Damien F. Mackey
Comments:
No one has summed up
evolution more succinctly, yet more pithily, than did the prolific British writer,
G.K. Chesterton, when he made this comment about the missing link:
“The
evolutionists seem to know everything about the missing link except the fact
that it is missing”.
Lita Costner has quoted Chesterton as saying that
Darwinism is “an attack upon thought itself”.
She goes on to consider Chesterton and:
The worship of science
As early
as 1920, G.K. Chesterton argued against what he saw to be the worship of
science (now sometimes called ‘scientism’),
which already was being invoked in education and ethics.2 He also observed nearly a
century ago that Darwinist scientists were more and more turning their science into a philosophy.3 These scientists were
forbidden by their own belief system from believing in miracles, regardless of where the evidence led. This
led inevitably to scientists making bizarre claims as to what natural processes
alone could accomplish. ‘Things that the old science at least would frankly
have rejected as miracles are hourly being asserted by the new science.’4
Chesterton
conceded that these materialists were completely logical and reasonable in
their belief system, but that it was a very small internal consistency which
denied even the possibility of miracles;
their belief system explained everything by natural events, which can be
logical enough (bearing in mind that there is a difference between logical consistency
and truth), but because that was the central tenet of their ideology, they
could not admit even one miracle. He argued that the orthodox Christian was
freer than the materialist because Christians could believe in both natural and
supernatural causes for events; Christianity can explain both physical laws and
miracles. As Chesterton wrote:
As an explanation of the world, materialism has a
sort of insane simplicity. It has just the quality of the madman’s argument; we
have at once the sense of it covering everything and the sense of it leaving
everything out.—Chesterton
‘The
believers in miracles accept them (rightly or wrongly) because they have
evidence for them. The disbelievers in miracles deny them (rightly or wrongly)
because they have a doctrine against them.’5
This, he
argues, makes for ‘a sort of insane simplicity’ to the materialist worldview:
‘As an
explanation of the world, materialism has a sort of insane simplicity. It has
just the quality of the madman’s argument; we have at once the sense of it
covering everything and the sense of it leaving everything out. … He
understands everything, and everything does not seem worth understanding. His
cosmos may be complete in every rivet and cog-wheel, but still his cosmos is
smaller than our world.’6
‘That modern intelligence which destroys itself’
….
One of
Chesterton’s main complaints against Darwinism is that it was advanced as a
fact long before it was even a well-established hypothesis (which some of
Darwin’s eminent scientific contemporaries also pointed out, e.g. German museum director, Dr Johann Blasius).
Chesterton argued that it would have been more productive to discover ‘what is
actually known about the variation of species and what can only plausibly be
guessed and what is quite random guesswork’, but ‘the Darwinians advanced it
with so sweeping and hasty an intolerance that it is no longer a question of
one scientific theory being advanced against another scientific theory. … It is
treated as an answer; and a final and infallible answer.’8
He noted
that even the most ardent evolutionists seemed hesitant in defending ….
Anti-evolution arguments
Chesterton
argued that ‘nobody need know any more than the mere rudiments of the
biological controversy in order to know that, touching twenty incidental
problems, [evolution] is in some ways a very unsatisfactory answer.’8 ….
‘I do not
know the true reason for a bat not having feathers; I only know that Darwin gave a false reason for its having wings.
And the more the Darwinians explain, the more certain I become that Darwinism
was wrong. All their explanations ignore the fact that Darwinism supposes an
animal feature to appear first, not merely in an incomplete stage, but in an
almost imperceptible stage. The member of a sort of mouse family, destined to
found the bat family, could only have differed from his brother mice by some
minute trace of membrane; and why should that enable him to escape out of a
natural massacre of mice? Or even if we suppose it did serve some other
purpose, it could only be by a coincidence; and this is to imagine a million
coincidences accounting for every creature. A special providence watching over
a bat would be a far more realistic notion than such a run of luck as that.’11,12
Chesterton
also questioned the usefulness of partially formed structures in animals; a
wing that enables flight is undoubtedly an advantage to a creature, but a half-formed wing is of no use. ‘Yet
Darwinism pre-supposes that numberless generations could survive before one
generation could fly.’13
….
Chesterton on evolutionary philosophy
….
