When claimed evidence is nothing but the insistence that something “must have” happened, perhaps we should not exclude the alternative…
(Photo by Dan Otis on Unsplash)
Though evolutionists speak as if macro-evolution is proven scientific fact, I’ve noticed how many times they use words and phrases like “we think”; “probably”; “most likely”; “scientists are of the opinion that…” and “must have”. This is hardly “empirical” evidence and wouldn’t be enough in court to convict or clear anyone. Instead it reveals how much the related subject matter is theory, hypothesis and speculation, patched together and presented as fact. Even if you don’t hear those phrases, it’s my observation that they are there between the lines.
Such evidence came into play in a discussion I heard recently on the subject of photosynthesis on the BBC radio broadcast, In Our Time: Photosynthesis (1). Photosynthesis is the process by which plants absorb sunlight, water, carbon dioxide, nitrogen and magnesium; grow themselves, and thereby also provide food for other life forms. Just coincidentally (joke) they also release oxygen as a “waste” product, something which certain life-forms not a million miles away from us are rather partial to. We, in turn, release Carbon dioxide as a waste product. Quite a cozy coincidence, eh? Is production of CO2 really such a bad thing after all?
EVIDENCE OF EVOLUTION?
The panel discussing photosynthesis consists of highly qualified biologists and educators. Photosynthesis, they declare, began when the only life forms that were around billions of years ago-single-celled bacteria-were “captured” by large inorganic molecules, and conscripted as energy-producing slaves for their new masters. Thus, they say, the necessary process to grow plants and so make all of life on earth possible came into being.
Asked by the host if they could give an idea of “when” said evolution from bacteria into the necessary chloroplast organelles happened, “within, say, seven hundred million years or so”, one of the expert answers was:
“…there are no fossils of this kind of thing-to date-in rocks, but it must have happened…”
There is no empirical evidence. There are no fossils demonstrating the alleged two-billion years past transition from single-celled bacteria into chloroplasts, and it doesn’t happen now. Let that sink in.
If there were fossils claimed to be evidence, you and I would not have the opportunity to examine or test the claims: we would have to take the word of the experts for it… or not. The experts know that this evolutionary change “must have happened”. Well, that proves it then, doesn’t it? If you’re believing it without question you, my friend, are living by faith, and evolutionists are the priests of your religion.
A text book on the evolution of life from non-life similarly bridges an enormous gap in one deft leap by invoking the “must have” imperative, demonstrating on paper how to easily solve a giant mystery by adding non-testable elements to the non-observable narrative:
“Once the necessary building blocks were available, how did a living system arise and evolve? Before the appearance of life, simple molecular systems must have existed that subsequently evolved into the complex chemical systems that are characteristic of organism” (2).
One of my favorite “must have” episodes was in a movie called “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed”, released in 2008. Towards the end of “Expelled” Director Ben Stein interviews none other than the high priest of Neo-Darwinism, Richard Dawkins.
Stein asks Prof. Dawkins how life began from non-life. Prof. Dawkins answers:
“Nobody knows how it started…we know the sort of event that must have happened for the origin of life”.
Stein: “What was that?”
Prof. Dawkins: “It was the… origin of the first self-replicating molecule.”
Notice that Dawkins had just made a gargantuan leap from nothing but soup to the first self-replicating molecule, actually skipping the substantive information that Stein had asked for.
The conversation continued…
Stein: “Right. And how did that happen?”
Prof. Dawkins: “I’ve told you, we don’t know”
Stein: “So you have no idea how it started?”
Dawkins: “No, no, nor has anybody.”
In summary the great Professor assures us that while they “don’t know” how life evolved from non-life, they’re pretty darn sure that it “must have”.
WHEN SPECULATION BECOMES GOSPEL
I found it interesting that the genres describing “In Our Time: Photosynthesis” are listed on the BBC’s web-site as “Factual” and “History”. Since there’s no evidence to support the theory of the origin of the process, shouldn’t there be more genres listed, such as: “Speculation”; “Philosophy”; “Faith”; “Hope”; “Religion”; “Propaganda”; “Poppycock”?
SOME DETAIL
Chloroplasts-amazingly complex organelles within a plant’s cells, extract electrons from water and, in layman’s lingo, “put them onto” Carbon Dioxide, with the help of sunlight energy, the panel tells us. They also discard oxygen as a by-product!
Asked by host Melvyn how a series of membranes and enormous complexes of proteins extract electrons from water and “pass them down a kind of a chain”… then eventually push them onto carbon dioxide to make sugars… the expert answers that:
At the biochemical level the process is “enormously difficult” to understand.
“Why?” enquires the host.
“Well it’s not easy to get electrons out of water in the first place”.
Even waves crashing upon rocks in the largest storms will not release electrons from water, we’re told, but chloroplasts manage to do it.
“But light can do that. Now light doesn’t normally do that: certain wavelengths-UV light-can split water, but by enlarge it requires… a… a biochemical skill which we can mimic, but with great difficulty…and plants just simply do it…”
We, with our tools and our knowledge and design find it greatly difficult, but plants do it by nature.
Another “must have” follows in the conversation:
Host: “They must have evolved to do it over a long period of time… why did they want to do it?”
That’s a good question, Melvyn. It’s too bad that you aren’t prepared to seek the real answer.
Answer: “That’s always a difficult question in evolution…”
GOD OF THE GAPS?
I’m not here invoking what Dawkins has cynically described as “the God of the gaps”. Our God does not retreat into what we don’t know-though He is there: He’s also present in what we do know. However, the incredible “coincidences” of nature; the inexplicably complex processes-all interlinked and interdependent; the unfathomable intricacy; the unsurpassable beauty of nature, and the sheer lack of hard evidence for the only theoretically viable alternative to Creation by an intelligent and omnipotent God, are all compelling arguments, to my mind and satisfaction, for the notion that “In the Beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”.
NOTES
1 http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b0435jyv
2 “Biochemistry” (5th Edition) http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK22508/
This post is a re-write of two earlier posts. Here’s one: https://nickyfisher.com/2016/07/22/the-must-haves-of-evolution/
Fuel for Faith 