Divine evidences — Human hostility

The need of reasoning —its purpose and its limits

“... to attempt to stifle criticism of Scripture by the cry that ‘the Bible is the word of God’ only serves to excite distrust on the part of earnest and honest-hearted inquirers. There never was an attack made upon the truth that could not be refuted. ‘Truth is one’; but error is in its very nature inconsistent, and therefore absurd. And while Divine truth is spiritual, and can only be spiritually discerned, human error is natural, and can be met on its own ground. We cannot ‘reason’ men into the kingdom of God, but by reasoning we can expose errors which prejudice them against it.”

Sir Robert Anderson
- The Bible and Modern Criticism
(London, Pickering and Inglis, c. 1895), p. 27.

The reality of God and human resistance

Many materialists are not bothered by the presence of a faith stated in an emotional and dogmatic form, with no basis on evidence. When they become alarmed and upset is when it is remarked that the Intelligent Design in nature and of nature itself is detectable and provable. That it is a logical inference which, although it does not depend on a theistic or religious worldview, carries an unavoidable inference of the reality of a Wisdom and a Godhead which, although often denied, it is none the less evident. It is a logical inference that has always been present and that has always stood as a barrier against the materialists claims that the whole universe as the environment for life and that all life in the said universe have sprung without direction or purpose.

One of the reasons for this stonewalling on the part of many against the least possibility of an Intelligent Design of nature and of life is that they have the intuition that this brings them before Him who judges the innermost attitudes and motives. And this they will not want to accept at all. They will not want to accept such a conclusion. They want to reject this possibility from the very start. This has always been the great motivator of materialism. The denial of God is not a scientific conclusion, but a yearning of a humanity in search of a false autonomy, a yearning that has been covered under the disguise of a philosophical or a scientific jargon.

For instance, philosopher Thomas Nagel, in his book, The Last Word (Oxford University Press, 1997), talks about what he calls "the fear of religion itself." He writes,

“I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that.”

In his view, this fear may be “responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time.” (p. 130)

That is why many materialists don't even want to talk about the evidences of Intelligent Design. For them it is a very personal, emotional matter. And they sense that it is a lost battle. Thus, instead of discussing about the facts and data as they are known today about the structures and functions of life, and about the theoretical possibilities that these facts and data allow, and about the limits that might or might not exist in the process of mutation and selection, they lower themselves to ridiculing and to throwing invectives, and try to confuse the matters that should be object of open debate. They even try to prevent the public presentation of these matters, as it happened recently in several places in Spain[1], and, like the squid, they throw a cloud of ink in their attempt to avoid a reasoned discussion of the matter.

On ridiculing the opponent:

When ridicule and mockery take the place of argument, we have to be wary. The use of ridicule against a reasoned exposition of arguments is a wretched attitude. However, humour can be the answer sometimes when the absurdity of a position is either clear by itself or has been demonstrated by a reasoned explanation; then the absurdity of such position may bring up the ridicule of the situation of those who may persist in an argument that has been refuted by facts or as inconsequential with them.

Speaking about evidences

One of the subjects in Physics is that to effect the separation of the molecules of a gas at a given temperature into two distributions of the said gas, a colder portion and a hotter portion, the so-called «Maxwell’s Demon» is needed, that is to say, an agent that may obtain information of each molecule of the said gas and act accordingly, to select it and let it pass and isolate it in the proper section of the system made ready to achieve the said differentiation. In summary, to select you need a given purpose, information and a source of energy for the work needed for the operation of the system, an operation guided by an information addressed to an end. We can also achieve a dissociation to even more segregated thermal groups (we can achieve groups segregated degree by degree). This implies more complication, a more complex mechanism.

By «evolution», when applied to the origin and development of life, what is generally understood is the emergence of new characters, of new structures, of new functions —by natural selection?

Darwin remarked that selection could be made between already existing characters, but this was known from old times. He advanced many examples of ARTIFICIAL selection and proposed a parallelism with natural selection which would improve the already existing traits and favouring the emergence of more and more complex structures.

The problem is that here we have a false parallelism. The real question, when we are dealing with the ORIGIN of new structures and functions (sight, hearing, flight, the diverse physiologic functions, etc.) is not how these structures are selected and improved, but how they ORIGINATE.

The paramount question in the origin and coordination of the diverse organic functions of the cell and of the organism is the production of the components and their coordination. First the material has to be available, then those necessary materials will have to be selected and placed in their due and corresponding relationships. A purpose, an end in view is necessary, and to possess the information that may direct all this arrangement. It is necessary not only to select all the adequate elements, but it is necessary as well to exclude all those that would interfere and that would make it impossible to reach the desired end.

