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February 20, 2005
Evolution and
Its Discontents
by Dmitry Chernikov
One important proof of the existence of God is
the argument from design. We observe that things in
the universe and the universe itself exhibit
internal organizations that could not have been
brought into being by any means other than
intelligent design. Of course, the theory of
evolution claims to contradict this inference. The
problems with that theory, however, seem
overwhelming.
- First, it violates a principle of causality:
more perfect life-forms cannot come from less
perfect (where perfection means "greatness of
being," not "superior adaptation"), because the
cause must always be greater than the effect,
for the cause cannot produce what it does not
already possess within itself. In general,
effects, virtually contained in their causes,
pre-exist in them eminently.
-
- Second, and relatedly, the distance in
perfection between, say, a man and an amoeba is
so great that it surely seems like a strange
idea that one can transmogrify into the other in
the limited time between the emergence of life
and the present. Indeed, judging simply by the
number of cells in the average human body
(between 10 and 100 trillion), our amoeba would
have to evolve something like ten additional
cells per day.
-
- Third, not only is man's body more
perfect than amoeba's body, but so is man's
soul, consisting as it is of seven
chakras and so on, more perfect than
amoeba's soul, which is purely vegetative. How
did it evolve? [1]
-
- Fourth, it is inconceivable that the
incredible diversity of life on the planet has
been generated from identical singled-celled
organisms. Is it really reasonable to believe
that these organisms contained within themselves
the potential to mutate into so many different
life-forms?
-
- Fifth, simpler organisms, such as bacteria
or insects, are greater in number and reproduce
in greater numbers than the more complex
creatures. Why did the former forsake that
advantage by evolving? (If it is objected that
they did not evolve and are "perfect,"
then we can argue that the objector has a very
defective view of perfection. And then exactly
which species are not perfect and are capable of
evolving?)
-
- Sixth, precisely how did asexual
reproduction give birth to sexual reproduction?
After all, a species would have to split into
both male and female, neither of which can
procreate without the other, at the same
time. The burden of describing a scenario in
which this remarkable feat took place is on the
evolutionist, and no one, to my knowledge, has
been able to meet it.
-
- Seventh, why did cells in the body become
such as to be able to undergo apoptosis or
programmed cell death? This is necessary for the
health of the whole organism. But why should an
individual cell care about that? How did it
evolve to be "altruistic" and prefer the common
good to its own individual good? Similarly,
cells in the body of an animal are in continuous
interaction with each other. What compelled the
original singled-celled organisms to enter into
such interaction (and then lose the ability to
exist on their own) when it requires
intelligence to recognize the benefits of giving
up some autonomy for social life and to make
voluntary agreements for mutual profit?
-
- Eighth, evolution presents a difficult
puzzle. Greater evolutionary fitness is supposed
to explain higher reproductive output. But
fitness is defined as possession of those
heritable organismal structures and behaviors
that produce higher reproductive output. One
cannot predict in advance which design solutions
will produce fitter individuals. That is, it is
impossible to measure the usefulness of a
solution independently of actual survival and
reproduction. For example, Darwin would argue
that the bird received its wing because wings
are useful in the struggle for survival. But how
do we know that? Well, wings are there, so they
must be useful. (As opposed to what?) They
evolved by natural selection. Again, how do we
know? Did certain favorable variations actually
occur in the past? Well, wings are there, so
such variations must have occurred. There is an
obvious circularity here, but this kind of
reasoning nevertheless, presumably, constitutes
evidence for Darwinism.
-
- Ninth, the theory of evolution does not
appear to generate any testable predictions. "A
lineage will survive, or it will not survive" is
not a prediction. This does not sit well with
its claim to be a scientific theory.
-
- Tenth, there is no evidence of large-scale
heritable variation; no instances of emergence
of new species have been observed; no fossils of
intermediate forms have been found, so what does
natural selection as a mechanism of evolution
actually explain? Why was it proposed in
the first place?
