Chapter 14: The Theory of Evolution: A Materialistic Liability
The information we have considered throughout this book has shown us that the theory of evolution has no scientific basis, and that, on the contrary, evolutionist claims conflict with scientific facts. In other words, the force that keeps evolution alive is not science. The theory of evolution is maintained by some "scientists", but behind it there is another influence at work.
This other influence is materialist philosophy.
Materialist philosophy is one of the oldest beliefs in the world, and assumes the existence of matter as its basic principle. According to this view, matter has always existed, and everything that exists consists of matter. This makes belief in a Creator impossible, of course, because if matter has always existed, and if everything consists of matter, then there can be no suprematerial Creator who created it. Materialism has therefore long been hostile to religious beliefs of every kind that have faith in Allah.
Darwinism and Materialism |
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| Leon Trotsky | Charles Darwin | Karl Marks |
| The only reason that Darwin's theory is still defended despite its obvious refutation by science is the close link between that theory and materialism. Darwin applied materialist philosophy to the natural sciences and the advocates of this philosophy, Marxists being foremost among them, go on defending Darwinism no matter what.
One of the most famous contemporary champions of the theory of evolution, the biologist Douglas Futuyma, wrote: "Together with Marx's materialistic theory of history… Darwin's theory of evolution was a crucial plank in the platform of mechanism and materialism." This is a very clear admission of why the theory of evolution is really so important to its defenders.1 Another famous evolutionist, the paleontologist Stephen J. Gould said: "Darwin applied a consistent philosophy of materialism to his interpretation of nature".2 Leon Trotsky, one of the masterminds of the Russian Communist Revolution along with Lenin, commented: "The discovery by Darwin was the highest triumph of the dialectic in the whole field of organic matter."3 However, science has shown that Darwinism was not a victory for materialism but rather a sign of that philosophy's overthrow. |
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So the question becomes one of whether the materialist point of view is correct. One method of testing whether a philosophy is true or false is to investigate the claims it makes about science by using scientific methods. For instance, a philosopher in the 10th century could have claimed that there was a divine tree on the surface of the moon and that all living things actually grew on the branches of this huge tree like fruit, and then fell off onto the earth. Some people might have found this philosophy attractive and believed in it. But in the 20th century, at a time when man has managed to walk on the moon, it is no longer possible to seriously hold such a belief. Whether such a tree exists there or not can be determined by scientific methods, that is, by observation and experiment.
We can therefore investigate by means of scientific methods the materialist claim: that matter has existed for all eternity and that this matter can organise itself without a supramaterial Creator and cause life to begin. When we do this, we see that materialism has already collapsed, because the idea that matter has existed since beginning of time has been overthrown by the Big Bang theory which shows that the universe was created from nothingness. The claim that matter organised itself and created life is the claim that we call "the theory of evolution" -which this book has been examining-and which has been shown to have collapsed.
However, if someone is determined to believe in materialism and puts his devotion to materialist philosophy before everything else, then he will act differently. If he is a materialist first and a scientist second, he will not abandon materialism when he sees that evolution is disproved by science. On the contrary, he will attempt to uphold and defend materialism by trying to support evolution, no matter what. This is exactly the predicament that evolutionists defending the theory of evolution find themselves in today.
Interestingly enough, they also confess this fact from time to time. A well-known geneticist and outspoken evolutionist, Richard C. Lewontin from Harvard University, confesses that he is "a materialist first and a scientist second" in these words:
It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us 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 counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, so we cannot allow a Divine [intervention].174
The term "a priori" that Lewontin uses here is quite important. This philosophical term refers to a presupposition not based on any experimental knowledge. A thought is "a priori" when you consider it to be correct and accept it as so even if there is no information available to confirm it. As the evolutionist Lewontin frankly states, materialism is an "a priori" commitment for evolutionists, who then try to adapt science to this preconception. Since materialism definitely necessitates denying the existence of a Creator, they embrace the only alternative they have in hand, which is the theory of evolution. It does not matter to such scientists that evolution has been belied by scientific facts, because they have accepted it "a priori" as true.
