The Evolution Hypothesis?

Some time ago, I wrote a text for a webpage, which I titled And God created Darwin. It dealt with some answers and questions I had around evolution theory and its relation to the Christian belief. From what I wrote on Christianity on my webpages, this text is the one I received most reactions on. In that text, I wrote:
But similar questions can be placed to the evolution theory. It still is not a complete theory, explaining everything there is, with holes and `missing links', even after its many years of existence.

Since then, I read, heard, and thought more about evolution theory, and found out that what I wrote is indeed very true. In this webpage, I want to point out a few of the current scientific problems the evolution theory still has, and try to draw a few conclusions.

In addition, I have a challenge/question to those who think I am wrong: give me scientific proof that what I write is incorrect.

Overall, many Darwinists (or, as I read this sometimes: Neo-Darwinists) state that their theory is proven fact. Sometimes, this statement goes together with a statement that we have a proven explanation how plants, animals, and mankind became to exist that does not require any religious assumption. Looking to the theory, it however appears that there are still big unresolved parts; indeed, it appears to be a theory which would be, when just looked at it from a scientific viewpoint, in big troubles. Here are some of the major current `problems' of the evolution theory.

The origin of life

One problem of the evolution theory is the creation of the first organism. If one looks to the complexity and size of a single cell, it is totally improbable that this cell was created by cheer chance. A common argument is that there was a lot of time, but actually, there isn't. The `lot of time' argument might go as follows: while it is very improbable that a single cell was created by chance, there was so much time since the start of the world that this chance becomes large enough. However, nobody has ever done the probability theoretic calculations that show this! Actually, given the enormous complexity of a single cell, I believe that probability theory tells us that we cannot assume that molecules in the sea of Earth have spontaneously have formed a single cell by chance. To tell the truth: I haven't either carried out the calculations, but if one reads how complex a cell is, then my guess as a mathematician would be that the size of the oceans times the age of the earth would be insufficient to make the probability of spontaneous creation of a cell large enough. (We know how large the oceans are. For the age of the earth, let's take in this calculation the current prediction of the age of the earth from physics: a few hundred million years.)

There are two or three ways out. A first possible explanation could be that the first life came into being in outerspace. That theory, which deviates from standard evolution theory as we read it in most school books (stating that life was created on earth in the oceans) has its own problems. One of these still comes from probability theory. While we can multiply the tiny probability of the spontaneous creation of a single cell by larger numbers (like the amount of planets in the universe), we must divide again by some number that tells the probability of such a cell reaching earth, and I would guess that the mathematics still wouldn't give a probability that is large enough to make spontaneous creation of a single cell likely enough to have this as a valid scientific assumption. The second way out is that something smaller than a single cell was created, and that that evolved to a single cell. But how? There isn't any scientific theory that tells how something like that could possibly happen (again, with sufficiently large probability). The third answer to the dilemma is of course that the assumption that a single cell was spontaneously created is wrong. So, either the existence of life on earth shows that a Creator exists, or, we should at least say: we currently do not know how the first life on Earth came into existence.

Micro evolution or macro evolution

Darwin did not really address the issue of the creation of the first life; the assumption that it was spontaneously created by chance was added by later followers of him. His theory mainly involved the changes between species. The idea is that sometimes, by chance, certain animals are born with different features from their parents. In some cases, these features give the animals which have them a better chance of survival and thus getting children, so the animals with the better features survive and hence the type of animal is changed somewhat. One can see in nature that such processes indeed sometimes occur; I'll give some examples, so the theory seems convincing. However, if we make a distinction between micro evolution and macro evolution, we see that the theory does not explain how big gaps between different species can be bridged.

An example of micro evolution can be seen in (forgive me the example) lice. At a certain moment, lice die because of a certain type of anti-lice spray. However, a few elements of the population survive, and after some generations of lice (and as lice have a short life and have children quickly, this doesn't take very long), the lice do not die anymore because of the anti-lice spray. This is an example of micro evolution: while we still have basically the same sort of animal, it has a different feature (this time, its resistence against this type of anti-lice spray).

Macro evolution would occur when evolutionary changes would after a while turn an animal in a different type of animal: a monkey in a human, for instance. The existence of micro evolution seems undisputed to me, but does not give any explanation of how the different types of animals (or plants) came into being. Macro evolution claims to be such an explanation, but like micro evolution, macro evolution is, as I will argue below, not a theory that has scientific proof.

The big gaps I: changes between species

If a species is changed to another species gradually, with several steps, then many forms between these two species should have existed At the time Darwin stated his theory, research of fossils was not as far evolved as it was now. At that time, he assumed that the fossils in the earth would later give further proof for his theory. Namely, he expected that these in-between forms would appear as fossils. However, the current palonteologic research has not shown that these in-between forms exist. Many people know the missing link, which is the unavailability of an animal form just before the human, but similar missing links exists at many, many other spots.

