Creation vs. Evolution - Evolution
- Nov 1, 2005 - 8
Definition
“What is Darwinism? Darwinism is a theory of empirical science only at the level of microevolution, where it provides a framework for explaining such things as the diversity that arises when small populations become reproductively isolated from the main body of their species. As a general theory of biological creation, Darwinism is not empirical at all. Rather, it is a necessary implication of a philosophical doctrine called scientific naturalism, which is based on the a priori assumption that God was always absent from the realm of nature.”
Phillip E. Johnson, Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law & Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 32.
“‘EVOLUTION IS A RELIGION. This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today.’
“Philosopher Michael Ruse made this statement to an astonished audience at the American Association for the Advancement of Science 1993 annual convention. From Darwin’s time through the Scopes era and beyond, disagreement about the relationship between evolution and creationism has obscured the battle between the two . . . But by the time of the Darwin centennial in 1959, evolution theory had itself evolved into a religion: metaphysical, universal, and the origin of life. Ruse’s admission before the AAAS was only a public acknowledgment of the obvious. Darwin based his theory on the nonscientific assumption that a good and perfect God wouldn’t create and develop an evil world. Proponents who followed based their support ultimately on scientific proofs limited by materialism: if science couldn’t explain it, it wasn’t science.
“In 1962 the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that promoting religion in the classroom was unconstitutional and ordered an immediate halt to prayer and Bible reading in public schools. But in 1980 the court effectively reintroduced religion by requiring schools to teach evolution. Historian Jacques Barzun wrote that the ‘so-called warfare between science and religion [could] be seen as the warfare between two philosophies and perhaps two faiths, [a] dispute between the believers in consciousness and the believers in mechanical action; the believers in purpose and the believers in pure chance.’”
Marvin Olasky and John Perry, Monkey Business (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 181-182.
“However diligently Attorney General Tom Stewart in 1925, the Supreme Court in 1962, or the ACLU in 2004 strained to separate evolutionary theory from religion, they ultimately found it impossible to do because the taproot of Darwinism has nothing to do with science and everything to do with subjective repudiation of a traditional Christian worldview. As a letter from a professor in the scientific journal Nature put it, ‘Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such an hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.’
“Harvard biologist Richard Lewontin provided an even more transparent statement of the evolutionist position in the New York Review of Books when he wrote that scientists ‘are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations,’ which must be ‘absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door.’
“And so Dawkins and many evolutionists have remained firm in their commitment. Dawkins’s quotation from ‘Oppressed by Evolution’ by American anthropologist Matt Cartmill clearly defines one view of the battle: ‘Anybody who claims to have objective knowledge about anything is trying to control and dominate the rest of us … There are no objective facts. All supposed ‘facts’ are contaminated with theories, and all theories are infested with moral and political doctrines … Therefore, when some guy in a lab coat tells you that such and such is an objective fact … he must have a political agenda up his starched white sleeve.’”
Marvin Olasky and John Perry, Monkey Business (Nashville: Broadman & Holman Publishers, 2005), 193-194.
Assumptions of Evolution Theory
- There are inheritable variations among the members of a population;
- Many more individuals are produced each generation than can survive and reproduce. This statement is based on Malthus’ observation that populations can increase geometrically (1-2-4-8-16) while the food supply can increase only arithmetically (1-2-3-4-5);
- Individuals with adaptive characteristics are more likely to be selected to reproduce by the environment;
- Gradually, over long periods of time, a population can become well adapted to a particular environment;
- The end result of organic evolution is many different species, each adapted to specific environments.
Darwinian Evolution, (Christian Brothers University) [Accessed July 8, 2005]
Another statement of the assumptions of Darwinism:
- Non-living things gave rise to living things.
- Simple life-forms evolved into increasingly complex life-forms.
- All of this was the product of chance.
- All this took place over aeons and aeons of time.
- Existing physical processes—including those related to geology, biology, and astronomy—have been acting in a consistent fashion for billions of years essentially as we see them acting in the present.
Ron Rhodes, The 10 Things You Should Know About the Creation Vs. Evolution Debate (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2004), 26-27.
