To avoid being proved wrong, like the shape shifting Mystique, evolutionists regularly change what they mean when they speak of “evolution” as I point out here. To be clear, this series refers to what is variously called “molecules to man” or “particles to people” evolution. Those terms capture what evolutionists must believe, (whether they acknowledge it or not), and what this writer claims never happened. Furthermore, Darwinian evolution (and its modern counterpart Neo-Darwinism) is an irrational belief kept alive by those who are unwilling (for various reasons) to accept the truth. There’s a lot packed into that statement so let me unpack it a bit.
– Neo-Darwinism
Darwinists are like Darwin had no idea about genetics and mutations. Even Mendel’s basic principles on inheritance were not published until 1865; which is of course after the 1859 publication of Darwin’s Origin of Species. So Darwin was ignorant of the basic mechanisms needed to make his theory work. Neo-Darwinism attempts to correct this by adding the mechanism of mutation as the change agent needed to bring about the changes Darwin imagines can happen under the “selection pressure” of natural selection.
– Irrational Belief
An irrational belief is a belief held to be true even when it has been demonstrated to be false. For example, it would be irrational to believe that a Boeing 747 could take off and fly under its own power if you were to remove all its engines. But evolutionists have become adept at holding on to obviously false beliefs by coming up with just-so stories. Stories where if every thing happens in a just-so way, they could continue to believe the story – however impossible the story still remains.
In my example above, a just-so story might be: “well 747s have been known to ferry the space shuttle around. If the space shuttle were attached, and it’s engines operable, it may be able to take off and fly.” But there’s always a problem with just-so stories. Besides the clearly apparent desperation in the answer (typical of just-so stories) the problem(s) with this one should be obvious: 1. A 747 with the space shuttle attached was not what was in view in the original statement. So that would be the error of equivocation. A common error among evolutionist explanations. And 2. The engines used in such a scenario are not the 747’s engines. So that would be the error of changing the conditions and thus changing the question. Which in this case is a form of equivocation.
– Unwilling to accept the Truth (over the Atheist Creation Story)
There’s a spiritual component here worthy of both mention and its own article. I won’t take the space here to detail it, but suffice it to say evolutionists are highly motivated to reject the truth, because accepting the truth would mean the destruction of their world view. It would mean the acknowledgement of a designer and thus God, (there is no other option) which would be catastrophic for them since the whole point of evolution is to attempt to explain the origin of life without God. In other words, combined with the big bang theory, evolution is the atheist creation story.
So now that I’ve clarified why evolutionists will continue to believe evolution regardless of how many ways you demonstrate it’s impossible; for the more reasonable among you, let me state them anyway. Keep in mind the goal of Darwin’s theory was to explain the variety of life we see manifested. For all practical purposes, though he does not explicitly state it, that includes the origin of life [1]. Following are 15 reasons why apart from God the creator, life is impossible, and further, why even the concept of evolution is impossible and thus did not, could not, and will never happen.
15 Reasons why Evolution is impossible and never happened (Part 1)
1. The Origin Of Life
Of all the problems evolution has – this is the biggest and one evolutionists will never solve. (Who says creationists don’t make predictions?) Pasteur proved life does not come from non-living objects (abiogenesis) back in the 19th century. Ironically his iconic experiment was run the same year Darwin published Origin of Species. So the death knell of Darwin’s theory was provided the same year Darwin published his book.
But we have stronger evidence than Pasteur’s that abiogenesis does not happen. All you have to do is look around you. Death is everywhere. People, animals, fish, insects, birds – dying all around. Once lifeless for days, they never come back to life. Never. Regardless of the circumstances you put the lifeless body in. Regardless of whether you try to shock them back to life like Dr. Frankenstein did. Once they’re lifeless for days, they’re lifeless forever. Which is true of people also. A sobering thought. This is evolution’s problem.
