic implications of the Darwinian worldview” (Total Truth p. 219).

 

 

Mark Dunagan/Beaverton Church of Christ/503-644-9017

www.beavertonchurchofchrist.net/mdunagan@easystreet.com