Evolution is metaphysical

“Today the theory of evolution is about as much open to doubt as the theory that the earth goes round the sun.” – Richard Dawkins.

This statement is true but conditional.   Only in academia is the theory of evolution accepted as a fact.    Evolution is, however, useless to the real world of working men and women.  Even in popular culture, evolution is generally not questioned.  It is doubted but not questioned.  The political and social outcomes of belief in evolution do affect our Western society.  Racism, genocide, abortion on demand, euthanasia, growing atheism, general humanist philosophy, sexual promiscuity, and directed attacks on Christianity have led to a general apathy towards Christian ethics and are the product of evolution’s philosophical agenda.  Evolution is believed to be a fact and if it is true then God does not exist, sin is a fabrication of the imagination of the mind, and Christ died to no avail.  If evolution is a fact, even if God does exist, He is irrelevant.

Arguments are made against the growing popularity of creationism and intelligent design.  We are told these are

Evolution is a fact - in cartoons! (click to enlarge pictures).

Evolution is a fact – in cartoons! (click to enlarge pictures).

religiously based distortions of natural phenomena; not science-based.  Science is materialistic based.  It deals only in the realm of the empirical; what can be seen, tasted, touched, heard, and smelt.  If this is so then evolution must have a basis in material fact.  If it doesn’t, then just as ID and creation science recognize a metaphysical reality, so must evolution.   If it doesn’t then it is a purely philosophical belief and it is this belief that distorts the reality of natural phenomena.

So what are the facts of evolution that prove molecules spontaneously produce mankind?  There are over 8 million species of living beings on the planet at this time. More are being discovered.   With this enormous diversity of life, the surety of evidence for evolution must clearly be manifest even to the layperson.  This remarkable process must have rules and laws and we must have a thorough knowledge of its mechanisms. Since evolution is a fact, the evidence proving it to be so ought to be sufficient to bear the burden of proof needed to account for the wondrous adaptations of gills and lungs, wings and fins, tails and feet and the human being? tug of war

Evolution is often taught as if it were a discovery. Discoveries are evidence-based.  However, Darwin did not discover evolution.  He proposed that the forces of nature such as the need for food, reproduction, predation, habitat, the changing seasons, and random catastrophes had influences on anatomical, behavioral and biochemical variation within populations of living things.    Darwin extrapolated this idea of natural selection as an agent of change to suggest that all living things were related through an ancient ancestry of descent with modification.  Through time, natural selection was responsible for the divergence of living forms into the millions of beings that now inhabit the planet.

Darwin knew that he needed evidence to show that this level of natural selection had been at work for millions of years and his theory would be confirmed as fact by hard evidence.  His thought that homologies like the arm of an ape, the wing of a bat and the flipper of a seal were a kind of forensic evidence of common descent with modification.  He was certain that in time fossils would demonstrate the fine gradations of changes in living forms that led to the production of life as we know it.  He believed that similar ecosystems found throughout the world were occupied by different species in similar niches. He thought this might be the result of evolution in action.  However, he had as many criticisms of his proposal as he did circumstantial evidence.   Has any of this changed?  Is there certain evidence that all of Nature has evolved from one or a few original life forms and that these came to be through some spontaneous generation of chemical substances into biochemical substances and these into living substances?whale's tale

“Of course in science there are things that are open to doubt and things need to be discussed. But among the things that science does know, evolution is about as certain as anything we know.”  -Richard Dawkins.

“The theory of evolution by cumulative natural selection is the only theory we know of that is in principle capable of explaining the existence of organized complexity.”  -Richard Dawkins.

“Today, the theory of evolution is an accepted fact for everyone but a fundamentalist minority, whose objections are based not on reasoning but on doctrinaire adherence to religious principles.”  -James Watson.

Let’s look at a typical textbook remarks on biology to learn what evidence is used in support of an evolutionary theory.

From Biology: The unity and diversity of life. Seventh Edition.  Wadsworth Publishing.soup

“The principle of evolution guides efforts to make sense of scattered and sometimes puzzling scraps of evidence of past life.  It guides the task of identifying and sorting out lines of descent, or lineages, that connect all species, past and present.  The fossil record and earth history yield evidence of evolutionary connectedness.  So do anatomical and biochemical comparisons.

