[The text below represents an edited transcript of this Tomorrow’s World program.]
3 (Big) Cracks in Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Do an Internet search and ask, “How did life begin on earth?” and you’ll find articles and videos pointing to some kind of evolutionary explanation. One honest NASA scientist in a video on the subject begins and ends with, “We just don’t know.” Yet, he is clearly looking for a naturalistic or evolutionary explanation.
Consider that there are only three fundamental hypotheses for the origin of life on planet Earth.
- Life was transported to Earth (panspermia).
- All life evolved from non-living matter.
- An intelligent being that we might think of as God created life.
Setting aside the huge problems of even bacterial life traveling through vast distances of space, over immense times, and in an environment that is hostile to life—the idea that life was transported to Earth from somewhere else in the universe merely postpones the central question. If life was transported to planet earth by a meteor or some other unknown means, how did it begin at that original source? Was it by chance? Or was it by an infinitely great mind with unlimited power?
Since the time when Charles Darwin’s thesis, On the Origin of Species, was published more than 165 years ago, the need for God in people’s minds has been diminished. After all, if we are no more than the product of blind evolutionary chance, what need is there for a Divine Creator?
1. Fossil Evidence Does NOT Support Evolution
However, in the last half century, insurmountable cracks have appeared in Darwin’s thesis. Let’s note three of them. Crack number one:
- The fossil record argues against evolution.
But this may surprise you, since evolutionists often point to the fossil record as proof! However, they personally know better. The lack of fossil evidence was a problem from the beginning—and Darwin admitted this. But it was hoped that with greater fossil finds, the intermediates, the so-called missing links, would be found. But sadly, for evolutionists, that has not happened.
Every few years we hear “the missing link has been found,” but is that true? The answer is no, it is not. Part of the problem is that it is not a single link, but many thousands of links that are required—not only for man, but for every living creature.
Scientist Michael Denton pulls back the curtain on the geologic record in his insightful book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
The overall picture of life on Earth today is so discontinuous, the gaps between the different types so obvious, that, as Steven Stanley reminds us in his recent book Macroevolution, if our knowledge of biology was restricted to those species presently existing on earth, “we might wonder whether the doctrine of evolution would qualify as anything more than an outrageous hypothesis” (pp. 157–158).
And as Denton points out—and evolutionary scientists must admit—missing transitions (that is, intermediate forms) plagued Darwin from the beginning.
The absence of intermediates, although damaging, was not fatal in 1860, for it was reasonable to hope that many would eventually be found as geological activities increased (p. 160).
However, time and new discoveries have not been allies for evolution. Denton suggests that “probably 99.9%” of our current knowledge of the fossil record has been discovered since 1860, and:
Only a small fraction of the hundred thousand or so fossil species known today were known to Darwin. But virtually all the new fossil species discovered since Darwin’s time have either been closely related to known forms or, like the Poganophoras, strange unique types of unknown affinity (pp. 160–161).
Transitional forms simply are not there, and Denton states the obvious to any honest person who looks at the fossil record with an open mind.
Without intermediates or transitional forms to bridge the enormous gaps which separate existing species and groups of organisms, the concept of evolution could never be taken seriously as a scientific hypothesis (p. 158).
So crack number one in the evolutionary hypothesis is the fossil record argues against evolution.
2. Mathematical Evidence Is Against Evolution
And now for crack number two:
- It is mathematically impossible for life to rise from dead matter by chance.
Science writer and evolutionist Bill Bryson explains.
No one really knows, but there may be as many as a million [different] types of protein in the human body, and each one is a little miracle (A Short History of Nearly Everything, p. 288).
One of those million or so miracles that you have likely heard of is collagen. And regarding the odds of it self-assembling, Bryson states what all rational scientists must admit:
The chances of a 1,055-sequence molecule like collagen spontaneously self-assembling are, frankly, nil. It just isn’t going to happen (ibid).
He then went on to describe the mathematical odds against a much smaller 200-string protein self-assembling as greater than all the atoms in the universe. The larger collagen protein happening by chance is of a magnitude incomprehensibly greater, but collagen is not even close to the largest protein.
Titin gives elasticity to our muscles and much more, and it contains somewhere in the neighborhood of more than 33,000 amino acids. That’s like throwing letters of the alphabet together and by accident forming a coherent sentence made up of some 33,000 or more letters. No wonder evolutionist Bill Bryson makes this remarkable admission:
By all the laws of probability proteins shouldn’t exist (A Short History of Nearly Everything, Bill Bryson, p. 288).
Nature programs and books generally portray evolution as fact rather than theory. However, this theory is in crisis, as Michael Denton explains in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. So far, I’ve given you two cracks in the theory.
Crack #1: The fossil record argues against evolution.
