Basic Knowledge for the Educated

“Now evolution is the substance of fossils hoped for the evidence of links not seen.” (Duane T. Gish)

In yet another radio discussion (Newstalk 93 FM, Jamaica) atheist Lloyd D’Aguilar attempted to defend his position that evolution adequately explains the origins of living things. His chosen analogy is the improvement we observe in human affairs via trial and error.

As I tried to explain, trial and error can indeed lead to improvement when human minds are guiding the process but there is no such guiding mind within the Darwinian evolutionary process. Further evolution (in terms of one organism giving rise to another different kind of organism) is impossible because the only causative mechanism for radical change available within Darwinism is mutation (genetic mistakes). Natural selection is dependent on gene pool possibilities.

It is not sufficiently known that mutations almost always destroy or diffuse genetic information but never add new information to an organism’s genome (gene pool).  Unless new information is added to the gene pool of an organism, that organism will continue to produce only its own kind it cannot produce anything else because its reproductive capabilities are limited by the genetic coding in its genome.

Evolution via mutations is like arguing that a virus-ridden, damaged Word 97 program can over time give rise to Word 2010.

The picture is actually much worse, for Darwinist face a trilemma. For change via mutation to happen  a mutation must 1) have a positive selective value 2) add a little information to the genome and 3) happen often enough across a population so that it survives to take over the population. Unless and until these three unlikely things happen the conservatism that marks all genomes studied will block radical change of one organism into another!! Millions of years can’t help here, what the evolutionary thesis needs are hundreds of bits of genetic information to modify body parts and effect internal system change at the biochemical level plus.

For example, for a reptile to become a bird you need genetic information to change scales to feathers and the reptilian breathing apparatus to the complicated avian breathing apparatus. As Michael Denton urges, “In addition to the feather and the avian lung there are many other unique features in the biology of birds, in the design of the heart and cardiovascular system…the unique sound producing organ, the syrinx…Altogether it adds up to an enormous conceptual difficulty in envisaging how a reptile could have been gradually converted into a bird.” (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, 1985, 213).

My friend Lloyd seems unaware of it but acquired characteristics (unless it is something genetic) are not heritable, cannot be passed on genetically. If I lose a hand in life it does not follow that my children born after that event will be one-handed too.  The loss of a hand does nothing to my gene pool.

Almost every inquisitive child when told about God will probably end up asking ‘where did God come from?’ or ‘So who created God?’ These questions are pardonable from a child but indictable from an educated adult. Philosophically, this kind of question is called a category mistake.

If you concede that there is something in the universe as opposed to nothing at all then one entity in the universe must be eternal. One can legitimately ask of anything that is around ‘who caused this to be?’ One thing you cannot do though is continue back to infinity asking that question because then nothing would be here. The existence buck stops at a first cause, an eternal entity which is uncaused, uncreated and to indulge a weird coinage, uncomefrom.

If the Universe was eternal it would also be a category mistake to ask ‘where did the Universe come from?’ It’s like asking ‘how much does the color pink weigh?’

Educated folk need to learn to ask questions as well as to question answers.

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