Kreitsauce's Musings

Lucy, the small australopithecus afarensis, is supposed to be our ancestor. Standing at around three feet tall, she doesn’t look like much. It’s obvious that if we’re supposed to get from a chimp-like creature to our current standing of Homo sapien, there’s going to have to be a lot of changing going on throughout the years. We are supposed to have gone through the Homo habilis stage, followed by Homo erectus, Homo sapiens, and finally Homo sapiens sapiens (that’s not a typo.)

It all sounds so tidy, doesn’t it? Well, it seems that way until one realizes that there is no clear-cut definition of any of these categories, at least not one that is universally accepted by the scientific establishment. There is some degree of consensus, but certainly not the degree one would expect. There’s also little consensus on how long it takes a new species to evolve. Some estimates place it at 250,000 years per new species of human. Lucy is dated at 3 million years. Homo habilis is dated from 2 to 1.5 million years. Homo erectus is dated at 1.6 to .4 million years. Homo sapiens and so forth remain in the present. With so many unknown factors, who can tell what one should believe about evolutionary science? Of course, it gets much more convoluted than that.

The Taung Can No Man Tame

In 1924, Professor Raymond Dart acquired a fossilized skull from the lime works at Taung. He knew it was unique, and determined that it was a young primate which he named Australopithecus africanus. You can see pictures of Taung in many school textbooks due to its fame. Until Lucy was discovered in 1974, Taung was considered to be our oldest evolutionary ancestor, dating around to 2 million to 3 million years old. Then, in 1973, geologist T. C. Partridge rocked the evolutionist’s world. He determined that the cave that the Taung skull came from could not be more than 870,000 years old. Since it could take up to a million years, according to evolutionary theory, for a new species to evolve,  going all the way from africanus to modern-day humans in 870,000 years is out of the question. Plus, even evolutionists date true humans back to 750,000 years. There’s no way for africanus to be an ancestor.

So what is an evolutionist to do? They tried to fit the Taung skull into the line of habilis. Of course, some were honest. Phillip Tobias wrote in response: “Although nearly 50 yr have elapsed since its discovery, it is true to say that the Taung skull has never yet been fully analyzed and described.” I guess it stinks for all the people duped by the scientific establishment all those years! Some have seen fit to remove the Taung skull from the line of humans altogether, classifying it as P. robustus.

Monkeying Around with the Family Tree

Fortunately for evolutionists, Lucy was found the year after Patridge dated the cave. The family tree was revised, and A. afarensis (Lucy) replaced africanus (Taung) as our nonhuman ancestor. Africanus was moved to the australopithecine branch of the tree and became the link between Lucy and P. robustus.

In 1985, the famous “Black Skull” was found. Dating back, according to evolutionists, to 2.5 million years ago, it seems to be a blend of P. robustus and Lucy, leaving Taung as the odd man out. So scientists have begun to move Taung back to the line of humans (again), between Lucy (A. afarensis) and H. habilis. The problem, of course, is that Partridge’s dating of the cave makes that impossible. The dating was based on thermoluminescence analysis of calcite and uranium-series dates of 942,000 years ago and 764,000 years ago on limestone. Richard G. Klein of Stanford University writes: “A date for Taung of 2 million years ago or more may seem most unreasonable, but the argument is obviously circular and the true age remains uncertain.”

What is my point in all of this? My point is that there is nothing solid or certain about the supposed family tree. Dating methods aren’t entirely reliable, but even when they are used, they are often ignored or twisted to make the fossil record say what the evolutionists want it to say. Lucy, Taung, and the rest are being moved haphazardly about the family tree just to make one that works. To place your trust in the soft science of paleoanthropology is a mistake. I love Lucy because she is a reminder that there are far more problems than solutions offered up by a Darwinistic interpretation of the fossil record. It needs to be reinterpreted. That’s where the problem lies. The flaws are not with the fakes (like Piltdown Man), the genuine fossils, etc. The flaws are in the way evidence is interpreted and with the scientific establishment’s mad dash to put something believable together.

Aren’t you glad there are much more firm foundations out there?

You’d probably assume that a blog post about biological evolution would deal with biology or some other related study. However, that’s not where I’m taking this discussion today. Today, I’ll be looking at the poetic and artistic aspects of the Darwinism movement. To be honest, it makes sense that a believable, coherent theory would have elements of the Arts, because humans have a way of describing anything that matters in with particular eloquence. It’s true, we often tell someone we care about simply “I love you,” but we all know there are much more creative ways of saying those three words. The music industry has blossomed thanks to that creativity.

