Where the ancient Greek philosophers argued pre-scientifically through logic using speculation in place of empirical evidence, modern science has replaced speculative conjecture with complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information to describe much of the causations of phenomena in the natural world.
Species are easily mutable if the God of the Bible is releasing through gene regulatory networks and epigenetic factors, entire blocks of new and different cell-types in clustered groups that produce immediate function, as the discontinuities in the geological, fossil record clearly show.
The fantastic irony in 2022 is that the “hopeful monster” hypothesis of evolution by saltation put forward by Goldschmidt in his 1940 book The Material Basis of Evolution, in an attempt to close the obvious gaps between living organisms in the common descent program, is that he is correct if we replace within the equation of biological development, the factor of scientific materialism with the alternate factor of intelligent agency.
The infinitude of connecting links required by materialism disappears when the simple move from one new and different cell-type at a time, shifts instead to adopting the more plausible program of new and different cell-types being introduced in blocks of clustered groups, in harmony with the scientific fact-based evidence that nature does make sudden leaps.
This better concept produces new and varied life-forms entering into existence at their end-points of functional development to immediately engage into the fast-lane of survival and reproduction.
Intelligent agency working within width-less durations of zero time to produce immediate function and fit, removes the untenable requirement of a vastly larger sized earth having more surface area, to provide the increased terrain for trial-and-error, accidental development to play-out.
Intelligent agency instead places the creative processes genetically inside the more manageably small-sized living cell.
In the cell there is adequate DNA information for intelligent agency to produce the vast diversity of life.
The externally-driven program of mutation/selection through survival pressures, when integrated with predator/prey relationships, complex ecosystems, and the need for the prior fitness of the environment to be in-place, would require a much larger surface area on the earth for a trial-and-error process to produce the vast diversity of life.
Typology and Increasing Complexity in Biology are not in Conflict
Blocks of new and different cell-types in clustered groups, each assembled genetically in the arrangement and folding of amino acids to build proteins using the blueprint information in the cell, reaffirms and maintains the typological worldview prevalent before Darwin.
The ideological difficulties that appeared inexplicable in 1859 to Darwin, inherent in individual fiat creations, over the advances of the past 160-plus years in science, now disappear.
These difficulties disappear through the character and quality of the complex, specified, and coherently integrated systems of information absolutely everywhere we look in the natural living and non-living world.
If God exists as the Creator of the universe, then there is no ideological dichotomy between the supernatural and the natural.
Because of the explosion of information about our natural environment available today, the difficulties in explaining the causations of the phenomena in nature, have from 1859 to 2022 switched from arguing against intelligent agency to arguing for intelligent agency.
The issue of the fixity of species disappears today when the concept of nature makes no sudden leaps, in support of amaterialistic worldview, is jettisoned overboard.
As a Christian, I admit to being a vitalist, but not in the manner of ascribing biological development to undefined, occult-like inner forces.
Empirical, fact-based information is not occult.
Information that defines the architectural body-plans and lifestyle habits of elephants according to their genetic make-up…as to type…is as factually evidential as the mechanical engineering of an automobile.
The mystery involved in DNA or automotive engineering is no longer the mechanics, but the origin of the structured, organized complexity that produces end-point fit and function.
Where does the ability to design an automobile using mechanical engineering come from?
The complex, specified, and coherently integrated character of information is the mysterious underlying force, that used to be pre-Darwin vitalism.
But this underlying database of information is now so complex and interwoven that it has passed-up the agency-free, research methodology of scientific materialism.
A multitude of forms makes perfect sense if blocks of new and different cell-types in groups of 10 or 20, are manufactured in the cell using DNA and developmental gene regulatory networks, then released by an Intelligent Designing Agent within width-less durations of zero time to produce functionally mature organisms ready to enter into existence into biodiverse ecosystems.
This is the diametric opposite of gradual biological development using the method of blind trial-and-error over vast periods of time.
Goldschmidt’s hopeful monster made no sense at the time because it was stuck within the paradigm of scientific materialism.
Replace this mindset of naturalistic materialism with intelligent designing agency, enabling saltation-like inputs of genetic information in blocks of grouped clusters to produce the common descent of end-point fit and function along the expanse of geological history, absent the need to find non-existent transitional intermediates, and many of the great mysteries in biology are resolved.
It wasn’t that Darwin’s facts were wrong, just that there were not enough of them to work with in 1859.
For Darwin the choice of the skeletal explanatory framework of atheism is what was defective in his theory of biological evolution.
Typology works beautifully in this alternate program of blocks of cell-types coordinated in clustered groups, because the essence of each type of living organism is always introduced at its completed and functional iteration.
The continuity of common descent, the fixity of species, change over time, and the vast diversity of life on earth, no longer makes sense within Darwinian evolution, but now makes sense only within the worldview of admitting an intelligent designing agent.
The Cross in the Christian Life 