

Tuesday, September 29, 2009

The Clumsy Works of Nature

Charles Darwin, along with Alfred Russel Wallace, was a co-discoverer of "natural selection." The modern definition of natural selection is "A process in nature in which organisms possessing certain genotypic characteristics that make them better adjusted to an environment tend to survive, reproduce, increase in number or frequency, and therefore, are able to transmit and perpetuate their essential genotypic qualities to succeeding generations."

This "natural selection" can be seen throughout creation, as different plants adapt to soil conditions or to climate, or animals adapt because of predators or because of selective interbreeding.

However, every animal that adapts, always stays within its own kind. Cats don’t bred and become another kind of animal. No animal is transformed into another "kind." This is often referred to as "micro evolution"--a small change that happens within a species or within a certain "kind" of animal. Birds remain birds, animals remain animals, and plants remain plants.

Darwin was anguished over what he saw in natural selection. He spoke of it as "the clumsy, wasteful, blundering, low and horridly cruel works of nature." It is a cruel work of nature when a painful disease kills the weakest of children (three of Darwin’s children died before they reached adulthood), or a weak and innocent deer is devoured by a stronger and vicious predator.

The Book of Genesis speaks of this terrible state of nature as being a "fallen" creation that is filled with disease, death and decay. The Book of Romans also addresses the "cruel works" of fallen nature by calling it "the bondage of corruption" and saying that "the whole creation groans and travails in pain together."

However, those who reject the Genesis account of the Fall end up in an ocean without a rudder. They are blown about by the many winds of speculation. After addressing the truth of micro-evolution, Darwin makes the speculation that perhaps (like plants and animals) mankind also adapted, over a great deal of time, and natural selection took him from primitive primate to human.

The problem with his theory is that nowhere in the entire creation do we see natural selection taking one species and change it into another species. Neither is there evidence of any species-to-species transitional forms in the fossil record. Every animal brings forth after its own kind, just as it is stated in the Genesis account.

Not only was Darwin’s leap of speculation completely unscientific, there were other serious difficulties. Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer of natural selection, declared that natural selection could not account for humanity's intellectual and moral abilities. Why then was such unscientific conjecture so embraced by so many?

When, On Origin of Species was first published, English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley said that it was a "veritable Whitworth gun in the armory of liberalism," and though he wasn’t convinced about natural selection, he proceeded to position himself as "Darwin's bulldog." Think of it. Even though Huxley didn’t believe the theory, he backed it and said that it was massive weapon that promised freedom. Freedom from what? The Theory of Evolution promised mankind liberty from any ultimate moral responsibility to God. Evolution got rid of sin, the Fall, and most of all, man’s accountability to his Maker.

According to Douglas Futuyma, professor of evolutionary biology at the State University of New York, "Darwin’s (and Wallace’s) concept of natural selection made this 'argument from design' completely superfluous . . . it provided a purely natural explanation for order and the appearance of design." In other words, evolution paved the way for atheism.

As one commentator said, "Darwinism is also ferociously savage -- the weeds die out, the fittest survive, there is no moral universe because all is pre-programmed and we have no free choice." The die-hard Darwinist believes that there is no moral universe. Such is the tragic delusion of the Theory of evolution.