Darwin’s Day in Court

Andrew Hill has written: “Compared to other sciences, the mythic element is greatest in paleoanthropology.” (in American Scientist, March-April 1984) Speaking sympathetically of that same phenomena in the same article, Ian Tattersall admits: “Paleoanthropologists are fond of telling each other ‘Just-So’ stories; and once in a while a little needling of this kind does no harm at all.” Milford Wolpoff is much less forgiving: ” When the only people who can comment are the discoverers or friends of the discoverers, there is no sense of independent observer. We’re not practicing science. We’re practicing opera.” His reasons for making that statement can be found here.

Two books, written by law professors, may be instructive at this point. Norman Macbeth, a Harvard-trained lawyer and non-creationist studied evolution for years and wrote a book Darwin Retried in which he demonstrated that evolution was a religion and was not of high enough quality to stand up in a court of law. Philip E Johnson, a law professor of the University of California, Berkeley, wrote Darwin on Trial. In his book, he came to four important conclusions about evolution:

1. Evolution is grounded on naturalism, not scientific fact
2. A belief that a large body of empirical evidence supports evolution is nothing but an illusion
3. Evolution is a religion
4. If evolution had been subjected to a rigorous study of the evidence, it would have been abandoned long ago

In response to Roger Lewin’s description of the Ancestor’s Exhibit in 1984 in which he spoke of the awe and emotion of the experience, Johnson commented:

“Lewin is absolutely correct, and I can’t think of anything more likely to detract from the objectivity of one’s judgment. Descriptions of fossils from people who yearn to cradle their ancestors in their hands ought to be scrutinized as carefully as a letter of recommendation from a job applicant’s mother…. The story of human descent from apes is not merely a scientific hypothesis; it is the secular equivalent of the story of Adam and Eve.”

Raining on Darwin’s Parade

Let’s turn now to Darwinism and graphic media. In the March 1998 edition of Antiquity, David Van Reybrouck, a student of the role of drawings in the propagation of Darwinism has made five observations:

1. Illustrations always go beyond the archaeological data
2. Illustrations always involve speculation on the part of the fossil discoverers, who advise the artists
3. Illustrations involve interpretations that rely heavily on unproven and sometimes doubtful theories
4. Illustrations are always nonobjective, yet they are trusted in a visual society such as ours
5. Illustrations are used extensively because they sell evolution effectively.

The most blatant lie ever told to help promote evolution is the “parade” of stages in supposed human evolution that we are all familiar with. The origin of this parade- or should I say charade?- of characters is an illustration in F. Clark Howell’s book Early Man, originally published in 1965. The parade was originally on a 36-inch foldout page within the book. What most people don’t realize that the parade is pure propaganda. It doesn’t exist. The original book makes it clear that the parade doesn’t tell an accurate story, and the author and publishers knew it. Evolutionists knew that the apes and ape-like creatures they had theorized did not walk on their back feet. The book clearly states in the text, but not on the chart: “Although protoapes and apes were quadrupedal, all are shown here standing for purposes of comparison.” Sizes of each proposed ancestor were not to scale, and they were shown walking, not simply standing as the author states. These small details make a world of difference when it comes to the believability of the theory. It’s clear deception. Yet it was- and still is, in some cases- included in advertisements and eventually became its own poster in classrooms around the world.

Holding Out for a Hero

Finally, I’d like to call your attention to Misia Landau’s book Narratives of Human Evolution. In her book, Miss Landau makes an interesting assertion: paleoanthropology is storytelling. She compare folk-stories and epics to Darwin, Huxley, Keith, and Haeckel’s descriptions of human evolution. Here’s some similarities she’s noticed:

