Problems of Evolutionism

The Problem of Truth As An Absolute Category (Ravi Zacharias)

Ravi: Do you believe that Time, Matter, and Chance created your brain?....
Scientist: Yes.
Ravi: If Time, Matter, and Chance created the human brain, then Truth as an absolute category cannot exist. For, in order for something to be true, it must be true on Sunday, on Monday... But, with the constant flux and fluctuation of Time, Matter, and Chance, all changing, Truth as an absolute category cannot exist.
Scientist: I believe that's right.
Ravi: But, if Truth as an absolute category doesn't exist, then how do you know that it is true that Time, Matter, and Chance created your brain?
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If Randomness (Chance) and not Intelligence (God) produced the universe, then Truth could not absolute, since "knowledge" whatever it is would be the product of a random collocation of atoms constantly in flux; and, flux being the underlying principle of evolutionism, absolutes become meaningless. But, if Truth doesn't exist, then one doesn't even have the right to say that something is absolutely truth, e.g. evolutionism. Therefore, evolutionism is self-defeating.

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The Problem of Scientific Authenticity

Oxford Dictionary defines Science as "the intellectual and practical activity encompassing the systematic study of the structure and behavior of the physical and natural world through observation and experiment". In order for a theory to be scientific in nature, it must be based on observation and experiment. For example, Newton OBSERVED the apple falling from the tree, then formed the THEORY of gravity, which was proven as (at least instrumentally) true by EXPERIMENT (yet, the theory is not an absolute because it's contrary, Einstein's theory of gravity is quite different, yet experimentally "proven"). Evolutionism is neither based on observation (e.g. of fish evolving into frogs in species evolution) nor experiment.

Someone once noted that there are four great problems of evolutionism:
1. The Second Law of Thermodynamics or the Law of Entropy. This Law states that the usable energy of the universe is decreasing; therefore, degradation and not evolution is the principle underlying the processes of the universe. Development only occurs where intelligence is present. Life and intelligence (including DNA) go together.
2. Missing Links. There isn't any evidence that a species evolved into another. No fossil of an ape-man or a fish-reptile have been found. There are not sufficient reasons to theorize that Neanderthal man, Java man, and Peking man were intermediaries between apes and humans. The Piltdown Man was a hoax (Check these articles Piltdown (wikipedia); Neanderthal (ICR)
3. No Known Mechanism. There is no known mechanism of evolution. It is not known because it cannot be observed, and unless one observes something happening (e.g. evolution actually taking place). See the following video:
4. Growing evidences for a young earth. Evolutionism claims eons of time taken for evolution to take place (e.g. hundreds of monkeys randomly hitting on a computer keyboard produced Shakespeare's The Tempest in eons of time). But, there are growing evidences for a young earth. (See Evidence for a Young Earth; Evidence for a Young Earth from the Ocean and Atmosphere by L. Vardiman, PhD)

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The Problem of Ethics

If evolutionism is true, then Justice, Courage, and Temperance are invalidated and moral questions become nonsensical. The moral sense is absurd. The serious consequences of such absurdity has been well portrayed by Steve Turner.

Turner's Creed as Quoted by Ravi Zacharias
We believe in Marx, Freud and Darwin
We believe everything is OK
as long as you don't hurt anyone
to the best of your definition of hurt,
and to the best of your knowledge.

We believe in sex before, during, and
after marriage.
We believe in the therapy of sin.
We believe that adultery is fun.
We believe that sodomy’s OK.
We believe that taboos are taboo.

We believe that everything's getting better
despite evidence to the contrary.
The evidence must be investigated
And you can prove anything with evidence.

We believe there's something in horoscopes
UFO's and bent spoons.
Jesus was a good man just like Buddha,
Mohammed, and ourselves.
He was a good moral teacher though we think
His good morals were bad.

We believe that all religions are basically the same-
at least the one that we read was.
They all believe in love and goodness.
They only differ on matters of creation,
sin, heaven, hell, God, and salvation.

We believe that after death comes the Nothing
Because when you ask the dead what happens
they say nothing.
If death is not the end, if the dead have lied, then its
compulsory heaven for all
excepting perhaps
Hitler, Stalin, and Genghis Kahn

We believe in Masters and Johnson
What's selected is average.
What's average is normal.
What's normal is good.

We believe in total disarmament.
We believe there are direct links between warfare and
bloodshed.
Americans should beat their guns into tractors .
And the Russians would be sure to follow.

We believe that man is essentially good.
It's only his behavior that lets him down.
This is the fault of society.
Society is the fault of conditions.
Conditions are the fault of society.

