The Case for a Creator (11 page)

“But what if the other evidence for Darwinism is faulty—which, in fact, it is? You and I didn’t even go into the major flaws with a whole host of other evolution icons that are used to teach students today. There’s no shortage of books debunking Darwin. And without any compelling evidence for Darwinism in these areas, the whole question of human evolution is up for grabs.

“Instead, Darwinists assume the story of human life is an evolutionary one, and then they plug the fossils into a preexisting narrative where they seem to fit. The narrative can take several forms depending on one’s biases. As one anthropologist said, the process is ‘both political and subjective’ to the point where he suggested that ‘paleoanthropology has the form but not the substance of a science.’
⁵⁵

“In fact, a paleoanthropologist named Misia Landau wrote a book in which she talked about the similarities between the story of human evolution and old-fashioned folk tales. She concluded that many classic texts in the field were ‘determined as much by traditional narrative frameworks as by material evidence’ and that these themes ‘far exceed what can be inferred from the study of fossils alone.’ ”
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I took a few moments to soak in what Wells had said. He was right—certainly Java man’s fall from grace is instructive. It highlights how many people, including myself, became adherents of Darwinism through fossils or other evidence that later discoveries have either undermined or disproved. But the damage has already been done in many cases—the student, unaware of these subsequent findings, has already graduated into full-fledged naturalism.

As I leaf back through my time-worn copies of the
World Book
from my childhood, I can now see how faulty science and Darwinian presuppositions forced my former friend Java man into an evolutionary parade that’s based much more on imagination than reality. Unfortunately, he’s not the only example of that phenomenon, which is rife to the point of rendering the record of supposed human evolution totally untrustworthy.

“There is no encompassing theory of [human] evolution,” conceded Berkeley evolutionary biologist F. Clark Howell. “Alas, there never really has been.”
⁵⁷

OUTDATED, DISTORTED, FAKE, FAILURE

At the end of our discussion about the fossil record, I reflected back on the four images that had paved the way for my descent into atheism. I could only shake my head.

I was left with an origin-of-life experiment whose results have been rendered meaningless; a Tree of Life that had been uprooted by the Biological Big Bang of the Cambrian explosion; doctored embryo drawings that don’t reflect reality; and a fossil record that stubbornly refuses to yield the transitional forms crucial to evolutionary theory. Doubts piled on doubts.

Are these icons the sole evidence for Darwinism? Of course not. But their fate is illustrative of what happens time after time when macroevolution is put under the microscope of scrutiny. As I continued to investigate the scientific and philosophical underpinnings of evolutionary theory, in a long-standing probe that goes far beyond my encounter with Wells, I kept getting the same kind of results. No wonder a hundred scientists signed a public dissent from Darwinism.

Yet every time an icon of evolution is discredited, Darwinists claim with religious zeal that it was never really the whole story in the first place and insist that new findings really do buttress macroevolution. New narratives are created; new stories are told. The theory of evolution, now unsupported by the original icon, is never questioned; instead, it’s used afresh to justify a redesigned model.

For instance, several years ago Gould and a colleague proposed a new hypothesis, called “punctuated equilibrium,” in a desperate bid to explain away the fossil gaps. They suggested that radically new species somehow managed to develop rapidly among isolated populations, conveniently leaving behind no fossils to document the process. When these new creatures rejoined the larger, central populations, this resulted in the preserving of fossils that suggested the sudden appearance of new species. This model has been roundly criticized, and rightly so, for creating far more questions than answers.
⁵⁸
In the end, Darwinism has remained a philosophy still in search of convincing empirical data to back it up.

Similarly, neo-Darwinists have proudly displayed four-winged fruit flies as evidence that small genetic changes can yield major physiological differences in organisms. As Wells reveals in his book, however, these fruit flies must be carefully bred from three artificially maintained mutant strains—an exceedingly unlikely circumstance in nature.

What’s more, the males have difficulty mating, and because the extra wings are nonfunctional, these mutant flies are seriously handicapped. “As evidence for evolution,” he said, “the four-winged fruit fly is no better than a two-headed calf in a circus sideshow.”
⁵⁹

Once again, closer investigation revealed that even the latest icons cannot buttress the sagging credibility of evolutionary theory. As for me, I finally came to the point where I realized that I just didn’t have enough faith to maintain my belief in Darwinism. The evidence, in my estimation, was simply unable to support its grandest and most sweeping claims.

THE CRY OF “DESIGN!”

Before I packed my belongings and grabbed a cab for the airport, I wanted to ask Wells a few closing questions about the overall case for Darwinian evolution. “After years of studying this,” I said, “when you take the most current scientific evidence into consideration, what is your conclusion about Darwin’s theory?”

Wells’s answer began as soon as the words left my mouth. “My conclusion is that the case for Darwinian evolution is bankrupt,” he said firmly. “The evidence for Darwinism is not only grossly inadequate, it’s systematically distorted. I’m convinced that sometime in the not-too-distant future—I don’t know, maybe twenty or thirty years from now—people will look back in amazement and say, ‘How could anyone have believed this?’ Darwinism is merely materialistic philosophy masquerading as science, and people are recognizing it for what it is.

“Now, having said that,” he continued, “I still see room for some evolutionary processes in limited instances. But saying evolution works in some cases is far from showing that it accounts for everything.”

I asked, “If macroevolution has failed to prove itself to be a viable theory, then where do you believe the evidence of science is pointing?”

There was no equivocation in Wells’s voice. Speaking with conviction, he said: “I believe science is pointing strongly toward design. To me, as a scientist, the development of an embryo cries out, ‘Design!’ The Cambrian explosion—the sudden appearance of complex life, with no evidence of ancestors—is more consistent with design than evolution. Homology, in my opinion, is more compatible with design. The origin of life certainly cries out for a designer. None of these things make as much sense from a Darwinian perspective as they do from a design perspective.”