This prejudiced behaviour leads evolutionists to a belief that "unconscious matter composed itself", which is contrary not only to science, but also to reason. Professor of chemistry from New York University and a DNA expert Robert Shapiro, as we have quoted before, explains this belief of evolutionists and the materialist dogma lying at its base as follows:
Another evolutionary principle is therefore needed to take us across the gap from mixtures of simple natural chemicals to the first effective replicator. This principle has not yet been described in detail or demonstrated, but it is anticipated, and given names such as chemical evolution and self-organization of matter. The existence of the principle is taken for granted in the philosophy of dialectical materialism, as applied to the origin of life by Alexander Oparin.176
Evolutionist propaganda, which we constantly come across in the Western media and in well-known and "esteemed" science magazines, is the outcome of this ideological necessity. Since evolution is considered to be indispensable, it has been turned into a sacred cow by the circles that set the standards of science.
Some scientists find themselves in a position where they are forced to defend this far-fetched theory, or at least avoid uttering any word against it, in order to maintain their reputations. Academics in the Western countries have to have articles published in certain scientific journals to attain and hold onto their professorships. All of the journals dealing with biology are under the control of evolutionists, and they do not allow any anti-evolutionist article to appear in them. Biologists, therefore, have to conduct their research under the domination of this theory. They, too, are part of the established order, which regards evolution as an ideological necessity, which is why they blindly defend all the "impossible coincidences" we have been examining in this book.
Materialist Confessions
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| Cytochrome-C |
The German biologist Hoimar von Ditfurth, a prominent evolutionist, is a good example of this bigoted materialist understanding. After Ditfurth cites an example of the extremely complex composition of life, this is what he says concerning the question of whether it could have emerged by chance or not:
Is such a harmony that emerged only out of coincidences possible in reality? This is the basic question of the whole of biological evolution. Answering this question as "Yes, it is possible" is something like verifying faith in the modern science of nature. Critically speaking, we can say that somebody who accepts the modern science of nature has no other alternative than to say "yes", because he aims to explain natural phenomena by means that are understandable and tries to derive them from the laws of nature without reverting to supernatural interference. However, at this point, explaining everything by means of the laws of nature, that is, by coincidences, is a sign that he has nowhere else to turn. Because what else could he do other than believe in coincidences?177
As Ditfurth states, the materialist scientific approach adopts as its basic principle explaining life by denying "supernatural interference", i.e. creation. Once this principle is adopted, even the most impossible scenarios are easily accepted. It is possible to find examples of this dogmatic mentality in almost all evolutionist literature.
Professor Ali Demirsoy, the well-known advocate of evolutionary theory in Turkey, is just one of many. As we have already pointed out, according to Demirsoy: the probability of the coincidental formation of cythochrome-C, an essential protein for life, is "as unlikely as the possibility of a monkey writing the history of humanity on a typewriter without making any mistakes"178
There is no doubt that to accept such a possibility is actually to reject the basic principles of reason and common sense. Even one single correctly formed letter written on a page makes it certain that it was written by a person. When one sees a book of world history, it becomes even more certain that the book has been written by an author. No logical person would agree that the letters in such a huge book could have been put together "by chance".
However, it is very interesting to see that the "evolutionist scientist" Professor Ali Demirsoy accepts this sort of irrational proposition:
In essence, the probability of the formation of a cytochrome-C sequence is as likely as zero. That is, if life requires a certain sequence, it can be said that this has a probability likely to be realised once in the whole universe. Otherwise some metaphysical powers beyond our definition must have acted in its formation. To accept the latter is not appropriate for the scientific goal. We thus have to look into the first hypothesis.179
Demirsoy writes that he prefers the impossible, in order "not to have to accept supernatural forces"-in other words, the existence of a Creator. It is clear that this approach has no relation whatsoever with science. Not surprisingly, when Demirsoy cites another subject-the origins of the mitochondria in the cell-he openly accepts coincidence as an explanation, even though it is "quite contrary to scientific thought".