This problem of death and lifelessness has held for all cases except one: Jesus, the Christ from Nazareth. He died, and rose to life on the third day. And here’s what proves that atheists know life does not come from lifeless things: The resurrection of Jesus is such an extraordinary event, they refuse to believe it happened. What does that mean? It means they know that normally, dead things stay dead. Lifeless things remain lifeless. That’s always true. That includes lifeless chemicals and cells. That’s always true, unless of course you’re the Son of God – the Living One who is alive forever and ever. (Rev 1.18) In that case, you (meaning Jesus) can defy death at will and give life to whomever you please. (John 5.21) What’s the atheist’s answer to the resurrection? Denial. But denials and hiding your head in the sand do not change the facts. Lifeless objects do not start living by themselves. The origin of life has but one answer: Life comes from the Living One who is alive forever and ever.
2. Inability to Create Proteins
Proteins are the engines of the cell. The biological cell is of course the fundamental building block of life. Your body is composed of trillions of them. They’re alive, supported by many processes which are enabled by proteins. Proteins build and repair tissues, make hormones and other body chemicals like enzymes. Enzymes are the catalysts for reactions. Many reactions would happen much too slowly in the cell for life to exist without enzymes. Trying to create complex life without proteins would be like trying to get to the moon without a spaceship. It simply wouldn’t happen.
Yet proteins, like the Saturn V rocket that sent men to the moon, are much too complex to just happen. Just as the Saturn V was custom made to do the job it was designed to do, proteins, are custom made from the instructions encoded in DNA to do the needed job:
Because you need DNA to make proteins, you need DNA to make RNA, and you need RNA to make proteins. So it’s worse than what came – first: the chicken on the egg”[2]
DNA is of course a huge problem for evolutionists, which leads us to our next problem. But for a more detailed description of the problem of creating proteins, without design and without information, see Mt. Improbable and other impossible evolutionary dreams.
3. The Information in DNA
The double strands of the DNA molecule contain coded information. That statement by itself presents two unsolvable problems for evolutionists. First, since the information is coded, who created the code? Consider languages used to code computers: Java, Visual Basic, Python, SQL, etc. They have varying levels of complexity. But one thing they have in common: They did not just come about by accident. An intelligent designer (or designers) had to create every coding language that exists.
Now take note of a second important fact: having a language with which to program something does not provide you with the finished product: specially arranged (coded) information. (In the case of computer languages we call such finished products “programs” or “applications.”) Languages provide you with are the tools with which to create the product, that is, to encode that information. But it does not provide the information that needs to be encoded. Just like being able to read English does not give you information unless you have something encoded with the words of English to read. Which brings us to the second problem: Where did the information that’s encoded in DNA come from? It could only have come from an intelligent source.
“Based upon our uniform and repeated experience, which is the basis of all scientific reasoning about the past, there is only one known cause for the origin of information, and that cause is intelligence.”[3]
Stephen Meyer
Since information can only come from an intelligent source, and living cells have DNA packed with information, Meyer correctly concludes:
“Neo-Darwinism and its associated theories of chemical evolution and the like will not be able to survive the biology of the information age, the biology of the 21st century.”[4]
Stephen Meyer
In other words, the discovery of information in DNA has again sounded the death knell of all forms of Darwinism.
4. Body Designs – Where do they come from?
The next problem: where does the design for the body plans come from? Body plans are the details of the layout of the various body parts of a creature. For instance in simple terms, the body plan for a human would include two arms, two legs, a torso, neck and head. For a horse it would be four legs, a large torso, long strong neck and head; while a bird would have two legs, two feather covered wings, a strong core section to support those wings, and a small head. You get the idea.
The problem is that DNA contains information for building the materials used to build the body parts, but not information for what the body parts are, or how they’re constructed or arranged. For instance, consider the Ishtar gate constructed by Nebuchadnezzar in the old Babylonian empire. I will provide a link to a depiction of it shortly.
The structure is made of baked mudbrick while the gate is wood and bronze. Let us suppose you had all the ingredients to create the various needed materials – the mud for the bricks, heat to bake them with, the wood and bronze for the doors, whatever they used for the deep blue coloring and other colors. So you could produce all the needed materials. But where is the information for building and arranging the structure? For constructing the gate? For the design of the arch? For hanging the doors? For constructing the parapets on the top? For etching the intricate animals (some of which appear to be dragons (aka dinosaurs))? Just because you can create the materials does not mean you can arrange them to create the structure. If you don’t already know what it looks like, or what the plans to build it are, how will you construct it? For those who haven’t seen it here is a depiction of it restored to its original splendor: Ishtar Gate. Again I ask, how would you build it if you had no idea what it looked like, or the plans for it?
