Evolution Professor: Special-Creation “Effectively Eliminated”

In his book Inside the Human Genome evolution professor and National Academy of Science member John Avise continues with the usual evolutionary religious claims that the evil and inefficiency of biological designs—at the molecular level in this case—necessitate evolution, for such designs would never have been designed or created by a loving higher intelligence. As usual, it’s all about religion.

In his chapter on non intelligent design, Avise points out that the world is deeply flawed right down to the fundamental, molecular level, and he repeats his religious belief that ascribing such a world to a Creator God is tantamount to blasphemy:

If, on the other hand, natural causation is denied, and a caring Intelligent Designer is to be held directly responsible for life’s imperfect features, then the theodicy challenge remains poignant. How could a Creator God have engineered such a deeply flawed biological world, right down to its most elemental molecular features? Unless we pretend that biological defects do not exist, we seem forced to conclude that any Intelligent Designer is either technically fallible, morally challenged, or both. Furthermore, if the intelligent designer is deemed to be the Abrahamic God (rather than a Martian, for example), then are we not guilty of blasphemy in ascribing to Him a direct hand in sponsoring the molecular genomic flaws that plague human health? [156]

But this is only the beginning of evolution’s metaphysics and Avise next points out that these so-called “shared errors” are common to many species:

Furthermore, molecular imperfections in the human genome provide significant evidence for evolution not only because they are imperfect but also because they are phylogenetically interpretable. Most genomic flaws (apart from de novo mutations that are currently confined to particular individuals) are distributed across biological taxa in ways that make evolutionary (i.e., phylogenetic) sense. This is true at all levels in the phylogenetic hierarchy. At the microevolutionary scale, many genetic disorders in humans “run in families” according to specifiable rules of Mendelian inheritance. [157]

Avise’s argument that genetic disorders “run in families” is weak. Nor is his argument from shared errors any better because convergence in biology is rampant. Evolutionists never had a problem before with astonishingly complex designs that are found in distant branches of the evolutionary tree.

If evolution is true those designs must have evolved independently, in spite of the ridiculously low chances of such an evolutionary path occurring twice (or even once for that matter).

So if evolution has no problem with biology’s astonishing levels of convergence, which repeatedly falsified evolutionary expectations, then it hardly can claim some other similarities, flawed or otherwise, as compelling evidence.

But of course this isn’t where the power of the argument comes. The point of the argument, as Avise immediately explains, is a religious one:

And at the mesoevolutionary and macroevolutionary scales, humans share many molecular features, including particular molecular flaws, with various other taxa in the nested hierarchies of phylogeny. When fine details of molecular errors recur in phylogenetically related species, special-creation explanations for such errors are thus effectively eliminated (unless we are to suppose that a bumbling Creator made the same molecular mistakes time and again when directly forging different species). [157]

Evolutionary thought has always been a referendum on creationism. That’s why they insist on labeling ID theorists as “creationists.”

Let’s be clear about the nature of this debate. There is nothing wrong with evolutionary theorizing, per se. For there is nothing wrong with religious premises driving one’s thinking. Men have done this for eons and it certainly is not showing any signs of slowing.

Evolutionary thought can be traced to antiquity. In the era of modern science it shows up in the seventeenth century in Christian thinkers such as Malebranche, Burnet, Ray, Cudworth, and Leibniz, to name a few.

By the nineteenth century this movement had gained substantial momentum. Darwin served to collect, formalize and apply this thought specifically to the origin of species and his work was drenched in metaphysics. He is rightly exalted as the father of modern evolutionary thought as he set the template for the historical sciences in the twentieth century.

Most importantly, Darwin refined and exemplified a method that is now taken for granted in origins research. Namely, Darwin’s thought was motivated by, entailed and hinged on metaphysics no less than earlier thinkers. But in Darwin the metaphysics was subtly dressed in empirical language. Here is a typical example:

Thus, we can hardly believe that the webbed feet of the upland goose or of the frigate-bird are of special use to these birds; we cannot believe that the similar bones in the arm of the monkey, in the fore-leg of the horse, in the wing of the bat, and in the flipper of the seal, are of special use to these animals. We may safely attribute these structures to inheritance.

One can read through such passages and almost conclude that Darwin is merely presenting empirical scientific reasoning and conclusions. And so it is with today’s evolutionary reasoning, such as this typical textbook example:

If the 11 species had independent origins, there is no reason why their [traits] should be correlated.

It all sounds so scientific. But of course it is not. This is the great deception of evolutionary thought. It is made to sound scientific, and indeed evolutionists argue strenuously that it is. They claim the high ground of “just science” and use creationists as their foil.

And so there are three problems with evolutionary thought. First, it claims that its finding that evolution is a fact derives from empirical science. Second, it criticizes the use of religious assumptions. Third, its everything-came-from-nothing hypothesis, while religiously compelling, is scientifically absurd.

The first of these problems is a lie. The second is a hypocrisy. And the third is an abuse of science.

Evolutionists, of course, recognize none of this. But neither do their detractors. Common criticisms are that evolution is “only a theory” and so could be wrong. Even more typical is the complaint that evolution is really nothing more than atheism in disguise. Both criticisms are glaring misconceptions of evolutionary thought which simply give evolutionists more confidence. If criticisms of their ideas are clearly false, then they must be doing well.

This is why it is important to understand evolution. For both evolutionists and skeptics, progress will be difficult until evolution is properly understood.