“Darwin’s classic book The Origin of Species argued three important related propositions. The first was that ‘the species are not immutable.’ By this he meant that new species have appeared during the long course of the earth’s history by a natural process he called ‘descent with modification.’ The second proposition was that this evolutionary process can be extended to account for all or nearly all the diversity of life, because all living things descended from a very small number of common ancestors, perhaps a single microscopic ancestor. The third proposition, and the one most distinctive to Darwinism, was that this vast process was guided by natural selection or ‘survival of the fittest,’ a guiding force so effective that it could accomplish prodigies of biological craftsmanship that people in previous times had thought to require the guiding hand of a creator … Darwinian evolution postulates two elements. The first is what Darwin called ‘variation,’ and what scientists today call mutation. Mutations are randomly occurring genetic changes which are nearly always harmful when they produce effects in the organism large enough to be visible, but which may occasionally slightly improve the organism’s ability to survive and reproduce. Organisms generally produce more offspring than can survive to maturity, and offspring that possess an advantage of this kind can be expected to produce more descendants themselves, other things being equal, than less advantaged members of the species. As the process of differential survival continues, the trait eventually spreads throughout the species, and it may become the basis for further cumulative improvements in succeeding generations. Given enough time, and sufficient mutations of the right sort, enormously complex organs and patterns of adaptive behavior can eventually be produced in tiny cumulative steps, without the assistance of any pre-existing intelligence … That is, all this can happen if the theory is true.”
Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin On Trial (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1993), 15-17.
Microevolution vs. Macroevolution
“A distinction must be made between microevolution and macroevolution, for much modern confusion on evolutionism is rooted in a confusion of these categories. Simply put, microevolution refers to changes that occur within the same species, while macroevolution refers to the transition or evolution of one species into another. Macroevolution ‘consists of changes within a population leading to a completely new species with genetic information that did not exist in any of the parents.’
“Creationists and evolutionists agree that microevolution has taken place. Creationists believe all the different races of human beings descended from a single common human ancestor (Adam). Likewise, all kinds of dogs have ‘microevolved’ from the original dog species created by God. In no case, however, have scientists ever observed macroevolution … the genetic pool of DNA in each species sets parameters beyond which the species simply cannot evolve (that is, dogs can take on new characteristics, but they cannot evolve into cats, for dog DNA always remains dog DNA, just as cat DNA always remains cat DNA).”
Ron Rhodes, The 10 Things You Should Know About the Creation Vs. Evolution Debate (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 2004), 29.
Arguments Against Evolution
“Many scientists and philosophers think that a dedication to materialism is the defining characteristic of science. Their argument is that an a priori adherence to materialism is necessary to protect the very existence of science. If design in biology is real, then the Designer also might be real, and scientific materialists contemplate this possibility (if at all) with outright panic. Science will come to a screeching halt, they insist, because everybody will stop doing experiments and just attribute all phenomena to the inscrutable will of God.
“Nonsense. On the contrary, the concept that the universe is the product of a rational mind provides a far better metaphysical basis for scientific rationality than the competing concept that everything in the universe (including our minds) is ultimately based in the mindless movements of matter. Perhaps materialism was a liberating philosophy when the need was to escape from dogmas of religion, but today materialism itself is the dogma from which the mind needs to escape. A rule that materialism should be professed regardless of the evidence … is the equivalent of a rule that science may not contradict the teachings of a church … Science has come as far as it has because scientists of the past were willing to describe the universe as it really is, rather than as the prejudices current in their times would have preferred it to be. The question is whether today’s scientists have lost their nerve.”
Phillip E. Johnson, Objections Sustained: Subversive Essays on Evolution, Law & Culture (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1998), 56 .
“History has taught us that an established religion tends to fall into bad habits, and the same thing may be true when a scientific establishment starts to act like a governmental body with an official ideology to uphold. The price of having that kind of position is that you are tempted to protect your power and wealth by defending things you shouldn’t be defending, with methods (like doubletalk and intimidating threats of legal action) that you shouldn’t be using. These become bad habits, and they eventually lead you into massive hypocrisy and self-deception. When you preach baloney detecting as the essential tool of science but make students turn their baloney detectors off when they get to the really important questions of origins, you convict yourselves every day of hypocrisy. You also lose the ability to think critically about your own beliefs.”
Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 55.
