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"Natural" Selection Versus "Supernatural" Design
Supplemental Reading


John D. Morris, Ph.D.
IMPACT
No. 223, January 1992


Few Christians realize the extent to which the evolutionary world viewconflicts with the Biblical world view. While many attempt to keep a foot ineach camp, acknowledging Christ as Savior yet holding evolution to be a factof history, Christianity and evolution cannot both be true. Evolution is, atits very essence, an atheistic explanation of the world around us. Not alladherents of evolution are atheists, but certainly the leading proponents ofevolution recognize that the concept leaves no room for the workings of Godin nature.

Consider the following oft-repeated quote from Sir Julian Huxley, who, untilhis recent death, was perhaps the world's leading spokesperson for evolutionand who, from his position as head of UNESCO at the United Nations, did muchto unite the world under an evolutionary, humanistic banner.
Darwin pointed out that no supernatural designer was needed; since naturalselection could account for any known form of life, there was no room for asupernatural agency in its evolution ... we can dismiss entirely all ideasof a supernatural overriding mind being responsible for the evolutionaryprocess. [1]
On the other hand, Scripture, in many places and in many ways, identifiesGod as Creator, and claims that His creation was an act of forethought, ofplanning, of design. Supernatural processes were used to accomplish thisdesign, not just natural processes. "The heavens declare the glory of God,and the firmament showeth His handiwork" (Psalm 19:1). "Thou art worthy, OLord, to receive glory and honor and power; for thou hast created allthings, and for thy pleasure they are and were created" (Revelation 4:11).

These two concepts, supernatural design versus natural processes operatingby chance, represent the two views of origins, and are opposite. They cannotboth be true. Nobel Prize-winning zoologist Jacques Monod said it this way:
" ... it necessarily follows that chance alone is at the source of every innovation.... Pure chance, absolutely free but blind, at the very root of the stupendous edifice of evolution." [2]
The recent edition of the authoritative Encyclopaedia Britannica informs usthat:
Darwin did two things: He showed that evolution was a fact contradicting literal interpretations of Scriptural legends of creation and that its cause, natural selection, was automatic with no room for divine guidance or design.

Many Christians believe in evolution, but they must come to realize that theevolutionary way of thinking, conflicting as it does with the facts ofscience, is a logical necessity, if, and only if, there has been nosupernatural input in nature.

Furthermore, if evolution is true, the entire Christian faith is a sham. Dr.William Provine, Professor of History and Biology at Cornell University andauthor of many anti-creation articles, wrote recently that Darwinrecognized:
... if natural selection explained adaptations, and evolution by descent were true, then the argument from design was dead and all that went with it, namely: 1) the existence of a personal God, 2) free will, 3) life after death, 4) immutable moral laws, and 5) ultimate meaning in life. [4]
But evolution is not a fact! Evolution is not even in a category of thingsthat could ever be a scientific fact! It is a world view about the past --an historical reconstruction. It is a way to interpret scientific data, suchas rocks, fossils, and complex living systems which exist in the present. Itis a potential answer to the question, "What happened in the unobserved pastto make the present get to be this way?"

As we have seen, this answer encompasses far more than merely a scientificproposal. As currently understood by leading evolutionists, it embracesstrict naturalism, an anti-God philosophy, and results in a denial of themajor doctrines of Scripture.

Darwin, in his writings, letters, and memoirs, promoted natural selection asa means by which the incredible design obvious in every living system couldbe derived through purely mechanistic, naturalistic processes. He devotedgreat energy to refuting the writings of William Paley, in which Paleyreasoned that one can infer from the functional complexity of a system thatintelligence was necessary in its formation. Just as a complex watchnecessarily implies a watchmaker, so living systems, much more complex thana watch, demand that a Creator was involved in their origin. His positionwas eminently logical, but necessarily implied a Creator-God.

And this helps explain why Darwin and his modern disciples combat theconcept of design with such vigor. If such a Creator exists, He has theauthority to set the rules for His creation, and the authority to set therules for breaking His rules. Accountability for our actions to a holy,Creator-God is not easily accepted by the natural man.

Jesus told Nicodemus, "And this is the condemnation, that light is come intothe world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deedswere evil" (John 3:19).

If no supernatural agency has been at work throughout history, then creationis dead. But if evolutionists even allow a spark of supernatural design inhistory, then evolution is dead, for evolution necessarily relies on solelynatural processes.

