Real Science

Darwinists may well object to the bold-faced statement in my last post (Finally Some Science) that Evolution Science is an oxymoron. After all, the only explanation I offered was that the major problems with evolution theory today are the same ones that were raised by Darwin himself 145 years ago.

Darwin discussed the lack of any evidence for the evolution of one species from another. He was very honest and explicit that evidence to the contrary would blow up his thesis. Furthermore, Darwin wrote to Hooker on life itself: “It is mere rubbish thinking, at present, of origin of life; one might as well think of origin of matter.” For more than a century since Darwin, those fundamental problems persist. What’s worse is that most evolutionary scientists have studiously avoided these foundational issues all this time. One wonders what they are afraid of.

Here I’ll further illustrate my contention about the weakness of evolution science by looking at physics, a real science.

Two centuries before Darwin, physics was making a monumental leap forward due to the work of Isaac Newton. In 1687 Newton published Philosophia Naturalis Principia Mathematica, his masterpiece written entirely in Latin. In it Newton described the meaning of absolute time and space; the three laws of motion; the mathematical theory of gravitation; he explained planetary motion in great detail; and to assist his work he developed analytical geometry and calculus. Newton was a giant.

For the next two centuries Newton’s work stood against every test, but that did not deter physicists from their explorations. There was much to learn about the physical world and generations of physicists focused their energies on the most fundamental and difficult problems.

Great advances were made in the understanding of gases (Bernoulli), thermodynamics (Boltzmann), energy (Joule), electromagnetism (Maxwell), relative motion and the equivalence of mass and energy (Einstein), atomic theory (Bohr) and quantum mechanics (Planck, Heisenberg, Schrodinger) over the next two centuries.

Physicists developed a deep understanding of the interaction of light with charged particles (Feynman, Schwinger) and laid the foundation of theoretical chemistry. They looked inside the nucleus and discovered fundamental particles called quarks (Gell-mann) that are the building blocks of all nuclei. They continue working on the unification of all the forces of physics in one Grand Unified Theory.

Physicists explored the most fundamental questions on the smallest scale and the largest. The discovery of universal cosmic expansion (Hubble) had been predicted by the application (Friedmann) of the equations of General Relativity (Einstein) and led to the Big Bang model of the universe. Theory shows that the ultimate fate of the universe depends on the total mass and energy contained, and measurements are continually updating the predictions.

The cosmic expansion implied a beginning and it was shown (Hawking) that the Big Bang was a singularity in space-time, where the density and temperature are infinite and time began. The instant of creation is now known to be about 14.5B years ago and the precision of that instant is being continuously refined.

The Big Bang model of creation is believed by most Christians and Jews to be the modern version of Genesis. The initial radiation dominated phase of the model explains for the first time the Biblical account of the creation of light before the sun was born. Physics can now be said to explain the evolution of the world from the instant of Devine creation until the ultimate future. Most scientists are quite comfortable with this account.

However, this belief does not deter physicists from exploring the creation in more detail and from looking for other possible creation scenarios. For example, one proposed model treats the Big Bang as a transition point between a collapsing universe and the expanding universe where we live. All such postulates are given serious study by physicists since truth is the ultimate goal.

Can the same be said of evolution theory?