Speaking of Ockham’s Razor…
Posted on May 5, 2008
Filed Under Reason, Liberalism, Science, Darwinism, Intelligent Design |
Which is the simpler explanation?
On one hand we have Darwin’s theories of evolution and natural selection. I need not get into specifics about this theory; it has been posited in schools world wide for decades, so I’ll assume that most are generally familiar with it. A summary of the theory will suffice for our purposes here.
Darwinism is built on the assumption that, due to apparent similarities among the species of Earth, the origins of species can be traced back to a single ancestor, specifically a single-celled organism that spontaneously sprung to life through some unknown process in some sort of indefinable “primordial soup.” Over the course of millions of years, and for no apparent reason given thus far by “science,” this single-celled organism evolved into increasingly more developed and complex organisms, eventually finding its way out of the soup and onto land, through amphibious and reptilian stages and finally into its primate stage. In simplistic terms, according to evolutionary theory, man is the highest form of primate, having evolved from apes.
The evidence to support this theory is weak at best. There is certainly scientific evidence of evolution over time within a given species; but, after all the years of evolutionary study, there is yet to be uncovered even a single shred of scientific evidence to support the theory of evolution across species, that is, evolution from one species into another.
The genesis of life is still unknown to evolutionary biologists, theorists and other scientists. Also unknown is any reason why our supposed single-celled ancestor would have needed to evolve at all. What was the impetus for evolution? As far as the pro-Darwinist scientific community can explain, our single-celled parent sparked to life with a serious java jones and began evolving in hopeful anticipation of getting to the nearest Starbuck’s a few short millions of years down the road.
Equally unknown is how one species evolves into another. With no evidence to examine, science doesn’t have any idea how one species knows what to evolve into or how to evolve into it. Development of tissues, organs, etc. is all based on instructions provided by DNA. So how a species knows to overcome its own DNA and instruct its own development is as yet unexplained.
All of this says nothing about the collection of conditions required to create, support and sustain life, whether or not it evolves as Darwin purports. The best explanation that science can come up with, so far, is randomness. (Don’t get me started on the impossibility of randomness, that’s for another post).
On the other hand we have God. Not God as defined by most religions–i.e. the unknowable, nebulous super-being whose relationship to man is the subject of endless speculation and debate–but God as He really is. A perfectly evolved being who was once as man is now.
Is this definition of God so hard to swallow? Look at it this way: Man has existed for generations spanning at least thousands of years. During that time–a relatively short span relative to the age of the universe–man has progressed in discovery and innovation in tremendous, even miraculous ways, and this with limited resources and brain function (which science still can’t explain, by the way). Now project man a hundred million years into the future. Is it not reasonable to assume that such progress would continue? Is it not reasonable to assume that man’s understanding of the laws of nature and universe would continue to purify, allowing him to overcome many of the limitations that we now face? Now suppose that progress continued eternally. Suppose that man’s intelligence and identity continued eternally, not only man’s, but a man’s, each human’s intelligence and identity. Suppose life continues in some form or another after the life that we understand and observe as mortal life. If each individual’s life continued for eternity, would it not be reasonable to assume that, given an endless amount of time to continue learning and progressing, man would achieve a state of existence so elevated that to humans such as us, such a being would appear in every way divine?
How is this difficult to accept? On the first hand we are expected to accept the notion of cross-species evolution. Why, then, would not the end (or at least the future) of that evolution for mankind be something akin to godhood?
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