Science and the Origin of Man - Authors Introduction

Science and the Origin of Man - Authors Introduction Introduction Gilbert G. K. Chesterton, in his book The Eternal Man, said, "Man is not merely an evolutionary product, he is a revolution by any measure".[1] Chesterton's phrase accurately captures the anxiety many may have about Darwinian interpretation of human origin from its very beginning, and even Alfred Russell Wallace, who co-founded Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, ended up refusing to explain man's emergence in full Darwinian terms, preferring design instead.[2] Since Darwin presented his theory of undirected evolution more than a century and a half ago, a constellation of scientists, philosophers, and thinkers have expressed similar skepticism. However, it has become increasingly common knowledge in recent years that Darwinian interpretations of our human origins are now beyond doubt. But are the clues to these Darwinian explanations of our human origins really that compelling? In this book, three scientists from Cambridge Geosciences will answer this question, but their findings may amaze you. Anne Geiger is a molecular biologist and developmentalist with research experience from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), the University of Washington, and Harvard University. All three of these publications are peer-reviewed in scientific journals, and they are all practitioners of empirical, not just theoretical, science, all of whom believe that Darwin's theory is insufficient to explain man's origin and uniqueness. Before we move forward, it may be useful to define what we are talking about when we refer to "Darwinian evolution"; as (evolution) today in public debates has become a evasive term, it can mean (anything) starting from genetic change over time - an idea that no one disagrees with - to the historical undirected process known (survival of the fittest), which is launched by organisms from the first living cell to the human. Common ancestor: The idea that all living things are descended from one or a few original ancestors that evolved in a process called Darwinism, according to which humans not only share a common origin with monkeys, but also with fungi and shellfish. Natural selection: is the idea (survival of the fittest); modern Darwinian theory combines natural selection with the ideas of modern genetics, random mutations and recombination processes in genes to produce unplanned variations within the living group, where some of these variations help the survival and reproduction of the organism better, and over time these beneficial variations will prevail within the living group, and over time these beneficial traits will combine into new ones. As Darwin himself explained, natural selection is an unconscious and blind process for the future; this process cannot choose new traits based on a future goal or potential benefit, and as a result Darwinian evolution is "an unguided and unplanned process", as thirty-eight Nobel Prize-winning scientists put it in their exhibition Defending Darwin's Theory in 2005. According to Darwinian view, spectacular biological features such as vertebrate eyes, butterfly wings, and the blood-clotting system are blind consequences of evolution, the result of chance (random mutations and recombination) and force (natural selection), as well as of the finest beings such as humans. This book focuses on the scientific debate about human evolution, but let it be clear that there are greater societal implications of this debate, as many secular Darwinists use evolution as a tool to destroy the idea of "human exceptionalism." According to Harvard paleontologist Stephen G. Gould, Darwinian biology "has de-emphasised us from the idealistic creatures made in the image of God"[5], so we are, in Darwinian terms, nothing more than a "accidentalistic idea of the world."[6] Peter Singer, a bioethicist at Princeton University, expresses a similar view, and as an advocate of the killing of disabled fetuses, Singer explains that Darwinism provides the basis for this inferior view of human beings: "All we have to do is hold on to Darwin, he showed in the 19th century that we are just animals. While humans believe that they are a special part of creation or that something magical separates them from animals, Darwin's theory dives deep into the Western mentality to determine the place of our species in this world."[7] Many religious Darwinists use Darwinian science as a motivation to revise traditional Christian teachings about God and man, and Carl Giperson, co-founder of the BioLogos Foundation, argues that humans are evil from the start because evolution is driven by selfishness, and that Christians should abandon the idea that humans are God-selected creatures. The current president of the foundation, Daryl Falk, argues that Christians should abandon their belief in the idea of Adam and Eve as the parents of the human race, claiming that biological evolution has now proved that "such a first pair does not exist".