Darwinism's Crumbling Myths and the Correct Definition of Science
If today's journalists, writers, philosophers, scientists, academics or university students were surveyed as to why they believe in the theory of evolution and what the evidence for it is, most of their answers would be unscientific myths. We can list the most common of these myths, together with why they are erroneous:
1. Proponents of evolution claim that scientific experiments have shown that life came into being spontaneously, as the result of chemical reactions. But in fact, no scientific experiment supports this claim and, moreover, it has been shown to be theoretically impossible.
2. They think that the fossil record proves that there has been a process of evolution on Earth. On the contrary, however, all fossils reveal a natural history completely at odds with Darwin's theory: Species did not come into existence by stages through any process of evolution, but were created in all their perfection in one instant.
3. They think that the celebrated Archaeopteryx fossil proves their thesis that birds evolved from reptiles. But it is now known that Archaeopteryx was a true bird, capable of flight, and no reptile ancestor has ever been found. Not a single piece of evidence remains to support the evolutionists' claim that birds evolved from reptiles.
4. For years, "the evolution of the horse" was portrayed as one of the best documented proofs of the theory of evolution. Four-legged mammals that had lived in different periods were set out in order of size, from small to large, and this "horse series" was exhibited in museums of natural history. Research in recent years, however, has shown that the creatures in the sequence are not one another's ancestors, that the sequencing is seriously flawed, and that creatures depicted as the ancestor of the horse actually emerged after it.
5. They believe that England's famous Industrial Revolution moths offer a proof of evolution by natural selection. However, the color change that occurred in moths during the Industrial Revolution has been proven not to be the result of natural selection. These butterflies did not change color; it was only that there were more pale moths at first but environmental conditions diminished their numbers, while the number of dark-colored moths increased. After this claim was realized to be a scientific fraud, evolutionists lost one more of their so-called proofs.
6. They claim that in fossil remains, there are traces of "ape men" proving that human beings are descended from a common ancestor with apes. However, all claims in this regard rest only on prejudiced assumptions, and even evolutionists are forced to admit that there is no fossil evidence for human evolution. For example, Richard Leakey, an evolutionist paleoanthropologist, writes:
David Pilbeam comments wryly, 'If you brought in a smart scientist from another discipline and showed him the meagre evidence we've got, he'd surely say, "Forget it: there isn't enough to go on".' Neither David nor others involved in the search for mankind can take this advice, of course, but we remain fully aware of the dangers of drawing conclusions from evidence that is so incomplete.2
David Pilbeam, whom Leakey quotes above, is also an evolutionist paleontologist. As he admits:
My reservations concern not so much this book [Richard Leakey's Origins] but the whole subject and methodology of paleoanthropology. . . . Perhaps generations of students of human evolution, including myself, have been flailing about in the dark; . . . our data base is too sparse, too slippery, for it to be able to mold our theories. 3
The fossils claimed to be those of human beings' so-called ancestors have been shown to belong to either an extinct species of ape, or a different race of human being. As a result, evolutionists are left without a single proof to substantiate their thesis that human beings and apes evolved from a single ancestor.
7. They claim that the embryos of human beings and other creatures undergo the same "process of evolution" in their mothers' womb or in the egg. They even say that a human embryo has gills that subsequently disappear. These claims have been shown to be completely unfounded and to rest on a major scientific fabrication. An evolutionist biologist by the name of Ernst Haeckel first made this claim; he deliberately made changes in his drawings to suggest that the embryos were similar to one another. Later, even evolutionist scientists came to accept that his claim was based on an unscientific fabrication.
8. They think that human beings and other living things have vestigial organs that have lost their function; and even believe that a great deal of DNA is "junk" with no particular function. But all these claims are known to be the result of scientific ignorance. Over time, as science advanced, it was discovered that all organs and genes are indeed functional. This shows that living creatures do not have organs that have ceased to function, through the so-called process of evolution, as a result of not being used. Rather, it shows that these creatures, with all their organs and component parts, are not the work of chance but of a perfect creation.
9. They think that the variation in a single species—for example, the differences in the size and shape of the bills of the Galapagos Islands' finches—is a strong proof of evolution. But this is known to be no proof of evolution: Micro-changes in the structure of a bird's bill cannot create new biological data, in the form of new organs, and so do not constitute evolution. As a result, even neo-Darwinists today realize that some variations within a species cannot result in evolution.
10. They believe that mutations in experiments with fruit flies have been able to produce new species. But these experiments produced only physically impaired or sterile individuals, and no "beneficial" mutation was observed. Even in the case of mutations produced under the control of knowledgeable scientists, no new species were formed; this proves that there is no such thing as evolution. Therefore, it is impossible to point to mutations as proof of evolution.
A large number of those interviewed, if asked why they believe in evolution, would actually know very few of the examples mentioned above, or know them only superficially. These myths they read about a few times or heard about from their high-school teachers have convinced them of evolution, and they see no reason to investigate further.
However, every one of the supposed proofs above is completely invalid. This is no groundless claim, but a fact proven with solid evidence by scientists critical of the theory of evolution—as we'll explore in the following pages.
In his criticism of Darwinism, a well-known American biologist, Jonathan Wells,4 refers to the myths of evolution as "the icons of evolution." By "icons," he means false and superstitious beliefs that every supporter of evolution knows by heart. The word "icon" describes objects of veneration that some false religions use to remind their members of what they regard as sacred. Some of the iconic symbols used to support the theory of evolution (which is actually an atheistic religion)5 for its devotees are drawings of the "ape man," "gills on a human embryo," and other such scientific fabrications. But each one of these depicts a groundless myth. Wells' book, Icons of Evolution: Science or Myth? Why Much of What We Teach About Evolution Is Wrong?, lists ten icons that correspond to the list we have given here and explains in detail why all have been rendered invalid.
