Science: Increasing Doubts About Evolution

By: Dr. John Ankerberg, Dr. John Weldon; ©1999

Many scientists are expressing doubts about the evidence and scientific validity for evolution. Surprisingly, these objections are coming from non-creationists.

Rejection on Scientific Grounds

An article of evolutionist Ronald Bailey in Reason attempts to explain why so many non-creationist political conservatives are now abandoning belief in evolution. Supposedly, it’s not because of the scientific evidence. Bailey’s argument assumes that evolution is true—and that recent new discoveries discredit or disprove the creationist’s probability and design arguments (they don’t). Incredibly, he argues that the only reason conservatives reject evolution is to preserve the moral order resulting from religious values. He cites Irving Kristol who correctly wrote, “If there is one indisputable fact about the human condi­tion it is that no community can survive if it is persuaded—or even if it suspects—that its members are leading meaningless lives in a meaningless universe.”^[1] Bailey actually sug­gests that conservatives secretly know that evolution is true, but they lie and deceive the public and criticize evolution publicly in order to help reserve the moral order!

This entirely ignores the fact that evolution is being rejected today largely on scientific grounds, not social or moral grounds, and that the attack on evolution comes more from establishment science than from religious creationism.

Again, it should be emphasized that the attack on evolution comes more from within the halls of naturalistic science than from creationists. Certainly this speaks volumes as to the weakness of its evidence. B. Leith, who catalogued some of the dissent in The De­scent of Darwin: A Handbook of Doubts about Darwinism (1982) observes, “The theory of life that undermined nineteenth century religion has virtually become a religion itself and in turn is being threatened by fresh ideas. The attacks are certainly not limited to those of the creationist and religious fundamentalists who deny Darwinism for political and moral rea­sons. The main thrust of the criticism comes from within science itself.”^[2] A few recent examples are science journalist and engineer Richard Milton’s Shattering the Myth of Darwinism (1997) and biophysicist Lee M. Spetner’s Not by Chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of Evolution (1997).

Scientists Who Face the Evidence

Evolutionists may declare that “denying Darwin is intellectually impossible,” as Herbert Gintis did in Commentary magazine (September 1996) or that “the scientific community has no doubts” about evolution as an article in Scientific American (October 1997) claimed. But consider a few examples of the dissent culled from our own research.

Professor Wolfgang Smith received his Ph.D. in Mathematics from Columbia Univer­sity. He has held faculty positions at the Massachusetts Institutes of Technology and UCLA. He writes,

I am opposed to Darwinism, or better said, to the transformist hypothesis as such, no matter what one takes to be the mechanism or cause (even perhaps teleological or theistic) of the postulated macroevolutionary leaps. I am convinced, moreover, that Darwinism, in whatever form, is not in fact a scientific theory, but a pseudo-metaphysical hypothesis decked out in scientific garb. In reality the theory derives its support not from empirical data or logical deductions of a scientific kind but from the circumstance that it happens to be the only doctrine of biological origins that can be conceived with the constricted Weltanschauung [worldview] to which a majority of scientists no doubt subscribe.^[3]

Dr. R. Merle d’Aubigne, head of the Orthopedic Department at the University of Paris remarks,

The origin of life is still a mystery. As long as it has not been demonstrated by experimental realization, I cannot conceive of any physical or chemical condition [allowing evolution]….I cannot be satisfied by the idea that fortuitous mutation…can explain the complex and rational organization of the brain, but also of lungs, heart, kidneys, and even joints and muscles. How is it possible to escape the idea of some intelligent and organizing force?^[4]

Sir John Eccles, winner of the Nobel Prize for Physiology/Medicine says of evolution in “A Divine Design,” “One of its weak points is that it does not have any recognizable way in which conscious life could have emerged….”^[5]

Professor Harry Rubin, Professor of Molecular Biology and Research Virologist to the Virus Laboratory, University of California Berkeley and recipient of numerous prestigious awards, accepts non-Darwinian evolution but still remarks, “Life, even in bacteria, is too complex to have occurred by chance.”^[6]

Nobelist and evolutionist Dr. Robert A. Millikan comments, “The pathetic thing is that we have scientists who are trying to prove evolution, which no scientist can ever prove.”^[7]

Dr. Albert Fleishmann, zoologist at Erlangen University, writes, “The theory of evolu­tion suffers from grave defects, which are more and more apparent as time advances. It can no longer square with practical scientific knowledge.”^[8]

Famous Canadian geologist William Dawson says, “the record of the rocks is decid­edly against evolutionists.”^[9]

The highly regarded noncreationist anti-Darwinian French scientist Grasse says, “The explanatory doctrines of biological evolution do not stand up to an objective, in-depth criticism. They prove to be either in conflict with reality or else incapable of solving the major problems involved.”^[10]

Ken Hsu, the evolutionist professor at the Geological Institute in Zurich, E.T.H., and former president of the International Association of Sedimentologists, writes, “We have had enough of the Darwinian fallacy. It’s about time we cry: ‘The Emperor has no clothes.’”^[11]

Lemoine, a former president of the Geological Society of France and director of the Natural History Museum in Paris, as well as the editor of the Encyclopedie Francaise, declares that, “The theories of evolution, with which our studious youth have been de­ceived, constitute actually a dogma that all the world continues to teach: but each, in his speciality, the zoologist or the botanist, ascertains that none of the explanations furnished is adequate….[I]t results from this summary, that the theory of evolution is impossible.”^[12]

Julio Garrido, Sc.D., a member of the Spanish Royal Academy of Science and a former president of the French Society of Crystallography and Mineralogy quotes French scholar and mathematician Georges Salet concerning the last 150 years of attempts to find evidence for evolution or even explanations of it: “During the last one hundred and fifty years of research that has been carried out along this line, there has been no discovery of anything [confirming evolution].”^[13]

Garrido also quotes French evolutionist Jen Rostand who writes, “The theory of evolu­tion gives no answer to the important problem of the origin of life and presents only falla­cious solutions to the problem of the nature of evolutive transformations…[Because of this situation] We are condemned to believe in evolution…. Perhaps we are now in a worse position than in 1850 because we have searched for one century and we have the impression that the different hypotheses are now exhausted.”^[14]

Dr. Garrido himself writes that evolution “is a simplistic idea, almost an infantile idea” and even that it is a philosophical disease: “The evolutionary theory is one of the ‘dis­eases,’ because it is the corruption of philosophical prejudices regarding a pure scientific question.”^[15]

An article by Howard Byington Holroyd, Ph.D., retired head of the Department of Physics, Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois, points out that evolution is nonsense. His research and calculations show “far beyond any reasonable doubt, that this theory is nothing more than physical and mathematical nonsense.”^[16]

R. Clyde McCone, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, California State University, Long Beach, states, “as an anthropologist, I object to evolution on the anthropological grounds that I have presented. There are no data for evolution.”^[17]

Roger Haines, Jr., J.D., research attorney for the California Third District Court of Appeals, Sacramento, writes that, “The arguments for macroevolution fail at every signifi­cant level when confronted by the facts.”^[18]

Finally, evolutionist and zoologist with the Department of Physiology and Biochemistry, University of Southampton (England), G. A. Kerkut writes the following conclusions in his Implications of Evolution. He refers to the seven basic assumptions of evolution and as­sesses their validity:

The first assumption was that non-living things gave rise to living material. This is still just an assumption…. There is, however, little evidence in favor of biogenesis and as yet we have no indication that it can be performed…. It is therefore a matter of faith on the part of the biologist that biogenesis did occur….

The second assumption was that biogenesis occurred only once. This again is a matter for belief rather than proof….

The third assumption was that Viruses, Bacteria, Protozoa and the higher animals were all interrelated…. We have as yet no definite evidence about the way in which the Viruses, Bacteria or Protozoa are interrelated.

