Sunday, September 18, 2016
Far from being a scientific theory of recent origin, evolution was an established religious belief at the heart of occultism and mysticism thousands of years before the Greeks gave it “scientific” status. And the central core of the ancient mystical theory of evolution is the lie of the serpent to Eve in the Garden, the belief that we are evolving ever upward to godhood. Sounding like Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Masonic authority W. L. Wilmhurst in his book The Meaning of Masonry declares:
This—the evolution of man into superman—was always the
purpose of the ancient mysteries [occultisms].... Man, who has sprung from the
earth and developed through the lower kingdoms of nature, to his present
rational state, has yet to complete his evolution by becoming a god-like being
and unifying his conscience with the Omniscient [W. L. Wilmhurst, The Meaning of Masonry, pp. 47, 94, as cited in Alan Morrison, The Serpent and the Cross, p. 230].
New Age leader Robert Muller, for many years Assistant
Secretary-General of the United nations, expresses much the same: “I believe
that humanity...has a tremendous destiny to fulfill and that a major
transformation is about to take place in our evolution” [Robert Muller, ed., The Desire to Be Human: A Global
Reconnaissance of Human Perspectives in an Age of Transformation, p. 17]. Muller states clearly:
“Decide to open yourself...to the potential of the
human race, to the infinity of your inner self, and you will become the
universe...at long last your real, divine, stupendous self”. [Robert Muller, “Decide to Be”, in Link-Up, 1986, p. 2].
Evolving Upward to Godhood
The goal of evolution, as portrayed for thousands of
years before Darwin, has always been to journey through endless reincarnations
until union with the Universal Mind, or All, has once again been achieved.
Barbara Brown of UCLA Medical Center declares that we are “evolving to a higher
level of mind… [called] supermind” [Barbara Brown, Supermind, pp.6-7, 19]. At Esalen, the New Age center in the Big
Sur area south of San Francisco where the Human Potential movement began,
Michael Murphy and George Leonard offered a seminar on “The Evolution of
Consciousness”, which suggested that “a transformation of human consciousness
as momentous as the emergence of civilization is underway”. Darwin also
recognized the spiritual implications of his theory. In The Descent of Man he wrote:
“Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having
risen...to the very summit of the organic scale; and the fact of his having
risen, instead of having been aboriginally placed there, may give him hopes for
the still higher destiny in the distant future”.
Whether Darwin fully realized it or not, the mystical
goal of the theory of evolution he championed had always been to become “God”.
In The Atman Project, Ken Wilbur lays
it out clearly: “If men and women have ultimately come up from amoebas, then
they are ultimately on their way towards God”.
In Up from Eden
Wilbur identifies this belief in man’s ascension to godhood as the heart of
what has been “known as the ‘perennial philosophy’...the esoteric core of
Hinduism, Buddhism, Taosim, Sufism...” As Jon Klimo in his book Channeling summarizes it, the “truth of
truths” of the channeled material is “that we are God” and only need to
“realize” it. So the serpent’s lie to Eve continues to dominate the ambitions
of modern man, and evolution is his hope that the lie will one day be realized.
Evolution plays a key role in the occult. Theodore
Roszak pointed out that mysticism is “the parent stock from which the theory of
biological evolution springs” [Theodore Roszak, Unfinished Animal, pp.74-75]. Anthropologist Michael Harner reminds
us that “millennia before Charles Darwin, people in shamanic cultures were
convinced that humans and animals were related” [Michael J. Harner, The Way of the Shaman: A Guide to Healing
and Power, p. 57]. Evolution, as the core belief of Hinduism and
witchcraft, is at least as old as the theories of reincarnation and karma, in
which it is a key element.
Evolution, Reincarnation, and Witchcraft
Of course, evolution must be an essential part of the
belief in reincarnation and karma. There is no point in coming back in an
endless cycle of death and rebirth unless progress is being made upward. That
progress is allegedly accomplished through evolution, not only of the body but
of the soul.
Since reincarnation is a belief basic to witchcraft,
it is not surprising that it is amoral.
If a husband beats his wife, the cause-and-effect law of karma will cause him
to be reincarnated in his next life as a wife who is beaten by her husband. That husband (who will have been
prepared by his karma to be a wife-beater) must in turn come back in his next life as a wife beaten by her
husband; a murderer must in turn become the victim of murder, and so forth
endlessly.
The perpetrator of each crime must become the victim
of the same crime, which necessitates another perpetrator, who in turn must
become a subsequent victim at the hands of yet another, ad infinitum. Rather
than solving the problem of evil, karma and reincarnation perpetuate it.
Apropos to our subject of the occult, evolution opens
the door to belief in a mysterious “Force” pervading the universe, a “Force”
which evolutionists believe brought life into existence and has directed its
astonishing development over billions of years. It is a Force, too, which
presumably has even greater heights of evolutionary development in store for
mankind. Clearly this force is a substitute for God.