-
- Eleventh, human intelligence is clearly
suited for the speculative work of discovery of
truth and judgment of good and evil. The theory
of evolution, however, would have it that
intelligence is only good for matters such as
finding the best mate.
-
- Twelfth, what is the evolutionary advantage
of universal charity, of self-sacrificial love,
agape? "Greater love has no one than this, that
he lay down his life for his friends." (John
15:13) "Love your enemies and pray for those who
persecute you." (Matthew 5:44) Who would be
willing to insist that charity, the mother of
all virtues, is actually a handicap in
life?
-
- Thirteenth, higher animals and human beings
in particular are not slaves to their sexual
instinct. They want more than just reproduce:
they want happiness, which can be gotten
in many ways and to which offspring are only a
means. They cannot therefore be thought of as
mere vehicles for genes to propagate themselves.
Are they an evolutionary dead end?
-
- Fourteenth, by what means did humans evolve
the ability to learn to do the myriad of complex
tasks in a sophisticated civilization? Of what
use to the "primitive man" was his potential
ability to, say, build airplanes?
-
- Fifteenth, no human being can survive alone.
Even the most primitive humans live in
communities, hunt and gather together, have
rudimentary division of labor, etc. But how,
according to the theory of evolution, could
whole societies of humans appear simultaneously?
Further, these societies had to be somewhat
organized from the get-go, because the first
humans would not have the time to find
one another and form economic ties. Finally, not
even Daniel Defoe could make his Robinson Crusoe
endure without permitting him to salvage many
goods from his ship. Neither could the first
humans survive without some capital and consumer
goods to get them started in life. For example,
if in the beginning they had to work to make
spears for hunting, then they would starve in
the meantime. Where did these goods come
from?
-
- Sixteenth, the fact that species adapt to
their environment by natural selection is not a
good argument for evolution. While
species can apparently change to some extent as
a result of this evolutionary trial-and-error
search for optimal solution, this search is a
conservative process that eliminates defective
organisms thus preserving the well-being of the
species as a whole. Environmental changes may
cause organisms that were previously poorly
adapted to become well adapted and vice versa.
The proportion between such organisms will
oscillate back and forth, but no new genetic
information is created as a result; some may
even be lost, if the disadvantaged organisms die
out. But a coming into being of a new
species demands a departure from established
patterns and a real engineering breakthrough.
This can only be accomplished by an
intelligence.
-
- Seventeenth, biological organisms exhibit
irreducible complexity (a system is
irreducibly complex if it is composed of
multiple parts and would not function if even a
single part were missing) which makes it
impossible for them to be produced via the
traditional Darwinian pathways, and, similarly,
specified complexity which explicitly
points to an intelligent designer. (E.g.,
crystals such as granite do not have that
property because they lack complexity; mixtures
of random polymers, because they lack
specificity.) So a designer, even if we do not
know his essence, is a more plausible
explanation of their existence than natural
forces. The overall complexity of the human body
is mind-boggling, and I do not think that
evolutionists quite appreciate this fact.
In sum, natural laws alone without a designer to
work with nature lack the creative power necessary
to produce the life-forms found on Earth. Further,
the universe is known to be "fine-tuned" for the
existence of life. Even more interesting is that
Earth is very well suited for the emergence of
intelligent life, because it, unlike other
planets, readily offers itself and the universe for
discovery by man.
Note
[1] Some theistic
evolutionists have maintained that man's body has
evolved, while his soul was at some time in the
past infused into his body. This is just bad
theology. The body and soul are tailor-made for
each other, and the body cannot live or function
without the soul. The soul was never optional.
Moreover, the soul constrains the evolution of the
body, which could never acquire organs, such as the
brain, that the soul could not "support." Return
Dmitry
Chernikov
is a graduate student in philosophy at Kent State
University. Copyright (c) 2005 by Dmitry Chernikov
and reproduced with permission.
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