And crack #2: It is mathematically impossible for life to rise from dead matter by chance.
Life is either the result of cosmic accidents, or the result of a great intelligence with unlimited power. There’s no other choice.
3. Living Organisms Are Too Complex to Evolve
Now here is a third crack.
- Life is complex beyond our comprehension.
When Charles Darwin formulated his theory and published it in 1859, he had no concept about the complexity of the cell, but with the advent of modern technologies that allow us to see inside the cell, we now know that the complexity of cells staggers the mind. As Michael Denton explains:
Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snowflake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive…. Although the tiniest bacterial cells are incredibly small… each is in effect a veritable microminiaturized factory containing thousands of exquisitely designed pieces of intricate molecular machinery…far more complicated than any machine built by man and absolutely without parallel in the non-living world (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton, pp. 249–250).
Denton goes on to explain:
The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle (p. 264).
In his 2019 book on the subject of the human body, Bill Bryson makes this thought-provoking admission:
You could call together all the brainiest people who are alive now or have ever lived and endow them with the complete sum of human knowledge, and they could not between them make a single living cell (The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson, p. 4).
Yet evolutionists want us to believe that something so complex happened by chance. The truth is that scientists cannot give a rational explanation how such a grand accident could occur.
Oh, they give just-so stories that sound good on the surface: This might have happened, then this may have come about, and it is not hard to imagine this change taking place, etc., etc., and etc.
All this leads us to the obvious conclusion: What is the most reasonable explanation for life?
Former Atheist Says DNA Had to Be Designed
Many scientists and philosophers are coming to the realization that evolution is found wanting and that the only rational explanation is that there is an intelligent Creator behind life. Perhaps the most striking example is that of the late Antony Flew, considered by many to be “the world’s most influential philosophical atheist.”
But early in 2004, at the age of eighty-one, he changed his mind. Flew announced his conversion to deism, launching seismic waves throughout the philosophic community.… He had become convinced that life would not be possible without the extreme fine-tuning of the universe, and this was only possible with a designer. In addition, he concluded that new discoveries about DNA made it impossible that life could be an accident. As he put it, “It now seems to me that the findings of more than fifty years of DNA research have provided materials for a new and enormously powerful argument to design” (Your Designed Body, Laufmann & Glicksman, p. 425).
When we consider how complex life truly is on every level, it brings us to another question: How could God do it? It should be obvious to anyone who knows even a little bit about the structure and operation of cells, that they cannot happen by chance. As Michael Denton rightfully stated:
The complexity of the simplest known type of cell is so great that it is impossible to accept that such an object could have been thrown together suddenly by some kind of freakish, vastly improbable, event. Such an occurrence would be indistinguishable from a miracle (Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, Michael Denton, p. 264).
A 1961 hit song tells us that God made woman out of a hundred pounds of clay, an obvious reference to the biblical account of man being made of the dust of the ground. But much is left out of this picture. My guess is that many people envision God taking clay and molding it in the form of a man, then breathing into his nostrils, and the clay suddenly became a living man. But was it that simple? Was it magic?
How Complex Is the Human Brain?
How did the circulatory system, the digestive system, the respiratory system come to be? How were all the organs—heart, liver, spleen, and pancreas—formed?
And let us not forget our brain. As Bryson says:
The most extraordinary thing in the universe is inside your head. You could travel through every inch of outer space and very possibly nowhere find anything as marvelous and complex and high functioning as the three pounds of spongy mass between your ears (The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson, p. 48).
How did something so marvelous and complex as the brain come to be? How did the cells that make up the organs and systems, with all their amazing organelles and protein machines, suddenly appear?
The human body and all living creatures, whether great or small, are designed from the microscopic to cause the body to function as a whole. As explained in the previous portion of this program, the complexity of life is so great that scientists readily admit it is mathematically impossible to happen by chance. Yet they refuse to entertain any alternative to their materialistic religion.
But if there is no other alternative than God, how did He do it? How did he construct the cells, the organs, and all the intricate details, all at once before it began decomposition—something that happens almost immediately? Think about it dear friends. This is no small thing.
Bible Verses About Creation
How could God do it? Well, Psalm 33:6 tells us:
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth.
Yes, “by the word of the Lord” and “the breath of His mouth.” One could argue that this is poetic and not to be taken literally, but the idea that it was by God’s command that the universe and life on this planet came to be is found throughout the Bible. Notice that this is confirmed in the very first chapter of Genesis. I won’t read it all, but let’s begin with verse 24.
Then God said, “Let the earth bring forth the living creature according to its kind: cattle and creeping thing and beast of the earth, each according to its kind”; and it was so.… Then God said, “Let Us make man in Our image, according to Our likeness.” …So God created man in His own image; in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them (Genesis 1:24–27).
