The Pendulum Turns on Darwinism and Good and Evil

Although proponents of Intelligent Design (ID) have received a setback in this week’s Dover, PA decision, I do not believe that the world-is-flat defenders of Darwinism can continue for long keeping people from discussing the possibility that the world is actually a globe that revolves around the sun. Future discoveries may show ID proponents to be wrong, but the inquisition should have died with Galileo.

Darwin’s theory that life began from a confluence of accidental events and evolved over eons into many thousands of life forms, including man, through a series of random mutations that were passed on through inheritance (if they were beneficial) was a Godsend (pun) to atheists and to materialists who were waiting for a theory that would disprove the existence of God and overturn the ideas of right and wrong and good and evil. After Darwinism took over in the 20th century, the century descended into the darkness and madness of communism, Nazism and relativism, with leaders like Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Pol Pot justifying the murders of 10’s of millions of innocent people by pointing to the conclusions that flowed from Darwin’s theory.

The black sciences of psychiatry and psychology, which justify any vicious act and every instance of demeaning behavior, also came into popularity, judging nothing to be wrong, only misunderstood -- to be talked through. (I know these professions help some people, but the principles on which they are based undo the foundations of society.) Now we even find that the Washington Post recommends that the tens of millions taking Paxil (a drug for someone feeling uncomfortable) who have been warned that pregnant women run the risk of birth defects (in the form of baby’s heart chambers having holes and malformations) not to worry about that because “the defects often heal on their own, and more severe cases can be surgically repaired". In other words, a leading American newspaper, discussing a drug to relieve mild anxiety, says it’s less important that your baby might be born with a serious heart defect than, goodness gracious, you not feel anxious.

Prior to the acceptance of Darwin’s theory of macroevolution, people generally believed that a God would judge their actions according to a set of rules that everyone understood, and even if they did not believe in that God, that it was “good” to follow those rules, and “bad” to break them. Long after Darwin and the “death” of God, all polls indicate that almost all Americans continue to believe that human beings came into existence through the plan of some sort of supreme being. Unfortunately, the intelligentsia who rule our lives do not share that belief, and in the world of science, adherence to Darwinism is rigidly enforced.

Fortunately, as some scientists have begun to challenge Darwinism, we have seen all sorts of stories lately of the concept known as Intelligent Design (ID) gaining support and popularity in school boards across the country, and many web sites have sprung up to discuss and to encourage consideration of this theory. I can not say the same for colleges and universities (see notes 1 & 2 below), but I believe that acceptance of ID will come in academia sooner or later. After it is fully understood that Darwinism is a theory for which no good and substantial evidence has ever been found, and that Darwin himself said that his theory would have to be proven by subsequent discoveries or it should be discarded, and after ID becomes supported by scientific inquiry and experimentation, ID will replace Darwinism as the most likely explanation for the mysteries of life. It may take another 50-100 years after that for ID to counter and then begin to overturn the degeneration of society caused by Darwinism, but that, too, hopefully will also happen.

Here is one of the better explanations of ID I have seen:

What Is Intelligent Design?
by Casey Luskin
Posted Dec 12, 2005

Intelligent design is a scientific theory which states that some aspects of nature are best explained by an intelligent cause rather than an undirected cause such as natural selection. Design theorists argue that we can find biological structures with the same informational properties we commonly find in objects we know were designed.

Design theorists observe that intelligent action produces large amounts of “complex and specified” information. Language and the finely-tuned, purposeful arrangement of parts in machines are prime examples of this encoded information. If the cell was designed, then we would expect to find language-like encoded information commonly throughout biology.

The cell confirms our expectations from design. Our DNA contains incredible amounts of encoded information. Living cells transform this encoded chemical message into machines which are engineered to perform necessary biochemical functions. The conversion of DNA into protein relies upon a software-like system of commands and biochemical codes. This is an information processing system which Bill Gates has described as “like a computer program, but far, far more advanced than any software we’ve ever created.”

The protein-machines produced by our DNA are often “irreducibly complex.” Irreducible complexity is a purposeful arrangement of parts, where if any part is removed or mutated, the structure ceases to assemble or function properly. For example, the “bacterial flagellum,” is a rotary-engine on bacteria which fails to assemble or function properly if we mutate any one of its 50 genes. Natural selection cannot account for this irreducible complexity because it only preserves structures which provide a functional advantage. In this “all-or-nothing” game, mutations cannot produce the complexity needed to provide a functional flagellum rotary engine one incremental step at a time, and the odds are too daunting for it to do it in a great leap.

Darwinists counter that parts can be “co-opted” from one job to another in the cell to build complexity. But there’s a problem with the Darwinist explanation: biological parts are not necessarily easily interchangeable. Complex assembly instructions dictate how these precise parts will combine to interact with one-another. The specific ordering of interacting parts in the cell can’t be produced by chance any more than keeping my old Jeep in an autoshop full of HEMI engines will increase its horsepower.

Yet design is not a negative argument against evolution. Design is fundamentally based upon our positive knowledge and experience that a code is produced by a coder, that an algorithm-based information processing system implies a software programmer, and that complex and specified information in the cell, which conforms to a “language” and produces sophisticated machines, points to the mind of some engineer.

Copyright © 2005 HUMAN EVENTS. All Rights Reserved.

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Notes:
1. In 2001, Iowa State University astronomer Guillermo Gonzalez’s research on galactic habitable zones appeared on the cover of Scientific American. Dr. Gonzalez’s research demonstrates that our universe, galaxy, and solar system were intelligently designed for advanced life. Although Gonzalez does not teach intelligent design in his classes, he nevertheless believes that “[t]he methods [of intelligent design] are scientific, and they don't start with a religious assumption.” But a faculty adviser to the campus atheist club circulated a petition condemning Gonzalez’s scientific views as merely “religious faith.” Attacks such as these should be familiar to the conservative minorities on many university campuses; however, the response to intelligent design has shifted from mere private intolerance to public witch hunts. Gonzalez is up for tenure next year and clearly is being targeted because of his scientific views.

2. The University of Idaho, in Moscow, Idaho, is home to Scott Minnich, a soft-spoken microbiologist who runs a lab studying the bacterial flagellum, a microscopic rotary engine that he and other scientists believe was intelligently designed -- (see "What Is Intelligent Design.") Earlier this year Dr. Minnich testified in favor of intelligent design at the Kitzmiller v. Dover trial over the teaching of intelligent design. Apparently threatened by Dr. Minnich’s views, the university president, Tim White, issued an edict proclaiming that “teaching of views that differ from evolution ... is inappropriate in our life, earth, and physical science courses or curricula.” As Gonzaga University law professor David DeWolf asked in an editorial, “Which Moscow is this?” It’s the Moscow where Minnich’s career advancement is in now jeopardized because of his scientific views.