In the first installment of this series, I stated that Darwinian Evolution and its modern counterpart Neo-Darwinism, (the theory whose supporters want you to believe that non-living particles can become living people by undirected natural processes and large amounts of time), is an irrational belief kept alive by those unwilling to accept the truth. In support of that statement I proffered 15 reasons why evolution is not and could never be true. Since it could never be true, it follows it has never happened. In part one, I gave the first five reasons. Here are the next five reasons.
15 Reasons why Evolution is impossible and never happened (Part 2)
6. Limitations of Natural Selection
Neo-Darwinian theory posits that all species – all of them – are the result of natural selection acting on random mutations from an original common ancestor – often called the “last universal common ancestor” or LUCA. But even a cursory examination of the theory shows it to be fatally flawed in its conception.
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Natural selection cannot create, it can only select from what already exists
Natural selection does not explain how the first living creature arose. Before there were any living creatures, there was nothing to select, so clearly natural selection was not in operation before the first living creature -
Natural selection requires a pair of reproducing creatures
According to evolution, what was the first living creature like? Was the first living creature actually a pair of creatures? Obviously not – that’s a contradiction in terms. The first, meaning one item, is not two living creatures. But that’s another problem for natural selection. Because natural selection requires a reproducing pair – under some sort of “selection pressure.” But there is no evolutionist that imagines the first living creature was actually a pair of reproducing creatures under some kind of “selection pressure.” So under the commonly accepted evolutionary theory of a single first living creature – natural selection is out of the picture. There is nothing to select. -
Natural Selection does not provide direction nor does it plan
Natural selection, by itself is insufficient to create the variety of life we see. That would require selections that tend toward a goal – like the form of a fish, or the form of a four legged creature. But again, that’s a problem because natural selection cannot plan, and does not have goals. As well respected evolutionist Ernst Mayr put it:
Another widespread erroneous view of natural selection must also be refuted: Selection is not teleological (goal-directed). Indeed, how could an elimination process be teleological? Selection does not have a long-term goal.
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Also there is no known genetic mechanism that could produce goal-directed evolutionary processes.
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To say it in other words, evolution is not deterministic[1].
Mayr said it succinctly: natural selection is an elimination process. It does not add anything. It takes things away. And it does so with no goal and no plan. That’s yet another problem for evolutionary natural selection. Even if there were an original reproducing pair (which only occurs in the Biblical account of Adam and Eve), natural selection can only remove information, generally making the creature overall less fit (though it may be beneficial in certain environments) . It cannot add information to make the creature change forms, or change the kind of creature.
7. Limitations of “Random Mutations”
As stated above, Neo-Darwinian theory posits that natural selection acting on “random mutations”, given enough time will produce all the species alive today. All of them. From the lowly amoeba, to the king of the jungle, to the pinnacle of creation: man. But the dirty little secret that evolutionists would prefer you not know is that mutations are not random – and thus cannot do what it is supposed that they do.
Many changes are needed to go from one species to another, obviously. Such changes require much new, unique information. One of the biggest problems in evolutionary theory is this unanswered question: where does the required additional new information come from?
There is only one known source of information: an intelligent mind. But evolutionists posit that the needed changes (and thus the needed information) come from natural selection acting on random mutations. We’re not talking about copy errors like illustrated immediately above. We’re talking uniquely different information as in the “mutation” graphic at the top. The increase in information is supposed to come from such random mutations. There are two problems with that:
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Mutations almost always destroy information. Mutations don’t add information. They almost always destroy information. That’s not to say that a mutation can’t be beneficial as Dr. Georgia Purdom explains here. What it does mean however is that mutations cannot provide the increase in information needed to change from one form to another; from one kind to another.
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Mutations are not the source of Information Evolutionists need them to be
Perhaps even more importantly, mutations cannot be the source of new information that evolutionists claim that they are. Due to the basic laws of chemistry, it turns out that at the level of DNA where mutations occur, when changes in pairs (AT and GC) do happen:
“There is substantial evidence that a general bias exists in all mutations toward AT (GC nucleotides are more likely to mutate into AT.)”[2]
Without getting into the fine detail (you can read that in the article on Creation.com by Paul Price here), the result is this:
“…we have powerful evidence that mutations are not the original source of the information in DNA.”[3]
Thus the “random mutations” that are supposed to be the basis of all the change that natural selection acts on cannot provide the needed new information.
