You Have to Believe Evolution

Ever since my Intro. Biology course at university, I have concluded that any scientist who accepts macro-evolution must suffer from a form of intellectual schizophrenia. How else can you explain the following scenario? The professor strides confidently into the lecture hall and deftly writes his name on the board. Smiling benignly on the sea of eager faces, he informs us that we will be examining the evolutionary model of the universe. “But first,” he says, “we will look at the principles by which a scientist works. The first is the Principle of Biogenesis–life only comes from life.”

As the lecture continued, I thought to myself, Sir, you have painted yourself into a corner. How will you reconcile this established principle that life only comes from life with the notion that life came from non-life?

When we arrived at the point in the explanation of evolution’s beginnings–which I thought would force the teacher either to do some major back-peddling or some impressive verbal gymnastics–he sailed right through as if his discussion of Biogenesis had been in another life. I presume he went home and had a good sleep that night, never once having nightmares of Redi or Pasteur2.

The scene changes. I’ve been invited into a high school Biology class. My points are simple: evolution is contrary to theoretical science, experimental chemistry, probability, genetics, thermodynamics, and every other recognized principle of scientific study. It is contrary to observable phenomena: the lack of intermediate life-forms in the fossil record, the lack of evolutionary changes in populations today, and the impossibility of life in a closed system (as seen in the billions of cans of soup used each day in which spontaneous generation never occurs). The idea defies logic at every step. Think about it. The evolutionist doesn’t have the first spark of life; and he must presume the matter in the universe was always here. Already he is in trouble.

But you can be magnanimous with such faithful proponents. Go ahead; give them the universe. And you can give them their spark of life, too (it would never happen by biopoesis, see article, Chemistry in Stereo). What next?

One of the simplest arrangements on the planet (really a pre-life form because it cannot self-replicate) is a virus.

Distinguished mathematician Harold Morowitz calculated the probability of such a virus haphazardly occurring as 10-1023 . Still a chance, someone says? Not a chance, says Morowitz. That’s not science; that’s philosophy. What if we increase the time, say by a few billion years. Could it happen then? Ah, but you’re going the wrong way, my friend. Because the universe is becoming increasingly chaotic, the more time, the less chance. Another dead end.

But go on and give them their virus. Now what can they do with it? Absolutely nothing! If all that there was in the universe was that virus, it could not reproduce (and therefore mutate and evolve) because it needs a more advanced life form with a nucleus to hijack, forcing this cell to make the materials necessary to produce more viruses. You have devolution at the first stage! Another dead end.

The faith of the evolutionist is not easily deterred. He is able to depend on his conclusions even though he thinks his brain is an accident. He looks for design in the universe even though he denies a Designer. When I was finished my high school lecture, the teacher walked to the front and said, “Well, Mr. Nicholson, you’ve made it pretty well impossible for me to teach evolution to this class. We know the model we have couldn’t work, but we’re obligated to teach it anyway.” As I say, evolution is not science; it is irrational belief. You have to believe evolution. Because thinking will lead you to God.

Uplook Magazine, October 1995
Written by J. B. Nicholson Jr
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