In this section: Chance
or Design? • The Scientific Method •
Life in a Test Tube? • The
Eye • Irreducible Complexity •
Anything Can Happen? •
Evolution or Selection? • Real Examples of
Evolution • "Do You Feel Lucky?" •
(Abio)Genesis 1:1 • Life
from Comets? • Life on Mars? •
Richard Dawkins • A Brief
History of Slime...
"A Brief History of Slime and Space"
If evolution as life's origin were a case in
court, would there be enough evidence for a conviction?
|Science progresses by seeking new explanations when evidence is found to contradict
the current understandings. Why is it that evolution holds to its beliefs
about life's origins and advancement in the
absence of critical evidence and even in the presence of contradictory
evidence? Is this true to the discipline we call science?
Science disproved life coming
from inanimate matter in 1861
||1859 - Mankind still believes (incorrectly) in the spontaneous generation of life from
inanimate matter. Charles Darwin publishes "On the Origin of Species." Lacking
evidence, he hypothesizes that fossils of transitionary forms will later be found to
prove his theory and show conclusively that we are not a creation of the Divine, but are
the product of chance and evolution.
|1861 - Louis Pasteur proves that even microbial life only comes from existing life, discrediting
a major foundation of evolution as the source of life. This leads to modern
sterilization procedures (pasteurization).
All evidence merits close investigation
|1912 - Charles Dawson announces the fossil find of Piltdown Man, with a human-like
skull and ape-like jaw, claiming it to be the missing link needed to prove man's ancestry
from apes. This was all based on the fragments shown to the right:
Some Assembly Required
|1953 - Piltdown Man is discovered to be a fraud and declared the greatest hoax in the
history of science. Incredibly, it is a human skull and orangutan jaw that have
been altered to fit together. Unfortunately, two generations grow up believing in its
Hoaxes and false beliefs can occur in science or religion. This
is no reason to reject either in its entirety, but it does show that we must carefully
investigate what we are told.
The real question is why the scientific community was so willing to accept this
evidence for so many years. Could it be that man's desire to justify his beliefs
exceeds his ability to challenge his beliefs? We can perhaps attribute this to faith
in matters of the spiritual, but how do we explain it in matters of science?
Is the gap between theory and evidence growing?
|1977 - Contrary to Darwin's prediction, we still lack the fossil
evidence required to prove the gradual evolutionary changes proposed
by his theory. Stephen Gould, Harvard paleontologist,
proposes a new theory called "punctuated equilibrium" which
discards gradualism and says that evolution
happened in giant leaps. This not only contradicts Darwin's theory, but is
unsupported by any evidence. Nothing like this has ever been observed, but it is
accepted as science.
Are our beliefs based in science
or naturalistic rationalism?
|1980's and 1990's - Richard
Dawkins gains fame and promotes atheistic thinking with books like
"The Blind Watchmaker" and "The Selfish Gene," but his writings are
filled inconsistencies and half-truths. Click
HERE for more.
New scientific insights reveal problems
with even recent theories
|2000 - Stephen Wolfram,
a scientific genius regarded by some as "the next Newton,"
discovers a mathematical error in the thesis Gould used to prove
natural selection. Wolfram states that "natural selection
is not all that important" and that organisms take their form by
cellular automata, a new field of science which seeks to describe
seemingly random or natural phenomenon by discrete rules. Click HERE
It may be outside the bounds of science, but if science
shows us that life executes according to a PROGRAM found in DNA and this
program contains very specific RULES for how each object defined in the
program is deployed, shouldn't we perhaps wonder WHO is the PROGRAMMER and
WHAT is His purpose for life? Or . . .
Do we just easily believe
anything we wish to be true?
Whether or not you accept the evidence claimed to date . . .
Is evolution fully supported by scientific reason?