Evolutionism is not Operational Science

It never ceases to amaze me when evolutionists (whether atheists or the so-called “theistic” variety) accuse creationists of being unscientific by ignoring evidence. The following paragraphs will point out a number of instances where evolutionism ignores greater demonstrable evidence than what they accuse creationists of ignoring.

First of all, let us assert plainly and forcefully: Evolutionism is not operational science! The scientific method, the true basis for any and all scientific knowledge, requires observation. Hypotheses are developed based on the observations. These are in turn tested by various experiments. The hypotheses are tweaked to conform to the outcome of the various experiments, resulting in a “theory.” Evolutionism begins with a theory, then it subjects data to experiments born from the very presuppositions this theory already believes. It then creates hypotheses to explain the results of his experiments, and then brushes aside as irrelevant the obvious fact that no one has lived long enough to witness the touted evolutionary changes. What exactly about this backward procedure is scientific?

It is worth repeating that science is not objective. Indeed, objectivity is impossible in any scientific field. This means we have good reason to doubt the outcome of all experiments that are relied upon to “demonstrate” evolution. It's not that we assert that the results of the experiments are fudged, but that the very experiments to which the data are subjected are, by nature, skewed in favor of the result the scientist hopes to achieve. They are a form of question-begging, and therefore, logical fallacies. The very experiments chosen are chosen precisely because they suit the experimenters presuppositions. No one who believes that apples are red would ever subject apples to experiments designed to prove that they are gray. The very experiments conceived of by the scientist will be conditioned by his presuppositions. It's just that simple. How exactly is begging the question scientific?

But let's cut a little closer to the bone. Evolutionism stakes everything on what is calls the “law of natural selection.” To any impartial observer, this is another crass case of begging the question. The very term “selection” is pure sophism – utterly inconsistent logically with the underlying philosophy of evolutionism. Selection is an act of an intelligent free-agent – the very thing evolutionism denies exists as a cause of the universe. As if this weren't stupid enough, the term gets partnered with the word “natural.” The 'Nature”' of the evolutionist is unintelligent. She acts by haphazard. The most common “explanation” offered by evolutionists is “chance.” There is no torture to which the word “chance” can be subjected in order to make it mean “intelligent free-agency.” Furthermore, there is no such thing as chance! There is no such entity. It is a piece of meaningless drivel, and an affront to rational beings to ask them to grant full personhood to a nonentity that can then be substituted for God as the creator of the universe.

Darwin was aware of the problem with the term “natural selection,” so he opted for Spenser's term, “survival of the fittest.” This nothing but the same absurdity wearing the disguise of a metaphor. The very notion “fitness” implies design! Fitness is an adjustment. It is crazy enough to say that the physical interaction between an organism and its environment should regularly result in this adjustment, but the simple fact is, there are countless cases where the notion is impossible. There are multitudes of know examples of fitness existing between organisms and conditions and/or environments it almost never encounters.

The fossil “record” is perhaps the greatest example of the unscientific nature of evolutionism. One of the most notable features of all discovered fossils is that they all represent established genera. Missing links are still missing 15 decades after Darwin hatched his theory. But their nonexistence is a much bigger problem for evolutionists than most people realize. Let me illustrate. On evolutionary theory, organisms adapt to their environment over the course of millions of years. If this were indeed true, nearly every fossil discovered would be a missing link, because the transition phases would outnumber established genera by far. At the very least, we should expect to see both sides of the blind process of evoltion played out in the fossil record. Along with developed species, there should also be fossils of the maladapted forms. Where are the million of years worth of fossil birds with useless stubs instead of developed wings? Where are the myriad fossils that would undoubtedly be the result of millions of years of failure? How is it that evolutionists only seem to be aware of the successful mutations? The downside of evolutionary change should be thousands of times more plenteous.

A more devastating critique is this: In what conceivable way can the fact that nature more regularly fails be called an “evolution?” Nature's failures outnumber her successes a billion to one. How on earth is that an evolution? How exactly is that scientific? On evolutionary theory, one should be able to make the same arguments without appeal to the fossil record at all. If nature is indeed evolving, where are all the living transitions? Why is every single plant and animal part of a clearly defined, established genera?

Never mind dinosaurs and apes for the moment. Let's just consider humans as they live today. Humans as supposedly the high point of evolution – the most complicated result of this supposed process. Is it natural to assert that man has adapted over million of years to his environment when men live comfortably and naturally in every climate on earth? Based on the central tenets of evolutionism, this is diametrically opposite to the result touted with regard to every other species.

