Highlights from The Challenge of Evolution

Posted by TimJones on September 4, 2009

On Relativism and Tolerance:

German philosopher Frederick Nietzsche said, “You have your way. I have my way. As for the right way, the correct way, and the only way, it does not exist.”

In today’s society, relativism has been fused with the belief that truth can be found only through the scientific method. It is compounded further by the current cultural demands of “tolerance”. As a result, many believe that there is no absolute truth concerning cultures, religion or even morality.  The desire is for everyone to get along and not for create problems; after all, all religions are the same anyway.

Certainly a relativist will disagree, but truth cannot be relative, subjective or a matter of opinion. Truth is absolute and is not affected by our personal feelings or beliefs. It is not a matter of what the majority thinks or believes, which political party is in power, or who controls the airwaves. We may believe something very sincerely but that does not make it a fact; only an opinion.

There is either a Creator or there is not.  There are either absolute moral laws or there are not.  In either case the existence or non-existence of a Creator is absolute. Furthermore, Nietzsche’s statement “the right way, correct way or only way does not exist,” is also an absolute statement and as such is a self-contradiction. You cannot make an absolute statement about the non-existence of absolutes.

On Natural Selection:

What explanation can there be for natural selection, or matter, creating the needed environment for our survival? How or why would inanimate objects place themselves in just the right locations to support living things? Dawkins has assured us that natural selection is blind and does not plan ahead, so how are objects able to adapt?

We have seen that living things are too improbable and too beautifully designed to have come into existence by chance. All appearances to the contrary, the only watchmaker in nature are the blind forces of physics, albeit deployed in a very special way.  A true watchmaker has foresight: he designs his cogs and springs, and plans their interconnections, with a future purpose in his mind’s eye.

Natural selection, the blind, unconscious, automatic process which Darwin discovered, and which we now know is the explanation for the existence and apparently purposeful form of all life has no purpose in mind.** It has no mind and no mind’s eye.  It does not plan for the future.  It has no vision, no foresight, and no sight at all.  If it can be said to play the role of watchmaker in nature, it is the blind watchmaker.

- from Richard Dawkins’ book, The Blind Watchmaker

How does this blind, mindless, purposeless automatic process work?  By taking an innumerable number of teeny tiny steps, over millions and millions of years, all unguided, all unplanned, all for either an unknown reason or simply to survive.

To say that an unknown, unseen, and unplanned series of “simple, cumulative steps” which lead to a complex end is not random chance; it is nonsensical. Is it more difficult to take several large steps in the darkness than lots of small ones?  You may miss a hole with a large step or fall into the same hole with a small step.

If you find yourself in a pitch-black cave without a reference point, it makes no difference if you take thousands of tiny steps instead of hundreds of large steps. It makes no difference if you turn right instead of left, or go up instead of down. In fact it makes no difference what you do, since there is no plan in the first place. Are you trying to get out of or stay in the cave? Frankly without a plan or purpose it does not matter if you get out or stay in. If you did actually get somewhere that was unplanned, with no forethought or purpose, not only would it be meaningless, it could only happen by random chance.

On Creating Life in a test tube

If a scientist were able, in a controlled laboratory environment, to perform an experiment that produced some form of life, it would not prove how life began in the universe. It would only mean that a form of life could be created in a test tube. Creating life in a “hostile” environment is a completely different reality than creating life in a laboratory, under controlled conditions. Moreover, even life created in the laboratory could only happen using materials already in existence, and this life would have a creator as well, the scientist.

About Mt. Rushmore

To deny the existence of a creator is the same as saying that Mount Rushmore and its creator, sculptor Gutzon Borglum, came into existence on their own out of nothing. However, to carve this incredible monument took foresight, planning organization, great intelligence and skill.  It does not make sense to say that the universe and life are less complex than the carving of this monument. The clear evidence of creation removes any doubt that there is a Creator.

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