Evolution is a religion without any support in fact.
C. S. Lewis wrote: “If minds were wholly dependent on brains, and brains on
biochemistry, and biochemistry on the meaningless flux of the atoms, I cannot
understand how the thought of those minds should have any more significance
than the sound of the wind...” [Hunt & McMahon, The New Spirituality, p. 155]. That simple logic destroys
Darwinism. If man is the chance product of impersonal evolutionary forces,
then so are his thoughts—including the theory of evolution.
A Surprising Development?
Most non-Catholics were surprised when Pope John Paul
II, in a formal statement sent to the Vatican’s Pontifical Academy of Science
on October 23, 1996, announced that evolution was a scientific theory
acceptable to the Church. Evangelical leaders, in joining forces with Rome,
assured their critics that Catholicism accepts biblical inerrancy. Yet the
Canons and Decrees of the Second Vatican Council (Roman Catholicism’s highest
authority) declare: “Hence the Bible is free from error in what pertains to religious truth revealed for our salvation. It
is not necessarily free from error in other matters (e.g. natural science) [Vatican II, Vatican Council II, Divine Revelation, Knights of Columbus
paraphrase edition, III.11e]. Evolution is “scientific”,
and the Bible is not infallible when it comes to science.
Allegedly infallible popes have made dogmatic but
embarrassingly unscientific pronouncements based upon false biblical
interpretations. Choosing to blame the Bible rather than admit the folly of its
leaders, Roman Catholicism denies that the Bible is “free from error” in
matters of science. Here is a brief excerpt from the Pope’s statement to the
Academy:
“I am pleased with the first theme you have chosen,
that of the origins of life and evolution, an essential subject which deeply
interests the Church...We know, in fact, that truth cannot contradict truth...I
would remind you that the Magisterium of the Church has already made pronouncements
on these matters...
“In his Encyclical
Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that
there was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about
man....Pius XII stressed this essential point: if the human body takes its
origin from pre-existent living matter, the spiritual soul is immediately
created by God....For my part.. [I have said that] the exegete and the
theologian must keep informed about the results achieved by the natural
sciences....
“Today...the theory of evolution...has been
progressively accepted by researchers, following a series of discoveries in
various fields of knowledge. The convergence... of the results of work that was
conducted independently is in itself a significant argument in favour of this
theory” [Pope John Paul II, “Message to Pontifical Academy of Sciences”,
in L’Osservatore Romano, 30 October
1996, pp. 3, 7].
John Paul II was simply reiterating the official
position of his Church. In May 1982, on the hundredth anniversary of Charles
Darwin’s death, the Pontifical Academy of Sciences held a conference of
scientists in honor of Darwin and issued this statement: “We are convinced that
masses of evidence render the application of the concept of evolution to man
and other primates beyond serious dispute”. [Father Edward Daschbach, S.V.D., “Catholics and Creationism”, in Visitor, October 21, 1985, p. 3]. As a further example of endorsements by the Roman
Catholic Church, in 1967 the New Catholic Encyclopedia had declared
confidently:
“Evidence... supports... the fact of organic evolution.
The best judges of the matter are the specialists who, over a period of 100
years, have assembled the necessary evidence. For them the fact of evolution
has been established as thoroughly as science can establish facts of the past
not witnessed by human eyes” [New Catholic Encyclopedia, McGraw-Hill, 1967, vol. 5, p. 689].
Deliver Us from Further Embarrassment
The shameful case of Galileo explains why Pope John
Paul II warned that “the exegete and the theologian must keep informed about
the results achieved by the natural sciences...” In enforcement of Church
dogma, Pope Urban VIII threatened an elderly and very ill Galileo with torture
if he would not renounce his claim that the earth revolved around the sun. On
his knees before Rome’s Holy Office of the Inquisition, in fear for his life,
Galileo recanted of this “heresy”—with his lips but not in his heart. That the
sun and all heavenly bodies revolved around the earth remained official Roman
Catholic dogma for centuries, with one “infallible” Pope after another
affirming it. Only in 1992 did the Vatican at last admit officially that
Galileo had indeed been right.
John Paul II’s quotation of Pope Leo XIII that “truth
cannot contradict truth” is a capitulation to science. Rome’s theologians must
take care that their interpretation of biblical truth agrees with the latest
scientific theories. Yet Peter, who Catholics say was the first Pope, declared
that all Scripture was inspired of the Holy Spirit (2 Peter 1:21). Surely the
Holy Spirit’s knowledge of science is not dependent upon the theories of
scientists, who often contradict one another and must revise their theories
periodically! If the Bible is not infallible when it comes to science, then
why believe it is infallible regarding salvation or anything else?
