Atheists use evolution to strengthen their argument that God does not exist. So, if you get into a discussion with an atheist, you might want to be prepared with some facts. Otherwise, if you are curious as to where the Evolution vs. Creationist debate stands today, listen in.
This is “Science and Scriptures” Episode #3 – (or What You Might Say to an Atheist Evolutionist)
Hello everyone. This is your host Scott Frazer and I would like to welcome you to episode #3 of the podcast Science and Scriptures. In the past two episodes, we discussed the reasons for earth life and the role that disease and danger play in it. Along with everything else it has done, COVID-19 has caused people to realize that they had to be more diligent about caring for their health for fear of getting sick and even dying. Is life just about dodging death, quarantining ourselves for months at a time? Is the threat so bad that we must wear facemasks in public? It appears the pro-facemask group is winning that battle.
Being forced to face one’s mortality tends to raise questions about earth life and the afterlife. It encourages non-religious people to wonder if religion should play a greater role in their lives. When you think you will live forever, religion can be… delayed. But now, maybe not. As members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, we should be ready to answer such questions.
We are supposed to be ready to give answers to Gospel questions to strangers, fellow ward members, our children and grandchildren. In 1 Peter 3:15, Peter counsels,
“But sanctify the Lord God in your hearts: and be ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear:”
With a career in the sciences, I have had numerous opportunities to discuss the Gospel with learned men and women who believed in Evolution, but not perhaps in God.In general, those conversations ended up amicably, and I was able communicate why I believe in both God and Evolution.
You see, I am an Evolutionary Theist. Various definitions abound in this area, so one must be careful. Being a Theist just means that you believe in God. An Evolutionary Theist believes in God and that He used natural forces and evolution to create our earth.
According to a Gallup poll in 2014, about 31% of Americans believe in theistic evolution, so it appears about a third of the country agrees with me.
According to the same poll, about 42% of Americans believe God created man as he is, with no help at all from evolution. These people would be called Creationists, many of whom still believe the world was created in six days.
About 19% do not believe in God or that He was involved in the Creation. These people might be called atheistic evolutionists. Generally all atheists are evolutionists, since it is the only viable alternative to God in explaining how we all got here. But please understand that all evolutionists are not atheists. One can believe in evolution and God at the same time.
Now, Evolutionary Theists who believe in the God-using-Evolution model can range widely in their beliefs. How much of the Creation was due to God and how much was due to evolution?God might have been involved every day over the four billion years of the Creation. Or He could have checked on progress every few million years and made adjustments. Most theists’ beliefs lie somewhere between those two extremes. I personally don’t think God had to be on Earth supervising the Creation full time. Once He had started the process, He probably was able to let natural evolution take its course for very long stretches of time.
But being a Theist means you can be criticized by both Creationists (for not being more loyal to a literal reading of the book of Genesis) and by Atheists for believing in God at all. In this podcast, I am going to lay out my approach to discussing the creation with Atheists. In the next podcast, I will tell you my approach in explaining my beliefs to Creationists. You may not know any atheists, so you may never get the chance to verbalize this argument. But if you are curious as to what the two sides of the Creation argument are, please listen in.
To understand the argument between atheists and those who believe in God, a little history is necessary. There were actually three scientific discoveries that led to the development of the field of evolutionary biology. These discoveries did NOT lead to the argument that God did not exist. Many people were questioning God’s existence long before Charles Darwin published his book.So let me tell you the abbreviated stories of the discoveries that led to our present evolutionary theory.
Discovery #1
Appropriately, the first discovery that led to the theory of evolutionary biology was indeed the theory of evolution first proposed by Charles Darwin.
Charles Darwin was born in England in 1809. He graduated from Cambridge in 1831 with plans to become a clergyman. So Darwin clearly believed in God. But Darwin’s interest in geology and natural history won him an appointment as the naturalist on the surveying ship H.M.S. Beagle, bound for South America. During stops made in the Galapagos Islands, Darwin noted that birds had different beaks best suited to consume the seeds and other foods available specifically for the island on which they lived. From this and other examples, Darwin gradually built his case for evolution. Darwin knew his theories would be contested and that they would be used to dismiss God as the Creator. It is believed Darwin delayed publication because of his fears.