Actually, scientific practice tells us that when a theory does a prediction, and the prediction doesn't come true, then one should start to doubt the theory. If Darwin expected fossils to show in-between forms, and after almost 150 years, these didn't show up, wouldn't it be time to no longer take that theory for granted scientific fact?

The big gaps II: the creation of complicated body parts

Evolution theory tells us how small changes can be made, but a DNA change that makes a spontaneous creation of something as complicated as an eye or ear is too unlikely to assume. Thus, when following evolution theory, we could assume that complicated body parts like eyes, ears, livers, etc. etc. etc. were gradually formed, with small changes between different species. However, it is not clear what is the use of some part of a body that is a start of an ear, but which cannot hear. Most of these body parts are only useful if they can perform their function, perhaps not yet optimally, but at least a little. But this contradicts evolution theory: a not functional body part would just be something bad for the animal, and thus the animal with the not yet finished ear would have a smaller chance of survival, and thus not enough chance of getting children. And hence, no animals with a slightly further developped ear, etc.

My conclusion is that evolution theory has no valid explanation how complicated body parts were formed for the first time.

A theory with problems

I summarize: there are at least three basic questions for which the evolution theory has no scientific answer: the formation of the first life on earth, the absense of in-between forms as fossils, and how complex body parts were created. While the theory claims that certain things happened `by chance', these claims are not supported by any mathematical analysis or proof.

Why is evolution theory presented as the ultimate truth?

It is remarkable that a theory with such big and unsolved problems is so often presented as the ultimate truth - look to how it is presented in school books and musea. It is sad, when people draw conclusions from it of the type: I do not believe in God, because I know the evolution theory is true. That conclusion is wrong in two ways: as I argued here, the theory is not proven, so in the least, one replaces one faith by another, but also, even if it were true, it does not mean God does not exist. (I've written on this topic on another webpage.

So, why is this theory with problems presented generally as science without doubts? I see two possible explanations: there is some evidence for the theory that I am unaware of (and in case you are aware of such, email me, and I'll continue on it on this webpage), or some people were too eager to accept and propagate a theory that fitted so well with their atheist ideas, misleading with it many others.

Seeing the gaps doesn't make you a Christian

The holes in the evolution theory are not, on themselves, a scientific proof of the existence of God. Many people will see the hand of a Creator in the complexity of Life on earth; if we see how clever the most tiny parts of the bodies of humans and animals work, and the enormous amount of detail, even in a single cell of an organism, then the existence of a mighty Creator seems evident to many (including me). However, I do not think we should take this as a scientific proof of the existence of God. In the past, people that had no explanation for, say, lightning, gave this as a proof of the existence of God, and Christians shouldn't make the same type of mistake again.

If you want a `proof' that God exists, I can tell you of the moments I felt his presence in my life, and ask you to listen to the many stories of people that did so too. Such a proof will not be accepted by all, and wouldn't be called scientific by many. But, does faith need a scientific proof? And how should such science be carried out? Enough questions to ask, and my answer here is merely: the `proof' is convincing enough for the Christians, and becomes the driving force in their lives.

Seeing the scientific problems of the evolution theory does not make you a Christian. Even more, believing that there is a God that created the Universe, Earth, plants, animals, and men doesn't make you a Christian: there are many religions that do so. The Christian faith tells much more about life than only how/that it was created by God - it tells about Jesus, his crucifiction and raise from the death, about forgiveness of sins, about that we should love and care for the other humans, about prayer, about the afterlife, etc.

Oh, and I believe that, as God created this earth and the living beings on it, we humans should be careful with it, and not destroy it, as, sadly, we're doing on a large scale nowadays...

Why I wrote this text

When I was around 15 years old, I thought a lot about evolution theory and the existence of God. It seemed there was a big gap between what was presented as scientifically proven, and what the church was saying about truth. It took a while before I saw that even when the evolution theory would be true, we can see Gods hand as the guiding force in creation, but it wasn't an easy struggle. I didn't know then, what I know now. So, I wrote this text for people like me, a quarter of a century ago, for people like the boy I recently met that said: I do not believe in God, I believe in the evolution theory, and for people that search for words when they meet such people. I hope that you all will accept Christ as your savior, and that you will not let a scientific hypothesis that seems to me sadly misrepresented, as a barrier between Him and you.

The author

Some ideas of this webpage were derived from/inspired by the book of van den Beukel (see below), which I recommend to those who can read Dutch, and also his other books. This text was written by Hans L. Bodlaender, January 2003. Hans studied mathematics and received a Ph.D. in computer science from Utrecht University, the Netherlands, and is member of a Christian church. If you want to email him, write to hansb@cs.uu.nl.

References

Some other webpages

Hans Bodlaender, January 2, 2003