[10] The geneticist Francis Collins, the first driver of the foundation, is also pursuing a demand to reconsider God's authority over the natural world. He is wrong – that the human genome is filled with useless junk DNA, which he sees as counter-evidence to the idea that the human race was specially designed by God. In another part of his book, Collins states that God is "capable of knowing and determining the consequences of evolution, but has let evolution run in a random, undirected way," turning God into a cosmic deceiver who creates the world in this way in order to mislead us. The biologist Kenneth Miller, author of In Search of a Darwinian God, goes further when he explicitly argues that God neither knows nor directs the outcome of evolution, including man, and according to Miller's view that "the appearance of man on this planet is unplanned, we are here because we are the inevitable result of successful evolutionary processes, which will constitute a fleeting glimpse into the history of life." Whether they are secular or religious, all these knights of modern Darwinism share the same underlying assumptions; and science, according to their view, has proved Darwinian evolution to be a proven fact, so we must fundamentally reshape our understanding of human existence in the rest of our lives in accordance with Darwinian beliefs. In chapters one and two, Anne Gouger and Douglas X test the basic claim of unguided Darwinian mechanisms of natural selection and its ability to reach the human race. In chapters 1, 3 and 4, Anne Geiger and Casey criticize the fossil and genetic evidence knife for humans sharing a common ancestor with apes. In the final chapter, Anne Gouger refutes claims that the human race did not start from a single pair. Although most of this book focuses on the flaws of Darwinian theory, the scientists we mention here are not really dismissive of current formulations of science, but share a positive view that much of biology will have a better understanding in the light of intelligent design rather than unguided Darwinian evolution. Many mischaracterize intelligent design and sometimes confuse it with the idea of creationism, but intelligent design is the result of experimental scientific efforts that study the elaborate and coordinated features of nature as the result of intelligent reason rather than as the result of evolutionary processes as blind as natural selection. Intelligent design focuses on whether or not the process of developing life has meaning and purpose, so it clashes more directly with the second principle of Darwinian theory (non-directed natural selection) than the first principle (common regression), yet intelligent design scholars remain open to criticizing the evidence of shared regression, as they will do in this book. Whether you consider yourself secular or religious or in between, anthropology raises deep and persistent questions about what it means to be human. You are invited to explore some of these questions in the following pages. Dr. John J. West Assistant Director at the Discovery Institute's Center for Culture and Science [1] G. K. Chesterton, The Everlasting Man (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1993), 26. [2] Michael Flannery, “Alfred Russel Wallace: A Rediscovered Life” (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2011). [3] Letter from Nobel Laureates to Kansas State Board of Education, Sept. 9, 2005. The letter was sent out under the auspices of the Elie Wiesel Foundation. A copy or the letter was posted at http://media.ljworld.com/pdf/2005/09/15/nobel_letter.pdf (accessed Aug. 8, 2006). [4] George Gaylord Simpson, The Meaning of Evolution: A Study of the History of Life and of Its Significance for Man, revised edition (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967), 345. [5] Stephen J. Gould, Ever Since Darwin: Reflections in Natural History (New York: W. W. Norton and Company, 1977), 147. [6] Stephen J. Gould, Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History (New York: Harmony Books, 1995), 327. [7] Quoted in Johann Hari, “Peter Singer: Some people are more equal than others,” The Independent, July 1, 2004, http://www.independent.co.uk/news/people/profiles/peter–singer–some–people–are–more–equal–than–others– 6166342.html (accessed on March 6, 2012). [8] Christopher Manes, Green Rage: Radical Environmentalism and the Unmaking of Civilization (Boston: Little, Brown, and Company, 1990), 142. [9] Karl Giberson, Saving Darwin: How to Be a Christian and Believe in Evolution (New York: HarperOne, 2008), 11–13. The book has a Foreword by Francis Collins. For a discussion of Giberson’s view, see John G. West, “Nothing New Under the Sun” in Jay Richards, God and Evolution: Protestants, Catholics, and Jews Explore Darwin’s Challenge to Faith (Seattle: Discovery Institute Press, 2010), 33–52. [10] Darrel Falk, “BioLogos and the June 2011 ‘Christianity Today’ Editorial,” June 6, 2011, http://biologos.org/blog/biologos–and–the–june–2011–christianity–today–editorial (accessed March 6, 2012). [11] Francis S. Collins, The Language of God: A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief (New York: Free Press, 2006), 135–136. For a rebuttal of some of Collins’s scientific arguments, see chapter four of this book by Casey Luskin. Also see Jonathan Wells, “Darwin of the Gaps,” in Richards, God and Evolution, 117–128. [12] Collins, The Language of God, 205–206. [13] Kenneth R. Miller, Finding Darwin’s God: A Scientist’s Search for Common Ground Between God and Evolution (New York: HarperCollins, 1999), 272. [14] Miller, quoted in John G. West, Darwin Day in America: How Our Politics and Culture Have Been Dehumanized in the Name of Science (Wilmington, DE: ISI Books, 2007), 226. [15] For good introductions to Intelligent Design, see: Guillermo Gonzalez and Jay Richards, The Privileged Planet: How Our Place in the Cosmos is Designed for Discovery (Washington DC: Regnery, 2004); Stephen C. Meyer, Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (New York: HarperOne, 2009), and William Dembski and Jonathan Wells, The Design of Life (Dallas: Foundation for Thought and Ethics, 2008). - Dr. John West. — Source: Brahin Center website - Posted on 2015-01-23 (archived at the Internet Archive) https://braheen.com/publications/intros/العلم-وأصل-الإنسان-مقدمة-المؤلفين