Darwinism is on trial biology majors

Jeff Jasko

Pittsburgh Standard

Over the past 140 years, Darwinian evolution has become one of the most influential theories to shape Western society. In the words of Dr. Michael Denton, "The triumph of evolution meant the end of the traditional belief in the world as a purposeful created order – the so-called teleological outlook which had been predominant in the western world for two millennia. According to Darwin, all the design, order, and complexity of life and the eerie purposefulness of living systems were the result of a simple blind random process – natural selection" (Sir Julian Huxley, Essays of a Humanist). In short, Darwinian evolution made it respectable to not believe in God.

The following article will summarize a few of the major challenges to Darwinian macroevolution: the theory that life has developed through purely random processes from the most basic of particles to the most complex of organisms.

I will consider the fossil record; the biochemical complexity of life, and the laws of thermodynamics to show why they offer strong support that life is the result of intelligent design, and therefore the work of an intelligent Designer.

The Fossil Record: When Darwin published his Origin of Species in 1859, he was well aware of the lack of fossil evidence supporting any transitional species. Since then, the situation has only become worse for his theory.

Noted Harvard Paleontologist, Stephen Jay Gould, has written, "The extreme rarity of transitional forms in the fossil record persists as the trade secret of paleontology. The evolutionary trees that adorn our textbooks have data only at the tips and nodes of their branches; the rest is inference, however reasonable, not the evidence of fossils."

David Raup, curator of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago, underscores this fact: "We now have a quarter of a million fossil species, but the situation hasn’t changed much . . . We have even fewer examples of evolutionary transition than we did in Darwin’s time" ("Conflicts Between Darwin and Paleontology" 22, 25).

The fossil evidence does not support a gradual transition of one species developing into another. Instead, the evidence clearly gives a picture of mature, fully functional creatures suddenly appearing and staying very much the same throughout their history.

The Biochemical Complexity of Life: Darwin also stated in Origin of Species that, "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down" (Origin of Species, 154).

However, over the past few decades, the studies of biochemistry and molecular biology have revealed extreme complexity at the sub-cellular level. For example, Denton describes the complexity of bacteria: "Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small, weighing less than 10-12 grams, each is in effect a veritable micro-miniaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery, made up altogether of one hundred thousand million atoms, far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world." (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 25)

Furthermore, Dr. James Coppedge, an expert in the science of statistical probability, explains the virtual impossibility of even one protein molecule being arranged by chance is 1 in 10161. He calculated this estimate after giving evolutionists every possible concession, postulating a primordial sea with every single component necessary, and speeding up the rate of molecular bonding a trillion times. He went on to calculate that "for a minimum set of the required 239 protein molecules for the smallest theoretical life, the probability is 1 in 10110,879. It would take 10119,841 years on the average to get a set of such proteins. That is 10119,831 times the assumed age of the earth and is a figure with 119,831 zeroes" (Evolution: Possible or Impossible? 110, 114).

The Laws of Thermodynamics: Simply stated, the first law of thermodynamics says that the actual amount of energy in the universe remains constant – it doesn’t change.

According to evolutionist Dr. Isaac Asimov, energy conservation is "the most powerful and most fundamental generalization about the universe that scientists have ever been able to make" (Morris, Scientific Creationism, 21). The second law of thermodynamics (also known as entropy) says that the amount of usable energy in any closed system (which the whole universe is) is decreasing. In other words, everything runs from order to disorder and from complexity to decay. The theory of biological evolution directly contradicts the law of entropy in that it describes a universe in which things run from chaos to complexity and order.

However, mathematician and physicist Sir Arthur Eddington demonstrated that exactly the opposite is true: The energy of the universe irreversibly flows from hot to cold bodies (Heeren, Show Me God, 129). Therefore, evolution requires constant violations of the second law of thermodynamics in order to be plausible. Since entropy is so firmly established as a fundamental law of nature, Eddington stated, "If your theory is found to be against the second law of thermodynamics I can give you no hope; there is nothing for it but to collapse in deepest humiliation" (The Nature of the Physical World, 74).

Finally, some evolutionists postulate that the universe has eternally existed; meaning that it never had a beginning. However, if the overall amount of energy stays the same (as shown by the law of energy conservation), but the universe is running out of usable energy, then the universe could not have started out with an infinite amount. It is impossible to run out of an infinite amount. The necessary conclusion is that the universe is and always has been finite. It could not have existed forever in the past and will not exist forever into the future. Therefore, it must have had a beginning.

The ultimate question is "How did it begin?" Even if Darwinian evolution were true, it still does not answer how the initial building blocks for life came to exist? Furthermore, if living organisms exhibit such intricate design who is their Designer? All scientists (including evolutionists) demand that everything that comes into existence needs a cause!

However, if God exists and is eternal, He does not need a cause, for a Being Who has existed eternally is by His very nature uncaused.

The first verse of the Bible declares that, "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." Several founders of modern science (including Kepler, Pascal, Boyle, Newton, Faraday, Mendel, and Kelvin) as well as many scientists today support this Biblical claim. I encourage you to investigate the evidences for the intelligent design of the universe, and compare it with the theory of evolution, so that you can determine which alternative best fits the scientific data.

(For further reading, see Darwin’s Black Box by Michael Behe; Intelligent Design by William Dembski; and Darwin on Trial by Phillip Johnson.)

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