The media persists in shilling for neo-Darwinism's obsolete myths offering blizzards of prolific clichés.  U.S. News & World Report added whitewash to the redundancy, pronouncing the issue settled.

"...Evolution moves beyond guesswork... scientists say evolution is no longer ‘just a theory'."¹

Now that is news!!!!  Or is it?

This news weekly's appraisal is not an objective assessment from a rocket scientist in the tradition of a Wernher von Braun but conjectured phrases in a pair of the journal's published essays.  The articles cite a chorus of more than a dozen evolutionists but cast an incidental nod to proponents of "Intentional Design."

The respected weekly assured readers "...Scientists have confirmed virtually all of Darwin's postulates."²

Really??? 

Or is this just another knee-jerk nod to the implausible and the mathematically impossible? Let's see now...what specific Darwin "postulates" have, in fact, been "confirmed"? 

How about vaccination? 

Darwin's elitist assessments don't jibe with 21^st century medical science knowledge.  "...Vaccination has preserved thousands, who from weak constitution would formerly have succumbed to small-pox...this must be highly injurious to the race of man" and "leads to the degeneration of a domestic race..."³  

Science disagrees!

"The introduction of vaccines during the early part of the last century...contributed to the decline of diseases that had been responsible for much of the morbidity and mortality of humans during recorded history.  Indeed, vaccination is considered the most effective medical intervention..."⁴

Or how about Darwin's touting "...distinction in the intellectual powers of the two sexes" empowering a man to attain "...to a higher eminence in whatever he takes up..." since "...the average standard of mental power in man must be above that of a woman."?⁵  

And there's more.

Not only did evolutionism's guru suggest that far back in human genealogy lurked some fish as well as a a single sex hermaphrodite but also informed readers "Man is descended from a hairy quadruped, furnished with a tail and pointed ears..."⁶  

Such scientifically outrageous and less than politically correct "postulates" saturate Darwin's literary legacy. 

But give the guy some credit: he fretted about "flaws" and "holes" in his prodigious pronouncements.  "...My speculations run beyond the bounds of true science...It is a mere rag of an hypothesis with as many flaw[s] and holes as sound parts."⁷

What did Darwin "postulate" that warrants knee-jerk worship?

Certainly not chemical evolution by spontaneous generation in which the first living cell allegedly arrived accidentally, courtesy of some mysterious primordial soup formula.  Darwin admitted bafflement. "..Science as yet throws no light on the far higher problem of the essence or origin of life."⁸ 

His notoriety related to biological evolution - the molecule-to-man scenario where all life supposedly started from that first single cell that emerged by random chance.  The English naturalist argued that next came small, incremental changes from the "simple" cell to more complex systems, accumulating over a bazillion years, more-or-less, until voila - all life forms came into existence. 

One of Darwin's more outlandish suppositions never made it past his 1859 first edition of The Origin of Species, in which he asserted he could "see no difficulty in a race of bears being rendered, by natural selection, more and more aquatic in the structure and habits...till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale."⁹ Awash in the potential of his imaginings, Darwin concluded "...we may safely infer that not one living species will transmit its unaltered likeness to a distant futurity."¹⁰

All this from a guy who thought a cell a blob of protoplasm; never had access to electricity much less an electron microscope; and apparently had no knowledge of Gregor Mendel's research.

Evolutionism's bottom line: life is but a freak of nature; human intelligence emerged by random chance from prebiotic slime; all species dead-end in nothingness, just a blip on the screen.

"Confirmed?"  Not hardly!

But Darwin was on target about one thing! 

Right from the git-go, the sudden appearance of complex life-forms at the Cambrian explosion perplexed the canny philosopher.  Where were the "infinite number of intermediate" life forms that should load the fossil record?

"Why do we not find beneath this system great piles of strata stored with the remains of the progenitors of the Cambrian fossils?" ¹¹  

Evolutionism's 21^st century apologists introduce far-fetched scenarios in attempts to gloss-over those "flaws" and "holes."  U.S. News volunteers a wondrous threadbare patch that undercuts the fabric of Darwin's gradualism, suggesting a process "...too fast to leave a record in the fossils." 

Just a minute here - Darwin touted gradualism with incremental changes supposedly accumulating over millions of years.  Which is it now - "too fast" or "deep time"?  Seems like it should be eons of deep time if Darwin is to be vindicated.  But "too fast?"