We have fossils for about 250,000 species, and they provide rich insights into evolutionary history.  However, judging from the current sweep of diversity, there must have been many millions of ancient, now extinct species and we will not be able to recover fossils for most of them. …our record of past life is incomplete, with built-in biases.  The fossil record also is heavily biased toward certain environments.  Most of the species represented lived on land or in shallow seas that, through geologic uplifting, became part of continents.  We have few fossils from sediments beneath the ocean… Preservation is favored when organisms are buried rapidly in the absence of oxygen. “

Note that geology is not adequate to supply evidence.  It is biased and both oceans and lands have been far too disturbed through earth processes to expect the identification of lineages or connectedness among organisms.  Preservation occurs through rapid burial in marine environments.

Here is an abbreviated description of what is known of the origins of life:

Synthesis of organic compounds -the primordial soup.

“Even if amino acids did form …they wouldn’t last long.  Maybe more lasting bonds formed at the margins of seas.  Suppose proteins that formed on some clay…function as weak enzymes.  Perhaps selection was at work before the origin of cells…  Molecules could have assembled spontaneously, if so, their close association would have promoted chemical interactions.  Imagine an ancient sunlit day…  Suppose a certain enzyme can promote the formation of complex molecules from simple ones… Suppose finally that some aggregates of molecules harness energy… what kind of molecules could give this advantage? …  On the early earth, sunlight and energy alone could have driven the spontaneous formation of RNA molecules for information storage…. Although, existing RNA is too inept to serve this role…  The story of life’s origin will be incomplete.  Filling in the details will require imaginative sleuthing….

Researchers ran a simple program on one of the world’s most advance computers.  It contained information on simple compounds.  It was asked to subject the compounds to random competition.  Simple precursors evolved into interacting systems of large complex molecules.

Before cells there must have been protocells (which means before cells)…  We know that simple membranes can form sacs spontaneously, in many ways like cell membranes…  In short there are major gaps in the story of life’s origins…  There is strong evidence that chemical evolution could have led to structures characteristic of life… The first cells emerged as molecular extensions of the evolving universe… They may have originated in tidal flats…  Possibly they were little more than self-replicating… sacs of DNA…  The original bacteria gave rise to the archaebacteria and the eukarotes…    The original bacteria were anaerobic but then became aerobic…  Some cells became photosynthetic… and produce oxygen…  This prevented other cells from arising

From primordial earth to the present.

From primordial earth to the present?

spontaneously…   Aerobic (oxygen) respiration became the dominant pathway…  The eukaryotes … where did they come from? … Accidental partnerships must have formed countless times on the evolutionary road. .. Some resulted in the origin of mitochondrion, chloroplasts and other organelles. .. With their efficient metabolic strategies, the early protists underwent rapid divergences and adaptive radiation…”

From this point on the textbook describes the classification of plant and animal life.  This poor story is replete with “possibilities”, “must haves”, “suppositions” and “imaginations” and this should create doubt as to the limits of materialistic origins to anyone who reads these excerpts. There are no facts here.  The text goes on to describe the plants from algae, molds, mosses, vascular plants, ferns, cycads, evergreens, and flowering plants.  Every plant in existence or in fossil form can be placed into one of these groups of plants.  Those that are extinct are not intermediate to known forms.  The text then describes the animals from protozoa to jellyfish, sponges, worms, starfish, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals and man.  Several now extinct forms of life representing unique categories must be included in the animals such as the dinosaurs, flying reptiles like the pterosaurs, swimming reptiles like the plesiosaurs.  The Cambrian sediments contain a few phyla of organisms not found living on the planet today but represent completely unique categories of animal life forms.   Any attempt to associate fossil forms with today’s living forms through an ancestral relationship has been and continues to be fruitless.  One can synthesize such a relationship of ancestry from fossils to the present but this is a hypothesis itself without a way to prove, scientifically, that the relationships exist!  Not only are the intermediate forms missing but

All the lines connecting living forms are missing links… and they are missing.

All the lines connecting living forms are missing links… and they are still missing.

every form falls into a category quite discontinuous from the next.  This is the very opposite of the evidence needed to support evolution.