But design in living things is obvious. Even the single-celled organism iscomplex beyond the ability of scientists to understand, let alone duplicate.All of life is governed by the marvelously complex genetic code, whichcontains not only design and order, but what is equivalent to writteninformation. This DNA code must not only be written correctly, the rest ofthe cell must be able to read it and follow its instructions, if the cell isto metabolize its food, carry out the myriad of enzyme reactions, and,especially, to reproduce. This code had to be present at the origin of life.How could it have written itself? And how could all the various organelleslearn how to read and obey it?

Carl Sagan, the modern-day evolutionary spokesperson has admitted:
The information content of a simple cell has been established as around 1012 bits, comparable to about a hundred million pages of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. [5]
And yet he believes the code wrote itself, by purely random, naturalprocesses, as non-living chemicals sprang to life!

Is this view really credible? Is it really scientific to ascribe to naturalprocesses functions and products which clearly are the result of intelligentdesign? The Bible tells us that even "the invisible things of Him from thecreation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things thatare made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are withoutexcuse" (Romans 1:20).

A favorite example of obvious design has always been the human eye. With itsmany functioning parts—the lens, cornea, iris, etc., the controllingmuscles, the sensitive rods and cones which translate light energy intochemical signals, the optic nerve which speeds these signals to a decodingcenter in the brain—and on and on. The eye was unquestionably designed byan incredibly intelligent Designer who had a complete grasp of opticalphysics.

Darwin was frustrated by the eye's complexity, even though he knew only afraction of what scientists have now discovered about the eye. In his book,Origin of Species, he included a section entitled, "Organs of ExtremePerfection and Complication," in which he declared:
To suppose that the eye, with all its inimitable contrivances for adjusting the focus to different amounts of light, and for the correction of spherical and chromatic aberration, could have been formed by natural selection, seems, I freely confess, absurd in the highest degree. [6]
Yet in the next several pages, he discussed how he thought it might havehappened.

One may wonder why Darwin was forced to adopt and defend what he admittedwas an absurd conclusion. His reasoning is made plain in the followingquote. Keep in mind that Darwin was raised in a nominally religious home,but whose extended family had a well-established anti-Christian perspective.Darwin, himself, studied for the ministry, as was common in those days forindividuals of a scholarly bent, but eventually rejected the Christianfaith.

In a May 22, 1860 letter to Professor Asa Gray of Harvard, propagator ofevolution on the American continent, Darwin wrote, evidently to answerGray's advocacy of "theistic" evolution:
I had no intention to write atheistically. But I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence (or goodness) on all sides of us. There seems to me to be too much misery in the world. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the ichneumonidae (parasites) with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed [parenthesis added].
Notice that Darwin was not looking at the eye and concluding an evolutionaryorigin. He looked at the pain, suffering, misery, and death in the world,and concluded that there must not be a God as revealed in the Bible. Ifthere was such a God, He wouldn't have created the world as we encounter it.

You see, Darwin had a theological problem. He had rejected the Biblicaldoctrine of the entrance of death into the world as the result of sin. Adamand Eve had rebelled against the Creator's authority, resulting in thedistortion of God's original, deathless, "very good" creation. Darwinrejected the doctrine that the Creator had, Himself, died to pay sin'spenalty, and had conquered death by rising from the dead, one day to abolishpain and suffering and misery and death forever.

Having rejected the God of the Bible and the possibility of supernaturalinput into the universe, all Darwin had to work with were natural processes.These led to admittedly absurd conclusions, but if there is no God, thereremains no other choice.

The existence of suffering and death has led many to abandon the concept ofGod. But to one who accepts the Bible's teachings on these foundationalissues, there is no need to embrace solely natural processes as creator.

References
[1] Julian Huxley, in Issues in Evolution, Sol Tax, ed. (University of Chicago Press, 1960) p. 45.Return to Text

[2] Jacques Monod, Chance and Necessity (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1971), pp. 112-113.Return to Text

[3] The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition, "The Theory of Evolution," 1986, Vol. 18, p. 996.Return to Text

[4] William Provine, in First Things, ("Responses to Phillip Johnson's article, 'Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism,'" October 1990), p. 23.Return to Text

[5] Carl Sagan, The New Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th Edition, "Life," 1986, Vol. 22, p. 987.Return to Text

[6] Charles Darwin, Origin of Species, 1859 (Sixth Edition, 1872) (New York, Mentor Books, 1958), p. 133.Return to Text


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January 1992
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