And what about the lengthy list of complex animal forms present at the dawn of the Cambrian Explosion without fossil ancestry?  No question, extinction has eradicated many life forms.  But what about the descendants of those Cambrian era critters, surviving and thriving, virtually unchanged in the 21^st century? 

A host of these surviving species live diminished in size, shrinking radically compared to their giant fossil ancestors. (The litany of these ancient giants include an eighty-foot shark, a crocodile with a seven-foot head, and dragon flies with three-foot wing spans).

Deep time stasis pervades - the precise opposite of evolutionism's insistence on radical change!!!

Not only does evolutionism remain hopelessly unconfirmed, the alleged anchor mechanism for neo-Darwinism undermines the teetering stack of philosophical cards.

The Mutation Bug-a-Boo

Darwin envisioned that muscles strengthened by a parent could be passed on to descendants. He reasoned, erroneously, that non-existent "gemmules" transferred the change from the body's somatic cells to its germ cells.   Confronted with the absurdity of this primitive superstition, neo-Darwinists abandoned the guru's pathway to nowhere and argued instead that gene mutations set the stage so that nature can complete the drastic alteration envisioned by means of natural selection.

Big problem here!

All scientists, creationists and evolutionists, recognize the enormous capacity of the genome of a life form to adapt to its environment.  Evolutionists extrapolate adaptation, the obvious real, to prove evolution, the never was and never will be. Still many influential scientists remain dazzled by the rhetoric.

Far from confirming evolution as fact, the proven reality of adaptive change does not and cannot equate evolution.  Adaptation: absolutely!  Evolution producing an entirely new and different critter: never!

It's time to get real!

Mutations never provide the new information to a genetic code necessary to pave the way so that a "bear can evolve into something as monstrous as a whale." Even given multi-millions of years, the mutation rate is not demonstrably fast enough to evolve the full spectrum of today's life forms.¹²

And here's the clincher: mutations are overwhelmingly deleterious.

Mutations typically induce a corruption or a loss of preexisting genomic information.  Even in the rare case of an arguably "good" mutation, new information is not added to the genetic code. 

There is not a scintilla of evidence that any mutation or series of mutations have joined with natural selection to drive evolution.

Redundant clichés citing fruit fly and bacteria mutations confirm only the adaptation potential within a preexisting genetic code, never evolution to an entirely new life form.  Thousands of generations later, fruit flies remain fruit-flies (albeit possibly crippled and deformed) never emerging as dragon flies or butterflies.  And of course bacteria replicate prodigiously as bacteria...ad infinitum.

To allege the fiction of evolution is to turn nature upside down.  The human mind uses inanimate matter as raw material to design, create and innovate.  The reverse has never been demonstrated in the laboratory.  Can it be argued seriously that non-intelligent inanimate matter actually produced intelligent life, on its own, by the luck of the draw?

Intelligent Design

Reports touting evolution typically give short shrift to Intelligent Design - usually ignoring quotes from distinguished scientists who challenge academia to "teach the controversy."  U.S. News argues "mainstream scientists" give "ID equal time...by rebutting it in public debates, books, and the press."  Such gratuitous media propaganda seeks self-justification by asserting "ID's arguments are...well beyond the average American's knowledge of science."

Is the public so hopelessly ignorant that they can be taught to understand and make sense of Darwin's fondest imaginings but too dumb to comprehend that a mouse trap won't function if any one of its simple parts is removed?

Englishman Richard Dawkins, avowed atheist and an extravagantly outspoken evolutionist, assessed the status of an evolution doubter in less than scientific terms. "...If you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is either ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."¹³  

Michael Ruse, scientist and atheist, describes evolution as "...a full-fledged alternative to Christianity...Evolution is a religion.  This was true of evolution in the beginning, and it is true of evolution still today."¹⁴ 

Other evolutionists attempt to reconcile religion with a theistic evolution, claiming "...evolution is more in line with Christian teachings" than Intelligent Design - quite a stretch since Christ, whose life represented a Divine miracle, taught the Biblical account of creation and the deluge of Noah's day.   Despite the twisted logic of theistic evolution, the gap can't be bridged - it's an either or.

"...must we really light a candle to see the sun?"

Wernher von Braun ranked as a towering "mainline scientist" of the 20^th century.  His words must rankle those who worship at the shrine of Darwinian conjecture.

"...For me, the idea of a creation is not conceivable without invoking the necessity of design. One cannot be exposed to the law and order of the universe without concluding that there must be design and purpose behind it all.  

