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by David F. Coppedge
(A response to a pro-evolution editorial in a local newspaper)

Two weeks ago in this column (Aug. 13), Mr. Kenneth Green read from the envelope and proclaimed, "And the winner is...Darwin!"  His commentary, however, presented some of the best reasons why Darwin's Theory of Evolution cannot possibly be true.  We agree on one thing: it will be a "wild ride" if Darwinism continues to shape policy.  It already has been a wild ride, with a 140 years of Darwinian experiments like communism, Naziism, "survival of the fittest" capitalism, racism, and eugenics.  Yes, Darwin won.  But the category was: "Worst Theory in the History of Science."

Mr. Green presented only three evidences for evolution.  First, he alleged, without elaborating, that genetic engineering techniques "all depend on an absolute application of the laws implicit in evolutionary theory at virtually every step."  Well, I would not wish to insult our biologists who have spent years of training using the most sophisticated tools ever made that their work was Darwinian!  The only "laws" behind Darwinism are chance and survival.  How opposite the scientist's work!  It is planned, executed, and perfected with the utmost in design, intelligence, and skill.  Mr. Green claims that discovery of the obesity gene would never have been made without Darwin's theory.  Wrong again.  Most science work today is largely standing on the shoulders of giants, who were creationists, like Newton, Pascal, Bacon, Pasteur, Maxwell, and Linnaeus.  And most of the time what they are doing doesn't need or use Darwinian theory anyway.  Darwinism has been a hindrance to the advance of science.  Read your history books; it was a conviction that the universe is orderly, not random, that ushered in the scientific revolution.

The DNA Mr. Green extols is, in reality, the demise of Darwinism.  Darwin himself knew nothing of DNA, genes, or Mendel's laws when he published the Origin in 1859.  To him, a cell was a blob of an unknown substance called "protoplasm."  Only in our lifetimes has the complexity of the DNA-protein system unfolded.  DNA replication and protein synthesis is a mind-boggling system involving a city of proteins, enzymes, and other components that are breathtaking in their complexity and efficiency.  Darwinists are at a loss to tell us how this marvelous system began.  Charles Darwin's main contribution, natural selection, does not apply until a system can reproduce all its parts.  Getting a reproducible cell in a primordial soup is a giant leap, for which today's evolutionary biologists have no answer, no evidence, and no hope.  It amounts to blind faith to believe that undirected, purposeless accidents somehow built the smallest, most complex, most efficient system known to man.

Second, Mr. Green alleges that men are either smart or dumb compared to women, and that this somehow is an evolutionary adaptation that aids human survival.  I would remind him that one of his most vehement anti-creationist friends, Stephen Jay Gould, denounces IQ as a politically motivated, pseudo-scientific method for consigning certain undesirables to lower classes of society.  Humans are certainly more complex than to be judged by any one criterion of intelligence dubbed "IQ."  I don't know if any of our women readers were offended by being so consigned to mediocrity, or how many men doubted what end of the IQ scale they were on, but I would regard any such anthropological study with a good deal of Gouldean skepticism.  Besides, I would think few evolving women would purposely choose the dumber males.  (Or is it the other way around?)

In this second argument, Mr. Green becomes a creationist in spite of himself.  "Men," he says, "are more disposable than women, and thus make a better laboratory for trying out mutations . . . ."  Who, ask yourself, is the scientist in the laboratory?  What is he trying to do?  Any such personality would surely have to be a god to possess such powers, and any God capable of building the DNA-protein system must be omniscient and omnipotent, who most certainly wouldn't have to use chance to get the experiment to work.  For Mr. Green to be logically consistent, there is no laboratory, no experiment, and no personality.  Everything is undirected, random, purposeless, and pointless!  Evolution would "care" nothing whether a protocell, a human being, or any other species on the planet or universe survived or mutated away.  Listen to Darwinians, and you'll hear them frequently salt the primordial soup with a little design, or speak of Nature as a deity.  Don't let them get away with it.

The third argument was that DNA changes over time according to "laws" of evolution, allowing us to trace lineages such as in the Simpson trial.  I would remind the reader that all humans are one interfertile species.  Variations within species are not a proof of evolution.  Creationists have no problem with variation within limits; a certain amount of flexibility is a good design concept in a dynamic environment.  But unless Mr. Green can tell us how a starfish changed into horse, or a worm into a shark, he has not proved that "macro" evolution is possible, which is the real issue.  Genetics shows that it cannot happen, and the fossil record shows that it has not happened.  The fossil record shows stasis and extinction, not evolution!  The large gaps between major kinds of organisms in the fossil record is an embarrassment to Darwinists.  It has given rise to radical theories like punctuated equilibria, which basically try to explain why the evidence is not there.  The minor changes in the DNA of families and racial groups is trivial compared to the major modifications that must have been required to go from a fish to a mammal.  Touting minor changes as proof that major changes can occur is unwarranted extrapolation, another logical fallacy.

Does any of this matter to you or the neighborhood?  Listen to all the news stories that bemoan the purposelessness of young people today, expressed in gang violence, drive-by shootings, drugs and crime.  In Darwin's universe, law and morality are arbitrary concepts that evolve also, subject to the whims of whoever is in power.  Life itself, both individually and collectively, is aimless, pointless, and cynical; for no matter what one accomplishes in one's lifetime, it ends in the grave.  Teach young people that they came from slime and return to dust, that there is no ultimate judge or standard of right and wrong in the universe, and existence becomes some kind of cruel joke or plaything.

To view life and the universe as the purposeful plan of a loving, all-wise God, is, by contrast, to have accountability, responsibility, purpose, goals and fulfillment both as individuals and as a society.  It can even be a great source of thankfulness, joy and love.

I invite all to get to know the Being behind the wonders that surround us.