Introduction - Table of Contents - Next Reason
100 Reasons to Choose Biblical Creation Over Evolution
1. Irreducible Complexity
Even the "simplest" cell is fantastically complex. Intricate structures throughout the cell dovetail together to create a network of systems, each complimenting the other in the most complex and remarkable ways. The cell's purpose, it seems, is to survive and to replicate. Since it needs all of its complex structures and systems to function, and since natural selection (survival of the fittest) requires something functioning to select, we must assume that the first organism arose suddenly A. Nothing that experimental science has discovered to date can be said to support such an idea. It is accepted purely as an article of faith B.
Some scientists, not willing to let go of their cherished belief in evolution, even when the empirical evidence demands it, have come up with a concept known as complexity theory. According to proponents of this view, life did not evolve in step-by-step fashion over countless ages, but was the result of forces we don't understand or observe today, which caused life to arise suddenly, fully functioning and able to reproduce. As David Harry Grinspoon notes, complexity theory cannot really be considered scientific,
"[Complexity theory is] inherently non-reductionist, focusing instead on emergence. One objection is that complexity science is not predictive - at least not yet, in the way that science has required itself to be. Maybe in some sense it is not even science but natural philosophy…We can poke around the edges of this question with science, but it is also fair game for intuition and faith." David Harry Grinspoon, Venus Revealed, 1997, pp. 301, 302
Again, anyone who can accept "complexity" theory as an explanation for something as irreducibly complex as a living system, cannot object to the Christian's belief in miracles.
The classic example of irreducible complexity: The mousetrap. The mousetrap's "job" is to catch mice. That's what it's designed to do. Unless it has all of its parts together and functioning, it won't be able to do it's "job". Living systems are infinitely more complex, but, like the mousetrap, they require all their parts to be present and functioning in order for them to do their job - namely living. There is simply no way one can imagine natural selection operating to preserve a half-formed cell. Creation is the only reasonable alternative.
1. Irreducible Complexity - Notes and References:
A. See Michael Behe, "Darwin's Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution", Touchstone, 1996. This is the heart of Behe's case for design, which he sets forth quite convincingly.
B. Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London, (Evolution and Creationism speech at the American Museum of Natural History, NY, Nov. 5, 1981) stated:
"The question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? 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 at 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.'…The level of knowledge about evolution is incredibly shallow…So I think many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge, to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me and I think it's true of a good many of you in here."
Geneticist Richard Lewontin (As quoted by Philip Johnson, "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds", InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1997, p. 81):
"It is not that methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."
British Biologist L. Harrison Matthews (Introduction to "The Origin of Species", C. Darwin, reprinted by J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1971, p. XI):
"The fact that evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation - both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof."