We must begin by making a most important distinction. Evolution and Darwinism are not the same thing. Evolution is the evidence we have that species of plants and animals have changed over vast amounts of time, or more modestly, that over millions of years extinct species have regularly been replaced by closely allied species. Darwinism is a particular explanation of the evidence for evolution, one that is passionately reductionist and materialist, and purposely excludes the possibility of a Creator. Evolution is not incompatible with theology; Darwinism is an ideological interpretation of the evidence for evolution designed by Charles Darwin himself to exclude God. It is quite possible, then, to affirm evolution, reject Darwinism, and believe in God.

We press this distinction precisely because prominent evolutionists, astronomers, physicists, and chemists are beginning to voice their disagreements with ideological Darwinism, and the reason is revolutionary. The evidence for evolution itself seems to be pointing decidedly away from Darwinism, and to God.

One must be cautious and sober about so monumental a shift, and there are few more cautious and sober scientists than those found in John Barrow and Simon Conway Morris’s The Fitness of the Cosmos for Life: Biochemistry and Fine-Tuning. It is fair to say that it is a technical book, with essays from experts in all relevant fields, but then, great scientific debates are waged in the technical details.

But, given the details, we may summarize the flow of their various arguments as follows. In the last twenty-five years, science has become increasingly aware that the universe is finely-tuned at its origin and in its unfolding. The fundamental laws of nature, the very precise and particular calibration of its various forces, the stellar evolution of the elements all turn out to be exactly balanced and orchestrated so that the merest nudge to any of them would result in a lifeless universe or perhaps no universe at all.

Such unimaginable precision strikes directly against Darwinism for an obvious reason. Darwin sought to eliminate the need for a Creator God by elevating chance and death, random variation and natural selection, as the twin secular deities. But such cosmic fine-tuning is the very opposite of randomness, and it occurs long before biological evolution. Moreover—and here is the most important news—the cosmic fine-tuning is suspiciously biocentric. That is, the chemistry of the cosmos is designed for life, the non-living for the living. Death is not the creative force, as Darwin believed. Nor is life an accident. Instead, life is written into the cosmos from the beginning. Not scribbled or dashed off thoughtlessly, but written in an elegant hand.

What do I mean by this? The science of biochemistry is revealing optimal design for biology. Carbon isn’t just a little bit better than the alternatives to serve as the backbone of biological complexity, but off the scale superior. Water isn’t just a little better than other compounds to serve as the liquid of life; no other possibilities even get close. Our genetic code isn’t just one possibility among many for carrying genetic information; it is one in a million better than the alternatives. Such optimal design isn’t the result of something a little better fit having emerged from a pool of close competitors. It’s the existence of superfitness without any competition at all.

Let’s put these discoveries in context. Darwin believed that the evident appearance of design in biology could be explained entirely as the result of two non-intelligent causes, random variation and natural selection. Against this, the authors of Fitness of the Cosmos for Life argue that the appearance of design occurs on the pre-biotic level, the level of chemistry and biochemistry, before natural selection can occur. In fact, biology depends upon the optimality of chemistry for biological form. The recognition of such optimality strikes a death blow to Darwinism. Evolution depends upon this optimality to function at all, and the optimality explains why life is so robust and evolution is so startlingly effective. Such optimality, like the fine-tuning of the Big Bang, leads us to an intelligent cause of the universe, not to mere randomness.

If the various scientists represented in Fitness of the Cosmos for Life are on the right track, then Darwinism is obsolete. That is, if pre-biological fine-tuning and optimality are confirmed, then whatever the contingencies involved in evolution, they certainly take place within and because of an extraordinarily well-designed cosmos superfit for life. That’s no accident.

Simon Conway Morris, a World-Class Evolutionist Diagnoses the Religion of the Darwinists

“I am driven to observe of the ultra-Darwinists the following features as symptomatic.

First, to my eyes, is their almost breezy self-assurance, their breezy self-confidence.

Second, and far more serious, are particular examples of a sophistry and sleight of hand in the misuse of metaphor, and more importantly a distortion of metaphysics in support of an evolutionary programme. Consider how ultra-Darwinists, having erected a naturalistic system that cannot by itself possess any ultimate purpose, still allow a sense of meaning mysteriously to slip back in…

Third, as has often been noted, the pronouncements of the ultra-Darwinists can shake with a religious fervour. Richard Dawkins is arguably England’s most pious atheist. Their texts ring with high-minded rhetoric and dire warnings—not least [of which are] of the unmitigated evils of religion—all to reveal the path of simplicity and straight thinking….Notwithstanding the quasi-religious enthusiasms of ultra-Darwinists, their own understanding of theology is a combination of ignorance and derision, philosophically limp, drawing on clichés, and happily fueled by the idiocies of the so-called scientific creationists. It seldom seems to strike the ultra-Darwinists that theology might have its own richness and subtleties, and might—strange thought—actually tell us things about the world that are not only to our real advantage, but will never be revealed by science. In depicting the religious instinct as a mixture of irrational fundamentalism and wish-fulfillment they seem to be simply unaware that theology is not the domain of pop-eyed flat-earthers.”