So neither natural selection nor mutations – the supposed mechanism that makes Darwinian evolution work – can fulfill the roles evolutionists assign to them. It’s clearly as Price concludes in his article: evolution has no mechanism.
These first seven reasons have dealt mostly with the material world – why it is physically impossible for Darwinian evolution to occur. But the physical impossibilities are not the only problems evolution runs into. There are a number of non-material core components of human existence that is impossible for a material process to create or manipulate. That’s obvious: the physical cannot manipulate the non-physical. Which means it.s impossible for evolution to create these next three items.
8. Evolution cannot explain the origin of consciousness
Is your toaster conscious? I’m concerned for you if you think it is. But there is a theory in science that suggests that if you keeping adding intelligence to machines, they will eventually become conscious. That is the subtext of movies like “I Robot”, “The Terminator” and “2001 A Space Odyssey”. But merely adding processing power and additional lines of code in your program does not equate to consciousness. Your computer is multiple times more complex than a simple mechanical machine that adds and subtracts whole numbers. But that increase in complexity does not amount to a computer that’s conscious. Philosopher David Chalmers explains the root of the problem:
You can know about all the physical processes in the world in the brain and not know about consciousness. Somebody could know about every last neuron in the brain involved in say – color processing. That wouldn’t tell them about the experience of seeing red. …
My own view is, there’s a principled gap here. Neuroscience gives us structure of the brain and dynamics of what we do. And that’s all it’s ever going to give us. More and more structure, more and more dynamics. More and more behavior. And that’s always going to leave – in principle – a gap to consciousness.[4]
Indeed there is a gap – a huge gap. Knowing more about the physical processes of the brain (or the body for that matter) does not get you any closer to consciousness. It’s like trying to use your bicycle to make a jump into extra-dimensional space. It’s not a matter of adding more processing power (with regards to computers) or going further or faster (with regards to a bicycle). Consciousness is qualitatively different from the ways that matter behaves – and we have no idea of how to produce it, any more than we have an idea of how your bicycle could take you to a higher dimension than the ones we live in. For more, including definitions of consciousness, see The complex science that explains consciousness: Faith. For a clip of David Chalmer’s on the gap to consciousness from the “Closer To Truth” series see here.
9. Evolution cannot explain the origin of language
The fundamental problem with the origin of language is that language is at root, coded information. Whenever you deal with coded information, immediately you are confronted with questions of:
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How did the code itself originate?
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How did the ability to encode – to represent a non-physical idea with an abstract code – originate?
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How did the ability to decode – to take an abstract idea, and using a predefined system, determine one abstract idea represents some other concept based on the encoding system – originate. (The encoding system matters of course. For example, “sea” means different things in the English encoding system (a large body of water) than in the Spanish system (a subjunctive tense of the verb “to be” – as in something might be)
The main problem here should be immediately apparent: Evolution deals with the physical world. It cannot operate on abstract objects like “ideas” and “codes.” How could something as complex as language then, ever evolve if evolution can’t even influence it?
In my article on language (Can Evolution Explain the Origin of Language?) I suggest a question: What would it take to make C3PO, the golden droid of Star Wars fame, talk? By that, I don’t mean to merely enunciate words (that they’ve been programmed to say) like computer interfaces such as Alexa or “Hey Google” might do. Such interfaces do not “understand” language as a human does – they merely provide a different means of input to a computer other than typing. You don’t suppose your keyboard understands what you’re typing, do you? Neither do Alexa and Google.
And even if they did understand, what would that prove? It would prove that it takes years of intelligent design and programming to come up with an interface that “understands” and “speaks” spoken language. Surely no one will argue that the non-physical ideas like those that power the interfaces of Alexa and “Hey Google” would evolve by random forces acting on physical objects given enough time. Yet that is precisely what evolutionists would have you believe when it comes to language. When you consider what must happen (material objects creating non-material objects that represent other non-material objects) and how it must happen (by random forces with no design or purpose behind it) to make a coherent, intelligible system, the whole idea is ludicrous.