The heart of the problem is how the mitochondria have acquired this feature, because attaining this feature by chance even by one individual, requires extreme probabilities that are incomprehensible... The enzymes providing respiration and functioning as a catalyst in each step in a different form make up the core of the mechanism. A cell has to contain this enzyme sequence completely, otherwise it is meaningless. Here, despite being contrary to biological thought, in order to avoid a more dogmatic explanation or speculation, we have to accept, though reluctantly, that all the respiration enzymes completely existed in the cell before the cell first came in contact with oxygen.180
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| Mitochondria |
The conclusion to be drawn from such pronouncements is that evolution is not a theory arrived at through scientific investigation. On the contrary, the form and substance of this theory were dictated by the requirements of materialistic philosophy. It then turned into a belief or dogma in spite of concrete scientific facts. Again, we can clearly see from evolutionist literature that all of this effort has a "purpose"-and that purpose precludes any belief that all living things were not created no matter what the price.
Evolutionists define this purpose as "scientific". However, what they refer to is not science but materialist philosophy. Materialism absolutely rejects the existence of anything "beyond" matter (or of anything supernatural). Science itself is not obliged to accept such a dogma. Science means exploring nature and deriving conclusions from one's findings. If these findings lead to the conclusion that nature is created, science has to accept it. That is the duty of a true scientist; not defending impossible scenarios by clinging to the outdated materialist dogmas of the 19th century.
The Scientific Death of Materialism |
| Constituting as it does the philosophical underpinnings of the theory of evolution, 19th-century materialism suggested that the universe existed since eternity, that it was not created, and that the organic world could be explained in terms of the interactions of matter. The discoveries of 20th-century science however have completely invalidated these hypotheses. The supposition that the universe has existed since eternity was blown away by the discovery that the universe originated from a great explosion (the so-called "Big Bang") that took place nearly 15 billion years ago. The Big Bang shows that all physical substances in the universe came into being out of nothing: in other words, they were created. One of the foremost advocates of materialism, the atheist philosopher Anthony Flew concedes: Notoriously, confession is good for the soul. I will therefore begin by confessing that the Stratonician atheist has to be embarressed by the contemporary cosmological consensus (Big Bang). For it seems that the cosmologists are providing a scientific proof ... that the universe had a beginning.1 The Big Bang also shows that at each stage, the universe was shaped by a controlled Creation. This is made clear by the order that came about after the Big Bang, which was too perfect to have been formed from an uncontrolled explosion. The famous physician Paul Davies explains this situation: It is hard to resist the impression that the present structure of the universe, apparently so sensitive to minor alterations in the numbers, has been rather carefully thought out... The seeming miraculous concurrence of numerical values that nature has assigned to her fundamental constants must remain the most compelling evidence for an element of cosmic design.2 The same reality makes an American professor of astronomy, George Greenstein, say: As we survey all the evidence, the thought insistently arises that some supernatural agency -or rather Agency- must be involved.3 Thus, the materialistic hypothesis that life can be explained solely in terms of the interactions of matter also collapsed in the face of the the discoveries of science. In particular, the origin of the genetic information that determines all living things can by no means be explained by any purely material agent. One of the leading defenders of the theory of evolution, George C. Williams, admits this fact in an article he wrote in 1995: Evolutionist biologists have failed to realize that they work with two more or less incommensurable domains: that of information and that of matter... the gene is a package of information, not an object... This dearth descriptors makes matter and information two separate domains of existence, which have to be discussed separately, in their own terms.4 This situation is evidence for the existence of a supra-material Wisdom that makes genetic information exist. It is impossible for matter to produce information within itself. The director of the German Federal Institute of Physics and Technology, Proffessor Werner Gitt, remarks: All experiences indicate that a thinking being voluntarily exercising his own free will, cognition, and creativity, is required. There is no known law of nature, no known process and no known sequence of events which can cause information to originate by itself in matter.5 All these scientific facts illustrate that Allah, Who has external power and knowledge, creates the universe and all living things. As for materialism, Arthur Koestler, one of the most renowned philosophers of our century says: "It can no longer claim to be a scientific philosophy"6 |
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