This account is severely abbreviated and leaves much out, but another passage confirms that it was the voice of God by which creation took place. Breaking into a thought in Psalm 148, we read:
Praise Him, you heavens of heavens, and you waters above the heavens! Let them praise the name of the Lord, for He commanded and they were created (Psalm 148:4–5).
And then there is Hebrews 1:2–3.
[God] has in these last days spoken to us by His Son, whom He has appointed heir of all things, through whom also He made the worlds; who being the brightness of His glory and the express image of His person, and [notice this] upholding all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:2-3).
The debate over how life began has huge implications. The late William Provine, a professor of biology at Cornell University, explains the evolutionists’ perspective.
Let me summarize my views on what modern evolutionary biology tells us loud and clear. There is no life after death. When I die, I am absolutely certain that I am going to be dead. That’s the end of me. There is no ultimate foundation for ethics, no ultimate meaning in life, and no free will for humans, either (“Darwinism: Science or Naturalistic Philosophy?”, William B. Provine, Debate at Stanford University, April 30, 1994).
What a dark, hopeless, and purposeless state of mind, but it is one thing to believe something—quite another to prove it.
But in this last portion of our program, I want to explore one possibility of how God could bring about life on this planet. As we saw in the previous segment (Genesis 1:24):
God spoke and it was done.
And:
By the word of the Lord the heavens were made, and all the host of them by the breath of His mouth (Psalm 33:6).
And:
He upholds all things by the word of His power (Hebrews 1:3).
Compare God’s Creation and Man’s Creation (A.I.)
But exactly how did God do it? Did kidneys and lungs, spleens and hearts, magically appear without God consciously designing them?
We have a technology that may at least help us imagine what this may have been like. While it has been in the background for several years, it’s only in recent times that we, the public, have become aware of the power of artificial intelligence. And while it is a terribly weak analogy, it may help us begin to have a sense of what it was like for God to create life.
Today’s A.I. platforms seem very powerful and creative. Ask an A.I. program for a picture of diving cats, and it will generate one on your computer screen. You see different species of cats doing somersaults off a diving board into the water. The cats are, of course, not real.
Computer programmers can describe new applications, and A.I. writes the code for them. Students use A.I. to write term papers. They type in guidelines regarding the subject, the style to be written in, the word count, etc., and A.I. generates the thesis—not always accurately, and sometimes not without bias.
Yet these A.I. platforms cannot truly create anything on their own. Instead, they have been trained using vast collections of mankind’s knowledge: art, literature, scientific publications and much more. A.I. is doing the work, but A.I. is powered by the sum of human knowledge and creativity.
God’s Ways Are Above Our Ways
Yet the mind of God is far greater than all of mankind’s combined knowledge. Let me remind you of the Bill Bryson quote given earlier in this program.
You could call together all the brainiest people who are alive now or have ever lived and endow them with the complete sum of human knowledge, and they could not between them make a single living cell (The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Bill Bryson, p. 4).
In our analogy—as imperfect as it is—the mind of God is a reservoir of knowledge far greater than man can amass. God could have thought through, planned, and designed every detail of life, from the intricacies of cellular structures to the complexities of life’s chemical processes. He had to design—as it were, write—the code of life—DNA. With all that planned out, He could then simply speak the instructions, and instead of an image on a computer screen appearing, real lifeforms appeared at His command, according to the very designs He had planned.
The point is that while A.I. may be a terribly flawed analogy, it can help us to see how every detail of life could be planned out in the mind of God prior to speaking the word. And when He did speak, the elements of the universe He created obeyed His instructions. God’s mind and power are vastly superior to ours.
Life did not happen by chance—it’s far too complicated for that, and scientists know it. Only the mind of God, along with His endless power, could create life.
One of my favorite quotes comes from Michael Behe in the context of modern discoveries revealing the incredible complexity of cellular life. He writes:
The result of these cumulative efforts to investigate the cell—to investigate life at the molecular level—is a loud, clear, piercing cry of “design!” The result is so unambiguous and so significant that it must be ranked as one of the greatest achievements in the history of science…. This triumph of science should evoke cries of “Eureka!” from ten thousand throats, should occasion much hand-slapping and high-fiving, and perhaps even be an excuse to take a day off.
But no bottles have been uncorked, no hands slapped. Instead, a curious, embarrassed silence surrounds the stark complexity of the cell. When the subject comes up in public, feet start to shuffle, and breathing gets a bit labored. In private people are a bit more relaxed; many explicitly admit the obvious but then stare at the ground, shake their heads, and let it go at that.
Why does the scientific community not greedily embrace its startling discovery? Why is the observation of design handled with intellectual gloves? The dilemma is that while one side of the elephant is labeled intelligent design, the other side might be labeled God (Darwin’s Black Box, Michael Behe, pp. 232–233).
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