The fourth assumption was that the Protozoa gave rise to the Metazoa…. Here again nothing definite is known….

The fifth assumption was that the various invertebrate phyla are interrelated…. The evidence, then for the affinities of the majority of the invertebrates is tenuous and circumstantial; not the type of evidence that would allow one to form a verdict of definite relationships.

The sixth assumption [is] that the invertebrates gave rise to the vertebrates…. As Berrill states, “in a sense this account is science fiction.”

We are on somewhat stronger ground with the seventh assumption that the fish, amphibia, reptiles, birds, and mammals are interrelated. There is the fossil evidence to help us here, though many of the key transitions are not well‑documented and we have as yet to obtain a satisfactory objective method of dating the fossils…. The evidence that we have at present is insufficient to allow us to decide the answer to these problems.^[19]

Kerkut goes on to state that, in essence, evolution has to be taken on pure faith: the evidence is circumstantial and much of it can be argued either way. He says of these initial assumptions for evolution, “The evidence is still lacking for most of them.”^[20]

Scientists may claim evolution is a demonstrated fact, and this may routinely be stated in student textbooks, but this is wrong. Creationists have pointed this out for decades.

And not without good cause.

Notes

1. ↑ In Ronald Bailey, “Origin of the Specious: Why Do Neo-Conservatives Doubt Darwin?” Reason, July 1997, p. 24.
2. ↑ B. Leith, The Descent of Darwin: A Handbook of Doubts About Darwinism (1982), pp. 10-11 in Bird, Origin…Revisited, Vol. 1, p. 2, emphasis added.
3. ↑ Wolfgang Smith, “The Universe Is Ultimately to Be Explained in Terms of a Metacosmic Reality” in Margenau and Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 113.
4. ↑ Merle d’Aubigne, “How Is It Possible to Escape the Idea of Some Intelligent and Orga­nizing Force?” in Margenau and Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 158.
5. ↑ Sir John Eccles, “A Divine Design: Some Questions on Origins” in Margenau and Varghese (eds.), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 163.
6. ↑ Harry Rubin, “Life, Even in Bacteria, Is Too Complex to Have Occurred by Chance” in Margenau and Varghese (eds,), Cosmos, Bios, Theos, p. 203.
7. ↑ M. Bowden, The Rise of the Evolution Fraud (An Exposure of Its Roots) (San Diego: Creation Life Publishers, 1982), pp. 216, 218.
8. ↑ Ibid.
9. ↑ Ibid.
10. ↑ Pierre-P. Grasse, The Evolution of Living Organisms (New York: Academic Press, 1977), p. 202.
11. ↑ Hsu, reply, Geology, Vol.15 (1987), p. 177; Hsu, “Darwin’s Three Mistakes,” Geology, Vol. 14, pp. 532-35 (1986) in Bird, Vol. 2, p. 516.
12. ↑ Lemoine, Introduction: De L’Evolution? in 5 Encyclopedie Francaise 06-6 (P. Lemoine, ed., 1937), emphasis added, in Bird, Origin…Revisited, Vol. 1, p. 151.
13. ↑ Julio Garrido, “Evolution and Molecular Biology,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Dec. 1973, p. 167.
14. ↑ Ibid, p. 168.
15. ↑ Ibid.
16. ↑ Howard Byington Holroyd, “Darwinism Is Physical and Mathematical Nonsense,” Cre­ation Research Society Quarterly, June 1972, p. 5.
17. ↑ R. Clyde McCone, “Three Levels of Anthropological Objection to Evolution,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, March 1973, p. 209.
18. ↑ Roger Haines, Jr., “Macroevolution Questioned,” Creation Research Society Quarterly, Dec. 1976, p. 169.
19. ↑ G. A. Kerkut, Implications of Evolution (Pergammon Press, 1960), pp. 150-53.
20. ↑ Ibid, p. 150.