Part Eleven:  Final Thoughts on Why Darwin’s Theory of Evolution  is  Untenable

 In his book, The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin cautioned, “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.” (Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 135) The previous ten blog posts in this series are examples that Darwin’s challenge has been met, and there are good reasons for the theory of evolution to “break down.”

Increasing numbers of  Ph.D. scientists from a variety of fields agree. A well-known example is Michael Denton, a medical doctor, molecular biologist, and self-described agnostic with no a priori theological or philosophical objection to evolution. Denton is not a creationist, nor is he a Christian. In1985 he wrote in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis:

The concept of the continuity of nature [uninterrupted evolution from common ancestors] has existed in the mind of man never in the facts of nature. In a very real sense, therefore, advocacy of the doctrine of continuity has always necessitated a retreat from pure empiricism, and contrary to what is widely assumed by evolutionary biologists today, it has always been the anti-evolutionists, not the evolutionists, in the scientific community who have stuck rigidly to the facts and adhered to a more strictly empirical approach. (353-354)

During the ensuing decades, a tremendous amount of new scientific evidence challenging Darwinism has accumulated, especially in molecular biology, astrophysics, and how information is stored and transmitted in DNA. In 2016—more than thirty years later—Denton revisited Darwinism and wrote a new book titled Evolution: Still a theory in Crisis. In it he points out the undeserved power Darwinism still holds in the scientific community:

       Despite its obvious failure . . . . [t]he perception that Darwinism is “the only game in town” has been reinforced since the middle of the twentieth century by makers of the neo-Darwinian “modern synthesis,” who imposed on biology the conviction that the evolutionary argument was over and that the Darwinian functionalist paradigm had won the day. In their view, adaption was everything—the primal organization principle of biology—and the extrapolation from microevolution to macroevolution was embedded in concrete. (emphasis mine, p. 277)

The neo-Darwinian model of naturalistic evolution remains a philosophy of science and empirically indemonstrable. It requires us to believe the universe suddenly came into existence out of nothing; It requires us to believe that out of the chaos and disorder of the big bang “explosion” materialized order, design, and harmony; it requires non-living chemicals to have somehow “evolved” into a living, self-replicating organism; it requires us to believe from a single-celled organism evolved all the amazingly diverse and complex life forms that ever lived on earth, in spite of the rarity of beneficial mutations and lack of function allowing for successive stages in natural selection. Beyond this, naturalistic evolution requires us to believe that human moral values evolved from amorality; human intelligence arose from irrationality; and that all human emotions, feelings, and thoughts are merely an extension of mindless matter.

By comparison, creationists look at a perfectly balanced universe; the precision and design of plant and animal life; the harmony and beauty of nature; human moral conscience and rationality; human emotions such as love, joy, peace, and happiness—and logically conclude they have their source in an intelligent, moral, loving, all-powerful, creative God. Which requires the most faith to believe? ©