In November 1859, Darwin finally published his theories in his famous book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.His first edition sold out immediately and evolution made headlines. As Darwin had feared, members of the social elite, scientists, and celebrities worldwide hailed the book as the discovery of the century and that it removed the need for God in the creation of our world.
Discovery #2 was a better understand the workings of DNA – or HOW species could evolve
But very little was understood as to exactly HOW evolution occurred biologically. What was the biological mechanism that promoted evolution? The idea of “natural selection” was understood and accepted – obviously the strong of a species survive and go on reproduce.Advantages in survival and reproduction within a species will be incorporated into successive generations, which changes the species forever. But the biological mechanisms of how traits were passed on was not understood.
In 1953, James Watson and Francis Crick determined that DNA, the blueprint of our bodies, was constructed as a double helix. This discovery eventually enabled scientists to determine how DNA was constructed from parental DNA, and how traits could be passed on to children. In their studies, these early geneticists came to realize that a species could be changed by errors in DNA transcription. Many genetic flaws are fatal, some have no effect, and a few are advantageous. In any case, accidental or not, changes in DNA can be additive allowing one species can create a new species.
However, without a Creator or a Director of such events, it was understood that evolution by random genetic flaws would be a chaotic, stumbling process. In the movie, Jurassic Park, the actor Jeff Goldbloom declares, “Life finds a way” to evolve. Well, not really. Life has not found a way on the other planets or moons in our solar system. We couldn’t (and still can’t) even figure out how to create life in our most advanced labs. Leaving each step of the process of evolution to random chance would take millions of years at least. If the earth was only 10,000 years old, as was believed at the time, how could the spectrum of plants, insects, and animals ever had time to evolve?
Cue Discovery #3
The third major finding to fuel the evolution debate was the discovery that the earth was much older than had been previously believed. For centuries, mankind believed that the earth was created in 4000 BC. In 1862, the physicist Lord Kelvin published his calculations that set the age of earth at between 20 million and 400 million years. There was a good deal of debate on the subject, but by 1900 geologists had reached a general consensus that the age of the earth was around 100 million years old. The science of radiometric dating increased the estimated age of the earth further, and by 1920, the accepted age of the earth had jumped to two billion years.Three elements found in the earth’s crust decay slowly but at a very constant rate to become more stable elements. By analyzing the ratio of the original elements to their breakdown products, one can determine the age of almost any given rock. In 1927, Arthur Holmes published a book estimating the earth to be between 1.6 to 3.0 billion years old. In 1956, Clair Cameron Patterson, using uranium-lead isotope dating, concluded the earth was 4.55 billion years old, which is very close to today’s accepted age.
All of this came together in the 1950’s and the evolution debate has continued since then. It appeared that evolution removed the need for God, so most religions declared it an enemy. There were protest marches and demonstrations by both sides. Battles were fought in countless school board meetings as to whether creation theory or evolution theory or, heaven forbid, both theories should be taught in our schools.
But then, in the past 20 – 30 years, we have heard very little about the Genesis vs. Evolution debate. What used to be the hottest topic of debate has dwindled and now there are few articles in magazines and even fewer in our newspapers. From the poll I mentioned, it appears that 42% of Americans believed God created man with no help from evolution. Despite that fact, Evolution is accepted by the global Biology community and schools routinely teach evolutionary theory in their biology classes. And yes, Brigham Young University has an Evolutionary Biology program and teaches evolution.
As will be discussed in the next podcast, the evidence for evolution is overwhelming. But what do you say to an evolutionist friend who may be trying to overwhelm you with that evidence? I suggest you agree with him or her. Evolution was indeed used to create the wide variety of life that we have on our planet. That question is really not under serious debate any longer. The debatable question is, “Was evolution guided by a Creator or was it Random and under no guidance? I am going to make the case for God as the Great Director, both because I am a Theist and the data is overwhelming.
Let me start with a metaphor to help illustrate this question.