Nevertheless, Edward Daschbach, a Catholic priest,
without any apparent sense of betraying Peter and the Bible, explains the
official Roman Catholic position:
“The Church, then, does not accept...the literal
interpretation of the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis that would lead
us to think that God, for example, actually made two grown adults suddenly from
clay and rib...Catholics should be against creation-science for at least three
serious reasons:
“First: It effectively teaches a distrust of science and ultimately hurts
religion as well. By defending a literal understanding of the opening
chapters of Genesis...creation-science sets itself squarely against the world
of true scientific discovery....The myths used by the Genesis authors are
simply tools with which they communicate their religious beliefs.
“Second: Creation-science is contrary to the method of interpreting Scripture
favored universally by scholars and strongly approved by our Church. This
favored approach… [allows us to] accept the divine revelation contained in
Scripture, while accepting at the same time human author’s errors in matters of
science or history....
“Third: Creation-science leads to deep prejudice and bigotry against the
Catholic Church. The case in point is the Book of Revelation. When
creation-science advocates ply their fundamentalist tools to this final
scriptural book, the Church often becomes a target for vehement attack…” [ Daschbach, S.V.D., Visitor, p. 3].
Theistic Evolution: A Convenient Compromise
The Pope stands firmly with a theory which contradicts
not only the Genesis account of creation but other key portions of the Bible as
well. And today’s leading evangelical magazine, Christianity Today, supports the Pope in his endorsement of
evolution. An editorial declared:
“John Paul II was...reminding scientists that if they
were to be faithful Christians there were limits beyond which their science
could not take them...no theory of evolution was acceptable...that did not
recognize the direct divine origin of the human soul” [Editorial, “The Pope, The Press, and Evolution”, in Christianity Today, January 6, 1997, p. 18].
This issue was discussed at a gathering of mostly
professing evangelicals at Biola University in Southern California in
mid-November 1996. There were scientists from various fields, along with
journalists, theologians, and educators “representing 58 state colleges and
universities, 28 Christian academic institutions, and 18 other organizations”.
While all agreed that God was involved in the process (which Darwinism denies),
there was wide disagreement on the extent of that involvement, all the way from
a strict biblical creationist view to the belief that God used evolution to
create various species over a period of millions of years and finally infused a
pair of them with human souls [Belz, “Witness for the Prosecution,”
in World, November30/December 7,
1996, p. 19]. The latter theory is called theistic evolution.
In contrast to the intimidation by science and the
lack of confidence in the Bible’s inerrancy to which both Catholics and many
Protestants have succumbed, consider these stirring words from the famous
preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon:
“We shall with the sword of the Spirit maintain the
whole truth as ours, and shall not accept a part of it as a grant from the
enemies of God. The truth of God we will maintain as the truth of God, and we
shall not retain it because the philosophic mind consents to our doing so.
“If scientists agree to our believing a part of the
Bible, we thank them for nothing: we believe it whether or no. Their assent is
of no more consequence to our faith than...the consent of the mole to the
eagle’s sight. God being with us we shall not cease from this glorying, but
will hold the whole of revealed truth even to the end” [Charles Haddon Spurgeon, The
Greatest Fight in the World].
The Serious Consequences of Theistic Evolution
Genesis lays the foundation for all of Scripture. If
its account of creation isn’t reliable, then neither is the rest of the Bible
which rests upon it; and Christ is proven not to be God and Savior, but a mere
man who foolishly took a mythological story of Adam and Eve literally (Matthew
19:4,5). Yet Pope John Paul II, as John Tagliabue, writing for the New York Times, reported, “…has put the
teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church firmly behind the view that the
human body…is the product of a gradual process of evolution” [John Tagliabue,
Pope says God and Darwin can co-exist happily”, in The Times-Picayune, October 25, 1996, p.A-3].
Adam is mentioned about 30 times in nine books of the
Bible. Thus to discredit the biblical account of Adam’s creation punctures so
many holes in the Bible that it can no longer contain a consistent theology.
For example, Luke 3:23-38 traces Christ’s genealogy to Adam, and Christ is even
called “the last Adam” (1 Corinthians 15:45). That title would be demeaning in
the extreme if Adam were a prehuman creature that had evolved from lower life
forms, as Catholicism officially affirms.
Christianity Today was not the only
popular evangelical magazine to favor theistic evolution. So did New Man, at that time the official
magazine of “Promise Keepers”, the men’s movement that sprang up a few years
ago under the leadership of University of Colorado football coach Bill
McCartney and has since grown phenomenally. That periodical expressed its
agreement with the Pope’s position on evolution even before he stated it.
Furthermore, New Man argued:
“Remember, however, that the debate over how God
created the world – through millions of years of evolutionary work or through a
few words spoken over a few days- is not the central tenet of Christianity”
[“Fathers, faiths and fossils”, in New
Man, July-August 1996, p. 54].