• The Hero’s Origin- The hero is typically leading a safe and untroubled life. He may be smaller or weaker than others. Think “Frodo Baggins.” In the story of evolution, the hero is a nondescript primate, perhaps living in the trees. Like Frodo Baggins heading out from the Shire with the Ring, the primate leaves the safety of the trees to walk on the ground, perhaps because of a larger brain or changes in the availability of food.
• The Hero Tested- In myths, the Hero is tested by predators, opponents, or his environment. In the Darwinistic myth, similar situations occur. “Indeed, the tests are specifically designed for that purpose: to bring out the human in the hero”, Landau writes.
• The Hero Transformed- Myths and even modern fantasy always add a sacred or magical object- a Ring of Power, the Master Sword, and Invisibility Cloak- to help a man become more than he was. In evolutionary theory, natural selection or a “magic twist” of genetic mutations (those are the words of Jared Diamond, who wrote an article about the movement of modern humans out of Africa in the May 1989 edition of Discover magazine) bestow upon the hero the intelligence or abilities necessary to become more than his ancestors.
• The Hero’s Death- The fatal irony of the average hero is that he dies due to pride through success. Most evolution tales include a warning to humans that we could become like our supposed ancestors if we aren’t careful. Richard Leakey devotes an entire book to that subject entitled The Sixth Extinction.

Frankly, I think J. R. R. Tolkien is a much better writer of this sort of material than the Darwinists. Let’s just leave it to the experts, ok, guys?

At the AAAS convention in San Francisco, Carl Sagan once explained in his lecture “Velikovsky’s Challenge to Science” that science works in this way: “The most fundamental axioms and conclusions may be challenged.” The hypothesis “must survive confrontation with observation. Appeals to authority are impermissible. Experiments must be reproducible.”

That’s a pretty strange statement when you think about it. Evolution isn’t observable. It can’t be challenged in the scientific establishment without some serious ridicule taking place. Evolutionists appeal to the authority of the scientific establishment. There aren’t any experiments that are able to confirm evolution. It’s ironic to me, then, that Sagan would also make a very profound statement in that same lecture: “Not all scientific statements have equal weight.” How right he is. Direct observations of, say, the laws of physics, are far more weightier because of the tremendous amount of data verifying them. Unfortunately, the scientific establishment does not appear to behave this way, and the general public certainly isn’t aware of this concept. What we have are Darwinists acting as the high priests of our society. People- even highly-educated people- believe in Darwinism because scientists can’t be wrong.

How is Darwinism a sort of lesser science? Consider our interest in chimps. We study chimpanzees- their behavior, genetic makeup, and anatomy- because Darwinists believe that we are very closely related to them. Darwinists then use superficial similarities between humans and chimps to prove their assumptions. That is called begging the question in logic. They assume to be true the very thing they are trying to prove. Bereft of anything that Sagan would call a good basis for scientific study, a philosophical assumption has been foisted upon us as science. In reality, such studies on chimps would only attempt to shed light on humanity if evolution had first proven to be a correct assumption. Unlike Darwinism, intelligent design bases its theories on the evidence around us: information provided for our world through physics and DNA as well as the incredible complexity of the universe.

The logical fallacies don’t stop there, however. There’s a difference between historical and scientific evidence. In spite of the fact that scientists have performed numerous experiments on animals in an attempt to prove evolution through mutation, the obvious must be declared: just because mutations can be made to happen or engineered in a lab does not mean that they did happen in the past. That is a logical fallacy. That genetic engineering is possible in the present does not mean that it certainly did happen in the past. Scientists have proven it is possible; they have not proven that it occurred.

Suppose I gave you a pile of hammers and asked you to arrange them in a potential evolutionary sequence. You could start with small ones and work your way to larger ones, arrange them by claw types, group them into families based on what they are made of, etc. You could argue that you showed a pattern from simple to complex. The whole assignment, of course, would be bogus. There was no actual evolutionary relationship between the different hammers. They were designed with a particular function or purpose in mind. Curved and straight claw hammers, sledge hammers, ball pein, mason’s hammers, upholsterer’s hammers, and mallets are different because they are designed that way. Just because scientists can superimpose an evolutionary order on things does not mean that the evolutionary order is fact.

We should all be very grateful for what science has allowed us to achieve. The medical fields have provided us with the ability to heal many wounds and diseases previously thought to be untreatable. Technology has allowed us to communicate and travel efficiently. Yes, because of scientific principles and dedicated men and women willing to spend years of their lives researching, writing, and peer-reviewing what has already been written, you and I are able to enjoy very different lives from our forbears. We can be confident in scientific discovery because it is based on solid evidence and a desire to “follow the evidence wherever it leads,” as Carl Sagan once famously said. Would it surprise you, then, to learn how little evidence we have of human evolution?