From Simon Conway Morris,
Life’s Solutions: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe, pp. 314-316.

http://www.amazon.com/Lifes-Solution-Inevitable-Humans-Universe/dp/0521603250/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245683937&sr=1-1#

http://www.amazon.com/Fitness-Cosmos-Life-Biochemistry-Astrobiology/dp/0521871026

A New Origin of Species?

Charles Darwin argued that the origin of each species was ultimately a kind of accident, the confluence of random variation and the consequent selection of traits that happened to fit the environment better or provided some advantage in the struggle for existence.

Three seemingly evident “truths” followed from this. First, the more complex some biological trait was, the less likely that it could evolve even once, let alone several times. Second, since a complex trait could only have evolved once, then whatever living thing had that trait must be directly related. Third, to use the late evolutionist Stephen Gould’s famous quip, if one could magically reverse the “tape” of evolution, and let it play back again, the winding paths of evolution would produce entirely different biological creatures. Creation would take a radically different path each time we hit replay because the creator is ultimately the great and fickle god Chance. Most importantly, Gould claimed, man wouldn’t exist in any of the replays. We are the greatest accident of all.

The problem for the Darwinian view, as scientists in Fitness of the Cosmos for Life, point out is that evident “truth” number one turns out to be false. The plant and animals kingdoms are shot through with endless examples of convergence, that is, the multiple development of the same complex traits from entirely unrelated species: wings in birds, bats, and insects; the complex camera eye of squids and mammals; echolocation in whales and bats; the existence of strikingly similar and sometimes nearly identical animals from entirely different origins like the hedgehog and porcupine, the marsupial flying squirrel of Australia and the placental flying squirrel, the marsupial and placental moles, anteaters, and mice; and the list goes on. Convergence blows a hole in the second “truth,” because similar complex traits do not give us a sure indication of common ancestry. And the third “truth”? Convergence leads us to believe that, if the tape were played again, creation would pretty much come out the same way—all the way up to human beings.

This third point has monumental implications if we couple it with the fact that the biochemical makeup of the cosmos is superfit for life. The reason that convergence occurs is that life is written into cosmos, and channels it according to definite patterns. Evolution isn’t a tale told by an idiot, but a well-orchestrated drama. If such is the case, then it means—to draw out the theological implications—that science may well be leading us to the conclusion that creation unfolds according to a plan with human beings as the culmination.

Benjamin Wiker

http://www.amazon.com/Meaningful-World-Sciences-Reveal-Genius/dp/0830827994/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1245254286&sr=8-1

Desperately Disproving God

A sign of the power of the fine-tuning and biocentric nature of the universe to evince the obvious conclusion that God exists, is the desperation of non-theistic cosmologists in avoiding the obvious. The favorite loophole so far has been to posit multiple universes. Sure, this one is extraordinary, they say, but there are millions, nay billions, of other universes out there that are lifeless (or, teeming with intelligent life), exploded to cosmic confetti, or sucked backed into cosmic collapse. Big deal, they say with a yawn. We’re just lucky.

Now there’s another interesting cosmic loophole, offered by stem-cell guru Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman. Sure, this universe is extraordinary, they say. We thought of it! This odd response is a throwback to philosopher George Berkeley (1685-1753). Berkeley was so perturbed by the rise of materialism, and its core belief that only matter exists and mind itself is a reflex of matter, that he embraced the opposite extreme—the real world, matter included, is a projection of our mind. The argument goes like this: we don’t know the real world, but only what we sense of it and think of it; therefore, reality for us is what we sense and think.

Lanza and Berman put a new spin on Berkeley by adding a dash of Heisenberg, whose famous uncertainty principle asserts that we cannot know both the position and velocity of a subatomic particle. Indeed, both its position and velocity are “fuzzy” until we choose to focus in on one of them. While observing one gives it clarity for measurement, the other becomes decidedly unclear. Observation seems to affect the status of the particle. And so, argue Lanza and Berman, since our observation affects the smallest particles in the universe, it must cause the entire universe to come into focus. That is why it appears biocentric. It appears to be strangely fit for intelligent beings because we intelligent beings are observing it. We needn’t invoke a God to explain it. God is us!

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