Explore
Also Available in:

It’s all bluff

by

This article first appeared in CMI-UK/Europe’ CMIExtra, March 2018.
Professor-Brian-Cox
Professor Brian Cox

The media often give the impression that evolution is scientific because scientists can tell us how it happened. In reality, the supposedly ‘factual’ accounts of where the universe came from and how the earth’s plant and animal life evolved are no more than imaginative stories. When pressed for details, the more honest scientists will sometimes admit that they really don’t know.

The big bang

According Professor Brian Cox, “You cannot claim that there wasn’t a big bang because you can see it”.1 Here he is not referring to the big bang itself, but what he believes to be its ‘afterglow’, a background heat that fills the universe, a remnant of the ‘original fireball’. What he doesn’t let on, however, is that this ‘afterglow’ (known as the Cosmic Microwave Background or ‘CMB’) is also a major problem for the theory. Explosions result in chaos; but the CMB is extremely smooth and even across the universe—the very opposite of what we would expect.2

Usually a problem of this magnitude would cause people to doubt the theory and look for an alternative explanation. But not so! Wholly undeterred, some secular cosmologists came up with a solution which they called ‘inflation’ (see Cosmic inflation: Did it really happen?). Their calculations indicated that the problem would go away if the expansion in an early stage was speeded up. (Actually it needed to be speeded up an awful lot—faster even than the speed of light!)

One of the early pioneers of ‘inflation theory’ was Paul Steinhardt, now Albert Einstein Professor in Science at Princeton University. Having worked on this for over twenty years, he admitted that it really has no scientific basis, relying on ‘convenient’ and unprovable assumptions.3 Secular cosmologists have clearly not solved the problem and big bang theory is still just as much a product of storytelling as it always has been.

The origin of life

In the 1950s, Harold Urey and Stanley Miller constructed some apparatus which supposedly reproduced conditions present on the ‘early’ earth, with a primitive atmosphere and water. Using sparks to simulate lightning strikes, they produced amino acids, some of the building blocks needed for life. According to the BBC:

“The Miller-Urey experiment supported the theory of a ‘primordial soup’, the idea that complex chemicals needed for living things to develop could be produced naturally on the early Earth.”4

In reality they produced small amounts of less than half of the 20 different amino acid types needed for life—and none of the other necessary components.5 In addition, the amino acids that were produced were an unsuitable mixture of left-handed and right-handed forms. (Life requires these to be all like-handed.) Hence, to claim, as the BBC does, that the Urey-Miller experiment gives credence to the idea that natural processes can produce life from ordinary chemicals is absurd. It’s like arguing that, since natural processes might produce brick-like slabs, complex buildings with modern kitchens, fridges microwave ovens and air conditioning systems could come into being without an intelligent designer. According to one of the world’s leading organic chemists, Professor James Tour:

“Life requires carbohydrates, nucleic acids, lipids, and proteins. What is the chemistry behind their origin? Biologists seem to think that there are well-understood prebiotic molecular mechanisms for their synthesis. They have been grossly misinformed. … Nobody understands them.”6

Darwinian evolution

Encyclopaedia Britannica tells us, “Charles Darwin argued that organisms come about by evolution, and he provided a scientific explanation … of how evolution occurs”. Yet, according to Oxford University’s Professor Denis Noble, “…. all the central assumptions of the Modern Synthesis [i.e. the ‘neo-Darwinian theory’ or modern form of Darwin’s theory] have been disproved.”7 Along with a significant number of evolutionists, he is looking for a better theory!8

The neo-Darwinian process of mutation and selection can explain some examples of organisms changing and how this can enable them to survive better (or reproduce more) than others. However, as explained by Professor Scott Gilbert, the theory “looks at adaptations that concern the survival of the fittest, not the arrival of the fittest”.9 In other words, while mutation and selection may generate minor adaptions, they cannot produce major changes in an organism’s basic design and turn microbes into men.

Refuting evolution is not difficult

The theory of evolution is maintained by bluff. It’s like the story of the Emperor’s New Clothes. Everyone was telling everyone else that the emperor was finely dressed because (and only because) everyone else was saying so. Similarly, everyone is telling everyone else that evolution is well supported by science because (and only because) everyone else is saying so. Our experience is that this is true not only of the general public but also of many scientists.10

The problems with evolution are not that difficult to understand and it is possible for laypeople to grasp many of the arguments. With a little determination and help, they can see for themselves the scientific bankruptcy of the claim that life can arise without the hand of a Creator. Every edition of Creation magazine is designed to help you and your family to do this. If you don’t already get it, why not subscribe today?

Published: 4 December 2018

References and notes

  1. The last leg, Series 1, Episode 2, Channel 4; youtube.com/watch?v=fLp0bwDMJ28. Return to text.
  2. This is known as the ‘horizon problem’. See Lisle, J., Light-travel time: a problem for the big bang, Creation 25(4):48–49 September 2003; creation.com/lighttravel. Return to text.
  3. Ijjas, A., Steinhardt, P.J. and Loeb, A., Cosmic inflation theory faces challenges, Scientific American, February 2017. Return to text.
  4. www.bbc.co.uk/schools/gcsebitesize/science/aqa/earth/earthsatmosphererev4.shtml. Return to text.
  5. Bergman, J., Why the Miller–Urey research argues against abiogenesis, Journal of Creation 18(2):28–36, August 2002. Return to text.
  6. Tour, J., Animadversions of a synthetic chemist, 2016; inference-review.com. Return to text.
  7. Noble, D., Physiology is rocking the foundations of evolutionary biology, Experimental Physiology 98(8):1235–1243, 2013; DOI: 10.1113/expphysiol.2012.071134. Return to text.
  8. Mazur, S., The Altenberg 16: An exposé of the evolution industry, North Atlantic Books, CA, 2010. Return to text.
  9. Gilbert, S. et al., Resynthesizing evolutionary and developmental biology, Developmental Biology 173:357–372, 1996. Return to text.
  10. See also Howard, G., Can all those scientists be wrong? Creation 36(1):20–22, January 2014; creation.com/scientists-wrong. Return to text.

Helpful Resources

Busting Myths
by J Sarfati & G Bates, edited
US $10.00
Soft cover
Busting Myths
by J Sarfati & G Bates, edited
US $10.00
epub (ebook) download
Busting Myths
by J Sarfati & G Bates, edited
US $10.00
mobi (ebook) download