Evolution

You How Did Darwinism Develop? The French natural philosopher Jean-Baptiste Lamarck (1744-1829) was the first to give general theory of biological evolution. In 1800 he argued that the simplest life forms had arisen spontaneously (that is, without God's special action) from matter, and that all other forms of life had developed from them. In his 1809 book Philosophie Zoologique, he tried to explain this development as due to two factors: first, a "power of life" that pressed toward increasingly complex animal classes; and second, the pressure of environment. This second feature is what people today most remember about Lamarck's theory: an animal's environment causes it to acquire characteristics which it then passes on to its young. For example, the ancestors of modern giraffes would stretch their necks to feed on the leaves of trees; they passed their stretched necks on to their offspring, who passed even more stretching on to theirs. Lamarck's views didn't win much acceptance in his day, but the tide turned, however, when Charles Darwin (1809-1882) published The Origin of Species in 1859.

Darwin proposed that all life-forms evolved through natural selection. He theorized that life progressively changed through the preservation of those individual creatures and characteristics best adapted to outlast others in the competition for survival. Darwin implied in the first edition, and explicitly stated in the second edition, that life had "been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one." But he also made it clear that while God may have been the Creator of "some one prototype" of life, he believed evolution was responsible for all the succeeding plant and animal species. Particularly offensive was the implication that humans descended from lower creatures. Though many scientists strongly objected to Darwin's views, most adopted it with surprising speed.

Thus, science and faith became increasingly polarized. The clouds of controversy became fixed and the front refused to move. In 1925,despite the guilty verdict of a biology teacher who had intentionally defied Tennessee's law against teaching evolution in public schools, in the infamous Scopes Trial, by the end of World War II, the Darwinist hypothesis expanded to become the molecules-to-man concept. With naturalistic philosophy now permeating the scientific community, few dared question the notion that biological evolution by strictly natural means applied not just to primitive cells but also to inorganic chemicals. Origin of life researchers admitted to being a long way from synthesizing life in the laboratory or from observing the production of any complex organic molecules from inorganic material either on Earth or in outer space. Nonetheless, they so influenced other scientists and educators that high school biology texts soon taught 'molecules to man' as an established, fact-based theory. By 1970, the teaching of evolution had become legal, as well as predominant throughout the United States, and much of the world.

INTELLIGENT DESIGN

History The Greek philosopher Plato (about 427-347 B.C.), in his Laws, when asked how you could prove that the gods exist, argued that the order and arrangement of the world must be due to the work of a soul or mind: "In the first place, the earth and sun,and the stars and the universe, and the fair order of the seasons, and the division of them into years and months, furnishes proofs of their existence". Plato defined atheism in terms of the belief that the world and everything in it result from the purposeless motions of material elements. He was specifically opposing Greek philosopher-scientists who tried to account for the order of nature by means of purely mechanical principles.

Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), a student of Plato, echoed Plato's view of design: ...So those who first looked up to heaven and saw the sun running its course from its rising to its setting, and the orderly dances of the stars, looked for the craftman of this lovely design, and surmised that it came about not by chance but by the agency of some mighty and imperishable nature, which is God. He took the view that anyone who looked fairly at the world would "surely reason that these have not been framed without perfect skill, but that there both was and is a framer of this universe-God."

In the modern period, we turn to Isaac Newton (1642-1727). Newton is best known for his laws of mechanics and gravitation, and his calculus; but he actually wrote a great deal of theological material. Newton writes: "To make this system, therefore, with all its motions, required a cause which understood, and compared together, the quantities of matter in the several bodies of the sun and planets, and the gravitating powers resulting from thence; the several distances of the primary planets from the sun, and of the secondary ones from Saturn, Jupiter, and the earth; and the velocities, with which these planets could revolve about those quantities of matter in the central bodies, and to compare and adjust all these together in so great and variety of bodies, argues that cause to be not blind and fortuitous, but very well skilled in mechanics and geometry.

Dr. Fazale Rana, a chemist, and co-author of Origins of Life with Dr. Hugh Ross writes: Stradivarius violins usually carry a label with the Latin inscription, "Antonius Stradivarius Cremonensis Faciebat Anno [date]." This label alone, however, does not guarante that the instrument is genuine, because thousands of copies bear that same identification. A violin is only authenticated by a thorough examination of its design, wood characteristics, and varnish. The specific features contribute to the weight of evidence for the identity of the maker. If life's beginning has a supernatural cause, then much like an original Stradivarius, the cell's biochemical system will display certain hallmark characteristics- individual features that indicate design. Over the last forty years, biochemists have made progress toward understanding life's chemistry. The cell's major biochemical systems have been identified and characterized, and thanks to advances in measurement technology, biomolecular structure and function can now be determined in detail that takes us down to the individual atom. These advances have exposed numerous features that build to a preponderance of evidence for the design and craftsmanship of a Creator. 

Irreducible complexity: This term describes a system comprised of numerous components, all of which must be present and must interact precisely for the system to function. Many man-made systems are irreducibly complex. The cell's biochemical systems appear to be irreducibly complex.

Chicken-and-egg systems: Many biochemical systems are called chicken-and-egg systems. (after the old conundrum, 'which came first:the chicken or the egg?') because they consist of components that require each other for the components to be produced. For example, ribosomes make proteins, yet they in turn consist of proteins .Proteins can't be formed without ribosomes (proteins),and ribosomes (proteins) can't be made without proteins. Fine-tuning and high precision: Long recognized as design features, fine-tuning and high precision traditionally signify a device's superior engineering and craftsmanship. Many biochemical structures and activities depend on precise location and orientation of chemical groups in three-dimensional space, just -right chemical composition, and exacting chemical rates. Molecular fine-tuning is a defining property of life's chemical systems. Compositional fine-tuning and complexity of cell membranes: These structures form the cell's external and internal boundaries and require precise chemical compositions to assemble. Cell membranes possess vast complexity. Both reflect design.

Molecular motors: These protein complexes are found inside the cell and are literal machines. Many possess and eerie resemblance to man-made machines. Those molecular machines revitalize the watchmaker arguement for a Creator's existence. Biochemical information systems: Experience teaches that intelligible messages come from intelligent sources. The cell's biochemical machinery (proteins, DNA, RNA, and oligosaccharides) is information-based and therefore must come from an intelligent source.

Genetic code: Encoded information indicates intelligence beyond the mere presence of information. An intelligent being must develop and employ the code. The cell's information exists in a coded format that defines the cell's information systems. Genetic code fine-tuning: The rules that comprise the genetic code are better designed than any conceivable alternative code to resist error caused by mutations. This fine-tuning powerfully indicates that a superior intellegence developed the cell's information systems.

Preplanning: Planning ahead indicates purpose and reflects design. Many biochemical processes consist of a sequence of molecular events and chemical reactions. Often the initial steps of these pathways elegantly anticipate the final steps.

Quality control: Designed processes incorporate quality-control procedures to ensure efficient and reproducible manufacture of quality product. Many biochemical operations employ sophisticated quality control processes. Molecular convergence: Several biochemical systems and/or biomolecules found in different organisms are structurally, functionally, and mechanistically identical. Yet they appear to have independent origins. Given the complexity of these systems, it is not rational to conclude that blind, random, natural processes independently produced them.

Molecular convergence reflects the mark of a Creator. The point can be made that each of these characteristics comports with the notion that a Creator brought life into existence. The collective weight of evidence compels design. God's plan and purpose for humanity can be glimpsed from the scientific evidence. The pages of the Bible unfold this plan and bring the purpose into fuller view.