Darwinism is Bad Religion

by Paul Wolff

The radio program Issues Etc. had an interview on June 8, 2012 about Creation and Faith and Reason. Guest Ken Samples was asked to respond to the charge some Darwinists make against Christians that “The idea of god is the result of intellectual laziness.” His response was that “Science can only work within a specific universe, and it was the Christian world-view that fueled the desire to discover nature, because God had created it.” This answer shows the historical truth that Christians invented science which discovers how the world works through experimentation because they believe in a God who is rational and created an orderly world. That is a fine answer, but I would answer the question a different way. 

It is very telling that the Darwinists are concerned about “intellectual laziness.” Darwinists are storytellers and myth purveyors. Charles Darwin did not come to his conclusions from his observations. Darwin started with the assumption that there is no God and he went from there to try to find evidence that might possibly fit his hypothesis. The Origin of Species is a book of fiction which attempts to describe a naturalistic world without God. This is a world which doesn’t exist. It is not even the world that science observes! 

No one has ever observed any living thing evolving into something else. There is no natural mechanism for evolutionary change. All the claimed examples of supposed evolution are better explained by natural variation already contained in the genes of the observed organism. The mechanism of the genes works for long term stability, not change. So when Darwinists complain about the “intellectual laziness” of creationism (or even Intelligent Design) what they mean is that they think themselves better storytellers than those scientists who are more interested in the truth than in inventing a fictional godless universe. 

Many of the specific explanations that Charles Darwin proposed have been disproved by science. Nevertheless, the idea of a godless universe has so captivated sinners that they won’t let it die. The myth of a naturalistic universe that has evolved without God has been rewritten many times since Darwin’s day in an attempt to account for scientific discoveries. Darwinists will admit to this, and will admit that the current theories of evolution have very little in common with The Origin of Species except for the idea of a universe without God. In this way the “science” of evolution has become more about creative fiction writing than about making scientific discoveries. 

The practice of science has become about innovation, but this is a change from what it should be. The scientific method is all about discovery, not innovation. The innovation comes when the scientific discoveries are applied, but that’s engineering and medicine, not science. The scientific method is all about observing and testing ideas about how the world works. These days much of what passes for science is really wild speculations based on unproven assertions. There is a lot (mostly dealing with Darwinism & evolution) which doesn’t stand up to scientific scrutiny, and when scientific investigation shows the weakness of these ideas then the real scientists are accused of being anti-intellectual by the Darwinist zealots, but the Darwinists cannot prove evolution with the same scientific investigation.

I believe that Darwinism was completely disproved over 50 years ago with the discovery by Watson and Crick of how the DNA molecule is structured (even though Francis Crick, at least, remained a Darwinist, and James Watson may have done so, too). If the DNA molecule works the way that Watson and Crick discovered, then there can be no macro-evolution. The structure of the DNA molecule works like a computer program which is so incredibly complex that it could not have come together accidentally. The DNA molecule is also remarkably stable in its transmission of accurate information. This means that mutations are extremely rare, and when there is a mutation it nearly always diminishes the functionality of the organism (i.e. kills it) rather than improves it. That is why we have living fossils like the coelacanth fish which hasn’t changed appreciably in 400,000,000 years (according to Darwinists). 

Some Darwinists say that “science disproves the existence of God.” but they are the ones being “intellectually lazy.” First of all, science cannot prove nor disprove God, and for anyone to say otherwise is “intellectually lazy.” If God truly is God (and how could He be otherwise), He is above His creation, and cannot be limited by it or especially by naturalistic explanations of what creatures think God must be. Secondly, Darwinism assumes from the start that there is no God and only tries to describe a world without God. It doesn’t prove God’s supposed nonexistence. Darwinists say, “If there is no god, then evolution must be true, so therefore there can be no god.” This is circular reasoning at its worst so that it ends up being a non sequitur. 

The science of “intelligent design” (I.D.) came about because there is good evidence in science which contradicts Darwinism and the I.D. scientists are honest enough to try to account for these facts. The science of I.D. cannot prove the existence of God, nor the opposite, but it can disprove naturalistic evolution. Darwinists have no answer to the scientists who have shown that I.D. has experimental merit. That is why Darwinists frequently respond by attacking the motives of the I.D. scientists rather than disproving their findings. In this way Darwinists act more like religious zealots suppressing the truth rather than as true scientists eager to find the truth about how the world works, no matter what that truth may be. 

Darwinism’s claimed fundamental mechanism of change is accidental mutation. You don’t get a science that relies on repeatable experimental observations from Darwinism. This is what Ken Samples was saying in his Issues Etc. interview. Darwinism relies on accidents and random mutations, and that is something that is not repeatable. In fact, the complexity of the needed mutations is so vast that it is statistically impossible. Note that it is not improbable, it is impossible. Because of this, Darwinism is anti-science. If all that exists came about by random chance and accidents, then nothing is sure or predictable or reliable, and there can be no science as we know it because nothing can be predictable. 

There may be some creationists who are intellectually lazy, but to label all who believe in God as such is dishonest. There are enough flaws in the theory of evolution that it must be questioned. Those who ignore the gaps in order to maintain that evolution describes how the world came to be are not scientists, they are atheistic religious zealots who aren’t really honest about the proper use of science. Darwinism isn’t just bad science, it is bad religion.