Many people are atheists because they feel that science proves there is no God. I would argue the exact opposite to be true. The more research that is conducted, the more proof there is that God created this universe.
Stanley Miller's experiments which claim to have created life
Some people argue that Stanley Miller in 1953 proved that life can be created from the conditions that would have been found within the atmosphere of a young earth. This is a study which is still printed in textbooks today, but foolishly so, because there are some serious issues with it. For one, experts state that it is impossible to know exactly what those conditions were like; therefore right off the bat, when Miller created an environment to test in, there is no way of knowing that he had it absolutely correct. Jonathan Wells, PHD, PHD states that the consensus within the scientific community is that the environment that Miller used was not at all like the atmosphere of early earth. On top of this, he created conditions and controlled those conditions in order to get the results that he wanted (created life). This is intelligent design! The reason why he had to do this is because the likelihood of all of the materials not only being combined, but being combined in the correct way (ratios, sequence, etc.) is insurmountable. Therefore, it is unlikely that he created accurate conditions of the atmosphere of early earth, but he also demonstrated the likelihood that a Designer was responsible for life.
Francis Crick, a biochemist and spiritual skeptic who won the nobel peace prize for his work in discovering the molecular structure of DNA admitted the following: "An honest man, armed with all the knowledge available to us now, could only state that in some sense, the origin of life apears at the moment to be almost a miracle, so many are the conditions which would have had to have been satisfied to get it going".
Darwin's Tree of Life and the Cambrian Explosion
Darwin argued in his theories that a tree of life can explain the evolutionary progression of life forms. This is the famous idea that organisms start out simple and evolve over time into more complex organisms. When he made these hypotheses, he knew that the evidence did not support this, but believed that science would catch up. Science has not caught up. In fact, the opposite has occurred as a result of the "Cambrian Explosion". This refers to the fossil records which show that there were simple organisms which existed long ago, but then "bam!" all of a sudden in the fossil record there are fully developed complex organisms. They appear suddenly in the fossil record and there is no evolutionary progression in the fossil records which can account for their being evolved. They simply appear fully developed in the record, and this is the exact opposite of what Darwin's theories predicted. It is the opposite of evolutionary processes because the fully developed life forms appear first, without any predecessors. A logical explanation is that they did not evolve, but that they were created fully developed.
The crazy thing is that this theory still appears in textbooks and appears as fact. Jonathan Wells makes a good point in saying that it is not a terrible thing if it appears in textbooks and taught as an interesting theory, but it is wrong for it to be taught as fact, for science has proven that it is anything but. He goes even further to say that based off of all that we know from the science community, "...it is not even a good hypothesis at this point".
Haeckel's Embryos
Another fallacy that has for years been taught in textbooks as fact is “Haeckel’s Embryos”. The story of this is that Darwin hypothesized that embryos in their early stages would show common ancestries with other organisms. The thought was that similarities in the early stages would serve as proof of such common ancestries. Haeckel, in his own studies, had similar theories, and was so confident in his theory, that he created drawings of embryos which were tailored to make embryos appear more alike than they really are. For lack of a better term, he faked the drawings. The truth of the matter with these embryos was that they were quite different between various classes of organisms in the early stages, would become somewhat more similar (but still different) in the middle stages, and then they would become very different again. The inaccuracy of Haeckel’s embryos is a well-known fact in the science community, yet for some reason it is still found in textbooks and taught as fact. These facts are frustrating. Jonathan Wells states that what has happened is that the primary evidence for Darwin’s theories – the fossil record and early embryos – served as the primary evidence for Darwin’s theories being true, but when the evidence proved to be false, scientists said, “Well we know the theory is true, so we will use the theory to explain why the evidence doesn’t fit”, but this is crazy, because then there is no evidence for the theory. None of this makes any sense at all.
