Just as our ruling media and education establishments dictate to us what we should believe about politics, so they sway the masses on the subject of origins also…
Hi good people of the world. I’m making Wednesdays my “re-post” days. I’m reading Stephen Meyer’s most recent book (as much as I have time to) and intend to pass on some highlights to you. So in preparation, I decided to recall a couple of posts I wrote about his last work, “Darwin’s Doubt”, and I think they deserve to see the light of day again. Just for the record, I’m a young-earth adherent, and Meyer isn’t , but he really writes some great info for all of us interested in origins.
AXING DARWINISM
I was reading a book by Steven Meyer called “Darwin’s Doubt” (1). Meyer received a PhD from the university of Cambridge in the philosophy of science after working as an oil industry geophysicist. He’s a proponent of “Intelligent Design”, and such people aren’t necessarily out to validate Biblical creation, but to look at the question of origins from a purely scientific viewpoint. Indeed some of them are not Christians, but simply want to research and draw attention to the reasons for their conviction that nature has been designed, and didn’t just come about by random processes. While I’m a young-earth creationist myself, I find Meyer’s works fascinating and inspirational.
The one thing that’s struck me most while reading “Darwin’s Doubt” is that the majority of evolutionists (though not all) when confronted with, or upon discovering facts that put a wrench right in the middle of the cogs of Neo-Darwinism, just start building other cogs.
They have no intention of backing out of their faith in naturalism, no matter what obstacles they encounter. After all, they don’t want to lose their funding, their jobs, respect among their peers, and their hope in total annihilation without judgment. Meyer’s honesty and willingness to search for truth rather than to bury it, incurring a considerable amount of opposition and ostracism, impress me. If only more were man (or woman) enough to do the same.
Meyer’s book is a little difficult to follow in places: it’s semi-technical. But I’d like to relate one of his experiences here.
Meyer described research carried out in the early years of the new millennium by secular chemical engineer Douglas Axe, and Alan Fersht, a professor at the University of Cambridge. It revealed the rarity of proteins in genetic sequence space, and therefore the incredibly long odds against any mutation along with natural selection ever finding a functional protein to act on. These results along with other equally stunning research results, in the words of Meyer, demonstrate that no “Neo-Darwinian scenario for producing a new gene is at all plausible”.
Axe’s research was peer-reviewed and published in the “Journal of Molecular Biology” in 2004.
Later that same year Meyer published a peer-reviewed scientific article in a biology journal called “Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington”, published out of the Smithsonian Institution. The paper was about the Cambrian explosion and the problem (for neo-Darwinian evolution) of the origin of the biological information needed to explain it. Meyer cited Axe’s results, explaining why the rarity of functional proteins in sequence space posed a severe challenge to neo-Darwinism.
However, because Meyer also suggested intelligent design as an explanation to the origin of biological information, a “firestorm of controversy” followed. Museum scientists and evolutionary biologists from around the country were furious with the journal and its editor for allowing the article to be peer-reviewed and published. After a lengthy smear campaign the editor was demoted. One of the rumors designed to destroy him was that he had no degrees in biology. The truth is that he has two Ph.D’s, one in evolutionary biology and one in systems biology. And you were led to believe that Neo-Darwinian evolution was all conclusively proven and supported entirely by unbiased scientists, weren’t you!
Meyer related on radio how that almost before his book was published it received some one-star ratings (the lowest rating possible) by people who obviously hadn’t taken the trouble to read it. Now there’s a sign of the times. However, he has since aroused considerable scientific interest.
SEQUEL
Meyer has also written a sequel which answers critics of Darwin’s Doubt.
Darwin’s Doubt discusses and names some scientists-including evolutionists-who are now questioning Neo-Darwinian evolution, and who are searching for other explanations for life. Isn’ t it ironic that while some honest scientists and evolutionists are questioning Darwin, the Church is inviting him in!
NOTE 1
“DARWIN’S DOUBT: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and the Case for Intelligent Design”, by Stephen C Meyer. Published by Harper One.
Fuel for Faith 