HIDE AND SEEK

Have you ever seen an actual fossil of a human ancestor? Probably not. I haven’t. The vast majority of the authors of textbooks on paleontology haven’t. Curators of the museums of natural history around the world usually haven’t. Only a very, very small handful of people have ever been privileged enough to see such fossils. I’m not saying there’s a conspiracy afoot. I’m saying that, because they are so rare, so valuable, and so fragile, human ancestral fossils are very unlikely to be on display or studied. In fact, most of us have never even seen a picture of an actual fossil. According to Marvin L. Lubenow, whose book Bones of Contention provided many of the “diving in” points for this series of blog posts, the total number of people who have access to ancestral fossils is fewer than the heads of state in the entire world.

William King, the man who declared Homo neanderthalensis to be a different species than modern-day humans in 1864, never saw the actual fossils. He did so after reading a description of them. Darwin never saw a single human fossil. Thomas Huxley never saw original fossils either, but he took great pains to describe them in his 1863 work Man’s Place in Nature.

People publish vast amounts of research with unverified data! Germany built a two-story museum to celebrate the discovery of Steinheim Man in 1933. Visitors never saw the actual fossil though. They viewed plastic replicas. The actual fossil was kept in a safe set into a stone wall in an old military outpost several miles away. In their article in the October 1995 edition of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology, Braun, Hublin, and Boucher note: “While it was never described in great detail, this fossil played a central role in various evolutionary models.”

Of course, there is a good deal of politics in this field as well. Teuku Jacob, former curator of Gadjah Mada University, was known for his jealousy of the Homo erectus fossils from Java in his possession. Swisher, Curtis, and Lewin write:

“These fossils, the prized objects of Jacob’s collection are rarely seen, even by professionals in the fossil-hunting business. Scholars with serious research programs have to apply to Jacob for permission even to see them, let alone touch them, for scientific study. And even those few who succeed in obtaining official permission have to wait for Jacob’s final OK, for he alone is permitted to remove the fossils from the safes.”

Donald Johanson, the discover of Lucy, agrees that “only those in the inner circle get to see the fossils; only those who agree with the particular interpretation of a particular investigator are allowed to see the fossils.”

CIRCLING THE WAGONS

There’s one exception to this almost xenophobic protection of the fossils. In 1984, the American Museum of Natural History in New York sponsored an exhibit in which more than forty of the original fossils were brought together for the first- and probably last- time ever. There were special guards over the fossils and the curators that traveled with the fossils. The fossils were placed in special cases. Work on the subway line beneath the museum was halted to avoid vibrating- and possibly damaging- the fossils.

What prompted this gathering of the fossils? In his book Ancestors: The Hard Evidence, Eric Delson tells us that there were those in the scientific community who were concerned about the rising popularity of creationism. Delson, who was a scientist at the American Museum, tells us that creationism was a “great and growing concern” at the museum. The primary purpose, then, was to show professionals and lay people the evidence for evolution, and they avoided making any statement concerning creationism at the museum so that they would not “dignify…creation science.” Their words, not mine. What are these guys afraid of?

BLIND LEADING THE BLIND

Paleoanthropology is in a strange position. Unlike most- if not all- other areas of science, workers in this field rarely have access to the material their science is based on. They are usually one step or so away from the actual evidence. Too often, creationists have been guilty of downplaying the importance of human ancestral fossils. In reality, they are unique and valuable, but because of their value, an insufficient number of scientists have been able to study them in depth.

What do they work with then? They work with casts and descriptions others have written of the fossils. Casts may be reliable if the molds used are detailed enough and if the materials maintain their intended shape. However, casts can be far from ideal. They lack the detail of the original. Becky A Sigmon of the University of Toronto says that there is a general consensus among paleoanthropologists  that “casts should not be used as resource material for a scientific paper.” (See her collection of papers on the subject for more information.) She has a good reason for saying this. At the American Museum exhibit in 1984, when the original fossils were to be placed into their mounts (which had been based on the casts available), most of them did not fit. Casts simply aren’t substitutes from the originals. Lubenow further complains that “casts of only a small percentage of the total fossil material and less than half of the most important fossil material are available for study.”

Scientists are then forced to turn to description of fossils in scientific literature, which is the most common form of source material for scientific work. How can a field of science continue to function and inform public opinion if there is so little readily-available information? How can we be expected to believe what few have seen? As John Fleagle of the State University of New York, Stony Brook has said: “The big awkwardness right now is when someone announces they have found a specimen that overturns everything we know, but almost no one has seen it.”

