In 1859, Charles Darwin published his classic work "The Origin Of Species". By 1900, virtually all of the scientific community had accepted his thesis of evolution as a fact. In 1959, at the centennial celebration in Chicago of the publishing of Darwin's book, keynote speaker Julian Huxley stated:
"The earth was not created, it evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human selves, mind and soul as well as brain and body. So did religion....Finally, the evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern, however incompletely, the lineaments of the NEW RELIGION that we can be sure will arise to serve the needs of the coming era."
Indeed, the science community has protected their investment in Darwinism with religious zeal. They have needed to because when evolution started creeping into high school text books in the early to mid 20th century, conservative Protestant groups pushed back and in a number of States, laws were passed to require a "balanced treatment" of evolution in biology text books. But one by one these were struck down as unconstitutional, culminating in a 1987 U.S. Supreme Court ruling against Louisiana's Balanced Treatment Act. The Neo-Darwinian Synthesis is now locked in with no options to challenge it.
The upshot is that students in the public schools are only exposed to this new religion of Julian Huxley. Why is this a problem? Imagine a room in which a body lies crushed flat as a pancake. A dozen detectives crawl around looking for clues. In the middle of the room next to the body stands a large gray elephant. The detectives carefully avoid bumping into the pachyderm's legs as they crawl around with their magnifying glasses. Over time they get frustrated with their lack of progress. You see, the text books for detectives say they must "get their man", so they never consider the elephant. This "elephant block" is labeled "intelligent design". The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally, not from the sectarian sacred books, but rather from the data itself. Given that, let's examine some of the problems with this materialistic view of the world.
The first problems is origins. That is, neo-Darwinism says nothing about how life got started from a wash of inorganic chemicals. Evidence of complex bacterial life stretch back as far as 3.8 billion years ago. Fossil remains were found in the Isua series in southwest Greenland, the "North Pole" region of Australia, and the Pilbara Block in western Australia. Almost immediately after the period of continuous meteorite bombardment (most of which were sterilization events) ended, complex self-replicating life appears. These creatures had fully functioning genetic code which enabled them to feed, excrete, and replicate. Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene, states, "A gene is simply a chemical compound....a purely material substance without a will, a soul, or purpose. It mechanically replicates itself...". Fine, but where did the gene come from? How did it come up with the genetic program with it's four letter alphabet and complex copying mechanisms which even has error checking mechanisms along with instructions on when to start reading the code and stop reading it? Even Dawkins is puzzled how this could have been pulled off so quickly. He even speculates on explanations like panspermia where perhaps the genetic code was planted here by aliens!
The second problem is with the fossil record itself. One of the biggest mysteries is the Cambrian Explosion. In the pre-Cambrian fauna we see precious little evidence of complex life. Basically the typical life form were various classes of worms. Then, in a geological millisecond every form of phyla (body plan) that we see today appears in the fossil record. In short, we see eons of time where there is only stasis (steady state with no activity), then BANG....complex creatures (metazoans) appear with fully formed respiratory systems, cardiovascular systems, skeletal systems, digestive systems, reproductive systems, etc etc.
Stephen Jay Gould and Niles Eldredge attempts to explain how nature pulled this off with their "punctuated equilibrium" thesis. It states that species might evolve in isolated populations through rapid individual selection and ultimately replace the parental type. But one thing you will always note in these theories is the admitted speculation. The thesis is glutted with conditionals such as "might", "should", "could", "perhaps", and the ubiquitous "if". The truth is that nothing can explain what we see in the fossil record. Not punctuated equilibrium, not macro mutations, not saltation, not genetic drift, nothing. These theories cannot explain the evolution of a new body part, let alone a complete body plan that we see in the early Cambrian.
This just scratches the surface. But to conclude, it is ashame that our children are not exposed to some of the problems with evolution. Micro evolution is a fact. Darwin's finches prove that. But we see genetic barriers in a higher taxa of animals. Those barriers prevent the mating of diverse creatures. The animal genome does experience a certain elasticity up to the genus level. All science agrees with that. But then to extrapolate that to macro evolution is to completely ignore the scientific method (observation and testing). The important thing is to always challenge, and never blindly accept. Especially challenge those with impressive titles or fancy letters after their name.