Evolutionists typically respond to the above criticism that blind chance, given enough time, amid the multitude of its experiments may sometimes happen upon results that bear the appearance of an orderly plan or design. The problem with this response is that it lies about the nature of the case. Nature does not get it right “sometimes” on the evolutionary scheme; it get is right every time. Always! What evolutionists have failed to account for is the observable fact that nature's results always have an orderly adaptation. How exactly is it that every single organ of every single life form living today or represented in the fossil record shows us orderly adaptation? Where, pray tell, are nature's failures? Where are the vast remains of nature's random, non-intelligent, haphazard failed efforts?

Robert Dabney mentions the famous illustration of the someone throwing a basket of printer's type letters, until, after an infinite number of throws, he happened to get precisely the arrangement of letters that composed the poems of Ennius. In response to the question: Why couldn't this happen, Dabney replies, “Suppose, I reply, that the condition of his experiments were this: that he should throw a different basket in each trial, and that a considerable part of all the types thrown in vain should remain heaped around him; then, he and his experiments would have been buried a thousand times over beneath the rubbish of his failures long before the lucky throw were reached. But this is the correct statement of the illustration. The simple making of this statement explodes the whole plausibility, leaving nothing but a bald absurdity. For, as has been already stated, Evolution must admit the teachings of Paleontology. But the later asserts that the organized beings of vast ages still exist, in the form of fossils. Now, will the Evolutionist pretend that the durable remains of the hurtful variations were less likely to continue in the strata than those of the naturally selected? Not one whit. Then, there should be, on his supposition, as large a portion of the printer's types from every unsuccessful 'throw' left for our inspection as from the sole successful one. Where are they?”

Let that sink in: If Nature has thrown out billions of baskets-full of letters hundreds of millions of times, we would never see the one good throw because we'd be buried in the leftover letters from all the unsuccessful throws! Planet earth should be a gigantic bone pile the size of the solar system.

But there is an even bigger problem: Evolutionism asserts that given enough time (which is the only reason their theory requires billions of years), the chance reshuffling of matter could produce the universe as we know it. But this is a grossly deceptive presentation of their case. It's not that after 100 billion attempts, Nature (whatever that means) could get it right. Before responding to this, let us note the personification of Nature (indicated by the capital N), which implies intelligence and design, the very things evolutionism is supposed to reject! Back to the subject: On the evolutionist's scheme, it's not that Nature might get it right after 10^1,000,000 times. Evolutionism actually proceeds as if Nature gets it right every time! It's not just that a zillion random reshufflings of quarks luckily turned into Oxygen; the same would be required for all 118 known elements. Then a zillion reshufflings (each!) of these elements are required to get all the various molecules that make up water, countless types of rock, breathable atmospheres, life forms that breathe said atmospheres, on and on the list goes. The number of lucky breaks required numbers more that the sum total of particles in the universe.

Science is established by experimentation, which means that predictable, repeatable results. No chemist would be confident in recommending his latest concoction as a cure for anything, without years' worth of predictable and repeatable lab results. Evolution, as far as it pretends to be science, affirms this too. But its entire superstructure is built on an actual denial of this scientific foundation. No repeatable proof, not predictable results, no “this is what happens every time.” Evolutionism actually requires accepting as legitimate exactly what every scientist in every discipline would reject!

One cannot escape the impression that evolutionists have built their empire of illusion by accounting for the movement of the train by explaining that that there are billions more railroad cars than previously believed. This logical fallacy neglects the basic fact that multiplying the train cars infinitely still doesn't account for the movement of the train. For that, you need an engine.

Why Christians Cannot Be Dispassionate Toward Attacks on the Faith

If man has a soul, a God, and a hereafter, and is a fallen being, then, indisputably, every good man must deem the bearings of any code of speculative opinions upon the doctrine of Christian Redemption as unspeakably its most important aspect. For it is impossible for any professed humanitarianism to advance any praiseworthy purpose or motive whatsoever, assuming to tend to the well-being or elevation of our race, but that I will show, if man is to have any future, that motive is bound to urge the well-wisher to seek his fellow-creatures' future good, as much more earnestly, as immortality is longer than mortal life. But has the Sensualistic philosophy any proposal to offer for redeeming men from a disordered and mortal estate, as plausible or promising as Christianity? Unless it has, a mere decent regard for humanity should prevent all disrespect to this doctrine, from which, it is manifest, the larger part of all the virtue, hope, and happiness in a miserable world now spring. I freely declare, therefore, not as a clergyman, but as a human being not simply malignant toward my suffering race, that my main impeachment of the Sensualistic philosophy, and especially of the Positivist and Evolution doctrines, in which it now chiefly appears, is grounded upon their anti-Christian tendencies. I have pointed to that gulf of the blackness of darkness, and of freezing despair, toward which they thrust the human soul; a gulf without an immortality, without a God, without a faith, without a Providence, without a hope. Were it not both impossible and immoral for a good man to consider such a thing dispassionately, it would appear to him odd and ludicrous to witness the pretended surprise and anger of the assailants at perceiving, that reasonable Christian people are not disposed to submit with indifference to all this havoc.

There is a great affectation of philosophic calmness and impartiality. They are quite scandalized to find that Christians cannot be as cool as themselves, while all our infinite and priceless hopes for both worlds are dissected away under their philosophic scalpel. Such bigotry is very naughty in their eyes! This conduct sets Christianity in a very sorry light beside the fearless and placid love of truth displayed by the apostles of science! Such is the absurd and insolent tone affected by them. J. S. Mill coolly argues, that, of course, we clergy are wholly unfitted for any pursuit of philosophy, because they are bound beforehand by their subscription to creeds, which have taken away their liberty of thought in advance; and it is quietly intimated that mercenary regard for salaries and dignities dependent on that subscription, will prevent their accepting or professing the Sensualistic gospel. To this arrogance and injustice I, for one, give place by subjection, not for a moment. It is a composition of hypocrisy and folly. For we observe that whenever these philosophic hearts are not encased in a triple shield of supercilious arrogance, they also burn with a scientific bigotry, worthy of a Dominic or a Philip II. of Spain. They also can vituperate and scold, and actually excel the bad manners of the theologians! The scientific bigots are fiercer than the theological, besides being the aggressors!

If we were about to enter upon an Arctic winter in Labrador, with a dependent and cherished family to protect from that savage clime, and if "a philosopher" should insist, in the "pure love of science” upon extinguishing by his experiments all the lamps which were to give us light, warmth, and food, and to save us from a frightful death; and if he should call us testy blockheads because we did not witness these experiments with equanimity, I surmise that nothing but compassion for his manifest lunacy would prevent sensible people from breaking his head before his enormous folly was completed. When a wilful, absurd person chooses to dignify his novel (or stale) vagaries, which contradict not only my most serious and honest judgment, but that of the best and wisest of human kind, with the reverend names of "Truth" and "Science," I submit that I have at least as much right to reject them as no truth and no science, as he has to advance them. Let us suppose a case perfectly parallel. I had an honored father, whose virtue, nobleness, and benevolence were the blessing of my life. That exalted character and all that beneficence were grounded in certain professed principles. Now, I know that father; I know, by their fruits, that his principles were noble. But here come a parcel of men who did not choose to become acquainted with him, and so really do not know his memory, and they indulge their vanity, or some other caprice, in disparaging his person and principles. But they expect me, his son and beneficiary, to "take it all coolly!" It is quite naughty to have any heat toward gentlemen who are proceeding so purely "in the interests of the Truth!" Now, every right heart knows that it is not only my. right, but my sacred duty to defend the sacred character of my father and benefactor with zeal and righteous emotion. If I were capable of really feeling the nonchalance which his gratuitous assailants profess, I should be a scoundrel.

There is no righteous room for neutrality or indifference of soul when righteousness is assaulted. It is impossible for man to love truth and right as it is our duty to love it without having sensibility when they are injured! Such is precisely the relation of the honest-minded Christian when his God and Saviour is disparaged! If men choose to exercise their right of free discussion by waging this warfare on our God and His cause, they need not expect anything except the resistance of honest indignation; it is a piece of hypocrisy as shabby as shallow to pretend to a right to outrage other people's clearest convictions without the provocation of their disapproval. We shall, of course, give them the full privilege of doing this wrong untouched of civil pains and penalties: this is the liberty of thought which Protestantism asserts, to its immortal honor. God forbid that any sinful abuse of the truth should ever provoke any Christian to infringe that liberty by persecution. And it is plainly our duty, under the bitterest provocation of these gratuitous assaults upon the most precious principles, to see to it that we "be angry and sin not;" that our indignation may not go farther than the evil desert, and our condemnation may contain none of the gall of personal spite.

