Creation: The Blind Darwinist

A Sunday guest post by my brilliant husband, Gregg.

Every Sunday, my clever husband offers me a “day of rest” by taking over the homemaker duties here. His primary topic, the Biblical Truth of Creation vs. Darwinism, is a subject that has broad reaching scientific, social, and metaphysical implications. For believers and non-believers alike, the primary purpose is to present scientific, historical, logical, and/or sociological data in an empirical and defensible fashion, as much as possible written in layman’s terms, and in a format suitable for supplementing any homeschool curriculum whether you choose to believe the Biblical account — or secular guesses — about the origins of human life on earth.

Frameworks and Worldviews

It is fallacious to believe that facts speak for themselves and are therefore self-evident. Facts are always interpreted according to a framework and the framework is determined by one’s individual worldview. The framework behind the Darwinists’ interpretations is called Methodological Naturalism. Whether or not a Darwinist claims a belief in God is irrelevant to this framework. Darwinism depends upon a philosophical bias wherein it is assumed that things made themselves, that no divine intervention has ever happened (or could ever happen), and that God has not revealed knowledge about the past to mankind.

Darwinian Evolution is a deduction from the base assumptions of this framework. It is essentially the idea that things made themselves, then made themselves bigger and stronger and faster and smarter, and continue to do so today. It includes these unproven and unscientific ideas: nothing gave rise to something at an alleged ‘big bang,’ non-living matter gave rise to life, single-celled organisms gave rise to many-celled organisms, invertebrates gave rise to vertebrates, ape-like creatures gave rise to man, ultimately that non-intelligent and amoral matter gave rise to intelligence and morality, man’s yearnings gave rise to religions, etc.

Biblical believers are puzzled as to why Darwinists so completely reject the idea that we might have been created by a supreme being.

“Evolution [is] a theory universally accepted not because it can be proven by logically coherent evidence to be true, but because the only alternative, special creation, is clearly incredible.” Professor D.M.S. Watson, Darwinist apologist

In his pronouncement, Dr. Watson leaves the word “clearly” undefined.  The answer to the puzzle is that it has never been a question of biased religious “creationists [sic.]” versus objective scientific Darwinists. Instead it is the beliefs of the Christian worldview versus the biases of the religion of Secular Humanism resulting in different interpretations of the same scientific facts.

One may think that a worldview can be intellectually set aside so that objective thought, analysis, and experimentation can occur, thus yielding valid, cogent, sound conclusions via the scientific process. Sadly, this is not the case. Darwinism corrupts the scientific process and inhibits logical thought.

The Darwinist Philosophical Bias: Pollution in the Mind’s Eye

This corruption is easily demonstrated, I believe, by expounding on what has become known as Paley’s Watchmaker argument, which is essentially a teleological argument.  Back in 1802, William Paley argued that if one found a hypothetical watch in the middle of a hypothetical swamp, one would have no doubt that the watch was a created thing, that it was designed by a designer. He then went on to compare the watch the earth, and indeed the entire universe, describing just how much more highly specifically complex these things were than a simple watch and how very many more tool-marks of design they displayed.

In short, Paley argued that it is logically coherent to arrive at the valid, cogent, sound conclusion that should a thing bear the tool-marks of design, that it was therefore designed.  At its heart, the conclusion of the argument is that DESIGN implies a DESIGNER.

Polluted Darwinist Criticisms of Paley’s Argument

Instead of refuting this conclusion, for the last 207 years, Darwinists have attempted to refute the specific premises of the argument. The three main fallacious criticisms against the premises are usually as follows:

1) Complex artifacts do not, in fact, require a designer, but can and do arise from “mindless” natural processes as in the “Infinite Monkey Theorem.”

2) The watchmaker is arguably a far more complex organism than the watch, and if complexity proves intelligent design, then the question arises: who designed such a complex designer? This is known as the “Who made God?” criticism.

3) The watch is a faulty analogy and not in any way analogous to man, the earth, galaxies, or the entire universe. This is known as the “false analogy” criticism.