This is the problem evolutionists have with DNA and body plans. DNA can create the various chemicals and tissues needed in the body, but it doesn’t contain information on how it’s put together. Because “the body plan, as far as we know, is not in the DNA.”[5] So DNA, by itself, does not give you the information for constructing a completed creature.
Could anyone construct the 40 foot tall Ishtar gate (how would you know the height by the way?) complete with animal depictions, working gate and parapets exactly as shown and correctly painted having never seen it and with no plan? Of course not. But these are the constraints the evolutionary process must work under. How could the much more complex body and its various parts “evolve” into the needed body shape with different organs, tissues and body parts with different functions, all working together, all coming together with no plan and no design?
Remember the use of plans and design for creating a living organism are by definition not allowed in evolution. That is the goal of evolution. This is a big problem for evolutionists. One that natural selection cannot over come because for selection to work, there must be something to select. Lack of plans means the creature cannot evolve beyond a few lifeless chemicals clinging together. So there is nothing to select. And even if evidence of plans were ever discovered somewhere in the cell or elsewhere, what would it point to? A planner of course. It would point to the creature’s designer, the creator who evolutionists deny exists. Because plans originate, obviously, from a planner.
5. The Existence of Irreducible Complexity in living Organisms
To understand irreducible complexity you start by understanding that specific functions must be completed. An object is irreducibly complex when it is composed of a number of individual components (which themselves have the appearance of being designed for this specific function in the object) all of which much exist, together at the same time, and correctly connected for the object to complete the specific function as intended. Michael Behe, the originator of the concept, uses the example of a common mouse trap to explain the concept. I’ll use an example I’ve used before – the suspension bridge. Take a look at the components of a suspension bridge.
Listed in the diagram are the main cable, suspender cables, the towers, cable anchors, and the deck or roadway. If you remove any of the components, the bridge will fail to be able to complete its purpose – suspend the roadway between two points so the distance between may be traversed. It’s beyond the scope of this brief description to go into detail, but as mentioned above, if you look into it you’ll find even the components of this irreducibly complex system are themselves complex and specifically designed. Such design on top of design does not happen by itself without a designer.
The point: such irreducibly complex systems cannot come about by natural means. Not only is it impossible for the components, to just naturally come together, (Consider one of the main cables: it’s actually 27,572 individual cables, woven together, then carefully strung over two towers and securely anchored into place. This cannot happen by any natural means!) but the individual components themselves, cannot exist apart from the careful planning, design, and crafting execution of an intelligent designer. If you believe a suspension bridge can come about without design and erected by unguided natural forces, then I defy you to show me any such bridge anywhere in the universe.
Naturally occurring irreducibly complex systems do not exist because they are a contradiction in terms. It’s like claiming impossible things like “square circles” exist. Such is the problem faced by evolutionary biologists who must explain irreducibly complex systems like the bacterium flagellum or the human eye without appeal to a designer. It simply cannot be done. (If you think the evolution of the eye has been explained, you’ve been deceived – see here.)
To be Continued
Clearly this list of 15 items is not complete. We’ll pick up the next items in the next article.
Duane Caldwell | July 26, 2020 | Printer friendly Version
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Notes
1. For a brief explanation on why Darwinian evolution necessarily includes origin of life issues (though some evolutionists will deny it) see the correction to the meme concerning this issue here:
https://rationalfaith.com/2017/03/unmasking-mistakes-in-memes-of-evolution-part-1/#origin_of_life
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2. Jeffrey Tomkins, ref. from “Unlocking the mysteries of Genesis” episode – “What is life?”, ICR DVD documentary series, 2014
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3. Stephen Meyer, ref. from “The Case for a Creator”, Illustra Media Documentary (DVD), 2006
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4. Meyer, “The Case for a Creator”
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5. Jonathan Wells, ref. from “Darwin’s Dilemma: The Mystery of the Cambrian Fossil Record” Illustra Media Documentary (DVD), 2009
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