I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (23 page)

Now let’s review the facts: Sagan realized that the human brain has the information content of twenty million books. He also realized that’s drastically more specified and complex than a string of prime numbers. Then why did he think the simpler message required an intelligent being but not the one twenty million books long? We might also ask Sagan and his fellow Darwinists a question of similar weight: If
intelligent
human beings can’t create anything close to the human brain, why should we expect
nonintelligent
natural laws to do so?

The Darwinist response will usually involve “natural selection.” Is this sufficient to account for new life forms? After all, it’s a long way from one cell to the human brain.

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HAT
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BOUT
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IFE
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Before discussing the origin of new life forms, we need to revisit the problem of the origin of first life. It certainly is a long way from one cell to the human brain, but the journey may be even longer from nonliving chemicals to the first cell. That’s the most difficult problem for Darwinists. Where did the
first
life come from?

Do you see the magnitude of this problem for Darwinists? If Darwinists don’t have an explanation for the first life, then what’s the point of speaking about new life forms? The process of macroevolution, if it’s possible at all, can’t even begin unless there’s preexisting life.

But as we saw in the last chapter, this doesn’t stop the Darwinists. Against all empirical and forensic evidence, Darwinists make up a “just-so” story—spontaneous generation or panspermia—that magically gives them the first life they need. This isn’t science—this is a joke. In fact it reminds us of a joke. Steve Martin used to say, “I know how you can be a millionaire and never pay taxes! First, get a million dollars, Okay, now . . .”

The Darwinists’ position is even more problematic when you consider that they don’t even have an explanation for the source of the nonliving chemicals, much less an explanation for life. As we saw in chapter 3, one of the most profound questions to ask is, “If there is no God, why is there something rather than nothing at all?” We saw that the atheists have no plausible answer to this question. Suggesting a possibility is not enough—they have to present evidence if they are going to be scientific. It’s obvious they don’t know where the universe came from. A good box top (worldview) should be able to plausibly explain all of the data. If it can’t answer the fundamental questions of the origin of the world or the origin of life, it’s not a viable box top. It’s time to look for a new one.

Even though we see that the Darwinist box top is fundamentally flawed, we need to look at a few of the claims the Darwinists make regarding the origin of new life forms. Their theory is macroevolution.

Microevolution vs. Macroevolution

You remember macroevolution—from the goo to you via the zoo. It’s the belief that all life forms have descended from a common ancestor—the first one-celled creature—and all of this has happened by natural processes without any intelligent intervention. God was not involved. It has been a completely blind process.

Darwinists say this has happened by natural selection. But the term “natural selection” is a misnomer. Since the process of evolution is, by definition, without intelligence, there is no “selection” at all going on. It’s a blind process. The term “natural selection” simply means that the fittest creatures survive. So what? That’s true by definition—the fittest survive (this is called a tautology—a circular argument that doesn’t prove anything). Logically, these are the creatures that are best equipped genetically or structurally to deal with changing environmental conditions (that’s why they survive).

As an example of “natural selection,” consider what happens to bacteria attacked by antibiotics. When bacteria survive a bout with antibiotics and multiply, that surviving group of bacteria may be resistant to that antibiotic. The surviving bacteria are resistant to that antibiotic because the parent bacteria possessed the genetic capacity to resist, or a rare biochemical mutation somehow helped it survive (we say “rare” because mutations are nearly always harmful). Since the sensitive bacteria die, the surviving bacteria multiply and now dominate.

Darwinists say that the surviving bacteria have evolved. Having adapted to the environment, the surviving bacteria provide us with an example of evolution. Fair enough, but what kind of evolution? The answer we’re about to give is absolutely critical. In fact, outside of the philosophical presuppositions we’ve been exposing, defining “evolution” is perhaps the greatest point of confusion in the creation-evolution controversy. This is where Darwinian errors and false claims begin to multiply like bacteria if not checked by those who believe observation is important to science. Here’s what observation tells us:
the surviving
bacteria always stay bacteria.
They do not evolve into another type of organism. That would be macroevolution. Natural selection has never been observed to create new types.

But macroevolution is exactly what Darwinists claim from the data. They say that these observable
micro
changes can be extrapolated to prove that unobservable macroevolution has occurred. They make no distinction between
micro
evolution and
macro
evolution, and thus use the evidence for micro to prove macro. By failing to make this critical distinction, Darwinists can dupe the general public into thinking that any observable change in any organism proves that all life has evolved from the first one-celled creature.

This is why it is essential that the right distinctions be made and that all hidden assumptions be exposed when discussing the creation-evolution controversy. So if someone ever asks you, “Do you believe in evolution?” you should ask that person, “What do you mean by evolution? Do you mean micro- or macroevolution?” Microevolution has been observed; but it cannot be used as evidence for macroevolution, which has never been observed.