“Contemporary scientists don’t investigate what the Supreme Court called ‘the religious viewpoint that a supernatural being created humankind [or anything else].’ They disregard that possibility because they consider things supernatural to be outside of science. In other words, scientists start by assuming that naturalism is true, and they try to give purely natural explanations for everything, including our existence.
“Because of that assumption, scientists do not really consider whether evolution (as distinguished from creation) is true or whether evolution might be guided by God. They assume that evolution is the only possibility and that it is unguided, because in their minds both special creation and guided evolution fall in the territory of religion, not science. They also assume that natural selection has great creative power, not because that power can be demonstrated but because there is no better naturalistic alternative.
“Students should regard the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution, then, as merely the best naturalistic explanation of our existence that science can provide. Whether it is true is another question, and we cannot go into that question unless we are allowed to consider the possibility that a Creator exists.”
Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 56.
“Many Darwinists are reluctant to make a clear distinction between microevolution and macroevolution. They have evidence for a mechanism for minor variations, as illustrated by the finch-beak example, but have no distinct mechanism for the really creative kind of evolution, the kind that builds new body plans and new complex organs. Either macroevolution is just microevolution continued over a longer time, or it’s a mysterious process with no known mechanism. A process like that isn’t all that different from a miraculous or God-guided process, and it certainly wouldn’t support those expansive philosophical statements about evolution being purposeless and undirected.
“In my experience, the distinction between the fact of evolution and the neo-Darwinian theory always turns out to be just a debating gimmick to hide the problem with the mechanism from scrutiny. Once the ‘fact’ is established, it turns out to include the necessary mechanism, which is mutation and selection.
“Don’t let anybody tell you that the mechanism is a mere detail; it’s what the controversy is mainly about. When critics subject the mechanism to detailed criticism, Darwinists very quickly run out of evidence. That’s when they want to substitute a vague ‘fact,’ which will later be inflated to include the whole theory. It’s another example of bait and switch.”
Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 59.
“Evolutionary science has picked up the bad habits Richard Feynman warned scientists against and has thereby learned to fill an impressive balloon with hot air. To collapse the balloon, one only needs to make a tiny hole in its outer layer and let out some of the overconfidence that leads materialists to believe, as Marxists did, that history guarantees that their philosophy will overcome its problems and triumph in the end. Once that happens, I predict that the theory will collapse with astonishing swiftness … The biologists have to tell us candidly whether they are asking us to believe in materialism because of what they know from studying the facts of biology or whether they are so devoted to the philosophy that they are willing to disregard evidence that doesn’t fit it.”
Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 114-115.
“The main thing Christian parents and teachers can do is to teach young thinkers to understand the techniques of good thinking and help them tune up their baloney detectors so they aren’t fooled by the stock answers the authorities give to the tough questions. When high-schoolers hear the word evolution, particularly in one of those public television science programs, the indicator screens on their baloney detectors should display ‘Snow Job Alert! Snow Job Alert!’ If you know a good science teacher … tell him or her what you are doing. Maybe the teachers will want to learn more about the ‘snow job’ themselves, so that they can teach science as a way of opening minds rather than as a process of memorizing the official story … One problem you and they may have is figuring out how to avoid attracting the attention of so-called civil liberties lawyers, who actually specialize in confiscating baloney detectors.”
Phillip E. Johnson, Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 116.
Further Learning
Learn more about: Science, Creation/Evolution
8 comments (post your own) feed
1 On Jan 29th, 2007, at 9:45pm, Larry Pirkle wrote:
I was raised Southern Baptist and am currently a member of the United Methodist Church. I consider myself Baptist when someone ask me. Here is my question, is there any room in our doctrine for a universe that is billions of years old. I ask this question because my daughter currently attends a private baptist school and I want some clarification from the convention on this. I also do not believe that we should use the words baloney or snow job when discussing the other viewpoint, this kind of writting makes no point other to stoop to their level of there is no God.
2 On Mar 14th, 2007, at 1:42pm, Ryan Combs wrote:
Hello:
My question is who is Jerry Price and why does he distort the truth abouth the theory of evolution.
