Some questions for evolutionists from scientists and others.

These books are written mostly by scientists who believe in Biblical creation.

Evolutionary Pathways?

Ariel Roth Origins Review & Herald 1998 ISBN 0-8280-1328-4

A former director of the Geoscience Research Institute at Loma Linda University gives an excellent, courteous overview of the creation-evolution debate. He says in chapter 6 that ‘the eye poses a serious challenge to the evolutionary hypothesis’ (p105). Darwin suggested an evolutionary pathway from a simple organ, as did Gaylord Simpson a century later. But Simpson, and Dawkins after him ‘bypass the crucial questions of interdependent functional parts’ (p104). It is easy to arrange things from simple to complex, but such arrangements tell us nothing about their origins.

Are evolutionists unbiased?

Jonathan Sarfati Refuting Evolution Master Books ISBN 0-89051-258-2

A Ph.D chemist – and former chess champion! - formerly in research deals with the criticism that creationists are biased. It is believed by many that the facts speak for themselves (p15), but the truth is that facts are always interpreted in the light of a framework. Atheistic evolutionists are naturalists, who assume that divine intervention is a myth. Evolution is a deduction from this assumption and yields the idea that things make themselves. Professor D.M.S.Watson in 1929 admitted that ‘Evolution [is]…universally admitted not because it can be proved….to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible’ (quoted p16). So  we are all biased!  ‘It’s not really a question of who is biased but which bias is the correct bias…?’ (p17).  Please read this book – it is an excellent corrective to unclear thinking! 

Can scientists trust God?

John Ashton (ed) The God Factor Strand 2006, ISBN 1921-202-068

This is an illuminating and a heart warming book. Forty scientists tell us how they became Christians. Jay Wile is a nuclear chemist. An ardent atheist at school, he went to a debate between an evolutionist (and biologist) and a creationist (physicist). The creationist inter alia said that a scientist examines all the available data and then draws his conclusions. Wile realised that he had not examined Christianity at all, therefore had not studied all the data. So he proceeded to do so, and – with the help of F.F.Bruce, Josh McDowell and Leon Morris - was persuaded intellectually that Christianity was true. However he discovered that the Christian girl he liked was being knocked about by her father. There and then he determined to kill the girl’s father. Borrowing his Dad’s gun he was on his way to perform the deed, when he was stopped in his tracks by God’s words from the Bible – ‘Test Me also in this’. So for the first time in his life He prayed that God would deal with the man. The following day the girl rang him to say that her Dad had become a Christian the evening before!  Apparently he had dropped into a ‘tent-meeting’ when an evangelist was due to speak. As he entered the tent, the evangelist got up and announced his subject – child abuse!  The man was converted and stopped abusing his daughter. To Jay Wile’s amazement God had answered his prayer. Then he became a Christian too and during his scientific career has never looked back. 

Is Paleoanthropology a science?

Marvin Lubenov Bones of Contention Baker 1992 ISBN 0-8081-5677-2

Chapter 2 of this superb and often hilarious book is entitled ‘An Inexact Kind of Science’. Richard Leakey said of paleoanthrolgists, ‘I think we are still doing a great deal of guessing’ (quoted p24). Lord Zuckerman wrote, ‘it is legitimate to ask whether much science is yet to be found in this field at all. The story of the Piltdown Man hoax provides a pretty good answer’ (p25; that was in 1971). Sir Peter Medawar (Nobel Prize winner) described paleo-anthropology as a ‘comparatively humble and unexacting kind of science’ (p25). In 1984 the American Museum of Natural History in New York brought together more than forty original human fossils from museums all over the world. Since American scholars had only been able to study plaster-cast copies of the originals, the dimensions for the precision-mounts were taken from the plaster-casts. But when the originals were delivered to the New York museum it was found that they did not fit!  ‘Since the original fossils are virtually beyond access even to most who teach in the field of paleoanthropology’ researchers in this field ‘seem(s) to have a problem’ (p17). No wonder it is an ‘inexact kind of science’. So how reliable then is the story that modern man has descended from ape-like creatures? 

Are evolutionary explanations always scientific?

Michael Behe Darwin’s Black Box Free Press 1996 ISBN 0-684-82754-9

A classic work on intelligent design by a biochemist and non-creationist. Darwin’s ‘Black Box’ is the biological cell of which Darwin was almost totally ignorant, when he published his theory in 1859. Evolutionists typically speculate as to the natures of earlier species from which later species evolved (e.g. birds ‘evolved’ from dinosaurs), but biochemistry forces their theory on to a much more complicated molecular level. Envisaging evolutionary molecular pathways is not easy and – in the case of blood coagulation, for example – ‘has resisted the determined efforts of top-notch scientists for four decades’ (p97). Behe shows that molecular machines are irreducibly complex’ – all their parts must be present if they are to function. Therefore they could not have evolved bit by bit. Of course, evolutionists continue to speculate on how the bits came together – but speculating is not knowing and Behe notes how even Prof. Russell Doolittle of the University of California (a noted expert) can cite no causative factors in his explanation of the origination of the blood clotting system. When is Darwinism going to face the facts?