The first thing you will notice, if you are a rigorously logical thinker, is that not one of these three primary criticisms refutes — or even comes close to addressing — the actual conclusion of Paley’s argument, that DESIGN implies a DESIGNER. This is because the conclusion is already known to be true. It is what is known as a tautology, which is similar to a scientific LAW in that it proves 100% true, 100% of the time.

Since the truth of the conclusion is already known, Darwinist have no choice but to address the premises in an attempt to refute the WORLDVIEW that led to the already proven conclusion.  But how sound, how cogent, how valid are the criticisms? Not surprisingly, it turns out these criticisms are all fallacious.

Cleaning Up Polluted Thought

The Infinite Monkey Theorem is essentially restated by Richard Dawkins in his book, “The Blind Watchmaker” in which he designed a computer model in order to produce a single 6 word fragment out of Shakespeare via a random program generator. The theorem basically states that given infinite time, a hypothetical monkey (or infinite hypothetical monkeys) typing at random would eventually almost surely produce all of Shakespeare’s plays in order and without error.

The fallacies of this criticism are threefold. First, the universe — nor any living thing in it — is composed of infinity. The universe is only so many years old, the earth is only so many years old, and any living thing came about in a finite amount of time. Second, typing infinite amounts of randomness to achieve the goal of eventually resulting in the collected works of Shakespeare would always result in an INFINITE amount of waste that is NOT the collected works of Shakespeare. Simply observing the universe, one can see that there is very little waste. Thirdly, the “goal” of achieving the collected works of Shakespeare implies an intelligence that is able to discern when that goal has been achieved or even an a priori intelligence that has a goal in mind. If the premise is randomness, the argument is self-refuting, since randomness has no mind and therefore is unable to set goals or recognize when the goal has been met.

When Dawkins designed his computer model, he leaves out the fact that he DESIGNED the model in his argument.  In order to have the model, there must first be an alphabet, a language, a frame of reference, and a target in mind that is intelligible as information: in his case, the phrase “to be or not to be” out of Shakespeare’s Hamlet.  The Infinite Monkey Theorem’s premises to form the thrust of the critisim are weak in that a language, an alphabet, an an intelligence must already exist for the crtisism itself to be recongnized as valid. Thus we have a fallacy forming the the foundation of the very conclusion. This encompases all restatements and respins of the argument, such as Dawkins’ recent regurgitation in his Blind Watchmaker argument.

The “Who made God” critisim is fallacious in that it is non sequiter and the argument itself is vastly incomplete. It is a tautology that an infinite regress of causality is impossible. Therefore, let’s assume for the sake of argument that the premise of the “Who made God?” argument is valid, and that the creator of the universe is not an eternal and omnipotent being and himself had to have been created by a more powerful being. It is logical, therefore, that an even more powerful and more eternal being created THAT creator. Logically, THAT being was also created and so an even more powerful and more eternal being created that entity. And you logically chase that infinite chain of regress all the way back to that which Aristotle called the “prime mover” or that which Thomas Aquin called the “first cause” and you ultimatelly conclude that there must have been an eternal being of infinite power and infinite knowledge and THAT is whom we call God.

It follows that the original argument, that the god we reach at the end of that chain of causality is the God of the Bible and that He created everything in the beginning; that such a claim is sound, cogent, valid, and perfectly logical.

The “False Analogy” critisim is probably the most sound though also not strictly valid in terms of logic because it makes a strawman of Paley’s analogy. Essentially, the claim is that it is a faulty analogy to compare apples to oranges when a more valid analogy is to compare apples to apples. Unfortunately, there is only one universe so it is not possible to draw an analogy between this universe and another known universe. There is no other known universe. Therefore, one is forced to compare apples to oranges.

But to draw an analogy between an apple and an orange in that they are both seed bearing fruit is a sound analogy. An apple and an orange are both found on fruit trees and this is a sound analogy. In short, it is only when one claims that an apple and an orange are analogous in every possible way that a faulty analogy fallacy occurs.