Some people state that early human embryos have slits which resemble slits in early embroys of fish that eventually become gills, and therefore argue that this is proof of the fact that we have an ancestry with aquatic organisms. The fact of the matter is that they are simply not gills. If you look down toward your belly and then feel the front of your neck, you will feel flaps of skin, or ridges in the skin of your neck. This is not to say that the ridges in a human embryo are simply skin flaps, for they are more complicated than that; however, what can be said is that these ridges are not gills, and the argument of common ancestry with aquatic life due to this resemblance has been long dismissed as simply not being accurate. In fact, these ridges in fish embryos, while they do eventually become gills, are not gills at that stage. In fish they become gills, in humans they become something else. Many people will argue that because fish and human embroys share this feature at early stages, with fish eventually developing gills, that this could still be considered proof of early ancestry between humans and fish. While it could seem to be a convincing argument superficially, science has determined that it is simply not fact. Human embryos at no point have gills.
I really liked this blog post… You’re on the right track!
ReplyDeleteI`ve read Strobel’s “Case for a Creator” too and I found it quite unfulfilling, and at times downright misleading. For example, Strobel continuously introduces his experts as ‘top of their field professionals’. In reality, they are not. He constantly mentions Jonathan Wells. He’s presented in the book as a biologist and evolution expert. It’s true that he has a PhD in molecular and cell biology… But his main focus is theology, in which he has a PhD as well. Wells doesn’t publish peer reviewed papers about evolution because he is not an evolution expert. He’d be laughed out of academia. Besides- can you really trust an “expert” that believes HIV doesn’t cause AIDS?
Wells and Strobel do a good job presenting the case for intelligent design, but they neglect a lot of facts that shouldn’t be ignored.
Miller’s Experiments: Since his original experiment, others have repeated his results in 1983, 1987, 2010 and 2011 with extreme ranges of atmosphere- all were successful (I point you to Chang et al. 1983 and Schlesinger and Miller 1983 in particular). Strobel attempts to claim that the young Earth probably had a much more oxidizing atmosphere than what Miller accounted for. Strobel was incorrect. There is overwhelming evidence that the young Earth’s atmosphere was actually less oxidizing than it is today (see Turner, 1981). Ultimately, it may not even matter how oxidizing the atmosphere was, because it is possible that life arose in areas far away from the atmosphere, such as deep sea hydrothermal vents.
Cambrian Explosion: Wells argued that complex animals suddenly arose in the Cambrian era, which occurred around 540 million years ago (but that number is disputed- give or take a few dozen millions of years). This is where Wells shows his incompetence in the field of evolution. He was dead wrong about complex life suddenly arising. There are many, many example of complex organisms within the fossilization record (Dr. Neil Shubin describes it as an “embarrassment of riches”). Multicellular life was found to exist between 590 and 560 Million years ago in China (see Chen et. All 2000,2004), testate amoebae appeared 750 million years ago (see Porter and Knoll, 2000), eukaryotes started to appear 2,700 million years ago…. I could go on and on and on about the complex life that existed before the Cambrian. Even transitional fossils (which creationists claim don’t exist, but we have them anyways) appear! Lobopods, which are essentially worms with legs, appear in this time period (see Conway & Morris, 1998)! Regardless, Wells is partially correct when he points out that there was suddenly an abundance of life in the Cambrian. So what happened? Was it God? Well….
i) First off- the length of the Cambrian era still needs to be fully defined. Long estimates put it at 40 million years, short estimates put it at 5 million years. Either way 5 MILLION YEARS IS A LONG TIME!!! That’s not a “sudden appearance”.
ii) Secondly, the Precambrian era was marked by the emergence of predators, which likely spurred the co-evolution of defenses such as hard body armour. These hard bodied animals fossilize better, so there is a possibility that we suddenly have more fossils, but not necessarily more animals. It might not have ever been an “explosion”.
iii) Third, much of complex life would have been microscopic… That makes it extremely hard to see, let alone fossilize (see Chen et. All 2004).
iv) Earth was coming out of an ice age at the beginning of the Cambrian, and that may have played a role in hindering development of complex organisms (see Hoffman 1998 and Kerr 2000).
v) Hox genes (they control an animal’s basic body plan) just starting developing, which might explain the diversity of life (see Carroll 1997).
vi) Plankton poop changed the oxygen levels of the ocean, making it more habitable for life (no seriously- see Logan et. All 1995). PLANKTON POOP!!!!