Everyone should know by now that the tree of life leading back to some unknown ancestral first cell has no support in reality.  The links that must have connected all mammals like the horse, elephant, whale, bat, dog, and man, are completely missing in the fossil strata.  And, much to Darwin’s own dismay there are no links connecting different forms that now exist, save for similar structures like the arm, head, eye, or pelvis.  The fundamental body plan of the mammals is a shared body plan but does this fact support a common ancestor through which the diverse forms have originated?  What is the evidence if it is not in the fossil record?  It is a hypothesis that cannot be tested.

If then the fossil record does not support the idea of innumerable intermediate life forms that must have existed for evolutionary biology to be true, where else is there to look?  Darwin had the very same question:

“Long before having arrived at this part of my work, a crowd of difficulties will have occurred to the reader. Some of them are so grave that to this day I can never reflect on them without being staggered; but, to the best of my judgment, the greater number are only apparent, and those that are real are not, I think, fatal to my theory.

These difficulties and objections may be classed under the following heads:-Firstly, why, if species have descended from other species by insensibly fine gradations, do we not everywhere see innumerable transitional forms? Why is not all nature in confusion instead of the species being, as we see them, well-defined?

Secondly, is it possible that an animal having, for instance, the structure and habits of a bat, could have been formed by the modification of some animal with wholly different habits? Can we believe that natural selection could produce, on the one hand, organs of trifling importance, such as the tail of a giraffe, which serves as a fly flapper, and, on the other hand, organs of such wonderful structure, as the eye, of which we hardly as yet fully understand the inimitable perfection?

As natural selection acts solely by the preservation of profitable modifications, each new form will tend in a fully-stocked country to take the place of, and finally to exterminate, its own less improved parent or other less-favoured forms with which it comes into competition. Thus extinction and natural selection will, as we have seen, go hand in hand. Hence, if we look at each species as descended from some other unknown form, both the parent and all the transitional varieties will generally have been exterminated by the very process of formation and perfection of the new form.

But, as by this theory innumerable transitional forms must have existed, why do we not find them embedded in

How did nature select for broccoli? Surely we know this much about evolution!

How did nature select for broccoli or Brussel’s sprouts? Surely we know this much about evolution!

countless numbers in the crust of the earth? It will be much more convenient to discuss this question in the chapter on the Imperfection of the Geological Record; and I will here only state that I believe the answer mainly lies in the record being incomparably less perfect than is generally supposed; the imperfection of the record being chiefly due to organic beings not inhabiting profound depths of the sea, and to their remains being embedded and preserved to a future age only in masses of sediment sufficiently thick and extensive to withstand an enormous amount of future degradation; and such fossiliferous masses can be accumulated only where much sediment is deposited on the shallow bed of the sea, whilst it slowly subsides. These contingencies will concur only rarely, and after enormously long intervals. Whilst the bed of the sea is stationary or is rising, or when very little sediment is being deposited, there will be blanks in our geological history. The crust of the earth is a vast museum; but the natural collections have been made only at intervals of time immensely remote.” Darwin from Origin of the Species Chapter 6.

No one who is informed believes that fossils are evidence for evolution.  Sedimentary geology has all but given over to catastrophic inundations of the ocean as the cause for at least 5 of the 10 major sedimentary rock formations of the geologic column.   If evolution occurred, the sediments do not capture it as a material fact.  Only mass extinctions are caught and there appear no transitional life forms when literally billions of these are required.

Homologous forms, embryology, shared biochemistry, and gene flow in natural populations of animals also known as

Darwin

Darwin

natural selection are all used as facts that support evolution.  But no one can prove that the hand of man and the flipper of a porpoise are in fact similar in bone structure because they shared a common ancestor.  Embryological development has long been repudiated as a proof of ancestral relatedness.  No informed scientists believe that embryo development somehow repeats an evolutionary history for that life form.  Shared biochemical pathways in the cells of all organisms are intrinsic necessities for carrying out the same metabolism.  All life needs sugars and amino acids to build cellular materials.  All living things need a way to use sugar and amino acids; whether they make them or eat them, living things metabolize them in the same way.  This is not proof of evolution.  And gene flow in natural populations leads to variety.  This is back to micro changes in life forms and not the level of evolution required by Darwin’s theory.

