There Ought to Be a Law Against Evolution: And There Is! by Dr. David N. Menton, Ph.D. Cop
There Ought to Be a Law Against Evolution:
And There Is!
by Dr. David N. Menton, Ph.D.
Copyright (c) 1993 by the Missouri Association for Creation
[No. 3 in a series]
Perhaps the reason so many people continue to reject the notion of
evolution is that it seems contrary to ordinary experience. Things left
to chance just don't get done. Random changes in anything simply do not
produce higher levels of organization and complexity. Rather, all
complex machines and devices with which we are familiar are the result
of intelligent design and manufacture. Random changes can only destroy
them.
None the less, the essential claim of evolution is that random
change and natural selection do make simple things spontaneously
transform into more complex things without recourse to intelligent
purpose or design. The famous evolutionist Julian Huxley has defined
evolution as a "directional and essentially irreversible process
occurring in time, which in its course gives rise to an increase of
variety and an increasingly high level of organization in its
products." In his book _Evolution in Action_, Huxley says that nowhere
in the process of evolution is there any trace of purpose, or even of
prospective significance. Huxley says that evolution is driven solely
by blind physical forces engaged in what he calls a great chaotic jazz
dance of particles and radiations.
Incredibly, Huxley concludes that evolution is a process in
which the only over-all tendency we have so far been able to
detect is that summarized by the second law of thermodynamics --
the tendency to run down." Now think about this -- one of the
most highly respected spokesmen for evolution tells us that
evolution produces an increasingly high level of organization in
things by means of a chance process whose only over-all tendency
is to cause things to break down!
The whole notion that random change over a long period of time can
transform simple systems into ever more complex systems runs precisely
contrary to one of the most fundamental laws of nature -- the second law
of thermodynamics. The Second Law states that with time, everything in
the universe tends to undergo progressive degradation. With the passing
of time, things do not naturally increase in order and complexity --
they decrease. Think of what spontaneous change over say a thousand
years will an automobile or your own body. Scientists tell us that with
enough time, this natural degradation process will lead to the "heat
death" of the whole universe when virtually everything in nature will
run down to the point that even molecular motion will cease!
Evolutionists have tried to get around this formidable obstacle by
arguing that the Second Law only applies to closed systems that do not
receive energy from the outside. The earth, on the other hand, is an
open system that receives energy from the sun. Evolutionists believe
that as long as energy flows into such a system, simple things will just
naturally transform into more complex things. They believe that the
immense complexity we see in all the living things here on earth has
occurred at the e of our sun. While the sun is burning up, and thus
decreasing its free energy and complexity in accordance with the Second
Law, the sun's energy promotes a local increase in complexity here on
earth.
To illustrate how all this is supposed to work, evolutionists often
give simple examples such as the earth's water cycle. The Second Law
predicts that in a closed system, water will naturally flow down hill
and will not flow up hill. But the earth being an open system, receives
energy from the sun which can in effect make water flow up hill.
Specifically, the sun's energy can evaporate water which has accumulated
on the earth causing water vapor to rise up again into the atmosphere.
Having mad a small investment in fact, evolutionists hope to gain a
wholesale return by huge extrapolation. They would have us believe that
just as a little energy from the sun can cause water to go up hill, so a
lot of energy impacting on the earth over 4.5 billion years can cause a
mixture of the gases methane and ammonia to evolve into people.
The evolutionist cannot get around the Second Law, as it applies to
evolution, with such trivial examples. All observed cases in which
complex things are derived from less complex things demand an already
existing machine that is at least as complex as that which it produces.
While this machine requires energy to do its work, energy by itself is
not enough. Energy and raw materials, for example, are used in an
automobile factory to make complex automobiles, but nothing would come
of these resources if not for the even more complex machines, designs,
and intelligent workers associated with the factory.
Like factories, living animals and their cells are comprised of
extraordinarily complex machines that use energy and raw material in the
form of food to do work, produce complex products, and even make
identical copies of themselves. The food that sustains life is
ultimately a product of living green plants. Such plants uses energy
from the sun to convert water and carbon dioxide into sugar and starch.
This process, known as photosynthesis, involves still other complex
machines called chloroplast e cells of green plants.
It is important to emphasize that the many different kinds of
energy consuming machinery in living cells are not the chance products
of mere energy and raw material, but are constructed according to
extraordinarily complex and precise blueprints in the genes of each
cell. Copies of these blueprints are read and implemented by still
other complex machines in the cell called ribosomes. When all of this
genetic information and machinery is present and working properly in say
an acorn, it has ever it needs to use sunlight and simple raw material
to grow into an oak tree. But if the same sunlight shines on a dead oak
tree, it will eventually break it down into dust.
Creationists are convinced then that there is a law against the
theory of evolution -- the second law of thermodynamics. Evolutionists,
on the other hand, continue to reject the idea that thermodynamics is
in any way incompatible with evolutionary theory. They insist that
creationists simply don't understand thermodynamics. But the great
physical scientist Lord Kelvin, who was the very founder of the second
law of thermodynamics, was a Bible-believing Christian and a
creationist! Kelvin, a contemporary of Charles Darwin, was convinced
that the science of dynamics was incompatible with evolution. In one
of his published lectures, Kelvin said: "I need scarcely say that the
beginning and maintenance of life on earth is absolutely and infinitely
beyond the range of all sound speculation in dynamical science. The
only contribution of dynamics to theoretical biology is absolute
negation of automatic commencement or automatic maintenance of life."
The Bible tells us that "every house is built by someone, but
God is the builder of everything (Heb. 3:4)." It requires less
faith to believe this eminently reasonable statement about the
origin of complex things as revealed in the sure Word of God
than it does to believe in the unreasonable speculations of men.
Dr. Menton received his Ph.D. in Biology from Brown University. He has
been involved in biomedical research and education for over 30 years.
*******************
Originally published in:
St. Louis MetroVoice, September 1993, Vol. 3, No. 9
Electronically distributed through the Missouri Association for Creation
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