We believe that each man must find the truth that
is right for him.
Reality will adapt accordingly.
The universe will readjust.
History will alter.
We believe that there is no absolute truth
excepting the truth
that there is no absolute truth.

We believe in the rejection of creeds,
And the flowering of individual thought.

If chance be
the Father of all flesh,
disaster is his rainbow in the sky
and when you hear:

State of Emergency!

Sniper Kills Ten!

Troops on Rampage!

Whites go Looting!

Bomb Blasts School!

It is but the sound of man worshipping his maker.

Evolutionism & Living Reality

From Marbaniang, Domenic. Philosophy of Science, 2007, 2011 (Amazon; Lulu, ITunes)


Evolutionism concerns the problem of the origin and nature of living reality. Evolutionism, in science, refers to the theory that ‘the many complex organisms now existent descended or evolved from relatively fewer and simpler organisms.’[1] The hypothetical nature of evolutionism, despite accruement of evidences in support yet inability to verify in prediction or through experimentation, has led some to label it as being not a scientific theory but a philosophical one.[2]

Supposed evidence for organic evolution comes from comparative anatomy, study of vestigial remains, embryology, blood and fluid tests of animals, examination of fossils, study of geographical distribution, domestication and experimentation, and classification.[3]

The theory of evolution doesn’t simply end at ‘the fewer and simpler organisms’. The ultimate problem is how life itself originated. The religious or purely philosophical answers do not concern scientific metaphysics. However, though evolutionism has been labeled sometimes as religious and sometimes as philosophical, its claim to an empirical scientific methodology, generally allots it a place in physical anthropology. According to Duane T. Gish, the General Theory of Evolution is the ‘theory that all living things have arisen by naturalistic, mechanistic processes from a single primeval cell, which in turn had arisen by similar processes from a dead, inanimate world.’[4]

Critics of evolution theory have pointed out that it fails to meet the criteria of a scientific theory. To Gish, for instance its failure consists in not being observed, not being subject to experimentation, and assuming the form of non-falsifiability.[5] Further, a verifiable prediction on the basis of evolution theory has never been successfully made and verified because an adequate theory to explain the mechanism has never been given. In fact, in order for such a theory to even exist, evolution must be first observed, which has never been the case. Therefore, evolutionism cannot be regarded as science, at least in the sense in which all other scientific theories are concerned. However, as relevant to the subject and science and also philosophy, the fundamental assumptions of evolutionism need to be examined.

Evolutionism assumes that life is material. In other words, life is all about a right arrangement of atoms and molecules. On the basis of this assumption, it is supposed that a mixture of certain gases, energy, and water could have given rise to certain organic substances, like amino acids (the building blocks of proteins, including the all-important enzymes that control the chemical processes of life), and purines and pyrimidines (the building blocks of RNA and DNA).[6]Consequently, the sea would have become a ‘soup’ of prebiological organic compounds which would become conducive to the generation of some kind of a replicator that played a crucial role in the development of cells and the origin of life. What all these substances and replicators are is unknown to science. How all this happened is unknown to science.

However, evolutionists seem to be sure that though they are not sure how this all happened, they are at least sure that it has so happened, although they have never observed it happening. Such kind of an approach seems to be too superstitious to some. But all of this proceeds out of a materialistic outlook that not only looks at the world as a machine but also looks at the organism also as a machine. Life, then, is not some spiritual element within the organism. It is simply the animation or growth caused in a material body due to some programmed materials that chanced to happen at random. The strength of belief in evolutionism despite such uncertainty in providing adequate scientific explanations cannot qualify evolutionism as a philosophy, which seeks not mere speculation but argument and reasoning to establish the absoluteness of truth. Consequently, theories that are based on evolutionism also may be as unreliable as evolutionism since it itself stands on uncertainty.

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[1] Milton D. Hunnex, Chronological and Thematic Charts of Philosophies and Philosophers (Grand Rapids: Zondervan Publishing House, 1986), p. 17
[2] Harry Rimmer, The Theory of Evolution and the Facts of Science (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1935), p. 18
[3] Titus, Smith, and Nolan, Living Issues in Philosophy, p. 33
[4] Duane Tolbert Gish, “Creation, Evolution and Public Education,” Philosophy and Contemporary Issues, 4th edn. (eds. John R. Burr & Milton Goldinger;New York: Macmillan Publishing Company, 1984), p. 458
[5] Ibid, p. 459
[6] “Evolution,” Microsoft Encarta Encyclopedia (Microsoft Corporation, 2001)