The truth is that Christianity is not an isolated
development of the New Testament but is inextricably linked with all of the Old
Testament and therefore stands or falls upon its accuracy or inaccuracy. Paul
declared that the gospel which he preached was “the gospel of God” and that it
had been foretold by the Hebrew prophets in the Old Testament (Romans 1:1-3)
and was the fulfillment thereof. The Bible is one Book. If any part contradicts
any other part, then the whole of Scripture is undermined. If the Bible is
wrong in its account of man’s origin, then why should we trust its teaching
about man’s redemption?
To support evolution to any degree and in any form is
in fact to demolish Christianity. Interestingly enough, the Satanic Bible
declares, “Satan represents man as nothing more than another animal, sometimes
better, but more often worse than those who walk on four paws, because by the
pretext of his ‘divine intellectual and spiritual development,’ he has become
the most vicious animal of all”. [Anton Szandor La Vey, Satanic Bible (Avon, 1969), from the nine satanic affirmations with
which the book begins]. The American Atheist knows what is at
stake: “Destroy Adam and Eve and original sin, and in the rubble you will find
the sorry remains of the Son of God and take away the meaning of his death” [The American Atheist, 1978, p. 19, as cited in The
Christian News, November 11, 1996].
A Theory That Should Be Discarded
In their desire to be in harmony with science, Roman
Catholicism and certain evangelicals are backing a dead horse. Growing numbers
of scientists are abandoning evolution as completely untenable because the
evidence against it is overwhelming. British astronomer and mathematician Sir
Fred Hoyle, though he finds the idea of God creating life distasteful, admits,
“The scientific world has been bamboozled into believing that evolution has
been proved. Nothing could be further from the truth” [George W. Cornell, “Scientist calls Darwin evolution theory absurd,” in Times-Advocate, December 10, 1982, p.
A10]. Australian biologist Michael Denton, an agnostic
and former evolutionist, and author of Evolution:
A Theory in Crisis, says science has so thoroughly discredited Darwinian
evolution that it should be discarded. Mathematics professor Wolfgang Smith
says evolution is a “metaphysical myth...totally bereft of scientific sanction”
[The Christian News, November 11, 1996, p. 15].
When in 1952 Stanley Miller introduced simulated light
into an atmosphere of methane, ammonia, water vapor, and hydrogen and
seemingly produced several kinds of amino acids (the building blocks of living
creatures), the scientific world was sure it could create life in a laboratory.
The pursuit of this chimera, however, has only revealed greater problems.
Klaus Dose, a prominent evolutionist, shares his disillusionment:
“More than 30 years of experimentation on the origin
of life in the fields of chemical and molecular evolution have led to a better
perception of the immensity of the problem of the origin of life on Earth
rather than to its solution. At present all discussions on principal theories
and experiments in the field either end in stalemate or in a confession of
ignorance” [Klaus Dose, The Origin of Life:
More Questions than Answers, in Interdisciplinary
Science Reviews, 1988, pp. 13,348].
Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist at the British
Museum of Natural History, confessed: “I had been working on this stuff for
more than 20 years, and there was not one thing I knew about it. It’s quite a
shock to learn that one can be misled for so long”. Patterson “started asking
other scientists to tell him one thing they knew about evolution”. Biologists
at the American Museum of Natural History in New York had no answer. Continues
Patterson:
“I tried that question on the geology staff at the
Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried
it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of
Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was
silence for a long time and eventually one person said, ‘I do know one thing—it
ought not to be taught in high school’” [Thomas E. Woodward, Doubts About Darwin, in Moody,
September 1988, p. 20].
Evolution is taught as fact in Catholic schools,
where, as the New York Times noted,
evolution is “a standard part of the curriculum” [Times-Picayune, October 25, 1996, p.
A-3]. Leonard DeFiore, president of the National Catholic
Educational Association in Washington D.C., says, “We start with the premise
that all creation came from God. Beyond that it’s a scientific issue” [Mary Beth Marklein, “Pope:
Evolution, religion don’t clash,” in USA
Today, October 25, 1996, p. 3A]. As cited earlier, Roman Catholic Stephen
F. Smith writes, “In Catholic school here in the Archdiocese of Washington,
D.C., we were taught that Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution was gospel truth”
[Stephen F. Smith, “Is Darwinism a Religion?” in The Catholic World Report, December
1996, p. 3A]. Lehigh University biochemist Michael J. Behe writes
of his days in Catholic schools:
“I don’t remember exactly what was said about life,
other than it came from God, and that...the leading scientific explanation for
how He did it was Darwin’s theory of evolution” [William Bole, “Of biochemistry and belief,” in Our
Sunday Visitor, December 1, 1996, p.