We could spend days discussing the complete failure of molecular biology to support evolution.  It doesn’t.  There are a few articles on this website that deal with these complex molecular facts, none of which support evolution.  Molecular biology is evidence against descent with modification.

 Research Note: Harvard Scientists Write the Book on Intelligent Design—in DNA.

By Dr. Fazale Rana  September 10, 2012

One of the most provocative arguments for intelligent design focuses on the recognition that DNA is an information-based system. Yet skeptics argue that biochemical information is not genuine information. Instead, they assert that when scientists refer to biochemical information, it is merely a scientific metaphor.  New research by a team from Harvard and Johns Hopkins University—in which researchers encoded an entire book into DNA—raises questions about this objection and helps to powerfully advance the case for a Creator.  So then why do people believe in evolution and on what basis?”

Even if the work on DNA storage never translates into practical applications, it still has profound implications for the creation/evolution controversy. These scientists were able to store information in DNA, because DNA is an information-storage system. In other words, it is hard for skeptics to argue that biochemical information is only a metaphor, when biotechnologists are using DNA to store an entire book’s worth of information.

The more that DNA becomes the focal point of new biotechnology application, the more the claim that life comes from the outworking of undirected evolutionary process becomes the same old tired story. It is time to “turn some pages.”

If there are no facts for evolution but only a commitment to materialistic explanations for life, what are we left with?  We have a belief that what can’t be proven by scientific facts has taken place, in spite of evidence to the contrary.  This is dependence on a metaphysical system of reality.  Evolution is a faith that molecules can spontaneously lead to man; knowledge of chemistry notwithstanding.  Evolution is a faith in the idea that all life has descended from a common ancestor even if there is no physical proof.  Evolution is a philosophical proposition that all life is related.  There is no evidence

freedom that all things are related.  Amazingly, even though evolution cannot be proven, even though there are no facts for the theory, in spite of chemical, mathematical, biological and biochemical evidence to the contrary people hold it as a fact.  Evolution is metaphysical. The only way that the chemistry, biology, and probabilities of random events can account for an evolutionary process of descent with modification is if unnatural conditions occurred in the past that violated the currently known laws of the universe.  This is the very definition of miraculous.

In effect, evolution is a belief system in metaphysical phenomena that have occurred in the past to create life the way we have come to know it.  A logical outcome of evolution is this metaphysical principle.  According to evolutionists it was neither intelligent nor purposeful and is beyond the scope of materialistic science to prove by empirical methods that it exists and that it worked to bring order out of chaos.  Evolutionists do not admit to this, however, though there is no other alternative to initiate the super-natural manipulation of materials, both inorganic and organic, to spontaneously create life on the planet.  The commitment of evolutionists, like Dawkins and other evolution_fish_feet_major_breakt_1027395academics, to this theory, has corrupted the simplicity of the scientific method and challenged the legitimacy of humans as rational beings.

I don’t believe in evolution because evolution does not prove its claim to be a purely materialistic answer to the problem of life. It is based on metaphysics but refuses to acknowledge this fact.  It is a delusional belief system that is no longer based on theory and has repeatedly proven by scientific investigations to be false.  It seems to me that the majority of people, scientists in particular, who believe that evolution is a reality, have yielded to the theory out of conformity and social pressure and possibly out of religious prejudice or ignorance.  This psychology of conformity is known as group-think. It is “the act or practice of reasoning or decision-making by a group, especially when characterized by uncritical acceptance or conformity to prevailing points of view; the tendency of a decision-making group to strive for consensus and to avoid critical examination of alternatives” (online dictionary).  If this is the case, those who hold to this persuasion are by definition deluded; they want to believe what is

Group think = conformity.

