Declaring with all of the small amount of humility I possess…by default I am the world’s leading expert on avoiding mistakes in the design and construction of new houses…simply because no one else…to my knowledge…has taken-on this difficult research project.
If a person goes-out at 4 A.M. at sunrise to their local wetlands, lake, or river…to observe the morning habits of the ring-necked, spotted warbler bird (my hypothetically invented bird)…publishes their findings in a scientific journal on nature…and no one else has conducted this specific study…then that person “owns” that particular topic…that specialized knowledge.
By virtue of the 42 years I spent on jobsites working in several building trades in my twenties, an assistant superintendent and superintendent in production tract housing, as a customer service repair-person in new housing construction, a bank field inspector, a project engineer, project manager, and vice-president of construction building four luxury mansions…working in both residential and commercial construction…I would place the basic field research I did to observe and record mistakes in the design and construction of new buildings…published in four books by McGraw-Hill (1995-98 under Bart Jahn) and four books currently self-published (under Barton Jahn)…favorably alongside the basic field research of any paleontologist, biologist, archaeologist, or anthropologist researching the natural living and non-living world.
The information in my roughly 2,000-topic database does not contain any mathematics, physics, or chemistry…but is difficult to research because it requires an investment of time with the observer having both feet planted on the ground…on a variety of new housing construction jobsites observing and recording scheduling coordination problems, proper sequencing of activities issues, and a plethora of crashes and collisions between two or more building elements competing for the same space…which were not anticipated on the building plans.
Does this scientific research program of observing and recording phenomenon on new building constructions sites…qualify me to opine on the creation/evolution debate?
The popular axiom that a specialist who ventures outside of their area of expertise becomes a layman…applies to everyone …including me.
But the Darwinists who write books aimed at a popular reading audience…purposely simplify the technical arguments to be understandable and accessible to people who are outside of their area of expertise…in order to convince us of the truth of their worldview narrative.
The second answer to this legitimate question of qualifications to write this Part Two series of essays…is therefore also straight-forward.
I am precisely the person Darwinism wants to win-over and convert.
I care enough about the debate to read both sides…to take my research beyond mere cultural osmosis and acquiescence to the authority of the accepted standard wisdom…to thoughtfully take-apart each of the arguments and to carefully weigh the evidence.
The rest of the general population…that understandably thinks the technical issues are too complex or do not directly apply to their own lives…nonetheless get indirectly and unconsciously influenced toward Darwinism by nature programs on the television that parrot the general scientific consensus in favor of common descent…while these programs give no supporting evidence for this naturalistic viewpoint.
I recently read the 2009 book Why Evolution Is True by Jerry A. Coyne…a PhD professor of biology at the University of Chicago.
The book is well-written…presenting a thorough and up-to-date case in support for the brilliance of evolution…persuasively and elegantly…in great detail…as one might expect from a college professor who has taught this subject for over 30 years.
But what is curiously counter-intuitive from the viewpoint of this reader…in so thoroughly and capably laying-out his arguments…is that Dr. Coyne actually makes the case in the opposite direction than intended…for special creation having intelligent design…rather than for blind, unguided, naturalistic macro evolution.
The unbiased and open-minded reader…not initially onboard for Darwinian macro evolution at the outset…gets to about pages 75-85 in Dr. Coyne’s book and realizes there is simply too much brilliantly complex and artistically arranged information in living creatures…to ever become the mature and fully developed living productions they are…through the supposed creative methodology of accidental genetic mutations acted upon by natural selection.
Dr. Coyne’s detailed descriptions of the exquisite lifestyle habits that are attached to the brilliantly functional, diverse physical characteristics of every living thing…described throughout his book…outpace by a mile the simplistic explanations for origin and development…coming from the working model of naturalistic materialism.
For a purely naturalistic explanation for the marvels of the living and non-living natural world to pass the commonsense test…to be believable…the natural world today would have to be a much simpler reality.
The natural world today would also have to exhibit a more chaotic appearance…with a myriad of living organisms in transitional flux…caught in the middle of development toward some future end-point.
The irony…in this search for truth regarding the origin of the diversity we see and study in the natural world all around us…is that the more complex, highly specified, and coherently integrated the description of each complete and fully mature living thing comes across in Dr. Coyne’s book…the more precise the detailed evidence becomes to accurately describe the unique qualities of each living organism…then the stronger becomes the unavoidably air-tight case for special creation…for intelligent design…and the worse becomes the vague and fuzzy case for the huge leaps across massive voids of incredulity…in proposing the Darwinian macro evolution half of the argument…of blind, mindless, unguided, accidental, and indifferent natural selection…as the explanation for this brilliant diversity of life.
The Cross in the Christian Life 