I see that you wrote “the crazy thing is that this theory still appears in textbooks as fact”. Good sir, I refer you to the Supreme Court of the Good Ol’ U. S of A.’s 2005 ruling on Kitzmiller v. Dover ruling on the matter, which can be found here: http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/dover/kitzmiller_v_dover_decision.html
ReplyDeleteEssentially, the judge ruled that Intelligent Design is nothing more than a disguised attempt to further a religious belief and that there was no evidence of creationism at all… And this was coming from a creationist, devout Christian, Republican nominee…
Haeckel’s Embryos: Wells is partially right once again, but mostly wrong. It’s true, Haeckel faked his embryo drawings. And because he presented his findings as science, the error was caught and corrected. Almost any field of endeavour has its fair share of cheaters and frauds (Lance Armstrong used steroids, should we stop riding bikes?), but when there is a general consensus across the majority of scientist, that means that there must be solid evidence for the belief. Science inherently self-corrects through the peer-review process. Junk science gets replaced by good science. When a scientist disproves a theory, they are rewarded, not punished. I’ve always wondered why people think that there is some sort of conspiracy among scientists… How is that possible?
Anyways… Regardless of Haeckel’s forgery… What matters here is whether or not early embryos are similar. Within a group of similar animal groups, that is exactly what we see. Early vertebrate embryos all share common traits- notochords, body segments, pharyngeal gill pouches (humans have gill structures- I will return to this), and post anal tails. When you look at other groups, the same process occurs. Mollusks, arthropods and annelids embryos look identical. Google an early bat embryo, an early bird embryo or even a snake… You can’t distinguish them apart.
You mentioned that humans use gills- something that I referenced many moons ago in an earlier exchange. You’re right- humans do not have gills. I will correct myself: human embryos have gill structures, called the pharyngeal pouches. The evidence for evolution is seen in the similar structures within related animals that can be repurposed. These structures are gills for sharks, but turn into ear, nose and throat structures in humans. But the structures themselves show that sharks and humans had a common ancestor. Google “shark human embryo” and look for yourself. Evolutionary forces like to repurpose things- I recommend reading the “Teeth Everywhere” chapter in Neil Shubin’s book “Your Inner Fish”. It shows how hair (yes, the hair that no longer grows on the top of head) is nothing more than a jury-rigged tooth.
Oh, and also human embryos grow a full coat of hair and shed it in the womb. That’s weird. Even whales grow and shed this embryonic hair…. Why? Because whales and primates share a common ancestor.
So for fun, let’s just pretend that Strobel had managed to somehow prove that there was a creator. You’ve at the very most proved deism. You can’t take this information and connect it to a Christian god. I’ve seen very talented orators, such as Hamza Andreas Tzortzis, claim that the proofs Strobel outlines clearly demonstrate that Allah is the one true God. I could argue that Strobel’s evidence of a God shows that Zeus created life and all that lives within it.
I’m going to recommend a book to you that was written by a very thoughtful and honest Christian man, named Dr. Francis Collins. Collins is a devout evangelical Christian, and admits that evolution and everything that science says about it is true. He should know- he was the head of the Human Genome Project and one of the top genetic scientists in the world. His book, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief, argues that Christians can square their beliefs with the truths of evolution. I disagree with his findings, but I found it to be much more honest than the half-truths that Strobel presents.
ReplyDeleteIf I were a Christian, I think that I would want to embrace scientific findings. Can you honestly spread the Good News if your theology requires you to deny basic truths about our world? I think you’d end up alienating people that might convert. Does evolution really disprove your religion? I think we’d both agree that it does not. Francis Collins doesn’t think so. If Christianity is going to survive in a word where 30% of young people have no religion, it’s going to have to be more adaptable to our growing understanding of the world. People like Strobel probably do more harm than good. Science and religion are often described as “non-overlapping magisteria”. They deal with different topics and arrive to answers differing in ways. Mixing them together doesn’t ever seem to work. Can you really claim that a non-material God that doesn’t exist within our understanding be measured in the physical world? Probably not.