But there is an affectation abroad, among the assailants of Christianity, which demands far more. It claims the privilege of speculating as unchristianly as they please, not only without being molested, which we freely concede, but without being disapproved. They say that the very emotion of disapprobation is a persecution; that this zeal is precisely the motive which, in more bloody days, prompted churchmen to visit civil pains and penalties upon dissentients; that this motive will do the same thing again, upon opportunity, if it be allowed to exist ; and that, therefore, we are not true friends of liberty of thought until the very emotion is banished, and all speculation, no matter what holy and righteous thing it may assail, is considered without feeling and weighed with the absolute impartiality and initial indifference which they affect.

Upon this claim my first remark is, that it is violently inconsistent. With these men, this license of thought is a holy thing (possibly their only one.) And when they imagine it assailed, or in the least restrained, do they entertain the question of the restriction with that dispassionate calmness? Not at all; they are full of an ardent zeal; and they believe that they "do well to be angry." They can argue the cause of charity most uncharitably, and can be most intolerant in their advocacy of toleration. Why? Because the encroachment is unrighteous. Aha! Then we have the sanction of the nonchalant gentlemen for the truth, that righteousness ought to be not only professed, but loved; that moral truth and right are the proper object, not only of judgment, but of moral emotion. They have found out that it is good to be "zealously affected" in a good cause! This is precisely my doctrine, provided only one is entitled to be sure that the cause is good. My second answer is: That this species of indifferentism is unnatural and impossible. Man's soul is formed by its Maker not only to see moral truth, but to love it upon seeing it. It is an unnatural soul, a psychological monstrosity, which does not. But love for that which is reasonably valued must have its counterpart emotion toward the opposite. One might as well demand to have a material mass with a top, but no under-side; or a magnet with a North pole to it, but no South, as a reasonable soul which loved the right (as it ought) and yet did not hate the wrong. Last: I argue, that such a state of soul would be criminal, if it were possible. Such moral neutrality would be intrinsic vice. In order to be capable of it, man must be recreant to the positive claims of virtue. If I find a man who is really able to hear the question debated, whether Jesus Christ was an impostor, with the same calmness, the same utter absence of emotion with which he would properly debate the species in botany to which a certain weed should be referred, I shall be very loath to trust my neck or my purse with that man in the dark. The demand for this actual indifferentism as essential to true liberty of thought and philosophic temper, is absurd; it is impossible it should exist. The speculative world needs to be reminded again of that doctrine of liberty of thought which Bible Protestantism enounced - when she bestowed that boon on mankind (for it was nobody's gift but hers.) That men are responsible for their opinions, but responsible not to society, but to God: that charity for evil and error is a universal duty; but the object toward which we are to exercise it is the person and not the error of "the misleading fellow-creature. Charity had its incarnation in Him, who shed His tears and His blood for the persons of the Scribes, while He denounced their principles with inexorable severity.

Taken from: R.L. Dabney, The Sensualistic Philosophy of the 19th Century Considered, Chapter 12

Dabney: We Can Be Glad Atheism Is Inconsistent With Its Own Principles

From, R.L. Dabney, The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century, Considered - Chapter 9

Further Critique of Evolutionism

“They ask us: 'Since blind chance may, amidst the infinite multitude of its experiments, happen upon any results whatsoever, why may it not at times happen upon some results wearing these appearances of orderly adaptation?' I answer: the question puts the case falsely. Sometimes? No. Always. The fact to be accounted for is, that Nature's results have always an orderly adaptation. The question we retort, then, takes this crushing form: How is it that in every one of Nature's results, in every organ of every organized creature, which is known in living or fossil Natural History, if the structure is comprehended by us, we see the orderly adaptation? Where are Nature's failures? Where the vast remains of that infinite mass of her haphazard, aimless, orderless efforts? On the evolution theory, they should be myriads of times as numerous as those structures which received some successful adaptation. Let us recur to the illustration of the Frenchman employing an eternity in throwing a basket of printer's type abroad blindly, until, after perhaps an infinite number of throws, he happened to get precisely that collocation which composed the martial poems of Ennius. Why might it not happen like at last? Suppose, I reply, that the condition of his experiments were this: that he should throw a different basket in each trial, and that a considerable part of all the types thrown in vain should remain heaped around him; then, he and his experiments would have been buried a thousand times over beneath the rubbish of his failures long before the lucky throw were reached. But this is the correct statement of the illustration. The simple making of this statement explodes the whole plausibility, leaving nothing but a bald absurdity. For, as has been already stated, Evolution must admit the teachings of Paleontology. But the later asserts that the organized beings of vast ages still exist, in the form of fossils. Now, will the Evolutionist pretend that the durable remains of the hurtful variations were less likely to continue in the strata than those of the naturally selected? Not one whit. Then, there should be, on his supposition, as large a portion of the printer's types from every unsuccessful 'throw' left for our inspection as from the sole successful one. Where are they?”