6].
Nothing could be more in opposition to Christian
belief. Oxford University zoologist Richard Dawkins demonstrates that evolution
allows atheists to justify their unbelief. Ironically, however, Dawkins, a
leading evolutionist, admits in his book The Blind Watchmaker that “biology is
the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been
designed for a purpose” [Richard Dawkins, The Blind
Watchmaker, Longman, England, 1986, p. 1]. Isn’t it amazing how everything “chance” produces always looks as
though it had been designed!
A Clear Mathematical Impossibility
A single cell, the smallest living unit, according to
Nobelist Lynus Pauling, is “more complicated than New York City”. “The
‘simplest’ self-sufficient cell has the capacity to produce thousand of
different proteins and other molecules, at different times and under variable
conditions. Synthesis, degradation, energy, generation, replication,
maintenance of cell architecture, mobility, regulation, repair, communication –
all these functions take place in virtually every cell, and each function
itself requires the interaction of numerous parts…[Behe, Black Box, pp.46-47 ]. If any part of this incredibly complex
biochemical machinery is not functioning properly the cell will die. Behe
provides just one example:
“A single flaw in the cell’s labyrinthine
protein-transport pathway is fatal. Unless the entire system were immediately
in place, our ancestors would have [died]… Attempts at a gradual evolution of
the protein transport system are a recipe for extinction…
“At some point this complex machine had to come into
existence, and it could not have done so in step-by-step fashion…as Darwinian
evolution would have it” [Ibid., pp.114-15].
The cell doesn’t merely “give the appearance of being
designed”, it could only be designed!
Dawkins admits that every cell, either of a plant or animal, contains in is
nucleus “a digitally coded database larger, in information content, than all 30
volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica put together” [Dawkins, Watchmaker, p. 18]. Try to imagine the
odds of chance creating a 30-volume encyclopedia! Even if that impossibility
somehow occurred, only one cell would have been produced, and there are
trillions of cells in the human body, and thousands of different kinds, each
working in unbelievably complex relationships with the others!
The mathematical odds against life beginning and
developing by chance (even with unlimited time) are so astronomical as to
render it logically impossible. Consider some examples. The combinations of
just the 26 letters in the alphabet in blocks of 26 is expressed mathematically
as 26, which simply means 26 times 25 times 24 times 23 times 22 times 21 times
20…on down to 2. Thus there are more than 400,000,000,000,000,000,000,000
combinations of 26 letters taken together. Yet instead of a mere 26, there
could be as many as 3000 proteins strung together in a particular sequence
within one cell. Chance could never put them all together in the right order!
Furthermore, each protein is itself a long chain of up to 3000 chemically
joined amino acid residues folded into precise structures. Try to imagine the
odds of having these meticulous sequences happen by chance!
If everything isn’t in perfect order it won’t work.
Thus it would be impossible to “evolve” toward the right combination. The
perfect structure must be there to begin with, which could only happen by
design. Forget superficial similarities and fossils; evolution can’t even get
started at the biochemical and cellular level. As Michel Behe reminds us:
“The cumulative [evidence] shows with piercing clarity
that life is based on machines – machines made of molecules…[which are] enormously
complex…The complexity of life’s foundation has paralyzed science’s attempt to
account for it…” [Behe, Black Box, pp.
4-5]
“Faced with such complexity beneath even simple
phenomena, Darwinian theory falls silent…” [Ibid., p. 97]
Sir Fred Hoyle calculated that the odds of producing just the basic enzymes of life by chance
are 1 in 1 with 40,000 zeros after it. In comparison, the odds of randomly
plucking a particular electron out of universe are 1 in 1 with 80 zeros after
it. Make another universe out of every electron, and the odds of plucking a
particular electron out of all those universes by chance are 1 in 1 with 160
zeros after it. Hoyle comments:
“This situation [mathematical impossibility] is well
known to geneticists and yet nobody seems to blow the whistle decisively on the
theory…
“Most scientists still cling to Darwinism because of
its grip on the educational system…You either have to believe the concepts,
or…be branded a heretic” [Times Advocate,
CA, December 10, 1982, pp. A10-11].
Obviously Designed by God
The obvious impossibility reveals evolution for the
fraud it is. Chance could even produce the basic enzymes. But enzymes serve
astonishingly complex functions, a fact which adds further astronomical odds to
the already impossible.
Consider the clotting of blood, in which enzymes play
a vital role. Imagine the billions of animals that would have died before this
incredible process was perfected by
chance! In his 1996 book, Darwin’s
Black Box, Behe writes:
“Blood clotting is a very complex, intricately woven
system…of interdependent protein parts. The absence of, or significant defects
in, any one of a number of the components causes the system to fail: blood does
not clot at the proper time or at the proper place.
