A SCIENTIFIC BLOW TO DARWINISM

Harun Yahya-A Scientific Blow to Darwinism_ Irreducible Complexity

Anyone who seeks an answer to the question of how living things,
including himself, came into existence, will encounter two distinct
explanations. The first is "creation," the idea that all living things
came into existence as a consequence of an intelligent design. The
second explanation is the theory of "evolution," which asserts that living
things are not the products of an intelligent design, but of coincidental
causes and natural processes.
For a century and a half now, the theory of evolution has received
extensive support from the scientific community. The science of biology is
defined in terms of evolutionist concepts. That is why, between the two
explanations of creation and evolution, the majority of people assume the
evolutionist explanation to be scientific. Accordingly, they believe
evolution to be a theory supported by the observational findings of
science, while creation is thought to be a belief based on faith. As a matter
of fact, however, scientific findings do not support the theory of evolution.
Findings from the last two decades in particular openly contradict the
basic assumptions of this theory. Many branches of science, such as
paleontology, biochemistry, population genetics, comparative anatomy
and biophysics, indicate that natural processes and coincidental effects
cannot explain life, as the theory of evolution proposes.

Despite having its roots in ancient Greece, the theory of evolution was
first brought to the attention of the scientific world in the nineteenth
century. The most thoroughly considered view of evolution was
expressed by the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, in his
Zoological Philosophy (1809). Lamarck thought that all living things
were endowed with a vital force that drove them to evolve toward greater
complexity. He also thought that organisms could pass on to their offspring
traits acquired during their lifetimes. As an example of this line of
reasoning, Lamarck suggested that the long neck of the giraffe evolved
when a short-necked ancestor took to browsing on the leaves of trees
instead of on grass.
This evolutionary model of Lamarck's was invalidated by the
discovery of the laws of genetic inheritance. In the middle of the twentieth
century, the discovery of the structure of DNA revealed that the nuclei of
the cells of living organisms possess very special genetic information, and
that this information could not be altered by "acquired traits." In other
words, during its lifetime, even though a giraffe managed to make its neck
a few centimeters longer by extending its neck to upper
branches, this trait would not pass to its offspring. In brief, the
Lamarckian view was simply refuted by scientific findings, and
went down in history as a flawed assumption.
However, the evolutionary theory formulated by another
natural scientist who lived a couple of generations after
Lamarck proved to be more influential. This natural scientist
was Charles Robert Darwin, and the theory he formulated is
known as "Darwinism."

Charles Darwin based his theory on various observations he made as
a young naturalist on board the H.M.S Beagle, which sailed in late 1831 on
a five-year official voyage around the world. Young Darwin was heavily
influenced by the diversity of species he observed, especially of the
different Galapagos Island finches. The differences in the beaks of these
birds, Darwin thought, were a result of their adaptation to their different
environments.
After this voyage, Darwin started to visit animal markets in England.
He observed that breeders produced new breeds of cow by mating
animals with different characteristics. This experience, together with the
different finch species he observed in the Galapagos Islands, contributed
to the formulation of his theory. In 1859, he published his views in his book
The Origin of Species. In this book, he postulated that all species had
descended from a single ancestor, evolving from one another over time by
slight variations.
What made Darwin's theory different from Lamarck's was his
emphasis on "natural selection." Darwin theorized that there is a struggle
for survival in nature, and that natural selection is the survival of strong
species, which can adapt to their environment. Darwin adopted the
following line of reasoning:
Within a particular species, there are natural and coincidental
variations. For instance some cows are bigger than others, while some
have darker colors. Natural selection selects the favorable traits. The
process of natural selection thus causes an increase of favorable genes
within a population, which results in the features of that population being
better adapted to local conditions. Over time these changes may be
significant enough to cause a new species to arise.
However, this "theory of evolution by natural selection" gave rise to
doubts from the very first:
1- What were the "natural and coincidental variations" referred to by
Darwin? It was true that some cows were bigger than others, while some
had darker colors, yet how could these variations provide an explanation
for the diversity in animal and plant species?
2- Darwin asserted that "Living beings evolved gradually." In this
case, there should have lived millions of "transitional forms." Yet there was
no trace of these theoretical creatures in the fossil record. Darwin gave
considerable thought to this problem, and eventually arrived at the
conclusion that "further research would provide these fossils."
3- How could natural selection explain complex organs, such as eyes,
ears or wings? How can it be advocated that these organs evolved
gradually, bearing in mind that they would fail to function if they had even
a single part missing?
4- Before considering these questions, consider the following: How
did the first organism, the so-called ancestor of all species according to
Darwin, come into existence? Could natural processes give life to
something which was originally inanimate?
Darwin was, at least, aware of some these questions, as can be seen
from the chapter "Difficulties of the Theory." However, the answers he
provided had no scientific validity. H.S. Lipson, a British physicist, makes
the following comments about these "difficulties" of Darwin's:
On reading The Origin of Species, I found that Darwin was much less sure
himself than he is often represented to be; the chapter entitled "Difficulties of
the Theory" for example, shows considerable self-doubt. As a physicist, I was
particularly intrigued by his comments on how the eye would have arisen.1
Darwin invested all his hopes in advanced scientific research, which
he expected to dispel the "difficulties of the theory." However, contrary to
his expectations, more recent scientific findings have merely increased
these difficulties..