Over the course of my several decades in the hard sciences in both academia and the commercial arena, I have been asked numerous times by well meaning students, colleagues, and coworkers how I could reconcile my belief in Christianity, with the realities of the scientific world. My answer was always the same........"I have never found a conflict..........". These conversations ultimately lead to a discussion of Evolution, and how that calculates into my worldview. In order to come to grips with this topic, I will refer to a conversation that I had with an esteemed mathematics Professor, who became a good friend of mine, and although he has now gone to his reward (also a Christian) his words were inspirational to me, both as a scientist, and as a Christian.
I recently read a book which contained a paraphrased version of this story, and it reminded me that it was a topic that should be discussed here.
To the best of my memory, my mathematician friend's words were as follows:
"When a scientist tells you that 'the science is settled' in regard to any subject, he or she has ceased to be a scientist, and has become an evangelist for one cult or another. The entire history of science is very simply that nothing is ever settled...........new discoveries are being made on a continuous basis, and are constantly setting aside that which was held as commonly true".
"Most people believe that the scientific theories and theses of their particular time are the right ones, and what remains for scientists to do is to expand and develop wondrous new technologies from their absolute understanding of nature's laws, mechanisms, and structures........many scientists believe that they live in the age of ultimate enlightenment, and become so committed to a particular theory that they spend entire careers desperately defending a concept, even as new discoveries rapidly destroy it."
"Aristotle's idea that that the universe did not originate in a singular event, that it has always been here, was the unanimous and virtually unchallenged scientific view for 2300 years, and it was only a few years ago that we discovered that the universe was expanding, driven outward by the "Big Bang" that began it all. What was known and accepted as fact for two thousand three hundred years was patiently wrong.
"Now we come to why Evolutionists hate Mathematicians........the Evolutionist's numbers simply don't add up........Darwinian evolution is predicated on the fossil record proving that the theory was true, but there was no fossil record.......Darwin even knew that, and accounted for it by stating that Paleontologists had not, as yet, looked in the right places. He predicted that in the next century, hundreds of dead-end versions of species would emerge that nature had selected out of the process. More that a century and a half later, not one has been found. In the Cambrian period, during a roughly five million year window, a hundred new phyla appeared, thousands of species. They could have appeared in an instant, or steadily over that period.....we simply don't know. However as mysteriously as their appearance was during this time.....no new phyla have appeared since, none have evolved. Today only thirty of the one hundred phyla have survived extinction, again, what from Darwin's perspective was a continuous process, no new phyla have evolved for millions of years".
"Darwinian evolution offends every mathematician that seriously thinks about it.........for the following reason........simplistically, lets assume the tiniest measure of time is the amount of time that a ray of light takes, travelling at 182,000 miles per second to cross the smallest distance on the molecular level of the universe. For the sake of argument, lets say that is a millionth of a second. The earth has been dated at roughly four billion years old......now if you multiply four billion by the number of millionths of a second in a single year, you get a staggeringly large number........arguably bigger than the number of grains of sand on the earth. Now consider the complexity of a single gene.....it contains thousands of bits of biological data......each of which had to be acquired by mutation, according to Darwin, but the simplest worm on the face of the earth could not have evolved from a single-celled organism in four billion years if a mutation had happened every second.
"The minimun number of genes required to support cell function and reproduction in the simplest form of life is 256........our worm will have several thousand, and its estimated that the human genome may have between thirty and one hundred fifty THOUSAND genes, so if it is a mathematical impossibility for the worm to evolve during the four billion years of the earth's existence, how many more billions of years would be required for a human being to evolve".
End of anecdotal discussion:
Personal caveats:
I am not an evolutionist, paleontologist, or mathematician, nor do I insist on the validity of Creationism or "Intelligent Design" (as it has been explained to me)........I simply don't know........as a person trained in the scientific method, I simply follow where the facts and evidence leads me...........and use logic as my guide.
Are my friend's comments valid? I think so.........does this imply that an outside force acted in what we observe as life on this planet? Setting my faith aside for a moment, I can arrive at no other conclusion based on what I see as evidence so far........
From this point science ends, and Faith continues.........
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Moderators Note: Due to several member comments regarding the similarity of some of the comments in the above discussion to a novel by Dean Koontz, entitled "Breathless", the writer of this post wishes to acknowledge the excellent work of Mr. Koontz, and state that if any similarity exists, it is unintentional, and not in any manner intended to infringe on his work, but to stimulate thought and discussion on the overall concept of the relationship between Darwin's work, and theology in the modern age. Although the writer of this post received the quoted information from a third party, attribution to Dean Koontz is enthusiastically given. In actuality, the poster encourages any reader of this discussion to purchase a copy of "Breathless", as it deals with the subject of Darwin's Theory in a unique, entertaining, and extremely creative manner.
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