For instance, to achieve the rotary motor of the bacterial flagellum, some given pieces are needed. These pieces are obtained through a manufacturing profess of each component in the desired quantities. And the manufacturing process of these pieces in the cell includes a series of steps which go from the reading of the instructions in the central library cell (DNA) to prepare transcriptions (not a mere copy) where information supports like mRNA are involved, as well as codified transport media of basic materials (aminoacids) as tRNAs, specific enzymes to join the tRNA with the said aminoacids, and machinery for the assembly of proteins (ribosomes) which, by means of a reading head, read the instructions which are transported to the same, and with other functions of this complex machine, weld the unit compounds (aminoacids) in the sequences commanded by the code supported by the lengths of mRNA which tell which tRNAs which each carry a specific aminoacid must enter every time in the entrance zone of the corresponding ribosome, to achieve the production of the proteins, both the structural ones and the enzymes, which are the fundamental components of the structures and of the functions of the cells.

Once the pieces of the motor of the bacterial flagellum have been obtained by means of this process of manufacture assisted by a cybernetic PROGRAMMED system with the reading of the codes and with all its systems of regulation and control, we are just at the beginning. The assembly of the motor follows a whole sequence that has been also PROGRAMMED, wholly regulated and controlled with the sending and receiving of signals of start-up and end of each of the sequential steps.

But this motor would not be able to do a thing without receiving (protonic) energy, which arrives through circuits which are as well product of a manufacture assisted by program, program also stored in the central library (DNA), transcribed and governed by the same process. And these circuits would not be fed by energy without the existence of another mechanism like that of ATP synthase which feeds all the different circuits and functions of the cell, of which we give one amongst thousands of examples.

Thus, we see that the great secret of all the production of these systems is the INFORMATION applied by means of sophisticated devices. It is not possible to achieve the selective production of components and their concatenation in coordinated systems without a system of reading and treatment of information. Codes, information, word and thought are everywhere, embodied in the performance of a plan and of a purpose.

Natural selection cannot achieve the origin of that which it selects. It is irrelevant regarding the origin of the structures of life, at all levels.

The necessary selection to obtain complex systems for regulation and control adapted to an end demands the existence of a transcending Mind and Purpose. The reality of life in particular, and of its framework, the universe in general, takes us to the consciousness of the reality of God, of His power and godhead.

The force of the evidence was felt even before the discovery of the nanomachinery of life by none other than Ernst Mayr, one of the most staunch Darwinists of the 20th Century. He had to confess that

“... it is a considerable strain on one's credulity to assume that finely balanced systems such as certain sense organs (the eye of vertebrates, or the bird's feather) could be improved by random mutations. This is even more true of some ecological chain relationships (the famous Yucca moth case, and so forth).”

Mayr, Ernst (1942)
Systematics and the Origin
of Species, p. 296

Of course, he immediately adds that:

“However, the objectors of random mutations have so far been unable to advance any alternative explanation that was supported by substantial evidence.”

Ibid.

This attempt to solve this matter in this way tries to sideline the reality of the evidence that points to life as a result of an act of creation by God. It is here that the well known physicist and cosmologist Carl F. von Weizsäcker, although a materialist and a Darwinist, uncovers the true state of affairs, which, since the time he wrote, has been really worsening more and more for any materialistic approach to the origin and development of life:

“We do not yet understand the causes of evolution too well, but we have very little doubt about the fact of evolution; ... What are the reasons for this general belief? In the last lecture I formulated them negatively: We do not know how life should have come to exist in its actual form by any other way. This formulation leaves silently aside any possible supernatural origin of life; such is the faith in science of our time which we all share.” [The Relevance of Science, Collins, London and Glasgow, 1964, p. 141.]

The weight of evidence facing a hostile will

In my view, I.D. will generate hostility in a mind-set that is already hostile to its basic outcome. As Richard Lewontin put it so quaintly in his review of some years ago, “we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door”. It is not that the evidence is weak but that the materialistic mind has an axe to grind. Materialism MUST be maintained at all costs.

So, in fact, this is a deeply personal matter: Materialism, promising Man freedom, but bringing with it all its ultimate despair, or Theism, bringing Man before God. But man's attitude is not neutral; there is nothing irenic in it. Unrepentant man is at enmity against God and therefore in its natural state prefers rather to reject or reinterpret all evidence of God in the design of all nature in materialistic terms.

The bottom line is that Materialism has provided an illusory refuge for Man where to hide from God.

