by Bill Nugent
Article #247
The Discovery Institute has a website (www.dissentfromdarwin.org) where scientists who reject Darwinism can sign a statement that reads “We are skeptical of the claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” Over 800 scientists and college professors from all over the world have signed this statement. Their names and academic affiliations appear publicly on this list.
This is not a religious creationist list. These are people of many faiths or no faith who publicly doubt Darwinism often at great personal cost.
One such scientist is Dr. Michael Egnor, Professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at SUNY, Stonybrook who wrote:“Darwinism is a trivial idea that has been elevated to the status of the scientific theory that governs modern biology.”
Front running Republican Presidential candidate Rick Perry was asked if he believes in evolution. His rejection of evolution brought condescending rebuke from the media yet also prompted open discussion of the scientific evidence that shows design in nature. It also helped put the Intelligent Design Movement back in the news.
The Seattle Washington based Discovery Institute’s Center for Science and Culture is the leading think tank devoted to theIntelligent Design (ID) paradigm. Many Ph. D. scientists of all faiths (and some of no faith) have come to the conviction that random collisions of atoms and blind chance could not produce the intricate and irreducibly complex biological systems seen in living things.
Bill Gates has contributed to the Discovery Institute and he has said that DNA is like a computer program but only more complex than any that Microsoft has written. ID scientists see design in nature and see the necessity of a designer but they hesitate to use the word “God” to avoid being accused of religious motives.
I have often said that as science progresses, Darwinism is undermined. In the 1800s, Darwin and men of his generation, looking through primitive microscopes, saw the living cell as a mere tiny bag of fluid with a dot (nucleus) in the center. They postulated that cells were simple and could be spontaneously generated from nonliving material. With the invention of the electron microscope in Germany in 1931 and decades of microbiological research we now know that the simplest living cell, such as an E. coli bacterium, is more complex than the computer I’m using to write this. The cell nucleus of a typical living cell coordinates over two trillion chemical reactions per second involving over two thousand chemical synergists.
Leading ID scientist, Michael Behe, in his book Darwin’s Black Box, shows not only the myriad complexity of what were once thought to be “simple” cells but also that cells are irreducibly complex.
Irreducible complexity means that all of the cellular parts such as cell wall, nucleus, DNA and mitochondria would have to form at the same time and be assembled instantly to form the simplest conceivable living cell. If any one part was missing the cell would be nonfunctional. Therefore, a gradual step by step formation of cell parts would not have produced a living cell but would have only produced dead cellular parts which would have dissolved away before being assembled. Establishment evolutionists fired back at Behe with very strained and vacuous argumentation.
The field of genetics also shows the impossibility of Darwinian evolution. Stephen Meyer, Director of the Center for Science and Culture, has written a seminal book titled, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. In this book, Meyer meticulously shows how DNA is like a detailed computer program that could never have formed by random collisions of atoms. It provoked a storm of controversy from dogmatic evolutionists.
Also, let’s consider that natural selection, the engine of Darwinism, lacks the ability to form new biological systems but simply destroys the less adapted. Natural selection not only means “survival of the fittest” but also destruction of the unfit. For instance, let’s say that a baby was born in Siberia tomorrow that had a genetic mutation that gave it far better hands than the hands of the other seven billion people on earth. According to Darwinists how would that favorable mutation spread to the rest of the human gene pool? The seven billion people with inferior hands would be less able to survive and reproduce than our Siberian with the new mutation.
Over the coming generations all seven billion people without that hand mutation would have to die off and only people with the new mutation survive. Do the math on that and you’ll see that it would take hundreds of generations to spread that one mutation to the entire human population. That’s called Haldane’s Dilemma, which is the realization that it would take too many generations for natural selection to substitute newly mutated genes into the entire gene pool.
As of now, the levers of power at the National Academy of Science and at most universities are clearly held by the old school Darwinists. There are many examples of firings and career sabotage directed against good qualified scientists who believe in Intelligent Design. The ID adherents are people of many faiths or no faith that suffer academic persecution. People are tired of being dictated to by ivory tower types who deny strong scientific evidence that refutes Darwinism.
They asked Rick Perry if he “believes in science.” Of course Perry and all Christian creationists and ID scientists believe in science. If any segment of western society doesn’t believe in science I tend to think it would be the evolutionists who have rejected the plain scientific evidence staring them in the face that refutes the Darwinian paradigm.
There have been many staunchly Christian creationists who have stood up boldly over many years against Darwinism. Creationists have been a kind of guerilla army but now with the addition of many regiments of Intelligent Design proponents of all faiths we now have a regular army of qualified scientists to oppose and overthrow the Darwinist empire.
Children are taught in public schools that they are soulless descendants of apes that have no real purpose or meaning in life. Darwinism implies atheistic materialism which in turn claims that people have no conscious existence in the afterlife and thus ultimately have no future. True science shows that there had to be an intelligent designer of life whom we call the Creator God.
Our Creator is also our redeemer who sent Jesus Christ, who came in fulfillment of over 300 Old Testament prophecies, to die in our place and atone for our sins. Call upon the name of Jesus today to receive forgiveness of sins!