“Animals with blood-clotting cascades have roughly… 30,000
gene pieces. TPA [Tissue Plasminogen Activator] has four different types of
domains… The odds of getting those four domains together is 30,000 to the
fourth power… The same problem of ultra-slim odds would trouble the appearance
of prothrombin… fibrinogen… plasminogen, proaccelerin, [etc., each essential to
the clotting process]…The universe doesn’t have time to wait…
“The odds of getting TPA and its activator together
[is so small as] not to be expected to happen even if the universe’s
ten-billion year life were compressed into a single second and relived every
second for ten billion years. [Even] worse…Darwin’s mechanism of natural
selection would actually hinder the formation of irreducibly complex systems
such as the clotting cascade” [Behe, Black
Box, pp. 78, 93-97].
There are thousands of intricate systems in the body,
each of which is incredibly complex. Consider the immune system:
“The internal defense system of vertebrates is
dizzyingly complicated…The first problem…is how to recognize an invader.
Bacterial cells have to be distinguished from blood cells; viruses have to be
distinguished from connective tissue.
“There are billions of different antibodies…
“The scientific literature has no answers to the
question of the origin of the immune system…How the body acquires tolerance to
its own tissues is still obscure, but whatever the mechanism, we know one
thing: a system of self-toleration had to be present from the start of the
immune system…
“Whichever way we turn, a gradualistic account of the
immune system is blocked by multiple interwoven requirements…The complexity of
the system dooms all Darwinian explanations to frustration…
“No one at Harvard University, no one at the National
Institutes of Health, no member of the National Academies of Sciences, no Nobel
prize winner – no one at all can give a detailed account of how the cilium, or
vision, or blood clotting, or any complex biochemical process might have
developed in a Darwinian fashion”. [Ibid., pp. 120, 122, 136, 139, 187].
“Darwin’s Black Box”
Behe’s book provides example after example of the
inconceivable complexity of life at its most basic chemical/cellular level and
points out that this “black box”, like the inner workings of a computer, cannot
even be inferred, much less understood, from the outer visible structure. This
inner complexity was completely unknown to Darwin and only discovered recently
with the advent of the electron and microscope. Behe offers multiple examples
to prove that the way life is put together at the molecular level demolishes
Darwin’s theory because it cannot possibly account for the indisputably
intricate design of “irreducibly complex” systems. Such systems could not have evolved because, without
all parts present and functioning in the right relationship to one another, the
system fulfills no function and life cannot be sustained:
“What we see [in the cell] is this incredibly
complexity that no one ever imagined…[and] that calls for a conclusion of
design…
“Biochemestry has, in fact, revealed a molecular world
that stoutly resists [Darwinian] explanation… Darwin never imagined the
exquisitely profound complexity that exists even at the most basic levels of
life [Bole, Biochemestry, pp. 6-7; Behe, Black Box, p.173].
“The typical cell contains about two thousand
[mitochondrion compartments]… Each of the little compartments contains
machinery necessary to capture the energy of foodstuffs and store it in a
chemically stable, yet readily available, form… The system uses a flow of acid
to power its machines, which shuttles electrons among a half-dozen carriers,
requiring an exquisitely delicate interaction between many components…The cell
controls how much and what kind of chemicals it makes; when it loses control,
it dies…
“Life on earth at its most fundamental level, in its
most critical components, is the product of intelligent activity. The
conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself – not
from sacred books or sectarian beliefs” [Ibid., pp. 188-93].
Darwin himself said, “If it could be demonstrated that
any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by
numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break
down” [Charles Darwin, Origin of Species,
p. 154]. This is precisely what we found at the biochemical, cellular level, a
level of life about which Darwin knew nothing. Behe asks, “What kind of
biological system could not be formed by ‘numerous, successive, slight
modifications’?” He answers conclusively: “Well, for starters, a system that is
irreducibly complex”, as explained above [Behe, Black Box, p. 39]. Behe’s discussion of DNA provides several
further examples:
“DNA, the most famous nucleic acids, is made up of
four kinds of nucleotides: A, C, G, and T. the form that is first synthesized
in the cell is AMP… It is comprised of…ten carbons, eleven hydrogens, seven
oxygens, four nitrogens, and one phosphorus…
“The formation of biological molecules…requires
specific, highly sophisticated molecular robots… To make AMP… we also need very
high-tech equipment: the enzymes… In the absence of enzymes, AMP is simple not
made… AMP is required for life on earth: it is use to make DNA and RNA, as well
as a number of other critical molecules…
“The problem for Darwinian evolution is this: AMP is
required for life. Either it immediately at its inception… AMP is not the only
metabolic dilemma for Darwin. The biosynthesis of the larger amino acids,
lipids, vitamins, heme, and more run into the same problems, and there are
difficulties beyond metabolism… mountains and chasms that block a Darwinian
explanation of life” [Ibid., pp. 142-151, 159-61].
