Broken-Down Darwin

Atheists were jubilant. Charles Darwin had developed a hypothesis that many believed could explain the present existence of life on earth without the need for God. This hypothesis would become commonly known as the "theory" of evolution. However, in the midst of this godless glee, Darwin himself warned caution:

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.

Although a large number of biologists remain in denial, Darwin's hypothesis has indeed broken down. Advances in paleontology (the study of fossils), advanced biology, and related fields have made this abundantly clear. Researchers Douglas Erwin and Eric Davidson have observed that "classic evolutionary theory, based on selection of small incremental changes" will not suffice.

If numerous successive slight modifications had occurred, the fossil record would show an abundance of transitional forms. But the fossil record shows no such thing, a fact the renowned Stephen Jay Gould called "the trade secret of paleontology." He wrote, "Can we invent a reasonable sequence of intermediate forms—that is, viable, functional organisms—between ancestors and descendants in major structural transitions? The answer is no."

Research continues to make clearer a crack in Darwinian evolution that Dutch botanist Hugo de Vries exposed in 1904: "Natural selection may explain the survival of the fittest, but it cannot explain the arrival of the fittest." Without God, how did organisms develop to the point that they were able to survive and thrive? Of course, the elephant in the room remains the question: "How did life arise from non-life?"

Scientists and mathematicians have been calculating the likelihood of Darwin's process occurring, and it is clearly not likely at all. Astronomer and mathematician Fred Hoyle found that the probability of enzymes producing a single amoeba is 1 in 10 followed by 40,000 zeroes. Poland's Michael Chaberek offers this comparison: the odds of winning the Polish national lottery are 1 in 14 million. Does that sound like a long shot? Well, the odds of originating the enzymes in the simplest cell are the same as winning that lottery 6000 times in a row. That is remote enough to go ahead and label this necessary process to evolution a virtual impossibility.

The handwriting is on the wall, and evolutionists know it. But instead of acquiescing to the facts, they are scrambling to find new ways to allow for the possibility of Darwinian evolution, even if in a convoluted form. Some are now pushing the possibility of billions of universes. They are not promoting this notion because there is evidence for it—there isn't. But billions of universes would be necessary for random chance eventually to allow the possibility of some of these necessary processes within the evolutionary hypothesis ever to occur within a single one of those universes.

How sad it is that the greater scientific community automatically disqualifies from consideration the most obvious explanation for life on earth—God!

Several thoughts and all quotes taken from article by Marvin Olasky, "Science, Math, and Worldviews," WORLD Magazine, March 18, 2017, page 40.