The problem is not in the evidence. There is a mountain of evidence to bring anybody to the conviction of the reality of a Design. But evidence is not a sufficient thing when facing a hostile attitude against God, as the one shown by the philosopher Nagel. We are surrounded by evidence. Out there in created Nature. The problem exists in the mindset of man, looking at design as something to be rejected, not because it is not apparent in the study of the created things, but because of a very strong bias against the evidence. When Dawkins says in his preface to The Blind Watchmaker: “Biology is the study of complicated things that give the appearance of having been designed for a purpose”, and then proceeds to apply the criteria that Lewontin describes in his review, he does so because "they have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism" ... they “CANNOT allow a Divine Foot in the door”. To be able to accept Intelligent Design, more than evidence is necessary, what is needed is a change of inner attitude that may break with the prior commitment to materialism and that may open itself to the reality that surrounds us. This prior commitment to materialism shows a heart of hostility against God. To come to a proper perspective of reality, repentance towards God is needed —and the end in view is a supernatural change of view transforming hostility and thanklessness into worship and thankfulness (Romans 1:20-22).

Yes, the bottom line is that the controversy is about much more than science, it is about the heart of man – which, taking his cue from the diatribes of Voltaire and others like him against God, seeks to deny all sovereign action of God in creation, providence, salvation and judgment. Thus modern man rebuilds his view of reality into one that God is absent, with the illusion of receiving therefore his freedom. But, as a lecturer remarked many years ago, in words that have stayed in my mind: “The optimistic Atheism of the Nineteenth Century thought that by displacing God, Man would have a place to be a man; the pessimistic Atheism of the Twentieth Century discovered that by having displaced God, Man had lost all place to be a man”.

Addressing himself to God, Augustine of Hippo (350-430) says: “Thou hast made us for thyself and our hearts find no peace until they rest in thee!” (Confessions, I, 1)

Santiago Escuain

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[1] For information in English on these events, click HERE; for more complete information in Spanish, click HERE
For supplementary reading: Evolutionist Learns from “Neo-Creationists”

For a sobering analysis of recent evolutionary claims that cannot be maintained, about evolution having been proved by lab experiments, and others, see:

• The ID Update - On the evolution of a "key innovation" in Escherichia coli
• Creation·Evolution Headlines - Fossil Frog-amander Claimed to Be Missing Link
• Creation·Evolution Headlines - An Evaluation of Evolution as an Explanatory Device

Darwin against Design - background and motivations

Touching the controversy between Darwin and the intelligent design of life, the following can be said:

1. No one doubts the observations made by Darwin, and by students of nature before him, regarding changes in living beings, nor regarding descent with modification. The great question mark has to do with the scope of such changes, the meaning of the same, the interpretation they may receive.

Darwin himself conceded this point, saying:

"... I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question; ..."

Charles Darwin,
The Origin of Species
by Means of Natural
Selection, 1859, Introduction.

2. Now, due to ideological and sociopolitical circumstances, the general atmosphere of England and in many places in Europe was in expectation of an approach to the origin and development of life that would give rational support to an atheistic or agnostic philosophy, which was already very well spread. But those that maintained this position confronted the weight of the argument as argued in the work Natural Theology, by William Paley (1802), on the evidence of an intelligent design for the forms and functions of life. This meant that atheistic or agnostic philosophy had the great obstacle of the evidence of design in living beings. In fact, one of the main modern proponents of atheism, professor Richard Dawkins, stated that Charles Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually satisfied atheist" (The Blind Watchmaker, p. 9).

We think that the great attractive of Darwin's thesis centres, more than in the rigour of the interpretations proposed by him, in the "deliverance" it offers man with respect to God as a Real Being on Whom he depends. For whatever reasons, ad as it is documented by Michael Denton in his work Evolution, a Theory in Crisis, after a few years Darwinism had passed from an arguable proposal to a dogma massively accepted by the intellectual classes. Darwin's apparently persuasive arguments, plausible for the state of knowledge about the living beings and their relationships in those times of the middle of the XIXth century (or rather due to the great lack of knowledge about it, as a matter of fact) were not supported by the inrush of new data which should lead to such a massive acceptance of Darwin's thesis. Rather, there was a climate of opinion ready to reject Christianity, and to accept the materialistic and atheistic thesis, or at least to reject any thought of a personal God active in Creation and Providence, due to the influence of philosophers like David Hume, and of writers like Voltaire.

Darwin himself reveals occasionally in his correspondence both his background and his motivations. In a letter to his son George he says, amongst other things:

“... Lyell is most firmly convinced that he has shaken the faith in the Deluge far more efficiently by never having said a word against the Bible, than if he had acted otherwise. ...