An Embarrassing Silence
Had Darwin known of the incredibly basic structural
complexity of life on the molecular and cellular level he probably would have
had enough common sense not to propose his theory. Since the discovery of this
“black box”, evolutionists right up to the present have maintained a discreet
silence on this subject. Behe points out that the prestigious Journal of Molecular Evolution, the
highest authority in its field, has never “proposed a detailed model by which a
complex biochemical system might have been produced in a gradual, step-by-step
Darwinian fashion… The very fact that none of these problems is even
addressed…is a very strong indication that Darwinism is an inadequate framework
for understanding the origin of complex biochemical systems” [Ibid., p. 176].
Between 1984 and 1994 about 400 papers concerned with
molecular evolution were published in the Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences. Yet not one “proposed [any] detailed routes by which complex
biochemical structures might have developed” – nor have any been offered in any
other biochemistry journals [Ibid., pp. 177-78]. It is at this basic level of
life (the complexity of which was unknown to Darwin) that Darwinism must now be
defended – but evolutionists have avoided the subject for the obvious reason
that it cannot be done. In view of the fact that there has been “a meeting, or a book, or a paper on details of the
evolution of complex biochemical systems”, Behe writes:
“Publish or
perish is a proverb that academicians take seriously. If you do not publish
your work for the rest of the community to evaluate, then you have no business
in academia… If a theory claims to be able to explain some phenomenon but does
not generate even an attempt at an explanation, then it should be banished… In
effect, the theory of Darwinian molecular evolution has not published, and so
it should perish” [Ibid., pp. 185-86].
Darwin relied upon similarities in outward appearance. He pointed to the
great variety of eyes and assumed that they had somehow developed by “natural
selection” over great time. Behe’s comment is shattering:
“Now that the black box of vision has been opened, it
is no longer enough…to consider only the anatomical structures of whole eyes,
as Darwin did in the nineteenth century (and as popularizes of evolution
continue to do today). Each of the anatomical steps and structures that Darwin
thought were so simple actually involves staggeringly complicated biochemical
processes…
“Anatomy is…irrelevant to the question of whether
evolution could take place on the molecular level. So is the fossil record…[It]
has nothing to tell about whether the interactions of 11-cis-retinal with rhodopsin, transducin, and phosphodiesterase could
have developed step-by-step…
“The scientific disciplines that were part of the
evolutionary synthesis are all nonmolecular. Yet for the Darwinian theory of
evolution to be true, it has to account for the molecular structure of
life…[and] it does not” [Ibid., pp. 22-25].
The Bible or Evolution?
Ignorant of the scientific refutation of evolution and
of its contradiction of Scripture, Donald Devine, former director of the U.S.
Office of Personnel Management, spoke out in support of his Pope: “Prehuman man
apparently existed for millions of years.... This is not a refutation of the
Bible but a confirmation of it—that it took God to breathe in a soul before man
could be man” [Donald
Devine, in Human Events, December 13,
1996, p. 19]. On the contrary, the theory of theistic evolution,
involving as it does prehuman ancestors of man (New York’s Cardinal O’Connor
says Adam and Eve were lower animals), [Los Angeles Times, November 30, 1996, p. B13], contradicts not only
Genesis but the entire Bible.
Rather than God implanting a human soul in prehuman
creatures that had evolved from ocean slime, Moses tells us that God formed
Adam from “the dust of the ground” and then later God formed Eve from “one of
his ribs” (Genesis 2:7, 18-23). Prehuman ancestors cannot be reconciled with
that account, an account which Jesus Himself confirmed (Matthew 19: 4,5).
Christ refers to the Genesis account of man’s creation
and quotes directly from it, placing
His stamp of approval on its authenticity. Paul, too, attested to the accuracy
of the Genesis account when he declared that “Adam was first formed, then Eve”
(1 Timothy 2:13, 14; see also 1 Corinthians 15:22, 45; Jude 14). Furthermore,
Paul says that it was through Adam that sin entered into the world, and death by sin (Romans 5:12). If Adam and
Eve descended from ancestors who had lived and died during thousands (or
millions) of years of prehuman evolution until God finally humanized them,
death would have been in effect before Adam sinned. Clearly, such a
contradiction would be devastating to Christianity.
Theistic evolution’s theory of prehuman creatures as
man’s ancestors contradicts Genesis, Christ’s teaching, Paul’s preaching, and
the gospel. What the Roman Catholic Church and other proponents of theistic
evolution apparently don’t realize is quite clear to The American Atheist:
“But if death preceded man and was not a result of
Adam’s sin, then sin is fiction. If sin is fiction, then we have no need for a
Savior.... Evolution destroys utterly and finally the very reason [for] Jesus’
earthly life... If Jesus was not the Redeemer who died for our sins, and this
is what evolution means, then Christianity is nothing” [Richard Bozarth in The American Atheist, 1978, p. 19, as
cited in The Christian News, November
11, 1996, p. 15].