Talk about blind faith! My point is this: if we are to believe that humans evolved in the manner most Darwinists claim, there must be more evidence. Right now, there’s just not enough out there for me to buy into.

As I said in a previous post, I’ve been reading a fascinating book by Hugh Ross entitled Why the Universe is the Way it Is. Dr. Ross has a Ph.D. from the University of Toronto and is the president of Reason to Believe ministries. He’s spoken at over 300 colleges and universities. While Ross’ book is by no means exhaustive, it does an excellent job of helping the reader realize how very, very, VERY unlikely it is for us to exist without a Creator. A disclaimer: Ross does seem to believe in some form of theistic evolution, at least to the extent that God allowed the universe to evolve and then stepped in to make humans several billion years later. I prefer to believe that God either created the entire universe with the appearance of age (since He did so with Adam and the rest of life on earth) or that- thanks to general relativity- God’s act of creation actually did some really cool things to the flow of time. I tend to go with the second option, but I’m not going to explain the whole theory in detail at this time. I also see some value in studying whether or not light itself could be slowing down.

Below you’ll see a few reasons why the earth is not only uniquely designed to support life, but also to allow mankind to view the heavens. God wanted us to discover His universe.

• For starters, there’s the atmosphere. It’s clear. If you read up on the atmospheres of other planets, you’ll notice that very few of them have clear atmospheres. If it weren’t clear but still breathable, we’d have no idea what space looked like.
• Then there’s the moon.Where else in the solar system can you witness a complete solar eclipse? Where else can the sun’s corona become viewable to scientists thanks to a perfectly round moon that regularly eclipses the sun? Earth is the only place this is possible because the distance between earth, moon, and sun, as well as the size and shape of all three bodies, is exactly right!
• In spite of how bright it appears, the moon actually only reflects 7% of the light the sun’s light. By comparison, the earth reflects 39%, Jupiter and Saturn’s moons reflect 60-90%, and Neptune reflects 73%. If the moon reflected more light than it did, we would have a hard time seeing much of the universe for most of the year!
• In a similar vein, the other planets are just so positioned that they don’t hinder our view of the night sky. Mars only comes close to earth once every 26 months and reflects only 15% of its light. Venus reflects 65% of its light, but because it lies between the earth and sun, we see very little of its light. If Mars and Venus were switched, Venus would be ten times brighter all night long, and we’d have a hard time seeing anything near its position in the sky. Switch Mars with Jupiter, and viewing distant galaxies would be impossible.
• The dust cloud from the galactic spiral arms that- as  I mentioned in the previous post- shield our solar system from lethal levels of radiation also block out much of the light from the rest of the galaxy. Other galaxies are made visible to us.
• Nebulae in our galaxy are relatively dark and very far from us. Things could have been very different. The Orion Nebula (located in Orion’s sword) is the closest “star nursery” to earth, and it blocks out a patch of sky the diameter of two moons. If, however, the Orion Nebula were switched, say, with the Tarantula Nebula, a full quarter of the night sky would be blocked out, and the nebula would be bright enough to cast shadows! We’d have a hard time seeing much in that case!
• Our galactic cluster is small and spread out, ensuring our ability to see many light years beyond our own galaxy.

As I hope you’re beginning to see, God not only cared about our ability to survive on our home planet, but He also wanted us to be able to witness creation. Of course, if you don’t believe that God made it all, all you’re left to say is: “What a wonder that we dwell in a galaxy in which we can see all its wonders!” But who believes in us getting this lucky?

Darwinistic "Tree of Life"

Dr. Geoffrey Simmons once wrote that if evolution is the explanation, then evolution has a lot of explaining to do. When it comes to attempting to trace the supposed macro-evolution of present-day flora and fauna through the fossil record, Dr. Simmons is very, very right. If evolution took place through small adaptions that culminated in major changes, one must ask how these changes took place and where all of the “missing links” went. Here’s a few examples of creatures which are too complex for adaptation over millions, nay billions, of years to explain away. And if someone were to theorize a mechanism to bring this adaptation about, there is certainly no fossil evidence for it. As one of my agnostic friends insists, those who assert a claim are responsible to validate that claim…..