Thanks, Ryan
3 On Apr 10th, 2007, at 2:01pm, Chris P. wrote:
I was raised Catholic, and have gone through Presbyterianism and Methodism. I constantly struggle with the Evolution vs Creation debate. I suspect that each side has (fossilized) skeletons in their respective closets! There is no way to prove EITHER theory (God nor Darwinism) beyond a shadow of a doubt! But I am surprised by Mr. Johnson’s suggestion that Christian parents teach their high-schoolers to “tune up their baloney detectors” when they listen to a science teacher, yet makes no such suggestion to do the same during a Sunday school class or sermon. The challenge for me continues to be reconciling the wealth of evidence (from many scientific disciplines) for a 14.7 billion year old universe with a Creator who planted a tiny Garden on a far-off world for two people he KNEW would betray his trust and love. Then the rest of humanity is cursed through the end of time. What’s the point?
4 On Apr 10th, 2007, at 3:05pm, Matt Hawkins wrote:
(Full disclosure: Matt is on staff at the ERLC.)
Ryan asked,
Answer:
(Forgive the delayed reply.)
5 On Apr 10th, 2007, at 4:01pm, Matt Hawkins wrote:
(Full disclosure: Matt is on staff at ERLC.)
Hi Chris P.
Thank you for posting to our site and admitting your struggle with Evolution v. Creationism. I can assure you that you’re not alone in your search.
You are correct that both proving or disproving God may, indeed, be impossible. A good read on the subject is an article by Paul Copan titled The Presumptuousness of Atheism.
I’d encourage you to keep asking questions of both sides. I’d also recommend an interview that we re-aired on For Faith & Family radio just this week with Phillip Johnson (The Right Questions: Truth, Meaning, and Public Debate). (Free MP3 via download or podcast.)
Chris P. said,
While I certainly won’t speak for Dr. Johnson, I would venture to say that his call for “baloney detection” would of course extend beyond the science room and into any given church or Sunday school. In fact, Scripture encourages us to test everything (1 Thess 5:21) and to be prepared with a reason for the hope that is within us (1 Peter 3:15).
Additionally, Johnson is simply making the case that a child’s ‘baloney detectors’ not be turned off during times of science study. Nowhere do we find him saying “turn on baloney detectors only during science class, then off for church and Sunday school.” He’s just not making that argument.
On the whole, I’d encourage your thinking and questioning of all sides of any debate. Thank you again for engaging in thoughtful dialogue at ERLC.com.
6 On Jun 17th, 2007, at 7:46am, mike wrote:
You have stated that “Evolution is a religion”. The statement is not supportable. This claim is a legal gambit to remove Evolution from schools because the Constitution specifically bars religious entanglements with government, and specifically mandates support for “science and the useful arts”.
The part that really separates Evolution from religion is that it remains disprovable. If something new explains the world better, science will accept the new paradigm because it will lead to better understanding. The current conclusions are not dogma and further questions are sought out, studied, and submitted. Evolution is science, not a leap of faith.
A religion has ideas that are beyond question. Take the divine inspiration of Scripture. If evidence showed that scripture is basically flawed, unreliable as history, is this acceptable? A religion relies on basic leaps of faith upon which all else is built. That is why they call it faith.
7 On May 27th, 2008, at 7:49pm, Robert Madewell wrote:
There is one mistake that I could detect. You said, “Non-living things gave rise to living things.
“. This is not at all an assumption of evolution. Evolution does not say what life came from or how it started. It explains how currently living things diversified from earlier living things. The theory that explains how life started is abiogenesis, and there is just not enough data on it to say that life started from non living things. By the way, doesn’t creationism say that life came (or was created) from non-living things? (Genesis 1:11-12, 2:7)
8 On Jun 10th, 2008, at 12:31am, Tom Smit wrote:
Evolution is now supported by the science of genetics.
Science is not so much materialistic as empirical. Science looks to disprove theories.
Now, no creationist has ever come up with an explanation for the problem of oceanic islands: ocenaic islands are too far from a mainland for any animals but those who can swim or fly (birds, insects, some serpents and amphibians.) No land animals, mammal or serpent on oceanic islands: why wouldn’t God put land dwelling animals there?
Australia is a special case, opossums from the Americas crossed over during the Gondwanaland phase and, in the absence of other animals fanned out to become kangaroos, wallabies, etc etc. Since there were no placental mammals even two monotremes (egg laying mammals) survived, the echidna and platypus. Why didn’t God put cattle, horses, sheep, tigers etc etc in Australia?