I have lately read Morley’s Life of Voltaire and he insists strongly that direct attacks on Christianity (even when written with the wonderful force and vigour of Voltaire) produce little permanent effect: real good seems only to follow the slow and silent attacks.” (October 21, 22, 24, 1873: Cambridge MSS.)

Quoted in Gertrude Himmelfarb,
Darwin and the Darwian Revolution
(Chatto & Windus, Londres 1959), p. 320.

Continuing with the matter of background and motivations, Aldous Huxley, the celebrated novelist, brother of Julian Huxley who was the first director of UNESCO, and grandson of Thomas Henry Huxley, known as "Darwin's Bulldog", shared these reflections in on of his works:

"... The philosopher who finds no meaning in the world is not concerned exclusively with a problem in pure metaphysics. He is also concerned to prove that there is not valid reason why he personally should not do as he wants to do, ...

"I had motives for not wanting the world to have meaning; consequently assumed it had none, and was able without any difficulty to find satisfying reasons for this assumption. ... For myself, as no doubt for most of my contemporaries, the philosophy of meaninglessness was essentially an instrument of liberation. The liberation we desired was simultaneously liberation from a certain political and economic system and liberation from a certain system of morality. We objected to the morality because it interfered with our sexual freedom. ..."

Huxley, Aldous: From Ends and
Means: An Inquiry into the Nature
of Ideals and into the Methods
Employed for Their Realization
(Harper and Brothers Publishers,
New York and London,
1937, fifth edition), pp. 314-317.

Philosopher Thomas Nagel, in his book, The Last Word (Oxford University Press, 1997), talks about what he calls "the fear of religion itself." He writes,

"I speak from experience, being strongly subject to this fear myself: I want atheism to be true and am made uneasy by the fact that some of the most intelligent and well-informed people I know are religious believers. It isn't just that I don't believe in God and, naturally, hope that I'm right in my belief. It's that I hope there is no God! I don't want there to be a God; I don't want the universe to be like that."

In his view, this fear may be "responsible for much of the scientism and reductionism of our time." (p. 130)

In these pages it is our purpose to reopen Darwin's challenge, examining it and pondering both sides of the matter. As he himself expressed it: "A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the facts and arguments on both sides of each question". Already in Darwin's time, a good amount of studies and arguments appeared expounding the real implausibility of his arguments beyond any superficial appearances. And during the XX century more and more knowledge has emerged which brings home the effective bankruptcy of the Darwinist argument. It is true that a great effort has been made to achieve the synthesis of this knowledge, as the confirmation of the discontinuous nature of the fossil record, the cellular mechanisms, the realities of genetics, construing them and pigeonholing them within the Darwinist or Neodarwinist model. But the build-up of data during the XXth century, and particularly during the last 50 years, due to the inflexibility of facts, shows the breakdown of the old materialism of the XIXth century, which considered all exclusively in terms of matter and movement, or matter and energy. Now we know that all structures of life are organized and ruled by an information which is codified in different ways, and the existence of several information supports, information transcription systems, systems to translate the said information, and to execute this information to form and function in the living beings; also verification systems and systems for the maintenance of this information, and of a dynamic for reproducing these systems. This information involves effectively a whole set of machinery which makes possible reading the same, and to understand it and manifest itself in the phenomena of life, with true and strict mechanisms for timing and for flux control and for identification, of great specificity and of irreducible complexity both upwards and downwards which never could have come by small chance steps with functionality. Because this functionality belongs to the system as a whole.

It is only too true that in our present society there is the barefaced attempt to sideline the thesis of the Intelligent Design of life, as something already refuted by Darwin. But this is not true. Darwin did propose his thesis denying design, and he did propose certain lines of evidence, although, in the words of Darwin, it was clear that "scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived", i.e., the directly opposite conclusions are those that maintain the Intelligent, divine, Design of life. The crystallization of Darwin's proposal as a dogma in his time was more due to the precipitation in accepting arguments that looked plausible, and not to the application of intellectual rigour to ponder these arguments, due to a social and ideological climate which were favourable to them. And the maintenance of this thesis in our time cannot be understood except with reference to the massive propaganda of the mass media addressed to drum-up a dogmatic materialistic approach, which comes uncovered in the candid and recent admission by Richard Lewontin, which we have to give again:

"... we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counterintuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door."

Richard Lewontin,
New York Review of Books
(January 9, 1997, p. 31).

Santiago Escuain