Biological science does not belong exclusively to the group of scientists who are atheists…who sprang-up in the study of the natural living world…during the time-period after the publication of Darwin’s book The Origin of Species.
The evidentiary facts of biological science belong to everyone to ponder and to evaluate…regardless of philosophical worldviews…regardless of whether we are theists, atheists, agnostic, or simply undecided regarding our outlook on the investigative reach of science as it relates to ultimate purpose and meaning in human life.
The facts that the universe came into being around 13.7 billion years ago…our earth around 4.5 billion years ago…and that primitive life in the form of single-cell bacteria first appeared on earth about 3.8 billion years ago…belong to me as evidence to contemplate and incorporate within my worldview as a Christian…adopting the reasonably informed and scripturally accurate “old earth” biblical interpretation of Genesis chapters 1 and 2…as much as it belongs to a Harvard trained paleontologist…steeped in the philosophy of materialism.
The fact that in 1929 Edwin Hubble discovered an expanding universe evidenced by the red-shift on the wave-length spectrum of light…while looking through the massive Mt. Wilson Observatory telescope into the deepest regions of outer space…and that this confirmed Albert Einstein’s previous mathematics calculations of either an expanding or a contracting universe in his 1916 theory of general relativity…belongs to my next-door neighbor to consider as part of her outlook on life…as much as it belongs to a PhD astrophysicist working at the Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
The fact that within living cells the micro-molecule DNA contains 3.1 to 3.5 billion bits of information…unimaginably complex in its logically sequenced arrangement to produce coherently coordinated function in the replication process within the living cell…be it a cell that is bone, muscle, tendon, skin, blood, hair, brain tissue, or internal organ in a human body…belongs as scientific fact-based evidence to a common person “walking down the street”…to own and to evaluate…to inform our judgment as to the reality of the natural world and of truth in general…as much as it does to a professor of microbiology or genetics…a proponent of Darwinian macroevolution…at any major university.
The worldview of scientism…that says that the only reliable guide to truth is science…is inadequate as a universal explanation that covers all reality…because human scientific investigation utilizing the philosophy of materialism will only take us so far.
Art can describe how romantic love expresses itself through human actions…but materialism cannot tell us what romantic love is.
Physics and chemistry can tell us how ink bonds to paper…but materialism as far as it goes cannot tell us how intelligence arranges the ink on paper to create the information conveyed through the headlines of the New York Times front page.
Neither the physics and chemistry of ink bonding to paper, or musical theory, or the magnificent mechanics of the concert grand piano…can explain the creative genius of Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, Debussy’s Clare de Lune, or Rachmaninoff’s Third Piano Concerto.
Materialism can hardly be the mode of explanation for the incredible dexterity, virtuosic attention to detail, and brilliantly artistic performance of Hillary Hahn playing Mendelsohn’s Violin Concerto…or the virtuoso violinist Jascha Heifetz playing Max Bruch’s Scottish Fantasy.
For most people living in the twenty-first century…there is simply too much information content observably at work and in action in the living and non-living natural world…highly specified and coherently coordinated and integrated…to be the sole product of a mindless, accidental, random-chance, trial-and-error, unguided mechanism.
Darwinists complain that macroevolution has not been accepted by the majority of people in modern cultures…and blame in- part religious faith as being antagonistic toward their theory.
The reason that most modern people do not accept macroevolution…do not ascribe to the philosophy of naturalistic materialism…as the explanation for the vast diversity of life and the origin of species…is not religious faith…but the simple reality is that at the upper, fundamental level of being a general, universal explanation… macroevolution does not hold water…does not stack-up…does not make total and complete sense as the overarching, explanatory origin for the brilliant diversity of living organisms…including ourselves.
The reader of this Part Two series of essays…may reasonably ask why its author is not a professional scientist…a paleontologist, biologist, geologist, or some other closely related science that would afford being able to claim expert status on this subject.
The first answer to this legitimate question is straight-forward.
Much of the literature that has been written by Darwinian evolutionists…beginning in 1859 with Darwin’s book The Origin of Species itself…is written in non-technical language intended for a popular audience.
Whether it is Ernst Mayr, Richard Leakey, Edward O. Wilson, Stephen Jay Gould, Niles Eldridge, Richard Dawkins, Janet Browne, Donald Johanson, or any of the other prolific writers on Darwinian evolution…many if not most of their books are non-technical and understandable to the general public.
Although it is true in nearly every scientific field that the “devil is in the details”…in support of one or another scientific theory …in the field of Darwinian evolution there are several generalized assertions and conclusions, that can be taken apart and analyzed for truth-value by laymen non-scientists…without having to possess doctoral degrees in biology, biochemistry, history of science, philosophy of science, or paleontology.
The arguments made for the general truth-claims for macro evolution are open to the general public through the large volume of literature on the subject…to access and to evaluate.
This renders Darwinian evolution open to refutation by layman or expert…which should be and is the case for all genuine scientific theories.
The simple answer therefore is that all of us…scientists and laymen alike…can study, think, and write about Darwinian evolution …and its broader social, cultural, and yes…theological implications…in the form of questions, comments, and discussions on website blogs on evolution on the Internet…and if we have enough material and enough to say…in a book.
The Cross in the Christian Life 