A recent bacterial discovery once again demonstrates that evolution is
false, and that adherents believe it on a faith basis, not an
evidentiary, scientific basis. To fully appreciate that point one must
understand how faith is expressed.
As a Christian, there are certain things that I
believe that you will not change my mind on. For instance, I hold the
following as true:
- God exists
- God is good
- God is love
- Jesus is the image of the invisible God
I have good reasons to believe all these things1,
which makes my belief a rational one. (More
on that
here.) But the fact that regardless of what you show me, I will
still believe them indicates that they are un-falsifiable statements, which makes
them statements of faith, not of science.
That is precisely how faith is supposed
to work. Care must be
taken that you place your faith in an object worthy of faith. Such as
Jesus and the Bible. Once that requirement is met, you continue to
have faith in revealed truth because your object of faith (God) has
presented evidence of the truthfulness of what you believe. More
importantly he knows
more than you do about things you now question, like why or how did
__x___ (fill in the blank) happen. God will at some future date resolve your questions and
make sense of apparent contradictions, but that which he has made clear
- like the fact of his existence2
- he expects us to continue to believe regardless of the nonsense and
lies unbelievers present.
On the other hand, science is not supposed to
work that way. Karl Popper championed the idea of science as
falsification, realizing that "... no amount of data can really prove a
theory, but that even a single key data point can potentially disprove
it."3 There are limits to falsification4, but
where falsification is possible, it is a valuable tool - a tool that
helps identify and separate true science from faith statements. Because
of that
materialists scientists are increasingly turning away from the practice
of falsification because when employed properly, it invalidates
incorrect theories - including pet ones. This invalidation is a
problem for scientists when theories, instead of being scientific,
become philosophical outlooks (as in the case of evolution5)
or when they lean toward the
metaphysical (as in the case of multiverses6).
This desire to protect scientific theories - even when it can be
demonstrated they are wrong shows that science without falsification
tends toward religion.
Science without Falsification tends toward
Religion
In science disciplines where falsification is possible, it
is easily demonstrable that scientists increasingly reject the notion of
falsification because they prefer not to have their favored theories (like
evolution) shown to be without merit by stubborn inconveniences like facts and evidences. In the case of metaphysical concepts like the multiverse -
they prefer not
to have have their theories ruled as un-testable metaphysics or religion instead of
science.
Someone will say since it is "easily
demonstrable" then do so. Very well, but let me clarify: that statement
was directed at evolution because it is a testable concept, unlike the
concept of the multiverse which is not testable. As Jay Richards,
senior fellow at the Discovery Institute puts it regarding a supposed
multiverse, "It's an interesting idea. There's really only one problem
with it. There's no independent evidence that it's true."7 There's
no evidence because it can't be tested, which means no evidence can be
generated. Furthermore, the multiverse is a metaphysical concept similar
to ideas John Lennox chides Stephen Hawking for with regards to
statements Hawking made in his book The Grand Design.8
Science, faith and evidences that
falsify evolution
Evolution has been falsified before,
and with this latest bacterial discovery, it has been falsified again.
Why has a falsified theory retained such popularity? Evolution is a
manifestation of a rejection of God and the morality that comes with
believing in God. (This, by the way, is another reason why Christians
who believe in evolution are misguided. See
Can you be a Christian and believe in Evolution?)Those who deny
God feel free to make up their own worldview and morality, and with it
attempt to make up science that fits their worldview. But science facts
are just that: facts meaning established truths. One can not change the
facts because they do not fit your worldview. By refusing to acknowledge
evolution's obvious problems, deniers of the powerful evidence against
evolution demonstrate they hold the tenets of evolution as statements of
faith which they consider to be above the facts. In science -established
facts can disprove theories if the theories don't fit the facts; but
theories cannot change established facts - however much you might wish
they could. Those who refuse to accept the facts regarding evolution
show they hold evolution not as a series of testable, disprovable
scientific theory, but as inviolate faith. In addition to reasoned
evidences like Behe's argument for irreducible complexity based on
bacterial flagellum (above) that militate against evolution9,
there are many hard facts that falsify evolution. Let's rehearse a
few starting with the recent bacteria discovery:
1. Unchanged (Un-evolved) 2 Billion
year old Bacteria
Following is an excerpt from an
announcement made 2/2/2015 by the UCLA Newsroom of the discovery of
bacteria that have not evolved for 2 billion years:
“It seems astounding that life has
not evolved for more than 2 billion years — nearly half the history
of the Earth,” said J. William Schopf, a UCLA professor of earth,
planetary and space sciences in the UCLA College who was the study’s
lead author. “Given that evolution is a fact, this lack of evolution
needs to be explained.”10
Even this supporter of evolution can't
hide the fact that things don't add up in the evolutionary worldview
with this latest find. Their attempts to salvage the theory fall far
short of believable. That attempt is this: evolutionists are saying this
find actually proves evolution - because the environment didn't
change for the microorganism, and evolution predicts there should only
be change when the environment changes - creating new pressures on the
organism.