The more
dangerous implication of evolutionism is how it permits us to treat our fellow
man. Chesterton saw the possibility that the more powerful could use
evolutionary arguments to exploit the disadvantaged—we have not seen his
fanciful predictions of people bred exactly for their intended professions,16 but the evolutionary
philosophy did produce eugenics in
America and to an even more extreme degree in Germany. There, ‘unfit’ individuals were
forcibly sterilized, and in the case of the Nazi death camps, exterminated for
the sake of what was seen to be the ideal for the human race. While few today
would advocate such tactics, evolutionary philosophy has substantially devalued
the human life, as can be witnessed by the millions of abortions which take
place every year in America alone, especially if the baby has Down’s Syndrome or some deformity—most of these handicapped
children never had a chance to take their first breath. And there are
evolutionists like Eric Pianka
and John Reid who wouldn’t
mind a drastic reduction in the human population to ‘save the planet’.
….
Staunch defender
Chesterton
also successfully debated some of the leading anti-Christians of his day, such
as George Bernard Shaw, H.G. Wells, Bertrand Russell and Clarence Darrow.17 Against Darrow, he was
much more successful than William Jennings
Bryan, winning the audience vote about 2–1. ….
I was favorably impressed by, warmly attached to,
G.K. Chesterton. I enjoyed my debates with him, and found him a man of culture
and fine sensibilities.—Famous atheistic lawyer Clarence Darrow, who decisively
lost a debate with him.
‘ … As Chesterton
summed it up, he felt as if Darrow had been arguing all afternoon with his
fundamentalist aunt, and the latter kept sparring with a dummy of his own
mental making. When something went wrong with the microphone, Darrow sat back
until it could be fixed. Whereupon G.K.C. jumped up and carried on in his
natural voice, “Science you see is not infallible!” Whatever brilliance Darrow
had in his own right, it was completely eclipsed. For all the luster that he
shed, he might have been a remote star at high noon drowned by the bright
incandescent light of the sun. Chesterton had the audience with him from the
start, and when it was over, everyone just sat there, not wishing to leave.
…
Ostensibly
the defender of science against Mr. Chesterton, [Darrow] obviously knew much
less about science than Mr. Chesterton did; when he essayed to answer his
opponent on the views of Eddington and Jeans, it was patent that he did not
have the remotest conception of what the new physics was all about.’18
….
[End of quotes]
Chesterton, in his book Saint
Thomas Aquinas, contrasted Homo
Sapiens with what he called Simius
Insipiens:
….
It is a pity that the word Anthropology has
been degraded to the study of Anthropoids. It is now incurably associated with
squabbles between prehistoric professors (in more senses than one) about
whether a chip of stone is the tooth of a man or an ape; sometimes settled as
in that famous case, when it was found to be the tooth of a pig. It is very
right that there should be a purely physical science of such things; but the
name commonly used might well, by analogy, have been dedicated to things not
only wider and deeper, but rather more relevant. Just as, in America, the new
Humanists have pointed out to the old Humanitarians that their humanitarianism
has been largely concentrated on things that are not specially human, such as
physical conditions, appetites, economic needs, environment and so on-- so in
practice those who are called Anthropologists have to narrow their minds to the
materialistic things that are not notably anthropic. They have to hunt through
history and pre-history something which emphatically is not Homo Sapiens, but
is always in fact regarded as Simius Insipiens. Homo Sapiens can only be
considered in relation to Sapientia and only a book like that of St. Thomas is
really devoted to the intrinsic idea of Sapientia. In short, there ought to be
a real study called Anthropology corresponding to Theology. In this sense St.
Thomas Aquinas, perhaps more than he is anything else, is a great
anthropologist.
[End of quote]
Rock of Ages versus Age
of Rocks
…. Perhaps
you remember Spencer Tracy and Frederic March playing this scene in the movie Inherit the Wind. …. Henry
Drummond (the Clarence Darrow character) has called Matthew Harrison Brady (the
William Jenning Bryant character) to the stand as an expert witness on the
Bible—
Drummond: It’s sad that we
don’t all have your positive knowledge of right and wrong, Mr. Brady. How
old do you think this rock is?
Brady: I am more interested
in the “Rock of Ages” than I am in the age of rocks.
….
Trying to date rocks is, though, fraught with problems.
You get those classic cases of layers of rocks, one on top of the other,
dated, respectively, to 100 million, 300 million, and 500 million years old. Unfortunately
for the conventional geologists, however, these are sometimes layered in
inverse order, with the 500 million on top, and the 100 million on the bottom.
Not surprising, for, as Dr. John Osgood has pointed out, all of the
supposedly scientific dating methods “rest
upon assumptions” (“A Better Model for
the Stone Age”)
…. The essential ingredients in putting together such
a chronology as the above [Stone Ages] are:
1.
the assumption of a
developmental history of mankind anatomically and culturally; in other words,
an evolutionary framework as a first base assumption; and
2.
the acceptance of
various dating techniques for absolute values in dating human habitation.
