I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist (25 page)

At a molecular level there is no trace of the evolutionary transition from fish ¨amphibian¨reptile¨mammal. So amphibia, always traditionally considered intermediate between fish and the other terrestrial vertebrates, are in molecular terms as far from fish as any group of reptiles or mammals! To those well acquainted with the traditional picture of vertebrate evolution the result is truly astonishing.
¹⁷

So even though all organisms share a common genetic code with varying degrees of closeness, that code has ordered the amino acids in proteins in such a way that the basic types are in molecular isolation from one another. There are no Darwinian transitions, only distinct molecular gaps. Darwinists cannot explain the presence of these molecular gaps by natural selection any more than they can explain the presence of huge gaps in the fossil record (which we’ll talk about next).

What About the Fossil Record?

So let’s quickly review what we’ve seen so far. These are the five lines of evidence which show that natural selection could not have produced new life forms:

1. Genetic limits

2. Cyclical change

3. Irreducible complexity

4. Nonviability of transitional forms

5. Molecular isolation

But doesn’t the fossil record support the Darwinian theory? Let’s take a look.

Without the benefit of today’s technology, Charles Darwin could not recognize the problems his theory faced at the cellular level. However, he did recognize that the fossil record posed a big problem for his theory because it didn’t show gradualism. That’s why he wrote, “Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain, and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory.”
¹⁸

But Darwin thought that further fossil discoveries would reveal that his theory was true. Time has proven him wrong. Contrary to what you may hear in the general media, the fossil record has turned out to be a complete embarrassment for Darwinists. If Darwinism were true, we would have found thousands, if not millions, of transitional fossils by now. Instead, according to the late Harvard paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould (an evolutionist),

The history of most fossil species includes two features particularly inconsistent with gradualism: 1). Stasis. Most species exhibit no directional change during their tenure on earth. They appear in the fossil record looking much the same as when they disappear; Morphological change is usually limited and directionless. 2). Sudden Appearance. In any local area, a species does not arise gradually by the steady transformation of its ancestors; it appears all at once and ‘fully formed.’
¹⁹

In other words, Gould is admitting that fossil types appear suddenly, fully formed, and remain the same until extinction without any directional change—exactly what one would expect to find if creation were true.

But instead of adopting creationism, Gould rejected the gradualism of Darwinism and formulated a theory he called “Punctuated Equilibria” (PE). PE suggests that species evolved faster over a shorter period of time, thereby explaining the huge fossil gaps. Gould had no natural mechanism by which this could have occurred, but since he was an atheist he had to explain the fossil record somehow. This is a classic case of allowing your prejudices to taint your observations.

But we digress. The main point here is that the fossil record actually lines up better with supernatural creation than with macroevolu-tion. Indeed, there aren’t missing links—there’s a missing chain!

There is no chain because nearly all of the major groups of animals known to exist appear in the fossil record abruptly and fully formed in strata from the Cambrian period (which many scientists estimate to have occurred between 600 and 500 million years ago). Jonathan Wells writes, “The fossil evidence is so strong, and the event so dramatic, that it has become known as ‘the Cambrian explosion,’ or ‘biology’s big bang.’”
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This evidence, of course, is completely inconsistent with Darwinism. All animal groups appear separately, fully formed, and at the same time. That’s not evidence of gradual evolution but of instantaneous creation. So the Darwinian tree we are so used to seeing doesn’t properly illustrate the real fossil record. In fact, as Wells observes, “if any botanical analogy were appropriate, it would be a
lawn
rather than a tree.”
²¹
And that lawn would have patches of different grasses or plants separated by large areas of nothing but dirt.

At this point you may be thinking, “But what about the skull progression we’re so used to seeing? Doesn’t it appear that man has evolved from apes?”

A number of years ago I (Norm) debated a Darwinist who lined up skulls on a table to illustrate that evolution had occurred. “Ladies and gentlemen, right here is the evidence for evolution,” he declared.

Gee, how can you ignore the fossils? The skulls look like they’re in a progression. They look as if they could be ancestrally related. Is this good evidence for Darwinism? No, it’s not any better than the evidence that the large kettle evolved from the teaspoon.

The problem for the Darwinists is that the fossil record cannot establish ancestral relationships. Why not? Because, according to Michael Denton, “99 percent of the biology of any organism resides in its soft anatomy, which is inaccessible in a fossil.”
²²
In other words, it’s extremely difficult to discover the biological makeup of a creature by looking at its fossil remains. Jonathan Wells observes, “The fossil evidence is open to many interpretations because individual specimens can be reconstructed in a variety of ways, and because the fossil record cannot establish ancestor-descendant relationships.”
²³

But this doesn’t stop the Darwinists. Since Darwinism
has
to be true because of their prior philosophical commitment, Darwinists
have
to find evidence supporting it. So instead of admitting that fossils can’t establish ancestral relationships, Darwinists take the one percent that fossils tell them and then use the other 99 percent of leeway to depict their fossil discoveries as filling any gap they want. With such vast leeway and no facts to constrain them, Darwinists have been free to creatively build entire “missing links” from fossil remains as trivial as a single tooth. This is why many so-called “missing links” have later been exposed as frauds or mistakes.
²⁴
Henry Gee, chief science writer for
Nature,
writes, “To take a line of fossils and claim that they represent a lineage is not a scientific hypothesis that can be tested, but an assertion that carries the same validity as a bedtime story—amusing, perhaps even instructive, but not scientific.”
²⁵