Today these myths are all discredited, and evolutionists have proposed no new proofs to replace them. As a theory, Darwinism convinced some people in the 19th century, when scientific conditions were unsophisticated. But in the 21st century, Darwinism has been revealed as defunct, outmoded and invalid.
Religion and Science Never Conflict
Before we proceed to trace the demise of Darwinism's myths in the following pages, we must show the invalidity of another idea that binds supporters of evolutionary theory.
This is the false assumption that there exists a conflict between religion and science. Those who defend this assumption claim that the theory of evolution must be true because "scientists" unanimously accepted it as scientifically proven. They propose that Creation is a theory for "faith" only, but not for science. However, such assertions are not based on the facts. As an example, take the ongoing argument about how the theory of evolution should be taught in United States schools. This argument is carried on solely on a scientific level, but there are attempts to show it as the "disagreement between the churches and scientists." News broadcast by some media organizations, and articles in some newspapers on the matter, all suffer from the same superficial assumptions, which are wrong for the following reasons:
First, Creation is supported by scientific evidence. The present evolution-versus-Creation debate is not between scientists and the churches, but between scientists who stubbornly believe in the theory of evolution and other scientists who see that this theory is invalid. All the available evidence argues against evolution. On the strength of this evidence, the theory of evolution in the USA has declined since the second half of the 20th century, which decline has influenced the decision taken in states like Kansas, Georgia and Ohio that schools must also teach the evidence for the theory of evolution's invalidity. In the USA, a powerful opposition arose against the theory of evolution. All members of this movement are scientists from the country's notable universities. In the 1970s Professor Dean Kenyon wrote a thesis on the origin of life and chemical evolution that made him one of evolution's well-known proponents. Today, he is a representative of the opposition movement against the theory of evolution and believes that the origins of life cannot be explained by evolution, only by creation.
The Legacy of Dogmatism, from Epicurus to Darwinism
Benjamin Wiker teaches science and theology at Franciscan University. His book Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists gives a detailed account of Darwin's "theory of evolution" as a latter-day version of the materialist philosophy of the Greek thinker Epicurus and his Roman counterpart, Lucretius.
Darwin followed these two philosophers in writing in detail about such unscientific ideas as:
1 Nature is a system that regulates itself.
2 Among living creatures, there is a merciless struggle for life and this leads to evolution by means of natural selection.
3 It should be avoided to give a "teleological" (the idea that they came into being for a purpose) account of nature and living things.
What is striking is that these ideas are not scientific. Neither Epicurus nor Lucretius conducted scientific experiments or made observations; they just used logic completely in line with their own wishes. Moreover, their logic had an interesting starting point. Epicurus rejected the existence of a Creator, saying that it entailed belief in an afterlife, for which reason he felt himself circumscribed. He clearly stated that his whole philosophy developed from his unwillingness to accept this proposition. In other words, Epicurus chose atheism for his own psychological comfort and later, undertook to construct a worldview based on this choice. For this reason he endeavored to explain the order of the universe and the origins of life in terms of an atheist system and with this purpose in mind, adopted ideas that would later prove basic to evolution.
Benjamin Wiker gives this detailed interpretation of the relation between Epicurus and Darwin:
The first Darwinian was not Darwin, but a rather notorious Greek, Epicurus, born on the Island of Samos about 341 B.C. It was he who provided the philosophical underpinnings of Darwinism, because it was he who fashioned an entirely materialistic, [atheistic] cosmology, where the purposeless jostling of brute matter over infinite time yielded, by a series of fortunate accidents, not only the Earth, but all the myriad forms of life thereon. . . .
After stating that Epicurus fashioned the cosmology, not out of evidence but from his desire to abstract the world from the idea of a Creator, Wiker goes on to say:
. . . This common disdain for religion unites Epicureanism and modernity because we moderns [Darwinists] are the heirs of Epicurus. Through a long and winding path, a revived form of Epicurean materialism became the founding creed of modern scientific materialism—the very materialist cosmology that Darwin assumed in the Origin and that still grounds the materialist dismissal of design in nature.6
Today, those motivated to stubbornly defend the theory of evolution are not on the side of science, but on the side of atheism. Like their precursor Epicurus, their attachment to atheism stems from the awareness that accepting the existence of God would clash with their own selfish desires.
There is a verse in the Qur'an in which God completely describes the situation of non-believers: "And they repudiated them wrongly and haughtily, in spite of their own certainty about them." (Surat an-Naml: 14) And in another verse, He reveals, "Have you seen him who has taken his whims and desires to be his deity?" (Surat al-Furqan: 43)
The Epicurus-Darwinist "clan" rejects the existence of God only because His existence conflicts with their personal desires and passions; in this, they are very much like those described in the verse above. Therefore, it is very deceptive to regard the evolution-Creation argument as a conflict between science and religion.
Evolution and Creation, two different explanations of the origins of life and the universe, have existed from ancient times. In order to understand which of these explanations is scientifically correct, we have to consider the discoveries of science. Here, as in our other books, we will once again see how all findings prove that the theory of evolution is erroneous, and that Creation is true.
It is False that Science Must Be Atheistic
There is no compulsion for science to be atheistic, that is, to believe in and to maintain the dogma that the universe is composed of matter only, and that there is no consciousness apart from matter. Science must investigate its discoveries and go wherever true discoveries may lead.
Today various branches of science such as astrophysics, physics and biology clearly demonstrate the examples of creation in the universe and in nature, which are impossible to explain in terms of random events. All proofs point towards a Creator. This Creator is God Whose eternal power and intelligence has created the heavens, the Earth and all things animate and inanimate that lie between.
The unproven "faith" is atheism. The following pages will show that atheism's most important support—that is, Darwinism—has collapsed.
