Jerry Adler"s Darwinism Error
Harun YahyaThe December 12, 2005 issue of Newsweek International magazine carried an article titled “Evolution of a Scientist.” Written by Jerry Adler, the article concerned an exhibit at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, about Darwin’s life and influence. The exhibit will display Darwin’s personal effects and insect specimens he had collected. Then it will begin an international museum tour that will come to an end in London in 2009, the 150th anniversary of the publication of Darwin’s book, after traveling to such cities as Boston, Chicago and Toronto. The article was full of praise for Darwin’s ideas. Adler rightly explained that the ideas of such figures as Sigmund Freud and Karl Marx, among those who shaped the intellectual history of the last century, were increasingly weakening, but wrongly asserted that Darwin remained as an intellectual challenge.
However, Adler is actually mistaken because of his Darwinist preconceptions. In terms of its so-called “intellectual” strength, Darwinism is actually traveling in exactly the same direction as Marxism and Freudianism. Darwinism is headed where these two outmoded forms of thought have already been consigned: the waste bin of intellectual history.
As Denyse O’Leary, a Toronto journalist and award-winning science writer observes:
The controversy over the origin of life was supposed to have been settled in the 1950s by the tidy doctrine of Darwinian evolution. Now, Darwin seems to be going the way of Marx and Freud... Far from supporting an atheistic, meaningless universe, the evidence supports a universe that is bursting with design. 1
Here the following questions may be asked: if Darwinism is an idea in a state of collapse, why is it still advocated in the scientific world, and why does Adler suggest that it is still intellectually appealing?
Evolutionist comments regarding the scientific nature and intellectual productivity of Darwinism are not objective analyses made in the light of the evidence, but the product of a dogmatic way of thinking that regards Darwinism as the only possible option. According to this dogmatic mindset, known as scientific materialism, the theory of evolution is regarded as true right from the outset. The materialist and evolutionary geneticist Richard Lewontin openly admits this:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, so we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door. 2
The importance of Darwinism for evolutionists is that it is shaped according to a materialism that is “a priori,” rather than according to the “methods and institutions of science.” Since, by definition, materialism excludes creation, evolutionists’ sole remaining option is Darwinism. It is impossible for evolutionists such as Adler to see the scientific facts regarding Darwinism and report these objectively. Although evidence obtained from various disciplines clearly invalidates this theory, evolutionists admit no possibility that Darwinism may be wrong – just because it is the only explanation compatible with a materialist world view – and such a possibility never even enters their minds.
Yet if blind devotion to materialism is set aside, the collapse suffered by Darwinism in the face of modern science is crystal clear. To summarize in brief: Darwinism is a theory built on the idea that life began spontaneously and by chance. Yet the story of evolution founders on this very first chapter.
The revolution in molecular biology that began some 70 years after Darwin’s death has revealed the extraordinary complexity in the cell. The molecular biologist Michael Denton describes this magnificent organization in the cell arising from interconnected and extremely intricate systems:
To grasp the reality of life as it has been revealed by molecular biology, we must magnify a cell a thousand million times until it is twenty kilometers in diameter and resembles a giant airship large enough to cover a great city like London or New York. What we would then see would be an object of unparalleled complexity and adaptive design. On the surface of the cell we would see millions of openings, like the port holes of a vast space ship, opening and closing to allow a continual stream of materials to flow in and out. If we were to enter one of these openings we would find ourselves in a world of supreme technology and bewildering complexity... Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality, the smallest element of which – a functional protein or gene – is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man? 3
In addition, the cell is a dynamic system capable of regulating itself and responding to external factors (such as infection). The macromolecular complexes (or molecular machines) made up of very delicate sequences of atoms in three dimensions and that assume specific functions within the cell, divide into sub-particles according to requirements and are re-arranged in such a way as to perform different functions. All this takes place in very short time frames, as well as within a flawless planning and sensitivity. The famous astronomer Sir Fred Hoyle stated that the odds that this complexity in the cell might have emerged by chance was comparable to the odds of a tornado sweeping through a junk-yard assembling a Boeing 747.4 The complexity of life displays God’s infinite might and knowledge.
The fossil record refutes the Darwinian prediction of gradual development, and proves creation by revealing that fossil species emerged suddenly and with all their flawless structures, followed by a state of stability (stasis) that has persisted for millions of years.
Darwin, who maintained that living things descended from other, simpler organisms by way of small and gradual changes, hoped that the intermediate forms required by his theory would be found in subsequent paleontological excavations. However, despite all evolutionists’ best endeavors, paleontology has provided no such intermediate forms, and the systematic gaps between species reveal that Darwinism is no more than a fairy tale. Paleontologists have risen up against Darwinism and embarked on a search for other evolutionary theories to account for the sudden emergence of living things in the fossil record. However, these efforts have also been in vain. The greatest obstacle has been this: Changes in finely integrated systems consisting of inter-related subsystems, such as living organisms, have destructive effects on these systems rather than improving them. For example, it is obvious that a random change in the electronic circuits in a camera will damage it rather than turning it into a television. The DNA of model organisms such as the fruit fly has been subjected to mutations generation after generation (mutation is the alteration of base units in DNA), but not a single new organ or system, or even a single protein, has ever been observed to emerge. The mutations have always produced destructive effects, leaving fruit flies deformed or dead.
Evolutionary theories that seek to account for species’ sudden appearance in the fossil record in terms of saltational changes have thus been proved to be mere fantasy. Most importantly, the sudden emergence in the Cambrian Period of all modern main body plans, with no predecessors behind them, and there being no difference between fossil species that are hundreds of millions of years old and their present-day counterparts, prove that all living things were created by God.
Another fact that demolishes Darwinism is that the dual mechanisms of mutation and natural selection are insufficient when it comes to new genetic information being added to an organism’s DNA. Evolutionists hoped that mutations would alter the DNA sequence and that new genes would evolve under the influence of natural selection. However, generations of fruit flies subject to mutation have never evolved at all, and no new species has ever emerged. In fact, molecular biologists can cite not a single new species that has come about by way of accumulation of mutations. 5
Conclusion:
Natural history museums are like “temples” to the false religion of evolution that found the opportunity to spread through the post-Darwinian Christian world. Evolutionists impose their false religion on the millions of people who visit museums by way of deceptive illustrations and models, and thus seek to propagate the materialist worldview. The latest Darwin exhibit is an ideological move aimed at upholding the theory of evolution, which is currently undergoing a significant retreat in the eyes of society. Yet mass propaganda will be unable to prevent the increasing collapse of Darwinism.
We wish that Jerry Adler will soon free himself from his evolutionist preconceptions and see the collapse of Darwinism as outlined above.
1. Denyse O"Leary, By Design or by Chance?: The Growing Controversy on the Origins of Life in the Universe, 2004, pp.1-2, www.denyseoleary.com
2. Richard Lewontin, The Demon-Haunted World, The New York Review of Books, January, 9, 1997, p. 28,
3. Michael Denton, Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, London: Burnett Books, 1985, pp. 328, 342
4. “Hoyle on Evolution," Nature, vol. 294, November 12, 1981, p. 105
5. Michael J. Behe, Darwin"s Black Box: Biochemical Challenge to Evolution, Free Press, 1996, p. 26