Darwinists are masters at defining the term “evolution” broadly enough so that evidence in one situation might be counted as evidence in another. Unfortunately for them, the public is beginning to catch on to this tactic, thanks largely to the popular works of Berkeley law professor Phillip Johnson. Johnson first exposed this Darwinistic sleight of hand with his groundbreaking book
Darwin on Trial.
That’s where he points out that, “None of the ‘proofs’ [for natural selection] provides any persuasive reason for believing that natural selection can produce new species, new organs, or other major changes, or even minor changes that are permanent.”
²
Biologist Jonathan Wells agrees when he writes, “Biochemical mutations cannot explain the large-scale changes in organisms that we see in the history of life.”
³

Why can’t natural selection do the job? Here are five reasons it can’t:

1. Genetic Limits—
Darwinists say that microevolution within types proves that macroevolution has occurred. If these small changes can occur over a short period of time, think what natural selection can do over a long period of time.

Unfortunately for Darwinists, genetic limits seem to be built into the basic types. For example, dog breeders always encounter genetic limits when they intelligently attempt to create new breeds of dogs. Dogs may range in size from the Chihuahua to the Great Dane, but despite the best attempts of intelligent breeders, dogs always remain dogs. Likewise, despite the best efforts of intelligent scientists to manipulate fruit flies, their experiments have never turned out anything but more fruit flies (and usually crippled ones at that).
⁴
This is especially significant because the short life of fruit flies allows scientists to test many years of genetic variation in a short period of time.

Most importantly, the comparison between natural selection and the artificial selection that breeders do is completely invalid, as table 6.1 demonstrates. The biggest difference is the fact that artificial selection is intelligently guided while natural selection is not.

Confusing intelligent with nonintelligent processes is a common mistake of Darwinists. This was the case when I (Norm) debated humanist Paul Kurtz in 1986 on the topic of evolution. The debate, moderated by TV apologist John Ankerberg, produced this exchange regarding macroevolution:

Geisler: [Chandra] Wickramasinghe
[who is an atheist]
said,“believing that life came by chance is like believing that a Boeing 747 resulted from a tornado going through a junk yard.” You have to have a lot of faith to believe that!

Kurtz: Well, the Boeing 747 evolved. We can go back to the Wright brothers and see that first kind of airplane they created . . .

Geisler: Created?

Kurtz: Yes, but . .

Ankerberg: By intelligence or by chance? [Laughter]

Kurtz: There was a period of time in which these forms changed . . .

Ankerberg: But didn’t they create those airplanes using intelligence?

Kurtz: I was using the analogy that Dr. Geisler was using.

Geisler: Well, you’re helping my argument! [Laughter] You ought to drop that one and find another one!

Kurtz: No, no, I think the point I make is a good one because there have been changes from the simplest to the more complex airplanes.

Geisler: Yes, but those changes were by intelligent intervention!

Indeed, directional change in airplanes
by intelligence
proves nothing about the possibility of directional change in living things
without
intelligence.
As we’ll see in the next section, directional change in living things by natural selection has not been observed. And directional change in living things
with intelligence
hits genetic limits. So even when it is intelligently guided, evolution hits walls.
In other words, even when
scientists intelligently manipulate creatures with an end in mind—which
is the antithesis of the blind Darwinian process—macroevolution still
doesn’t work!
If intelligent scientists cannot break genetic barriers, why should we expect nonintelligent natural selection to do so?

2. Cyclical Change—
Not only are there genetic limits to change within types, but the change within types appears to be cyclical. In other words, changes are not directional toward the development of new life forms, as macroevolutionary theory requires, but they simply shift back and forth within a limited range. For example, Darwin’s finches had varying beak sizes, which correlated with the weather.
⁵
Larger beaks helped crack larger, harder seeds during droughts, and smaller beaks worked fine when wetter weather brought an abundance of smaller, softer seeds. When the weather became drier, the proportion of finches with larger beaks grew relative to the smaller-beaked finches. The proportion reversed itself following a sustained period of wet weather. Notice that no new life forms came into existence (they always remained finches); only the relative proportion of existing large-beaked to small-beaked finches changed. Notice also that natural selection cannot explain how finches came into existence in the first place. In other words, natural selection may be able to explain the
survival
of a species, but it cannot explain the
arrival
of a species.

3. Irreducible Complexity—
In 1859, Charles Darwin wrote, “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.”
⁶
We now know that there are many organs, systems, and processes in life that fit that description.

One of those is the cell. In Darwin’s day the cell was a “black box”—a mysterious little part of life that no one could see into. But now that we have the ability to peer into the cell, we see that life at the molecular level is immeasurably more complex than Darwin ever dreamed. In fact, it is irreducibly complex. An irreducibly complex system is “composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.”
⁷