• Bombardier beetles fire off hydrogen peroxide and hydroquinone from separate glands in its abdomen. When combined, the exothermic reaction blasts predators at 500 bursts per second. How did the beetles choose those two chemicals out of the thousands available on this planet? Where are the transitional forms that developed the glands, chemicals, and firing mechanisms?
• The various species of whales can dive thousands of feet, adjust the pressure in various parts of their bodies to withstand the crushing weight of the water around them, adjust spermaceti in their heads to regulate buoyancy, store additional oxygen in muscle tissue for extended diving, and hunt by blowing a wall of bubbles to trap krill. How did they develop these abilities? Where are the transitional forms?
• The amoeba- a single-celled organism- can extend a “false foot” in any direction as it moves to attack food or escape a toxin or a predator. It lacks any apparent ancestors, yet is too complex to have been anything like the “simple” single-celled organisms mentioned by the Darwinists.
• Consider also the “migrating” body parts of some types of sea life. Leftvents have anuses that migrate from their left side to mid-line later in life, and flounder’s eyes migrate when they bury themselves in the sand. (Incidentally, one species of leftvent known as “netdevils” consist of females who function as predators and males who function as parasites, since they attach to the females and gain nourishment from their host’s circulatory system.) How did such features adapt? How did one species develop a parasitic and a predatory distinction between genders? And what evolutionary impetus necessitates a mobile anus, anyway?
• Some microbes suck out the chloroplasts of other microbes to create an internal food manufacturing system. The sea slug elysia does the same thing to seaweed. They are animals that depend on photosynthesis and nutrients from their prey for survival. How did they learn to do this?
• Fleas jump many times their body length with an acceleration of up to 100Gs. When they bite, their saliva injects blood thinner and vasodilator to prevent the blood vessel from clotting.  How did this adaptation take place?
• Nudibranchs are a type of sea slug that can swallow nerve toxins from sea anenomes and jellyfish and transfer them to their cerata to be used as a defense mechanism. If the ancestors of the nudibranchs had to develop this ability over time, how exactly did that work? Wouldn’t the first wave of ancestors be killed off?
• Cockroaches can survive over nine times the amount of radiation a human can. Their antannae alone have over 130 segments. They have an “extra” brain in their lower abdomens. They can carry a variety of pathogens yet not contract the diseases. They secrete a “suit of armor” upwards of seven times throughout their lifetimes which helps keep moisture in and bacteria out. They have a second set of teeth in their stomachs. Where is the precedent in the insect world for a second brain in the abdomen or a second set of teeth in the stomach? Did the 130-segment antennae develop all at once or gradually? How did they develop the ability to molt and secrete a new coat in such a short time?

How did all of these creatures evolve in the Darwinian sense? Gradual evolution seems nigh on impossible, yet here they are. Few serious scientists believe in punctuated equilibrium, yet if transitional forms do exist thanks to gradual macro-evolution, 99% of them have yet to show up in the fossil record. There is simply no clear-cut evidence for Darwinism in the fossil record. Why then has Darwinism persisted in the scientific community? The religious fervour surrounding Darwinism is curious. One would think the much-vaunted intellects of our day would appreciate some rigorous criticism so that they could more accurately get to the bottom of the “mystery” of how life originated.

Strangely, as James Lovelock pointed out in his book Gaia: A New Look at Life on Earth, “Things have taken a strange turn in recent years; almost the full circle from Galileo’s famous struggle with the theological establishment. It is the scientific establish that now forbids heresy.” Perhaps Intelligent Design is a better explanation in a scientific sense after all. True, that means postulating the existence of a Being that isn’t strictly detectable in the normal sense, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t evidence for His existence. And, as I’ve pointed out before, the ID vs. Darwinism debate only pits one metaphysical concept against another. Naturalism is a metaphysical concept which is ultimately unprovable by science, and Theism is a metaphysical concept which is just as ultimately unprovable by science. As such, the answer to the question of origins will never be strictly within the realm of science. It is ultimately in the realm of metaphysics that the solution will present itself.

The question is: which concept is there more evidence for? Job had the answer thousands of years ago:

“But ask now the beasts, and they shall teach thee; and the fowls of the air, and they shall tell thee: Or speak to the earth, and it shall teach thee: and the fishes of the sea shall declare unto thee. Who knoweth not in all these that the hand of the LORD hath wrought this?” (Job 12:7-9)

Some scientists have been quite outspoken concerning their desire to purge religion from their ranks. In fact, a quick perusal of Paul Z. Myers’ blog Pharyngula will make it obvious that religion in general, and Christianity in particular, is to blame for most of the world’s evils. The major complaint against the use of religion in science is that (supposedly) science that seeks out a non-naturalistic cause isn’t very good science at all. I would like to suggest that there is a problem with religion mingling with science. It’s just that I disagree with some scientists on what the religious problem is. You see, modern science’s idea that naturalism alone can explain the universe isn’t just unscientific (springing from the field of metaphysics). It’s also an idea that has its roots in the Church.

