Unconfirmed

Darwin’s Own Tests Fail to Validate the Darwinian Model

Charles Darwin’s 1859 book On the Origin of Species is considered by many to be the beginning of the ongoing creation vs. evolution debate. Surprisingly, the controversy started much earlier, in 50 BC, with the appearance of Lucretius’s book, De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things). Darwin’s book deserves credit, however, for catapulting the conflict into the public arena. The Scopes Monkey Trial helped popularize the dispute.

What often sparks a heated exchange on the subject is either an evolutionist’s claim that biological evolution is a “proven fact” or a creationist’s comment that evolution is “just a theory.” With such salvos, a needless battle begins—a war of misused and/or misunderstood words.

Seeing that life has become increasingly diverse and complex since it began approximately 3.8 billion years ago, biologists can rightly declare evolution a “proven fact,” since the simplest definition of evolution is “observed change over time.” How life originated and progressed from relatively simple to enormously complex remains an ongoing scientific debate between those who attribute the changes to natural processes alone and those who acknowledge the necessity of intelligent causation or supernatural intervention.

People who cast aside evolution as “just a theory” make light of what scientists mean by theory. In everyday use it often refers to a guess, but among scientists it means much more. A theory emerges from substantial observations and rigorous testing to offer a reasonable explanation of some physical phenomenon. To use the term as if it means a mere “hunch” is insulting to scientists’ integrity.

Attempts to Test the How

When Albert Einstein published his theories of relativity, he identified tests that could confirm or deny his theories. Within a few years, several observations did so. To his credit, Darwin also identified tests that could affirm or refute his claim that natural processes can account for all life’s changes. Oddly, scientists delayed performing these proposed tests for more than a century.

Darwin noted that according to his naturalistic theory, animals that look most like humans should be most like humans in their intellectual capacity. Not until 2009 was this hypothesis tested—and shown incorrect. Biologists observed that ravens and crows exhibit far greater intellectual prowess than chimpanzees and monkeys.¹

In his book, The Descent of Man, Darwin attributed cognitive differences between human and nonhuman animals to a natural, continuous progression. In a 2008 paper titled “Darwin’s Mistake,” a team of psychologists reported that humans, alone, manifest the capacity to invent and use symbols in their communication and, thus, to develop abstract thinking and writing.² In the researchers’ words, “This symbolic-relational discontinuity [between anatomically modern humans and all other animals] pervades nearly every domain of cognition.”³

Only four natural processes are known to produce changes in the morphology, behavior, and genetics of life-forms: natural selection, mutations, gene exchange, and epigenetics. Evolutionists and creationists agree that these four mechanisms can and do generate microevolutionary changes. Naturalists go on to claim that microevolution, given sufficient time, can produce macroevolutionary change.

Macroevolution refers to the emergence of novel organisms, organs, and/or body structures by natural processes alone. Familiar taxonomic ranking purports to show the progression of ongoing change. For example, 16 species of foxes belong to the Vulpes genus. These 16 differ in body size, structure, and internal and external organs, enabling them to thrive in a widely diverse range of ecosystems. The next larger taxonomic rank for foxes is the Canidae family, which includes all dogs, wolves, coyotes,  jackals, dholes, and foxes. The next rank is the Carnivora order, to which all mammalian carnivores belong. This rank is followed by the class Mammalia for all mammals. All foxes and other creatures included in Mammalia belong to the phylumChordata, which includes all vertebrates and invertebrates having a hollow dorsal nerve cord.

One intractable problem for the naturalistic view arises from the discovery that in many instances, such as in the Avalon and Cambrian explosions, enormous macroevolutionary changes occurred rapidly; then, later, over long time spans, mere microevolutionary changes occurred. Diversification of phyla occurred first and in no time, while diversification of species and genera occurred over eons. In the journal Evolution, paleontologists noted, “The major pulse of diversification of phyla occurs before that of classes, classes before that of orders, and orders before that of families.”⁴ The fossil record reveals the reverse of what naturalistic models would predict. However, that history reveals precisely what a biblical perspective would anticipate.

Another challenge to naturalism comes from the observation that the most dramatic macroevolutionary changes occur as soon as physical and chemical conditions permit. For example, Avalon animals need eight percent oxygen in the atmosphere to survive. However, in the geologic moment when atmospheric oxygen jumped from two percent to eight percent, the Avalon phyla appeared.⁵ Likewise, the moment atmospheric oxygen jumped from eight percent to 10 percent, more than 30 distinct Cambrian phyla appeared.⁶

Decades ago, naturalists assumed that the most primitive Cambrian phyla appeared at the beginning of the Cambrian era, with more advanced phyla appearing gradually over the following 50 million years. Paleontology now establishes that the Cambrian phyla appeared simultaneously. The most advanced phylum, Chordata, to which humans and vertebrates belong, appeared with the most primitive phyla at the beginning of the Cambrian. Included among the chordates were vertebrate fish and creatures with complex eyes.

While 30 or more animal phyla appeared at the beginning of the Cambrian, only 30 remain today.⁷ Of these, at least 28, including bryozoa,⁸ appeared at or near the beginning of the Cambrian.

Any scientific model’s validity is tested by how well the model fares as relevant data and understanding increase. Does the evidence supporting the model grow stronger or weaker? A survey of the scientific literature reveals that naturalistic models for mass speciation events have grown more problematic. According to a paleontologist team’s review paper, “Elucidating the materialistic basis for the Cambrian explosion has become more elusive, not less, the more we know about the event itself.”⁹

What Darwin Didn’t Know About the Sun

In Darwin’s day, scientists thought the Sun’s radiation was constant. So, understandably, solar radiation received no attention in the development of Darwin’s origin-of-species theory. What would have seemed irrelevant then has become highly relevant today.