Group think = conformity.

false to avoid exclusion.   Another alternative is ignorance, which is conceivable given that group-think has enormous influence over individualism and guarantees social rejection to those who think for themselves.  It is much safer, in a closed community, to remain ignorant of the facts and to forego deliberate investigation of the prevailing paradigm.  Still, another reason for belief in evolution is atheism.  But this is a choice not to believe in God; evolution providing a convenient pseudo-scientific endorsement for rationalizing such a belief.  In many ways, evolution is a

religion that creates a cult-based following from which amoral political, social and cultural behaviors are propagated as acceptable.   Humanism is a social by-product of evolutionary theory.

It is the unfortunate state of affairs in Western civilization that evolution has been adopted as a popular scientific position on the basis of religious preference, conformity and or disinformation (ignorance).  This theory has failed in every way to account for life on the planet. Its social ramifications have corrupted the moral and ethical values of Western civilization, which was once based upon Judeo-Christian theology.  The result has been the decay of the moral fiber of society and the undermining of true freedoms.  The continued teaching of evolution as a relevant and useful description of reality will continue to denigrate the value of human life and weaken the fabric of constitutional law, which was founded on the belief that mankind has a relationship to a moral and righteous metaphysical intelligence – God.

The solution according to humanism.

The solution according to humanism.

Johnathan Wells explains in his book “Icons of Evolution” that scientists educated in evolutionary theory often unconsciously manipulate their data to fit the paradigm rather than critically examining whether the facts support evolution.  What is expected to be the truth from analysis of the data is often the interpretation given the data so that the results are never objectively scrutinized.  Scientific publications of relevant data quite typically make at least a marginal but irrelevant note as to how this data might have evolutionary significance.   So the myth of evolution being scientific continues to be propagated in academia.  After describing the controlling interests of the National Center for Science Education (NCSE) over academic freedom and the use of legal threats by the ACLU, school boards across the country are coerced from considering the use of educational material critical of Darwinian evolution.  Lawsuits have been brought against school evolution-cartoon-photos-27boards to protect the frailty of a theory that cannot stand on its own merit.  “The truth is that a surprising number of biologists quietly doubt or reject some of the grander claims of Darwinian evolution.  But at least in America-they must keep their mouths shut or risk condemnation, marginalization, and eventual expulsion from the scientific community. “ (Wells 2002, page 239).  The fact of the matter is that if evolution were put on trial there would be no evidence to convict.  It is an accepted academic myth based on unproven but imaginative assumptions.  Evolution is metaphysical.

Many in the field of biology have argued that critics of Darwinism offer no solution or alternate theory by which to redress the failures of evolution.  This is true.  The reason why no alternate explanation is available is that any field of biological endeavor will uncover evidence that cannot be explained by material causes and, sooner or later, will require explanations that are metaphysical.  This is already the argument against Darwinian evolution.  It holds that organic chemistry must eventually rise from inorganic events when this has yet to be proven. It is believed that biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology arise from purely materialistic phenomena, in spite of the fact that biomolecular chemistry does not work without design.  The foundation of evolution is natural selection on mutations of genetic information.   This is believed to have given rise to more than 2 million species of living beings.  The facts of biochemistry, molecular and cellular biology, statistical probabilities and genetics do not support this belief.  The facts are in opposition to evolutionary mechanisms.  Collectively, the hard data refutes the fundamentals of Darwinian evolution yet evolutionists still believe YouCanHaveItWebthat buried in the poorly defined details of evolutionary theory, evolution occurs.

If we are to believe that atoms, molecules, probabilities, and selection account for biology then we must appeal to a metaphysical apparatus that violated the known laws of chemistry, genetics, development, and information flow to transcend the infinitely small probabilities for the events that are required to promote, sustain and diversify life.  Things beyond nature had to intervene to give life a chance, especially when one observes the material facts.  Design theory is willing to recognize this fact.  For a design theorist, the argument is not who the designer is but that knowledge about life demands a designer or designers.  The very existence of life in all of its splendor and diversity is the ultimate evidence of design for nothing in the material world has the explanatory power to make sense of it otherwise.  No matter how much lecturing goes on, evolution is metaphysical.

 

 

Note:  –A myth is “a legend embodying (“nothing makes sense except in the light of evolution”) the convictions (evolution) of a people (biologists) as to their own origin (dust) and early history (fossils) and the heroes (Darwin, Dawkins, Gould, Sagan) connected with it.”

 

 

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