Let us now look at the second of these two
assumptions, the dating methods.
Dating Techniques
The scientific method can only work in the present,
for it only has its artifacts in the present with which to experiment and to
investigate. Reasonable scientific conclusions can be reached about those
artifacts in the framework in which we find them, whether these be tools or
cities or fossils. However, as we extrapolate the observations into the past we
immediately step out of the scientific method and into the area of historical
assumption. This is not science but mere reasoned conclusions, however
acceptable they may be to one's reason.
It follows naturally that if the scientific method
cannot work in the past and conclusions about the past must rest on
assumptions, then there is not today a dating method that can be scientifically
substantiated as being correct, for every method will have built into it an
assumption. Now when we come to the practical application of this theory we
discover in fact that this holds true. Let us look at the methods available.
There are many methods now available for dating. We
will mention the more obvious, all of which are used to obtain an absolute date
(we are not here referring to the primary chronological arrangement or relative
dating). The discussion will not be concerned with a lengthy treatise on the
subject matter as this can be found in a number of other places.
1. Fossil dating.
This is largely irrelevant in this context as it is used for much
greater periods of time. However, it is used to some extent in the Lower
Paleolithic strata as here defined. Fossil dating assumes that the fossil can
be dated by the rock in which it is found, and dating of the rock in which it
is found assumes that it can be dated by the fossil which is found in it. This
is, of course, circular reasoning and is frankly invalid.
2. Radiometric dating.
Radiometric methods assume that we can estimate the amount of radio
active substance with which we began the time clock, a doubtful proposition,
since that was a past event. It usually assumes a constant decay rate whereas
of recent years some doubt has crept into this assumption, and in most cases it
assumes no outside interference that has altered the system.
3. Carbon-14 dating.
Carbon-14 (or radiocarbon) dating in particular assumes that the influx
and outflow of carbon-14 atoms into and out of the biosphere is in equilibrium.
This simply is not so, and that alone invalidates the method. Massive
variations have been found. Furthermore, all the assumptions that are made for
the other radiometric methods essentially apply here, and these make all
radiometric dating methods doubtful as scientific tests.
4. Dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating.
This method is assumed by many to be able to 'correct' the carbon-14
clock from its drift of measurements. However, it assumes a number of things.
Firstly, it begins its estimation with a carbon-14 date!1 This introduces circular reasoning again. It
assumes also that a tree grows a single ring every year. This is simply not
always the case, for some trees have been found to put on multiple rings each
year, while other trees have been known to put on no rings in a particular year
or for several years, particularly in dry times. It also assumes that
conditions over small areas are the same as far as climate and soil conditions
are concerned, but most gardeners can tell you that the growth potential for
any tree can vary across very small distances in any one place. This is rarely
taken into account in dendrochronology. Dendrochronology, in fact, is so shot
through with assumptions that it is surprising that anyone dared to present it
as a scientific test.1
5. The written word including coins.
This assumes that the author is reliable or that the details are not
inaccurately copied and can be verified.
A quick perusal of the above list will show very quickly that none of
these methods qualify as a scientific test for dating the past, for all of them rest upon assumptions.
Furthermore, these principles can be extended to other tests and all will be
shown to be based on assumptions.
[End of quote]
No wonder that Australia’s Mungo Man gets dated, now to 60,000 years
ago, then - following a sudden change of opinion - spiralled down to 40,000
years ago.
Still, what’s a mere 20,000 years between friends!
Mungo Man
Turning evolution upside down
…. In the study of human evolution, Australia has not traditionally
believed to have much to offer; however, the skeletal record has thrown up a
few spanners in the works that may one day transform beliefs about where humans
came from.
One of these spanners is Mungo Man, who was discovered in 1974 in
the dry lake bed of Lake Mungo in west NSW. Mungo Man was a hominin who was
estimated to have died 62,000 years ago and was ritually buried with his hands
covering his penis. Anatomically, Mungo Man's bones were distinct from other
human skeletons being unearthed in Australia. Unlike the younger skeletons that
had big-brows and thick-skulls, Mungo Man's skeleton was finer, and more like
modern humans.
The ANU's John Curtin School of Medical Research found that Mungo
Man's skeleton's contained a small section of mitochondrial DNA. After
analysing the DNA, the school found that Mungo Man's DNA bore no similarity to
the other ancient skeletons, modern Aborigines and modern Europeans.
Furthermore, his mitochondrial DNA had become extinct. The results called into
question the 'Out of Africa' theory of human evolution. If Mungo Man was
descended from a person who had left Africa in the past 200,000 years, then his
mitochondrial DNA should have looked like all of the other samples.
….
