“An article in The Guardian by science journalist Stephen Buranyi represents something remarkable in the way the public processes the failures of evolutionary theory. In the past, those failures have been admitted by some biologists, but always in settings (technical journals, conferences) where they thought nobody outside their professional circles was listening. Well, the field of evolutionary biology has just done the equivalent of a massive Facebook dump. In a very long article, top names in the field share with Buranyi what intelligent design proponents already knew, but few Guardian readers guessed. The headline from the left-leaning British daily asks, ‘Do we need a new theory of evolution?’ Answer in one word: yes. The article is full of scandalous admissions: ‘Strange as it sounds, scientists still do not know the answers to some of the most basic questions about how life on Earth evolved. Take eyes, for instance. Where do they come from, exactly? The usual explanation of how we got these stupendously complex organs rests upon the theory of natural selection. This is the basic story of evolution, as recounted in countless textbooks and pop-science bestsellers. The problem, according to a growing number of scientists, is that it is absurdly crude and misleading. For one thing, it starts midway through the story, taking for granted the existence of light-sensitive cells, lenses and irises, without explaining where they came from in the first place. Nor does it adequately explain how such delicate and easily disrupted components meshed together to form a single organ. And it isn’t just eyes that the traditional theory struggles with. ‘The first eye, the first wing, the first placenta. How they emerge. Explaining these is the foundational motivation of evolutionary biology,’ says Armin Moczek, a biologist at Indiana University. ‘And yet, we still do not have a good answer. This classic idea of gradual change, one happy accident at a time, has so far fallen flat.’ There are certain core evolutionary principles that no scientist seriously questions. Everyone agrees that natural selection plays a role, as does mutation and random chance. But how exactly these processes interact–and whether other forces might also be at work–has become the subject of bitter dispute. ‘If we cannot explain things with the tools we have right now,’ the Yale University biologist Günter Wagner told me, ‘we must find new ways of explaining’ [Buranyi, ‘Do we need a new theory of evolution?’ The Guardian, June 28, 2022]. Underneath all this lurks another, deeper question: whether the idea of a grand story of biology is a fairytale we need to finally give up.’ ‘Absurdly crude and misleading’? A ‘classic idea’ that ‘has so far fallen flat’? ‘A fairytale we need to finally give up’? This is how writers for Evolution News have characterized the troubles with Darwinian theory. But I didn’t expect to see it in The Guardian.”
“Evolutionists Admit,” Evolution News and Science Today, July 1, 2022
CONCLUDING NOTE: Natural selection, mutation, and random chance are not creative powers and explain absolutely nothing about the existence of life as we know it.
(Friday Church News Notes, July 15, 2022, www.wayoflife.org, fbns@wayoflife.org, 866-295-4143)