If a man builds a house, who should get the credit for the new building—the man or his tools? After all, unless the man can cut construction lumber with his teeth and pound nails with his skull, his tools are absolutely essential for the work. The man had to use tools and construction materials to translate the house design he had in his head to the actual house itself. Now, if I examine the house, I can tell you what tools were used. By looking at the cuts in the lumber, I can tell you if the man used a radial saw, a hand saw, or an axe. By looking at the impressions of the hammer around the nails, I can tell you if he used a framing hammer, a finishing hammer, a sledgehammer, or a nail gun. Tools leave evidence. But by looking at the house, I can tell you very little about the man who wielded the tools. I can tell you if I like his taste in houses and if he attends to the small details of building a home. But that is about all. The Creator does not generally leave evidence of His work. But it is rather impossible for the house to have built itself.
In 1802, a man named William Paley wrote a book entitled Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity Collected from The Appearance of Nature. In it, he put forth a much more famous metaphor than mine. He proposed that if he chanced upon a stone during a walk in the wilderness, he might conclude that it had lain there forever. It was simply a rock. However, if he were to find a watch on such a path, he would have to conclude the watch had a maker. The watch was too complex to have occurred randomly. Nature, Paley concluded, is like the watch—so complex that it had to have a Maker.
In 1986, Richard Dawkins, the preeminent atheist spokesman of his century, wrote the book, The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design, criticizing the 184-year-old metaphor. But the metaphor is still applicable today and the question remains.
Besides the watch and watchmaker metaphor, others have been suggested over the years. Could a roomful of monkeys with typewriters write a Shakespearian novel if given a million years to do so? Could a pile of airliner parts hit by a tornado ever end up as a completed Boeing 247 ready for flight? All asked the same question - Could a complex universe have been created by random events?
Randomness can only explain simple events. For example, you could flip a coin five times and get five heads. Random chance allows that. The explanation is that you got lucky and random chance allowed you to flip five heads out of five flips. But if you were to flip 10 heads in a row (with odds of 1/1,024) you should probably become very suspicious of the coin. If you were to flip 20 heads in a row (with odds of 1 in over a million (1,048,576) you would know something is amiss. Admittedly, as they tell you in the lottery ads, it could happen. But it is much more likely that the answer is more complex than simple random luck. Someone has rigged your game. The coin is two-headed, weighted, or the person flipping it is cheating.
However, through the mid-1900s, no one really believed that the universe, earth, or life was that complex. Earth was certainly a beautiful planet, teeming with life. But it was greatly underappreciated. No one recognized the rare ability of a planet to support life. Many thought that Mars and even Venus could be populated. And life itself was seen as simple. In cell biology, for example, a bacterium was considered to be simply a cell membrane surrounding a small drop of salt water, with a nucleus for the DNA, and a few other organs whose functions weren’t really understood. Single-celled bacteria used to be “Simple” Cells. As it turns out, that was a hugely flawed misnomer
What has changed? In the last few decades, it has been found that single-celled organisms are much more complex and amazing than we once thought possible. Thousands of biochemical reactions are occurring every second in single-celled organisms in order for them to collect and digest nutrients, dispose of waste, and reproduce. Cells in multi-celled organisms (like us) have to do all that and communicate with other cells around them as well.
Returning to our question – Could a cell or a human being have evolved through random processes? Let’s look at the difficulties of building a protein. Proteins are the workhorses in your body and conduct most of the biochemical reactions required to keep you alive. Proteins must have complex yet precise structures to allow them to do their jobs.
We are going to talk a bit about biology and math, but don’t worry, it’s pretty straightforward. Proteins are produced in cells from DNA blueprints using combinations of 20 different amino acids. Just like our alphabet of 26 letters is used to write a book, this group of 20 amino acids is used to create proteins. But just like a good story cannot have many misspelled words, a functioning protein cannot have misplaced amino acids. These amino acids must come together just right to give each protein its three-dimensional structure, which gives it the molecular bonding capabilities it requires to do its job.