R.L. Dabney, The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century Considered, Chapter 9  

A Critique of Evolutionism

“Here, then, is the fatal chasm in the materialistic scheme. Not only does it overlook the essential difference between inorganic and vital causes; it is guilty of the absurdity of ascribing to the blind, unintelligent forces of protoplasm, more thought, choice, and wisdom, than all the philosophers in the whole world will ever attain unto. When we rise to the crown of the series of living creatures in man, the absurdity culminates in the highest conceivable extravagance; for there we see a being not only displaying the highest thought about him, but also containing thought in him.

“Let us look, now, at the part of this structure contributed by Mr. Darwin. We object, first, that the favorite law of 'natural selection' involves in its very name, a sophistical idea. Selection is an attribute of free-agency, and implies intelligent choice. But the 'Nature”' of the evolutionist is unintelligent. She acts by haphazard. To apply the idea of selection to such fortuity is but a metaphor, not science. Dr. Darwin, perhaps, seeing this fatal objection, thankfully accepts from H. Spenser what he deems the more accurate phrase, 'survival of the fittest.” But we still have the same absurdity insinuated under a metaphor. Fitness also implies design! Fitness is an adjustment. That the physical interaction between the environment and organism should regularly result in this adjustment, while totally blind, is a supposition wild enough. But a multitude of cases might be found where the notion becomes impossible, because the fitness existing is not between the being and its ordinary environment, but between it and some other being which it rarely meets, or never meets once in its existence. …

“Paleontologists (to whom the evolutionists, of all men, are bound to adhere,) hold that the great masses of these fossils actually remain, many of them of almost incredible age. But they all represent established genera. Where are the fossils of the transitional and intermediate links, which ought to be a myriad times more numerous? Were evolutionism true, 'the world could not contain them.' Again: fossil natural history should present us with both sides of the history of the blind process of this natural selection, with the fossils of the degraded, the unfit, as well as with those of the developed species. How is it that Mr. Darwin only dwells upon the latter? Especially as the downhill slide of the history ought to be ten thousand times the fullest. But did the fossils present us with such a history, then how preposterous would it be to call the course of nature an 'evolution,' when nature's decadences would almost infinitely outnumber her advancements? The evolution theory is also inconsistent with the wide diffusion of some of the highest species of animals. Man is the highest and most complicated result of this supposed process. Now it is natural to suppose that the local conditions, or environment, necessary for evolving this most complicated result, would be more rarely found. But man is found more widely diffused over the globe, and multiplying his species under more diverse climates and condition, than any other animal. This is inconsistent with the result to be expected upon that scheme.”

R.L. Dabney, The Sensualistic Philosophy of the Nineteenth Century Considered, Chapter 9

The Myth that the Church in the Middles Ages Repressed Science

The Claim: “The dark ages were a time of ignorance and superstition, thanks to religion’s negative influence on scientific progress.”

The Truth: Atheist writer Tim O’Neill responds to this claim in his review of “God’s Philosophers”: 

“It’s not hard to kick this nonsense to pieces, especially since the people presenting it know next to nothing about history and have simply picked up these strange ideas from websites and popular books. The assertions collapse as soon as you hit them with hard evidence. I love to totally stump these propagators by asking them to present me with the name of one – just one - scientist burned, persecuted, or oppressed for their science in the Middle Ages. They always fail to come up with any. They usually try to crowbar Galileo back into the Middle Ages, which is amusing considering he was a contemporary of Descartes. When asked why they have failed to produce any such scientists given the Church was apparently so busily oppressing them, they often resort to claiming that the Evil Old Church did such a good job of oppression that everyone was too scared to practice science. By the time I produce a laundry list of Medieval scientists – like Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Roger Bacon, John Peckham, Duns Scotus, Thomas Bradwardine, Walter Burley, William Heytesbury, Richard Swineshead, John Dumbleton, Richard of Wallingford, Nicholas Oresme, Jean Buridan and Nicholas of Cusa – and ask why these men were happily pursuing science in the Middle Ages without molestation from the Church, my opponents usually scratch their heads in puzzlement at what just went wrong.”