Long before Darwin penned his Origin of Species, liberal Christian theology was already moving away from belief in a Creator that is also involved in His creation. Here’s a brief list of their arguments:

1. Some theologians believed that God would get more glory if He could simply produce matter, energy, and scientific laws to govern the universe. Cosmological and biological evolution would take place- in their minds- due to laws already put into place. In this view, special divine action should be minimized since Creation revealed a Designer God, not divine intervention. (Thomas Burnet [1635-1715], Anglican cleric, Telluris Theoria Sacra; John Ray [1627-1705], botanist and natural theologian, The Wisdom of God Manifested in the Works of Creation.)
2. Deistic theologians argued that religious belief was solely a product of reason and not an act of faith. The Deists rejected any doctrines that could not be deduced from philosophy or nature. If it could not be deduced, it was not essential for salvation. Ultimately, they rejected the Bible’s concept of an active, providential God. (Matthew Tindal [1657-1733], deist, Christianity as Old as the Creation)
3. Other scientists and theologians believed that God’s direct involvement with His creation would result in perfection. Evil as a moral category exists, and- to the mind of the theologically-minded scientists- evil existed in nature in the form of imperfections. To their mind, God clearly did not and does not directly intervene in nature. Looking at the geological records of his day, Thomas Burnet insisted that our world was a creation that was “lying in rubbish.” Philosopher David Hume (1711-1776) wrote that “a perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures.” Hume believed that God must be only transcendent and not immanent since such evil exists.
4. Finally, a movement within the church sprang up in the 1700s that sought to downplay and disregard the miracles of the Bible. Peter Annet argued against the existence of miracles because he believed that a God of infinite knowledge would not need to intervene. He could simply make things work out right the first time. He also believed that God would create a simple clockwork system that never needed to be adjusted and that God, being immutable, would never need or want to “contradict” His own laws.

The result of the above four movements was that naturalism was accepted first in the Church and then in the Academy. Because the Church was an avid supporter of discovering truths about Our Father’s World, theology dramatically influenced science. Naturalism became a self-fulfilling prophecy of sorts. Because the world was interpreted naturalistically by the theologians and then the scientists, all findings were viewed as supporting naturalism. The problem, of course, is that naturalism is not a finding of science. It was presupposed in the theological and philosophical realm and then superimposed on the scientific realm. Philosophical and theological naturalism came before scientific naturalism.

By the time of Erasmus Darwin, the grandfather of Charles Darwin, the results of naturalism in the theological realm bore fruit. Here are the words of Erasmus Darwin in his Zoonomia:

“The world itself might have been generated, rather than created; that is, it might have been gradually produced from very small beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles, rather than by a sudden evolution by the whole by the Almighty fiat. What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of the great architect! The Cause of Causes! Parent of Parents!”

In the 1800s, Charles Darwin’s own Origin of Species made many theological and philosophical arguments for his theory. In the first place, why would God make things “imperfectly” or with a boring pattern? He argued that patterns in species were “utterly inexplicable if species are independent creations.”(Origin, 73-74) He also argued that “the best adapted plants and animals were not created for oceanic islands, for man has unintentionally stocked them far more fully and perfectly than did nature.” (Origin, 398) In other words, Darwin believed that God would include more variety in nature and would put every living thing precisely in a habitat that would cause it to multiply the most rapidly. He also believed that the variety in “important” organs between species and within the same genus was nonsensical in the creationist’s paradigm. (153, 156) Why would God do reinvent the wheel?

Why would God create birds with webbed feet that rarely swam, and why would He create birds with no webbing that stayed mainly in the water? How can this be the product of special creation? (177) What about the “waste” of pollen in trees and plants? (469-470) All of this makes God a “mockery and deception,” says Darwin. (165-166) Note that Darwin says this as a person who believed in God, not as an atheist. He is careful to keep a lofty view of God intact when he argues that speaking of God as a Designer makes God seem too human. We should not “assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man.” (181-182) It’s fairly obvious to make the connection between the liberal theology in the centuries preceding Darwin and what Darwin believed he saw while writing Origin of the Species. The Church created Darwin.