“Let me get this straight,” I said. “You’re not merely saying that the evidence for evolution is weak and therefore there must be an intelligent designer. You’re suggesting there is also affirmative evidence for a designer.”

“I am,” he relied. “However, the two are connected, because one of the main functions of Darwinian theory is to try to make design unnecessary. This is what you experienced as you became an atheist. This is what I experienced. So showing that the arguments for evolution are weak certainly opens the door to design.

“And then,” he said, “when you analyze all of the most current affirmative evidence from cosmology, physics, astronomy, biology, and so forth—well, I think you’ll discover that the positive case for an intelligent designer becomes absolutely compelling.”

I stood and shook Wells’ hand. “That,” I said, “is what I’m going to find out.”

SCIENCE VERSUS FAITH

The plane ride through the black velvet sky over the Pacific Coast was exceptionally smooth that evening, and I closed my eyes as I reclined my seat as far as it would go. I felt satisfied by my interview with Wells and was anxious to determine whether the most up-to-date scientific evidence supports the existence of the intelligent designer he had talked about. Still, though, some pesky questions continued to bother me.

I remained troubled by the intersection of science and faith. I needed to resolve whether these two domains are destined to be at war with each other, as some people claim. Can a scientific person legitimately entertain the idea of the supernatural? How much can empirical data tell us about the divine? Should scientists merely stick to their test tubes and let the theologians ponder God? Should pastors be allowed to poke their nose into the research laboratory? Can science and faith ever really be partners in pursuit of the ultimate answers of life?

I knew I needed to get some answers to those questions before I could go any further. I pulled the blanket up to my neck and decided to get some sleep. Tomorrow, I’d be planning another journey.

FOR FURTHER EVIDENCE

More Resources on This Topic

Denton, Michael.
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
. Bethesda, Md.: Adler & Adler, 1986.

Hanegraaff, Hank.
The Face that Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution
. Nashville: Word, 1998.

Johnson, Phillip.
Darwin on Trial
. Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, second edition, 1993.

Wells, Jonathan.
Icons of Evolution
. Washington, D.C.: Regnery, 2000.

4
WHERE SCIENCE MEETS FAITH

I am all in favor of a dialogue between science and religion, but not a constructive dialogue. One of the great achievements of science has been, if not to make it impossible for an intelligent person to be religious, then at least to make it possible for them not to be religious. We should not retreat from this accomplishment.

Physicist Steven Weinberg,
¹

Science and religion . . . are friends, not foes, in the common quest for knowledge. Some people may find this surprising, for there’s a feeling throughout our society that religious belief is outmoded, or downright impossible, in a scientific age. I don’t agree. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that if people in this so-called “scientific age” knew a bit more about science than many of them actually do, they’d find it easier to share my view.

Physicist and theologian John Polkinghorne
²

A
llan Rex Sandage, the greatest observational cosmologist in the world—who has deciphered the secrets of the stars, plumbed the mysteries of quasars, revealed the age of globular clusters, pinpointed the distances of remote galaxies, and quantified the universe’s expansion through his work at the Mount Wilson and Palomar observatories—prepared to step onto the platform at a conference in Dallas.

Few scientists are as widely respected as this one-time protégé to legendary astronomer Edwin Hubble. Sandage has been showered with prestigious honors from the American Astronomical Society, the Swiss Physical Society, the Royal Astronomical Society, and the Swedish Academy of Sciences, receiving astronomy’s equivalent of the Nobel Prize. The
New York Times
dubbed him the “Grand Old Man of Cosmology.”

As he approached the stage at this 1985 conference on science and religion, there seemed to be little doubt where he would sit. The discussion would be about the origin of the universe, and the panel would be divided among those scientists who believed in God and those who didn’t, with each viewpoint having its own side of the stage.

Many of the attendees probably knew that the ethnically Jewish Sandage had been a virtual atheist even as a child. Many others undoubtedly believed that a scientist of his stature must surely be skeptical about God. As
Newsweek
put it, “The more deeply scientists see into the secrets of the universe, you’d expect, the more God would fade away from their hearts and minds.”
³
So Sandage’s seat among the doubters was a given.

Then the unexpected happened. Sandage set the room abuzz by turning and taking a chair among the theists. Even more dazzling, in the context of a talk about the Big Bang and its philosophical implications, he disclosed publicly that he had decided to become a Christian at age fifty.

The Big Bang, he told the rapt audience, was a supernatural event that cannot be explained within the realm of physics as we know it. Science had taken us to the First Event, but it can’t take us further to the First Cause. The sudden emergence of matter, space, time, and energy pointed to the need for some kind of transcendence.

“It was my science that drove me to the conclusion that the world is much more complicated than can be explained by science,” he would later tell a reporter. “It was only through the supernatural that I can understand the mystery of existence.”
⁴

Sitting among the Dallas crowd that day, astounded by what he was hearing from Sandage, was a young geophysicist who had dropped by the conference almost by accident. Stephen Meyer had become a Christian through a philosophical quest for the meaning of life, but he hadn’t really explored the issue of whether science could provide evidential support for his faith.

Now here was not only Sandage but also prominent Harvard astrophysicist Owen Gingerich concluding that the Big Bang seemed to fit best into a theistic worldview. Later came a session on the origin of life, featuring Dean Kenyon, a biophysicist from San Francisco State University, who had co-authored an influential book asserting that the emergence of life might have been “biochemically predestined,” because of an inherent attraction between amino acids.
⁵
This seemed to be the most promising explanation for the conundrum of how the first living cell could somehow self-assemble from nonliving matter.