Didn’t evolution put God out of a job? Why rely on religion in an age of science and knowledge?

• The theory entails that all species would eventually trace back to one original ancestor- to the trunk in his classic tree illustration- but how that being first came to life was beyond the scope of Darwin’s focus.  Its existence was obviously implied, but never really explained.
• Darwin was right at least in this:  living things do change and adapt over time… virtually no one denies that microevolution occurs- meaning the adaptations that happen over time within the assorted species. .. It’s worth noting that most of the evidence offered for evolution is really just evidence for microevolution- which Christians and non- Christians alike acknowledge as happening- but it’s a leap to say this proves the much larger claims of Darwinian macroevolution. 
• Darwin’s theory does not account for the origin of the universe and all that’s in it, the origin of the first living organism, or the encoding of complex information in DNA.

o   Evolution could never have gotten off the ground without all the necessary ingredients already present and accounted for.  But to say this happened on its own, by mere chance, is a huge leap.  It’s like declaring, “In the beginning… the stuff was already here… Randomly, without cause or purpose or outside help of any kind, it arranged itself into the exact elements and order necessary to cause self- replicating and upwardly evolving life to suddenly leap into existence.”  .. It’s possible to name an event- call it the Big Bang- without explaining how or why it happened.   That, I believe is exactly what scientists (that is the ones who deny God’s existence) have done…. Put a scientific label on it; and then claimed to know that this astounding turn of events happened in the complete absence of any outside mind or creative designer.  They’ve just ruled God out of the equation by definition.. saying that only natural (non- supernatural) explanations will be considered as possible causes or influences, regardless of the topic or the strength of the evidence presented.

o   The second prerequisite for Darwin’s Origin of the Species which purportedly then evolved into all the varieties of living beings.  But Darwin never even gave serious treatment to the question of how that first life began.

o   … contrary to what we’d expect according to the principles of Darwinian evolution in which the earliest life forms should have been traceable back to smaller and simpler components parts, the fossil record shows early life just showing up- bam!- unannounced and fully formed. .. Biochemist Michael Denson in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, poses the problem like this:  “Is it really credible that random processes could have constructed a reality; the smallest element of which- a functional protein or gene- is complex beyond our own creative capacities, a reality which is the very antithesis of chance, which excels in every sense anything produced by the intelligence of man?”

o   Cambridge- trained philosopher of science Stephen Meyer elaborates:

§  Consider what you’d need for a protein molecule to form by chance… Run the odds of these things falling into place on their own and you find that the probabilities of forming a rather short functional protein at random would be one chance in a hundred thousand trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion trillion.  That’s a ten with 125 zeros after it!  And that would only be one protein molecule- a minimally complex cell would need between three hundred and five hundred protein molecules… To suggest chance against those odds is really to invoke a naturalistic miracle. [From an interview with Stephen Meyer in Lee Strobel’s book The Case for a Creator, p. 229]

o   There’s one other element that needs to be in place for evolution to have even a chance of getting off the ground:  information.  William Dembski and Sean McDowell [inUnderstanding Intelligent Design, p. 131] explain clearly:

§  The key feature of life is information- specified complexity..  A single primitive cell would require hundreds of thousands of bits of information precisely sequenced in its DNA… Because there is not evidence of simpler life forms from which bacteria could have evolved… evolutionary biologists are left with a mystery.  Here is the key question:  How could nature, without intelligent guidance, take the massive informational jumps needed for life to originate?  These hurdles simply cannot be cleared without information.  This is why a growing number of scientists today are turning to intelligent design as the best explanation for the origin of life.

§  And if one “primitive” first cell required that immense volume of information, what about the human body, with all its millions of advanced and specialized cells?  How much information does it require?  That’s exactly what Francis Collins and the team he led at the Human Genome Project discovered as they mapped the entire DNA sequence of the human species.

• The newly revealed text was 3 billion letters long and written in a strange and cryptographic four- letter code…. A live reading of that code at a rate of three letters per second would take thirty- one years, even if reading continued day and night.
• Even if his theory were true it would be dependent on these other things- all of which point to a creative intelligence outside the universe.

o   I don’t think we necessarily have to change people’s minds about evolution itself in order to lead them to faith in Jesus.  In fact, trying to do so can actually put up an additional barrier for someone who might have been otherwise ready to hear and respond to the gospel message.

o   So even if Darwin’s Origin of Species were correct about how new species develop out of previous ones, that fact still would not hurt the truth that God exists, that he is the intelligence and power that created and sustains all things, and that he wants everyone to come to him for his forgiveness and leadership.

o   Here is how evangelical philosopher William Lane Craig argued this…”Any doubts that I might have about the theory of evolution really are not biblical but scientific.  Namely, what the scenario envisages is just so fantastically improbable. “Now it seems to me that if evolution did occur then it would have had to have been a miracle.   In other words, evolution is literally evidence for the existence of God.”

• The Big Bang theory… goes beyond physics or science, and it points to an intelligent cause outside of itself, as we saw in the first chapter.
• … many of the great scientists both past and present have been strong believers in God.  Science is not inherently atheistic.
• Our great opponent is not science or even evolution, but philosophical naturalism, which is the view many scientists hold that says only naturalistic (non- supernatural) causes can be considered.  Rather good science should follow the scientific facts wherever they lead- including to an intelligent designer.
• FOR THE RECORD-

o    First, there is an almost complete lack of hard evidence for Darwin’s so- called Tree of Life.

o   And what about the fossil record itself?  Even Darwin himself recognized that the record did not support his thesis, and he even conceded that the lack of transitional examples was one of the greatest objections to his model [i.e.- evolution has never been observed]- but he was confident that further research would eventually fill in the gaps.  Yet to this day there is a complete lack of solid, undisputed examples.