"In the world around us, we can behold the obvious manifestations of an ordered, structured plan or design. We can see the will of the species to live and propagate. And we are humbled by the powerful forces at work on a galactic scale, and the purposeful orderliness of nature that endows a tiny and ungainly seed with the ability to develop into a beautiful flower. The better we understand the intricacies of the universe and all it harbors, the more reason we have found to marvel at the inherent design upon which it is based.  

"...The scientific method does not allow us to exclude data which lead to the conclusion that the universe, life and man are based on design.  

"To be forced to believe only one conclusion-that everything in the universe happened by chance-would violate the very objectivity of science itself. Certainly there are those who argue that the universe evolved out of a random process, but what random process could produce the brain of a man or the system of the human eye?

"Some people say that science has been unable to prove the existence of a Designer...They challenge science to prove the existence of God. But, must we really light a candle to see the sun? 

"Many men who are intelligent and of good faith say they cannot visualize an electron? The electron is materially inconceivable and yet, it is so perfectly known through its effects that we us it to illuminate our cities, guide our airliners through the night skies and take the most accurate measurements.

"What strange rationale makes some physicists accept the inconceivable electron as real while refusing to accept the reality of a Designer on the ground that they cannot conceive Him?  ...Although they really do not understand the electron either, they are ready to accept it because they managed to produce a rather clumsy mechanical model of it borrowed from rather limited experience in other fields, but they would not know how to begin building a model of God. 

"I have discussed the aspect of a Designer at some length because it might be that the primary resistance to acknowledging the "Case for DESIGN" as a viable scientific alternative to the current "Case for CHANCE" lies in the inconceivability, in some scientists' minds, of a Designer. The inconceivability of some ultimate issue (which will always lie outside scientific resolution) should not be allowed to rule out any theory that explains the interrelationship of observed data and is useful for prediction.

"We in NASA were often asked what the real reason was for the amazing string of successes we had with our Apollo flights to the Moon. I think the only honest answer we could give was that we tried to never overlook anything. 

"It is in that same sense of scientific honesty that I endorse the presentation of alternative theories for the origin of the universe, life and man in the science classroom. It would be an error to overlook the possibility that the universe was planned rather than happening by chance."¹⁵

1. See Thomas Hayden, "A Theory Evolves" and Holly J. Morris, "Life's Grand Design," U.S. News & World Report July 29, 2002, beginning on  p. 42.  Other excerpts from this pair of back-to-back U.S. News & World Report  features are  cited  in this essay without precise  reference to the news weekly or  page.

2. Ibid, p. 43.

3. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1881)  vol. I, p. 168.

4. Rappuoli, Rino, Henry L. Miller, and Stanley Falkow, "The Intangible Value of Vaccination," Science Vol. 297, 9 August 2002, p. 937.

5. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, vol. II, p. 327.

6. Charles Darwin, The Descent of Man, vol. II, p. 389.

7. Charles Darwin letter  to Asa Gray, cited by Adrian Desmond and James Moore, Darwin, (New York: W.W. Norton and Company, 1991) p. 456, 475.

8. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, (New York: Random House, 1993), p. 637.

9. While Darwin abandoned the thought in later editions, the July 29, 2002 issue of U.S. News reported the discovery of Pakistani fossils "...showing step by step how hairy, doglike creatures, took to the sea, and became the first whales."

10. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 547. 

11. Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, p. 617, 618.

12. See Fred Williams, "A Troubling Tip of the Iceberg," CreationDigest.com, Autumn Edition 2002.

13. Phillip E. Johnson, Darwin on Trial (Washington, D.C.: Regnery Gateway, 1991) p. 9.

14. Michael Ruse, "Saving Darwinism from the Darwinians," National Post , May 13, 2000, p. B-3; as quoted by Dr. Henry B. Morris, "Evolution is Religion - not Science," Impact, February, 2001.

15. On September 14, 1972, this letter, addressed to a Mr. Grose and attributed to rocket scientist Wernher von Braun, was read to the California State Board of Education by Dr. John Ford; later cited in Jesus Christ Creator by Kelly Seagraves, 1973; printed in Applied Christianity, then quoted in the Bible Science Newsletter, May, 1974, p. 8. The complete text of the von Braun letter was made available through the courtesy of Dennis R. Petersen, author of Unlocking the Mysteries of Creation (Creation Resource Foundation: El Dorado, California, 1990) p. 63.

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