The problem with that is, that's only true for classical
evolution as Darwin first proposed it, where only natural selection
operates as a change agent. But no scientist alive adheres to merely
classical Darwinism. They've all adopted and injected the concepts of
genetics and mutations into evolution, transforming it into what is
typically referred to as "Neo-Darwinism." And Neo-Darwinism uses genetic
mutations as a key mechanism for change and states that change is always
occurring. In fact they say the change is so regular, they can use it as
a genetic dating technique which they call a "Molecular Clock."
Geneticist Mark Stoneking from the Max Planck Institute explains that,
"It's based on the fact that the sequence of chemical bases which make
up DNA mutate at a regular rate."11
Since mutations happen regardless of
environmental factors - and they happen at "a regular rate" - so much
so, that they can use mutations as a clock, how can it be that a
micro-organism has not changed at all in 2 Billion years? Thus the
incredulity of even the evolution supporting Schopf. When you
consider it was only 5-7 million years ago that (evolutionists claim)
chimps and humans had a common ancestor, it boggles the mind that this
bacterium has not changed at all in 2 billion years. How many thousands
of mutations were needed for the chimp-human divergence? And it happened
(in theory) only 5-7 million years ago. And here we have a simple
microorganism that has not changed in 2 billion (that's billion
with a "b") years. Evolution is clearly not happening. Contrary to what
Schopf states, this doesn't need to be "explained," rather it
needs to be recognized that evolution simply did not, and does not
occur, and thus you find microorganisms unchanged for billions12
of years.
2. Wheels (and motors) in living
Creatures
Consider the following:
The famous
evolutionist J.B.S. Haldane predicted that we would find no wheels
or magnets in living creatures. This is because these would not work
unless fully formed. Thus natural selection could not have produced
them step by small step, each an improvement over the previous one.
[Note - Because random changes don't move in a planned fashion; such
directed improvements require a designer! - DC] Such motors thus
falsify evolution by Haldane’s own words.13
That's from an article on the
microorganism
MO-1,
Germ with 7 motors in one!. In addition to that, they've found two others.
See "A
Third Rotary Motor Has Now Been Found in Bacteria"
By their own standards evolution has
been falsified, but few (if any) materialist scientists have the courage to step
forward and admit it.
3. The Cambrian Explosion
The Cambrian explosion is a well
documented problem for the theory of evolution. If evolution is true,
the model predicts we'd find the simplest fossils at the lowest strata,
starting with a singled celled creature. From this single celled
creature, all other creatures should evolve, creating the familiar
evolutionary tree, and leaving ever increasing complex fossils of the
various creatures as you go up through the strata. This means by the
time you get to very complex creatures, there should be a well
established fossil trail of their evolutionary origins.
On the other hand if creation were true
you would expect to find complex creatures appearing all at once,
without a fossil trail behind them. What does the fossil record show? As
the diagrams below depict, the fossil record shows complex creatures
suddenly appearing in the Cambrian layer, with no fossil record of
simpler creatures before (below) them.
Above: Simplified depiction of the
fossil record as it should appear if evolution were true.
As you go down deeper in the levels, fossil remains should become
simpler and simpler,
going back to an original single celled creature called LUCA (Last
Universal Common Ancestor)
(In the diagram, simpler, less evolved creatures are depicted by smaller
creature icons.)