Astronomers now know the Sun’s energy comes from the nuclear fusion of hydrogen into helium. Because helium is denser than hydrogen, ongoing nuclear fusion causes the Sun’s core density to increase. This increasing density results in increasingly efficient nuclear burning. Today, the Sun is 20–24 percent brighter (more luminous) than it was when life began.

Even a mere two percent change in solar luminosity would be deadly to all life, whether through runaway freezing or runaway evaporation of Earth’s surface liquid water. Such a catastrophe has been prevented by a perfectly measured and timed reduction of Earth’s greenhouse gases, coordinated with a perfectly measured and timed alteration of Earth’s albedo (reflectivity). As the Sun has grown brighter, atmospheric greenhouse gases have decreased. Earth’s albedo has also altered, keeping Earth’s surface temperature optimal for life.

Two processes are responsible for this timely reduction of greenhouse gases: the silicate-carbonate cycle and organic carbon burial.

In the silicate-carbonate cycle, rain catalyzes a chemical reaction that converts silicates (continental building blocks) and atmospheric carbon dioxide (a greenhouse gas) into carbonates and sand.¹⁰ Different organisms regulate how much silicate rock is exposed to water and how much rain falls from clouds.

Microbes, plants, and animals all take carbon dioxide from the atmosphere to manufacture carbon compounds. Burial of these organisms by floods, landslides, and volcanic eruptions prevents the decay of their bodies and subsequent release of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere.

The existence of a just-right diversity and abundance of life at the just-right times and locations guarantees that greenhouse gases will be removed from the atmosphere at just-right rates to compensate for increasing solar luminosity. Also, because life impacts Earth’s albedo by altering cloud cover and surface reflectivity, this process must be precisely coordinated. In short, organisms have played an “orchestrated” role in compensating for the Sun’s increasing luminosity.

The type of radiation emitted by the Sun has also changed, and so have its flaring activity and luminosity. These alterations affect what kinds of life can thrive on Earth under what conditions—a challenge for ensuring the presence of just-right life to compensate for the Sun’s brightening.

Unless all these compensating factors operated at just-right levels throughout the past 3.8 billion years, life would have become extinct. Natural selection, mutations, gene exchange, and epigenetics possess no inherent “knowledge” of ongoing solar dynamics. Only a Mind with awareness of the changing physics of the Sun, Earth, and Moon can know which life-forms must be present on Earth and when. For life to persist on Earth requires an understanding of the past, present, and future physics of the Sun, Earth, and Moon, as well as the ability to remove certain life-forms, those no longer able to compensate for changes in the Sun, and replace them with just-right life-forms at just-right times and locations in just-right abundance and diversity.

Neither Darwin nor the lawyers arguing in the Scopes trial knew of these life-essential features of the Sun and how they point to the existence of a Mind. The fossil record bears witness to this Mind. So does our ability to see and understand what this mindful Being has accomplished to make possible our existence. We are here by no accident of nature but, rather, by the intention and agency of a supernatural Creator.

Notes
1. Johan J. Bolhuis and Clive D. L. Wynne, “Can Evolution Explain How Minds Work?” Nature 458, no.   7240 (Apr. 16, 2009), 832–833.
2. Derek C. Penn, Keith J. Holyoak, and Daniel J. Povinelli, “Darwin’s Mistake: Explaining the Discontinuity Between Human and Nonhuman Minds,” Behavioral and Brain Sciences 31, no.   2 (Apr. 2008), 109–130.
3. Penn, Holyoak, and Povinelli, 109.
4. Douglas H. Erwin, James W. Valentine, and J. John Sepkoski Jr., “A Comparative Study of Diversification Events: The Early Paleozoic Versus the Mesozoic,” Evolution 41, no. 6 (Nov. 1987), 1177–1186.
5. Hugh Ross, “Where Did the Cambrian Oxygen Come From?” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe (Jan. 24, 2022).
6. Michael Tatzel et al., “Late Neoproterozoic Seawater Oxygenation by Siliceous Sponges,” Nature Communications 8 (Sep. 20, 2017): id.   621; Yuntao Ye et al., “Tracking the Evolution of Seawater Mo Isotopes Through the Ediacaran-Cambrian Transition,” Precambrian Research 350 (Nov. 2020).
7. Roger Lewin, “A Lopsided Look at Evolution,” Science 241, no. 4863 (Jul. 15, 1988), 291–293; Eric H. Davidson and Douglas H. Erwin, “Gene Regulatory Networks and the Evolution of Animal Body Plans,” Science 311 (Feb. 10, 2006), 796; D.  H. Erwin and J.  W. Valentine, The Cambrian Explosion: The Construction of Animal Biodiversity (2013); Graham E. Budd and Illiam S.  C. Jackson, “Ecological Innovations in the Cambrian and the Origins of the Crown Group Phyla,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London B, Biological Sciences 371 (Jan. 5, 2016); Xianfeng Yang et al., “A Juvenile-Rich Palaeocommunity of the Lower Cambrian Chengjiang Biota Sheds Light on Palaeo-Boom or Palaeo-Bust Environments,” Nature Ecology & Evolution 5 (Aug. 2021), 1082–1090.
8. Zhiliang Zhang et al., “Fossil Evidence Unveils an Early Cambrian Origin for Bryozoa,” Nature 599 (Nov. 11, 2021), 251–255.
9. Kevin J. Peterson, Michael R. Dietrich, and Mark A. McPeek, “MicroRNAs and Metazoan Macroevolution: Insights into Canalization, Complexity, and the Cambrian Explosion,” BioEssays 31, no. 7 (Jul. 2009), 737.
10. Hugh Ross, “Weathered Bedrock: Key to Advanced Life on Earth,” Today’s New Reason to Believe (blog), Reasons to Believe (May 7, 2018).