Evolution is not a true theory at all. Webster defines a theory as “a formulation of apparent relationships or underlying principles of certain observed phenomena which has been verified to some degree.” No matter how proponents of evolution brandish their beliefs, this so called “theory” has never been verified to any degree. Calling it an hypothesis would be more accurate. Webster defines hypothesis as “an unproved theory…tentatively accepted to explain certain facts or to provide a basis for further investigation.”
Actually to call evolution a religion would be far more correct; for it certainly cannot masquerade under the heading of science since science is systematic experimentation and observation. Webster’s first definition of religion is “a belief in a divine or superhuman power or powers to be obeyed and worshipped as the creator.” As we will see, this is exactly where evolutionists hold their “theory”; natural selection is their god.
There are many evidential scientific as well as philosophical problems with the hypothesis of evolution, such as the missing links in the fossil records, the inability to account for these embarrassing gaps, and the improbability of life forming by simple chance. If, for instance, feathers evolved from scales, as evolutionists claim, there should be countless fossil records of the transitional forms. After all, there would have of necessity been trillions upon trillions of animals with these “transitional” vestigial organs. But no fossil records of transitional forms of scales-to-feathers exist. Feathers serve one purpose and scales another. Feathers regenerate and are replaced annually; scales do not. Thus, any organism possessing these transitional forms would have become extinct by the very definition of the “survival of the fittest” philosophy.
Genesis 1:21 states, “God created…every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth…after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind.” Both being created the same day allowed little time for the process of transitional forms. Even the 17 billion years age of the earth that some scientists propose is not near enough time to accomplish the simplest of these feats. In the nineteenth century, when Darwin proposed his “theory,” which, by the way, was not original with him, many scientists looked forward to the day when more advanced scientific studies would reveal the close links between chemistry and biological life.
As a greater understanding of living systems grew, especially in the 1950’s with the discovery of DNA, the gap between chemistry and the life processes widened rather than narrowed. The more we learn of living organisms, the more complex we realize they are. For instance, a one-cell organism contains approximately 13 trillion bits of information. This is more letters than are in all the volumes of some of the world’s largest libraries.1 The proteins contained in the simplest organisms such as bacteria are just as complex as those found in the “higher” forms of life. Whereas evolutionists see these similarities as evidences for their hypothesis, Christians see them as proof of a Master Designer who used the same building blocks for all life.
The gargantuan problem which evolutionists will not acknowledge is the impossible probability that life could have originated by chance. The whole basis for the claim that life evolved is that certain atoms combined to form the right molecules which then united in the correct sequence with others in the proper medium and correct temperature to somehow result in a living organism. This organism could then even reproduce itself. It also possessed the added advantage that it could periodically go through accidental changes (mutations) which would then allow it to become better adapted to changing circumstances.
In essence, evolutionists propose development from the primitive to the advanced. However, the biblical account that a world was made perfect and is slowly disintegrating is what is being observed, not that it is evolving into a more complex unit. Watches never wind up; they always wind down. This also agrees with the second law of thermodynamics, that any system goes from greater order to lesser order, not the other way.
Let’s examine what must take place for something by mere chance to form the precise combination which will work. Note that with a particular living organism only one combination will work.
Look at a biblical example. Remember the story of Joseph in Egypt when just before revealing himself to his brothers, he prepared a feast and arranged them each in their order of birth. We read, “The men marvelled one at another” (Gen. 43:33). Why? What were the possible combinations in which Joseph could have seated his brothers?
If there were only two brothers, there of course would be two possibilities: A and B or B and A or 1 X 2 = 2. If there were three brothers, there would be six possible seating arrangements, 1 X 2 X 3 = 6. With 4 brothers, 24 different combinations or 1 X 2 X 3 X 4 = 24. But there were 11 brothers! So using a simple equation we can easily see by multiplying 1 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 5 X 6 X 7 X 8 X 9 X 10 X 11 that there would have been 39,916,800 possible seating arrangements for just these 11 men.
And Joseph just happened to “hit” on the right one?! Is there any wonder that they marvelled? It is amazing how that with each additional entity the number grows exponentially. When explaining this to a Sunday School class with 17 people on one side of the room, we observed that there were 357,104,563,256,000 (trillions) possible combinations with which these 17 members could arrange themselves. If every second someone moved into a different position, it would take over 11 billion years to exhaust the possibilities for just this group!
Now relate this to a living system and the likelihood that any part of a living cell could come together by chance. Dr. Henry Morris in his book Scientific Creationism 2 uses the example of an organism with 100 parts and the possible combinations with which they could be arranged, realizing that only one could be correct. Understand that there is nothing living even remotely this simple, as we saw with the 13 trillion bits of information in one living cell. Scarcely anything mechanical is even this simple.
What are the possible combinations for something with 100 parts? To determine this, we again adopt our simple formula of 1 X 2 X 3 X 4 X 5 X 6…X 100. To accommodate it practically, the number has to be written logarithmically and is 10158. This is 1 followed by 158 zeroes. No one can comprehend the enormity of this number. For example, the smallest particle known in the universe is an electron. Not in just our solar system or even our galaxy, but in the entire universe, there are “only” 1080 electrons. And yet with only 100 components, we can get 10158 possible combinations.