Paley scrupulously does not argue that the watch is analogous to the entire universe in every possible aspect. To claim otherwise is a straw man. Instead, he restricts his analogy only to the single aspect that both his hypothetical watch and the known universe show the toolmarks of design.

New Pollution

David Hume may have been the first to offer a criticism of the conclusion of the teleological argument. He argued that for the design argument to be feasible, it must be true that order is only observed when they result from design. But order is observed regularly, resulting from presumably mindless processes like snowflake or crystal generation or soap bubbles. A similar objection is coined as the Mandelbrot Analogy. It relies on the observation that in rare cases some complex patterns and behaviors, such as those seen in fractals and chaotical systems, arise naturally from simple systems. Therefore, the order and arrangement of something is not a valid argument for the necessity of a designer.

The problem with the Hume and Mandelbrot Analogy criticism is that THEY create a false analogy. While “order” can arise in soap bubbles and fractals and snowflakes, there is no intelligence in that kind of order; no information, no highly specific complexity. Intelligence is only ever present in the form of information, and information relies on very specific highly complex levels of code (for lack of a better word) which requires both a sender and a receiver. The kind of order found in the collected works of Shakespeare (William Shakespeare = sender) which we read today (we = receivers) is orders of magnitude more specific and highly complex than the endlessly repeating patterns of “order” found in snowflakes, crystals, fractals, and so forth.

In some recent formulations of Paley’s argument usually restated by Intelligent Design theorists, the “tool-marks” or the characteristics marking design, is left implicit while in others it is specific complexity, or that something was clearly being designed for a purpose.

Again, rather than addressing the conclusion — that DESIGN implies a DESIGNER — Darwinists have attempted to refute the premises. They argue that “purpose” is undefined or that in rare cases specific complexity can arise through random processes.

As you can see, Darwinism corrupts the scientific process and pollutes logical thought.

The Truth

If you find something as simple as an arrowhead in your own backyard, even if you have never seen one before in your entire life, you can see by many obvious clues that it was designed. It bears toolmarks. It is specifically complex. There has never been observed in the history of history that such a thing can come about via randomness and chance.

If you study DNA, and learn as much about that code as did Francis S. Collins, the head of the Human Genome Project, you might safely conclude, as did Collins, that DNA is the “Language of God” and that it bears specific toolmarks of having been designed and, he believes, by God Himself.

Darwinists’ objectivity is polluted.  Their logic centers and ability to observe the natural world are so corrupted by their philosophical bias that they can easily recognize the design in things like arrowheads, watches, Mount Rushmore, rubber balloons, or boxes with nails in them — they are blind to the tool-marks of design commonly found in living things like proteins, DNA molecules, the human eye, or the unborn.

Honestly, it makes me feel sad for them. They riducule the premises over and over stacking one fallacy atop another, while never facing the irrefutable conclusion. We bear the toolmarks of design. Therefore, we were designed and DESIGN implies a DESIGNER.

To restate the obvious, Darwinism depends upon a philosophical bias wherein it is assumed that things made themselves, that no divine intervention has ever happened (or could ever happen), and that God has not revealed knowledge about the past to mankind. It assumes that nothing is designed by a designer.

Ask yourself, how valid, how cogent, and how sound is that philosphical bias? Were we designed for a purpose, or did we make ourselves from non-living things for no purpose? Did our Designer inform us of events in the past, His special act of creation, or did we just appear by accident in the universe’s greatest ever stroke of fantastic luck?

When you think logically, you emulate the mind of God. Logic, therefore, leads only to the singular conclusion that God exists. The greatest scientists in the history of mankind: Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Kelvin, Boyle, Dalton, Ramsay, Ray, Linnaeus, Mendel, Pasteur, Virchow, Agassiz, Steno, Woodward, Brewster, Buckland, Cuvier, Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Herschel, Maunder, Pascal, Leibnitz, Euler, and Francis S. Collins — all bear testimony to the toolmarks of our Designer. They all embraced logic and arrived at the only possible conclusion.

I commit to you that I will publish every single comment that meets this blog’s commenting criteria. You may want to review that criteria before adding your opinion here.

God Bless you and yours.

Gregg

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