What is the probability of making a relatively small protein, say a starch-digesting amylase of just 200 amino acids, randomly stitching them together from a pool of all of the amino acids? First let’s say we would need the amino acid glycine to take the end spot. Since there are 20 amino acids, the chances of this happening are one chance in twenty (1/20). Then let’s assume we need tryptophan to take the second position; the chances of this happening are also 1/20. But, if you remember your high school math, the chance of both glycine and tryptophan being in their correct positions is 1/20 multiplied by 1/20, or 1/400. This exercise in probability continues. Let’s say the third amino acid in the chain must be leucine, but the odds of the glycine—tryptophan—leucine chain forming are now 1/8000. We now must add on another 197 amino acids. To calculate the chance of the full protein being made in the proper sequence is 20 to the power of 200 (20200) or 1 chance in 10260 th power.
To put his number in perspective, the odds of winning a recent large Powerball jackpot were reported as 1 in 292.2 million. Thus you have a better chance of winning the Powerball lottery every year for 40 years than you would of randomly building a protein of 200 amino acids. So the math exercise is now over – hopefully the take-away message is clear.
The molecular biology of your DNA is even more mind-numbingly complex. With DNA we use nucleic acids as the building blocks. We could run another mathematical exercise to determine the probability of making a functioning DNA molecule randomly. But neither you nor I are up to it – and the chances will be outrageously slim. Your genome is made up of 23 pairs of chromosomes and those chromosomes are made up of about 3 billion base pairs of nucleic acids. Richard Dawkins, the appointed spokesman for atheism for many years, argued that God did not have to exist because DNA did all the work of evolution. DNA is a great tool and does a lot of the work in reproducing cells or humans. But DNA did not appear from nothing. The chances of building such an enormously complex double-helix molecule from scratch are so low that … well it’s impossible.
Once you have built your DNA and proteins, you must set up the many organic reactions required to run a cell. To break glucose down to energy that is usable by a cell requires four major sequences – called glycolysis, the Link reaction, the Krebs cycle, and the electron transport chain.But within these sequences, Glycolysis is made up of ten organic chemistry reactions, the Link reaction requires 4 reactions, the Krebs cycle is made up of 10 independent reactions, and electron transport requires another 3 reactions, all in a specific order. Try to set up that sequence of events randomly…
The debate between pure evolutionists and pure creationists has become a question of whether undirected evolution could navigate the complexity of creating the earth, life, and mankind. The initial response to this challenge by evolutionists was to point out that every complex operation can be broken down to a list of simpler operations. This is true. But with the added complexity of the last few decades, the lists of simple operations to create a cell, or a person, have gotten impossibly long. Any model that requires randomness to accomplish such long lists of tasks has lost credibility.
When presented with these, let’s face it, impossible odds, atheists argued that given billions of years even something as wildly improbable as randomly-constructed proteins could happen. In 1954, George Wald, a Harvard University biochemist and Nobel Laureate summarized this argument in the journal Scientific American,
“Time is in fact the hero of the plot. The time with which we have to deal is of the order of two billion years. What we regard as impossible on the basis of human experience is meaningless here. Given so much time, the ‘impossible’ becomes possible, the possible probable, and the probable virtually certain. One has only to wait: time itself performs the miracles.”
It turns out that Dr. Wald was wrong. Twenty-five years later, as we came to understand the complexity of biological life, Scientific American retracted the article. They stated that Wald was wrong and (I quote) “that merely to create a single bacterium would require more time than the universe might ever see if chance combinations of its molecules were the only driving force.”
Speaking of the evolution of life, Simon Conway Morris, a paleobiologist at Cambridge stated,
“The number of potential ‘blind alleys’ is so enormous that in principle all the time since the beginning of the universe would be insufficient to find the one in a trillion trillion solutions that actually work.”
So, the furor of the debate between Evolutionists and Creationists has died down over the past few decades. Evolution is now accepted throughout the world, though six-day creationists still exist. The Laws of Probability make a strong case that evolution could NOT have been a random process, yet most evolutionists are not willing to identify God as the Director of the process. So, the debate has become a standoff. We can only wait and see what the future holds.
Thanks for your time in listening to this episode of the podcast Science and Scriptures. Please consider listening to my next episode, where we will discuss what you might tell a Creationist in a discussion about Genesis. If you wish to ask a question or leave me a comment, please send me a note to scottrfrazer@gmail.com. Have a good week and take care.