10. Evolution cannot explain the origin of Morality
In a world run supposedly only on “survival of the fittest,” how does one explain the origin of morality? Let’s be clear here – I’m not speaking merely of people acting in a moral fashion because it’s in their best interest to do so to keep from being thrown in jail, or have harm come to them because of harm they’ve done to others. That’s mere pragmatism. With pragmatism, you don’t avoid murder and steal because it’s morally wrong. No the reason you don’t do it is because other people might catch you and kill you or jail you – and you’d prefer that not happen. With pragmatism, you appear moral not because things such as murder and stealing are actually objectively wrong. No, you don’t consider them wrong, you simply don’t do them because you don’t want to suffer the consequences others might impose on you for having done them.
And even if you act morally but don’t recognize the objective morality that murder and stealing is wrong, pragmatism fails in the evolutionary scheme. Because why should a collection of molecules, bound together in a world without right or wrong, good or bad, without purpose or meaning, without heaven or hell, care if it wantonly and intentionally takes the life of another? And how does a collection of physical particles in a meaningless universe with no good or bad, get a non-physical idea? And not just any idea, but an idea that something that doesn’t exist, namely “bad”, applies to an action called “murder” which is applied to another collection of molecules? Remember – there is no “bad” or “wrong” in an evolution driven world. Chief atheist cheerleader Richard Dawkins said so himself:
“The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.”[5]
And for that matter what does it matter to any collection of molecules if any life is taken, including its own. That would not be “wrong” if there is no right and wrong. With no good or bad, there is also no “better.” In such a worldview it’s irrational to say it’s “better” for the creature itself to stay alive because there is no “better.” And from where does the consciousness rise from among the molecules to care whether it lives or dies? (Back to problem eight.) It is, after all, just a collection of molecules in a meaningless, purposeless world without right or wrong, good or bad, and no “better.”
You see an evolutionist cannot live consistently in a world where evolution is true in a “civil” manner without denying the very theory they claim to believe. For every day they live as if there are moral laws – they’re denying that everything – including humans – are merely a collection of molecules. Thus, as I argue in my article – the Moral Argument – Revealer of Hypocrites – that the moral argument for the existence of God is a revealer hypocrites. For every day the evolutionist lives according to a moral code he denies exists, he’s living the life of a hypocrite – denying the tenets he professes to believe.
To be Continued
We’ve now covered the first 1o items. Items one through five are here. Items six through ten above. We’ll pick up the final five items in the next article.
Duane Caldwell | August 30, 2020 | Printer Friendly Version
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Notes
1. Ernst Mayr, What Evolution Is, New York: Basic Books, 2001, p. 121
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2.
Couce, A. et al., Mutator genomes decay, despite sustained fitness gains, in a long-term experiment with bacteria, PNAS 114 (43) E9026–E9035, 24 October 2017. doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1705887114. and Hildebrand, F., Meyer, A., and Eyre-Walker, A., Evidence of Selection upon Genomic GC-Content in Bacteria, PLoS Genet 6(9): e1001107, 2010. doi: 10.1371/journal.pgen.1001107.
Referenced from:
Paul Price, “Evolution’s well-kept secret: Mutations are not random!”, Creation.com, 7 July 2020, https://creation.com/mutations-not-random
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3. Paul Price, Evolution’s well-kept secret: Mutations are not random!, Creation.com, 7 July 2020, https://creation.com/mutations-not-random
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4. David Chalmers (Professor of Philosophy, Australian National University;
Professor and Co-director, Center for Mind, Brain, And Consciousness, NY University)
ref from Closer to Truth, episode “Can the Brain Alone Explain Consciousness?”, Documentary, 2016
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5.Richard Dawkins, River Out of Eden: A Darwinian View of Life
Ref from Good Reads, accessed 8/27/20 https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/22201-the-total-amount-of-suffering-per-year-in-the-natural
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Images
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DNA sequence mutation© Catalinr | Dreamstime.com used by permission
Chromosomal abnormalities © Meletios Verras | Dreamstime.com used by permission
