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A Review of "Darwin On Trial"
Phillip E. Johnson is a lawyer. He is a graduate of Harvard and the University
of Chicago. He has taught law at the University of California for over twenty
years. He has written a book about the theory of evolution, not so much from a
scientific standpoint as an evidential standpoint. What he has found is that,
contrary to popular opinion, there is not the vast body of empirical evidence
supporting the theory as many would like for us to believe. The theory must be
accepted by faith, if it is to be accepted at all.
By all means, get the book if this controversy is of interest to you. The book's
title is "Darwin on Trial" and is published by Intervarsity Press.
Johnson tackles the theory in several ways, He shows how the evidence for
natural selection is completely inadequate to support the theory. The supposed
evidence is really not evidence at all. The arguments used amount to a
tautology; or saying the same thing twice and trying to prove the one by the
other. For example, natural selection means that nature weeds out inferior
species by allowing only the fittest to survive. How do we know? Well, we know
this because the earth is covered with the fossils of extinct species. They were
not fit, you see. How do we know they weren't? Because they all died. The fact
is, creatures which have become extinct at one place may have done very well in
another. You see what they have done? Natural selection defines "fittest" as
those species which survived, and those species which survived are said to prove
"natural selection"!
The theory is so problematic that many scientists have tried in vain to find
some way to make it work. One of these is called "the hopeful monster" theory.
Essentially, since the evidence for a slow evolution of organs is so lacking,
and since natural selection holds that any change must be beneficial to the
animal for evolution to occur, and since a partially developed eye that will
take thousands of generations to become useable is not beneficial to the animal,
some have suggested "the hopeful monster" theory. This suggests that a great
leap is made in one generation with the offspring possessing entire organs that
their parents did not have. Such a thing is called a "macro-mutation". All the
parts must develop suddenly in lock-step, and every part is needed else the
mechanism will be useless. If only 50% of the mechanisms needed for sight
developed, the creature would have a useless eye that could not see at all.
Well, the theory was tried, and some still hold to it today, but most have
rejected it because for such a thing to happen sounds too much like a miracle.
The secular evolutionist does not like to even get close to admitting such.
Johnson also looks at other various arguments made to support evolution, and how
they really do not prove what they are said to prove. Darwinism is a faith; its
proponents are as fanatical as any "religious fanatic" has ever been. They are
the ones fighting to keep any evidence that counters their dogma from being
taught. To question Darwinism is to commit sacrilege to them. Any interpretation
of data that supports Darwin's theory seems to be fine, and high school science
textbooks today continue to advance theories in support of evolution that have
even been discarded by evolutionists themselves! There are textbooks rolling off
the press today that argue that the developing embryo of animals goes through
its evolutionary stages, for example. And the state sanctioned proselytizing of
the young to the Darwinian faith continues. As one high priest of Darwinism
preached:
"In the evolutionary pattern of thought there is no longer either need or room
for the supernatural. 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 our coming era."
--Julian Huxely
At the celebration of the 100th anniversary of the publication of The Origin of
Species, Chicago; 1959.
By Jon W. Quinn
The Final Page
From Expository Files 4.11; November 1997