That is not what was actually found. (See below)
Above: Simplified depiction of the
fossil record as it is actually found. Complex creatures
suddenly appear in the Cambrian layer. No simpler creatures found below
them (before them in time) in the Precambrian layer.
This is devastating evidence to the theory of evolution as Darwin
himself recognized:
"If my theory be true, it is
indisputable that before the lowest Cambrian stratum was deposited,
long periods elapsed, and during these periods of time, the world
swarmed with living creatures. To the question why we do not find
rich fossiliferous deposits belonging to these assumed earlier
periods prior to the Cambrian, I can give no satisfactory answer."14
Neither Darwin nor any other
evolutionist has a feasible answer as to why the fossil record does not
contain what Darwin expected. Darwin attempted an answer by claiming the
fossil record was incomplete - we hadn't found enough fossils yet. After
150 years of looking, we still haven't found the "rich fossiliferous
deposits" of earlier periods that Darwin claimed should be there for his
theory to be true. The conclusion is simple. His theory is not true.
4. Evidence of the Phyla - (body
plans)
Further evidence coming out of the
evidence from fossils found in the Cambrian layer is that of the body
types or body plans which scientists call phyla. Before moving on to the
actual evidence lets review the importance of graphical evidence using
as an example the proof cited for the recently discovered Higgs Boson
(also known as the "God particle).
The Higgs decays much too quickly for scientist to detect it directly so
the scientists were looking for the signature of particles (photons)
that the Higgs decays into. They measure those particles in units of
gigaelectronvolts (GeV). The range for the particle they were looking
for was between 115 - 127 GeV.
On July 4, 2012 the heads of the Atlas
and CMS projects, teams working independently to find the Higgs headed
by Fabiola Gianotti and Joe Incandela respectively, called a press
conference and presented the above graphs. The graphs - independent
verification of the long sought after particle - show a particle
weighing in at 125.3 +- 0.6 GeV was discovered. It was taken as
unanimous evidence that the Higgs particle had finally been found.
I point out these graphs to illustrate
the importance of accurate, visually depicted data - which is what a
graph presents. Scientists use such graphs to determine if their
theories are correct or not. In the case of the Higgs, it shows Peter
Higgs was correct in his theory of a mass producing particle. What about
Darwin and his prediction of phyla as a result of evolution?
Darwinian evolution predicts you'd
start with one phylum, then go to 2 phyla, then more in a gradually
increasing curve over time which would look something like this:
But what is actually found in the
fossil record is this:
As philosopher of science Stephen Meyer
puts it:
"What you actually have in the
fossil record is a sudden spike in the number of phyla that appear
during the Cambrian, and then a few that trickle in across the rest
of geologic time. This kind of discontinuity is radically at odds
with the Darwinian picture of the history of life"15
As Meyer points out, the evidence is
"radically at odds" with what Darwin's theory predicts and requires. Put
another way - the evidence of the phyla as graphed above from the
Cambrian explosion falsifies Darwin's theory.
When you bring up such evidence,
believers in evolution go into full damage control mode to convince you
that the evidence above does not mean what it clearly means. (It clearly
means that evolution as they depict it does not happen.) Just as they
want to convince you that the above bacterial flagellum motor diagram, a
representation of what Michael Behe calls an "irreducibly complex
system" came about without design; (a ludicrous proposition) likewise
they want to convince you that graphs of data that contradict evolution
don't mean anything. In their minds, the only graphs that mean anything
are graphs that agree with their point of view. That is not science;
that's religious belief masquerading as science.
Now don't misunderstand me - they have
a right to their beliefs. But if what they believe is impervious to
evidence; if they refuse to change their beliefs regardless of what the
evidence shows, that's an indication what they believe is not science,
it's faith; it's religion. It's fine to have faith and religion, but
they should identify it as such, and not masquerade it as science. If
they don't want creationists to present their beliefs as science (and
they don't - there are strong efforts to deny "Creation Science" is
science16), neither should they
masquerade their religious beliefs as science; particularly those
beliefs that have been falsified multiple times by multiple lines of
evidence.
Duane Caldwell | posted 2/14/2015
|