Not only is the fossil record inadequate to establish ancestral relationships; in light of what we now know about the irreducibly complex nature of biological systems,
the fossil record is irrelevant to the question.
The similarity of structure or anatomy between types (sometimes called homology) also tells us nothing about common ancestry. Michael Behe writes,

Anatomy is, quite simply, irrelevant to the question of whether evolution could take place on the molecular level. So is the fossil record. It no longer matters whether there are huge gaps in the fossil record or whether the record is as continuous as that of U.S. presidents. And if there are gaps, it does not matter whether they can be explained plausibly. The fossil record has nothing to tell us about whether the interactions of 11-cts-retinal with rhodopsin, transducin, and phos-phodiesterase [irreducibly complex systems] could have developed step-by-step.
²⁶

So, according to Behe, biology dwarfs anatomy on the question of the plausibility of macroevolution. Just as the contents of a book provide far more information than its cover, the biology of a creature provides far more information than its skeletal structure. Nevertheless, Darwinists have long argued that similarity of structure between, say, apes and humans is evidence of common ancestry (or common descent).
Does it
ever dawn on them that similarity of structure may be evidence of a common
designer rather than a common ancestor?
²⁷
After all, in a world governed by certain physical and chemical laws, perhaps only a certain range of anatomical structures will be conducive to animals designed to walk on two legs. Since we all have to live in the same biosphere, we should expect some creatures to have similar designs.

Moreover, while apes may have a similar structure to humans, what is often overlooked is the fact that apes and humans bear almost no resemblance to snakes, fungus, and trees. But according to Darwinism, all living things have evolved from the same ancestor. To posit Darwinism, you must be able to explain the vast
dissimilarity
between living things. You must explain how the palm tree, the peacock, the octopus, the locust, the bat, the hippopotamus, the porcupine, the sea horse, the Venus flytrap, the human, and mildew, for example, have all descended from the first irreducibly complex life without intelligent intervention. You also have to explain how the first life and the universe came into existence as well. Without viable explanations, which Darwinists have failed to provide, it takes too much faith to be a Darwinist.
And that’s why we don’t have enough faith to be Darwinists.

I
S
I
NTELLIGENT
D
ESIGN AN
I
NTELLIGENT
A
LTERNATIVE
?

Much more could be said about macroevolution, but space does not permit us to go any further. Nevertheless, a reasonable conclusion can be drawn from the data we have investigated in this chapter. In light of the fossil record, molecular isolation, transitional difficulties, irreducible complexity, cyclical change, and genetic limits (and the fact that they can’t explain the origin of the universe or of first life), you would think Darwinists might finally admit that their theory doesn’t fit the observable evidence. Instead, Darwinists are still providing unsubstantiated “just-so” stories that actually contradict scientific observation. They continue to insist that evolution is a fact, fact, fact!

We agree that evolution is a fact, but not in the sense the Darwinists mean it. If you define evolution as “change,” then certainly living beings have evolved. But this evolution is on the micro, not the macro level. As we have seen, there’s not only a lack of evidence for macroevolution;
there’s positive evidence that it has not occurred.

If macroevolution isn’t true, then what is? Well, if there’s no natural explanation for the origin of new life forms, then there must be an intelligent explanation. It’s the only other option. There’s no halfway house between intelligence and nonintelligence. Either intelligence was involved or it wasn’t. But Darwinists don’t like this option. So once they exhaust their ability to adequately defend their own position with unbiased scientific evidence (which is very quickly), Darwinists typically turn their guns on the Intelligent Design people—those of us who believe there’s intelligence behind the universe and life. Here are their typical objections and our responses:
²⁸

Objection: Intelligent Design is not science.

Answer:
As we have seen, science is a search for causes, and there are only two types of causes: intelligent and nonintelligent (natural). The Darwinists’ claim that Intelligent Design is not science is based on their biased definition of science. But that’s arguing in a circle! If your definition of science rules out intelligent causes beforehand, then you’ll never consider Intelligent Design science.

The irony for the Darwinists is this: if Intelligent Design is not science, then neither is Darwinism. Why? Because both Darwinists and Intelligent Design scientists are trying to discover what happened in the past. Origin questions are forensic questions, and thus require the use of the forensic science principles we already have discussed. In fact, for Darwinists to rule out Intelligent Design from the realm of science, in addition to ruling out themselves they would also have to rule out archaeology, cryptology, criminal and accident forensic investigations, and the Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence (SETI). These are all legitimate forensic sciences that look into the past for intelligent causes. Something must be wrong with the Darwinists’ definition of science.

Objection: Intelligent Design commits the God-of-the-Gaps fallacy.

Answer:
The God-of-the-Gaps fallacy occurs when someone falsely believes that God caused the event when it really was caused by undiscovered natural phenomena. For example, people used to believe that lightning was caused directly by God. There was a gap in our knowledge of nature, so we attributed the effect to God. Darwinists assert that theists are doing the same thing by claiming that God created the universe and life. Are they correct? No, for a number of reasons.