Evolution, that “most bloated of sacred cows”, [Doug Bandow, “Fossils and Fallacies”, in National Review, April 29, 1991, p. 47]. has persuaded millions that the Bible isn’t reliable
and that the God of the Bible doesn’t exist. As Berkeley law professor Phillip
Johnson puts it, “The whole purpose of the Darwinian evolutionary story is
to...show that you don’t need a preexisting intelligence to do all the work of
creation” [Russell Schoch, “The Evolution of a Creationist”, in California Monthly,
November 1991, p. 22].
Facing the Truth
Johnson shocked the academic world in 1991 with his
book Darwin on Trial. Knowing that it
is the unpardonable sin in academia to oppose evolution, Johnson courageously
and with the precision of a trial lawyer demolished Darwinism by demonstrating
that it would not stand up in court. Johnson indicted his fellow academicians
with having “abandoned the truthful and accurate reporting to which science has
traditionally been committed in their zeal to extirpate and dismiss religion
from public life” [The Catholic World Report, December 1996, p. 50].
If evolution were true, there would necessarily have
been literally billions of intermediary stages filling the fossil record.
Imagine the millions of tiny steps it must have taken over millions of years to
develop lungs from gills, the stomach and digestive system, eyes, kidneys, the
brain and nervous system throughout the body, the heart and bloodstream, sperm
and ovum for mammals, the egg and its shell for birds and reptiles, etc. Yet
not one of these “missing links” has been found!
And what about instinct? Evolution has no answer. Even
if the bat’s sophisticated radar system suddenly appeared by chance, who taught
the first mutated bat to use it? How many millions of Arctic terns drowned
before the first one, by chance, learned to navigate thousands of miles across
the ocean? How many salmon lost their way in the ocean and never made it back
to spawn before this uncanny instinct was developed? How many millions of
spiders starved before the amazing mechanism for making webs suddenly chanced
itself into existence—and who taught that unique mutated spider how to make a
web? How many eggs of all manner of birds rotted before the instinct to hatch
eggs developed, and how was it learned and passed on?
Pursuing a Delusion
Jean Houston, who is both a psychologist and a
theologian, presents us with a synthesis of psychology, occultism, and
evolution in her workshops and writings. In some of her workshops she leads
participants into an alleged awakening of ancient prehuman “memories” as a
means of gaining insight into their personalities and working through
“emotional blocks”. Here is an excerpt from a reporter’s account of one such
session:
“Remember when you were a fish”, Houston suggested...Nearly
a thousand people...dropped to the floor and began moving their “fins” as if to
propel themselves through water.
“Notice your perception as you roll like a fish. How
does your world look, feel, sound, smell, taste?”
“Then you came up on land”, Houston recalled, taking
us through the amphibian state...
“Then Houston suggested, “Allow yourself to fully
remember being a reptile....Then some of you flew. Others climbed trees...”
“We became a zoo of sounds and movements made by early
mammals, monkeys, and apes.
“Houston then called us to remember being “the early
human” who loses his/ her protective furry covering “and... evolves into modern
human...”
“We had become a wriggling sea of bodies—nearly a
thousand housewives, therapists, artists, social workers, clergy, educators,
health professionals.. [who] had crawled over and under each other, enjoying
ourselves and re-learning what was deep within our memories” [ Shepherd Bliss, “Jean Houston: Prophet of the Possible”,
in Whole Life Times, October/
mid-November 1984, pp. 24-25].
This “exercise in evolutionary memory”, as Houston
calls it, is patently nonsense. The fact is that no one has such “memories”.
Nor could such memories exist at some unconscious level (as in Jung’s alleged
“collective unconscious”), or even at the cellular level, as some argue,
inasmuch as evolution is a myth that never occurred in real life. Then what is
happening? Obviously, participants are talked into fantasizing in order to play
along with the regressive therapy game.
It is amazing to see who is willing to participate in
such folly. Houston chaired and organized a symposium for leading U.S.
government policymakers entitled “The Possible Society: An Exploration of
Practical Policy Alternatives for the Decade Ahead”. She tells of guiding about
150 high-ranking officials for about three days. She had these officials on the
floor, imagining internal journeys on a search for “the possible society”. Such
exercises, of course, can lead one into occult contact as surely as the
shaman’s journey to which it is clearly related.
Evolution, psychology, shamanism—the link is clear,
but it is a belief in evolution which has led the downward spiral to today’s
renaissance of the occult. Man’s much-vaunted claim to an evolving ascent to
perfection has led instead to an inglorious return to pagan superstition.