That means that the number of possible combinations of linkages (of which only one will work; while there is duplication of some factors, surely 100 out of 13 trillion is not an extreme number!) of these 100 parts is equal to the number of electrons in 1078 (1 followed by 78 zeroes) universes the size of our own!
Another way to help grasp the enormity of the evolutionist’s dilemma with this “simple” organism is the so-called age of the earth. Astronomers and physicists told us with great exuberance just a few years ago that their calculations had determined that the “Big Bang”–the birth of the universe–occurred just over 17 billion years ago. But is this enough time to do all that evolutionists say has happened since the origin of the universe? Especially since they say life itself only “evolved” 4.1 billion years ago. Let’s be as generous with them as possible and give them 30 billion years, almost double the time that they claim has elapsed. Further, let’s say the 1080 electrons that make up the entire universe are each a separate computer interconnected so that not one will duplicate the work of another and let each computer explore a billion possible combinations a second (these we could say are mutations) for 30 billion years. We would still have explored only 10107 possible combinations. The probability that we would have found the right combination would be only 1 in 1049.
Think of this as 1080 organisms which are mutating at the rate of a billion mutations a second for 30 billion years. This would actually require a billion generations a second for each organism to pass on these new characteristics, as a mutation cannot be passed on without a reproducing generation. The absurdity of the situation becomes evident, because nothing reproduces at the rate of a billion generations a second. Another problem with this hypothesis is that 1080 organisms would have to evolve at the same time, not just one.
Don’t get too taken up with these examples as they are so ridiculously simple compared to anything in a living system. Frank Salisbury, an evolutionist, writing in an article, Doubts about the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution,3 even expressed doubts about the ability of a living structure such as DNA to come together by chance. He points out that a medium-sized protein molecule of 300 amino acids would be synthesized by a gene on a DNA strand with approximately 1000 links. Since there are four different nucleotides in a DNA chain, this would render 10600 possible combinations for this portion of the DNA strand which would generate this particular protein molecule. We previously examined the enormity of the number 10158. What must 10600 be? Remember, there are 13 trillion bits of information in a single cell! What are the possible combinations here? Only a Divine, omnipotent, omniscient Creator could have ever designed a living system.
Salisbury concludes: “We can try to write Shakespeare by piling computers on top of each other and letting them rearrange letters of the language, but a much better way is to let Shakespeare apply his intelligence to the job. Could God apply His intelligence to the ordering of nucleotides in the DNA chains…? Certainly, if He exists.”
Julian Huxley, one of the foremost evolutionists of this century, in his book Evolution In Action,4 made an attempt to calculate the number of generational steps it would take for a higher form of life such as a horse to evolve from a primitive form. He had to make several assumptions concerning the proportion of good mutations to bad. He made this observation: “We should clearly have to breed a million strains to get one containing two favorable mutations; and so on, up to a thousand to the millionth power to get one containing a million” favorable mutations. He was assuming that it would take a million favorable mutations for a horse to evolve, but even this number is absurdly inadequate. Even with this conservative number of mutational steps needed, it would take 103,000,000 generations to end up with a horse. Again, compare this to our number of electrons in the entire universe, 1080. Why did Huxley not calculate how long this would take? If he had, he would have realized the absurdity of the evolutionist’s position. Even with a trillion (1012) generations a second, it would take more than 102,999,980 years for a horse to evolve by their own admission. Since evolutionists claim the universe to be 1.79 years old, they have some explaining to do.
Huxley’s conclusions were even more astonishing: “Of course this could not really happen, but it is a useful way of visualizing the fantastic odds against getting a number of favorable mutations in one strain through pure chance alone…No one would bet on anything so improbable happening. And yet it has happened! It has happened, thanks to the working of natural selection and the properties of living substance which make natural selection inevitable!”
How would you like to pray to the “god of natural selection” every day and trust him for your salvation? This is why we observed earlier that evolution is a religion, not a science. It is shameful, but these so-called scientists put more faith in their god of natural selection than many believers do in our omnipotent Lord and Saviour.
It becomes clear from these examples that men are “willingly ignorant” (2 Pet. 3:5). In verse 4, we see that he is speaking of creation. Paul describes them further as those “who hold the truth in unrighteousness” (Rom. 1:18). “Hold” is better rendered “suppress.” These truly hold down or suppress the truth with evil intent. Verses 19-20 add, “Because that which may be known of God is manifest in them; for God hath showed it unto them. For the invisible things of Him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.” Could it be any clearer?
Endnotes:
1. Caryl Matrisciana and Roger Oakland, The Evolution Conspiracy (Oregon: Harvest House Publishers, 1991).
2. Henry M. Morris, Ph. D., Scientific Creationism (California: Creation-Life Publishers, 1985).
3. Frank B. Salisbury, “Doubts about the Modern Synthetic Theory of Evolution,” American Biology Teacher, (September, 1971).
4. Julian Huxley, Evolution in Action (New York: Harper and Brothers Co., 1953).