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My good friends, my first very pleasant duty is to thank you for your invitation to be with you here once again. And the second is likewise pleasurable for me to state what a great enjoyment it is to come back once more, uh, to be with you here. It is like coming back to one's roots, and I'm sure I gain great sustenance and nourishment by, from time to time, returning, returning to my roots here in the noble and royal county of Suffolk. My topic tonight is to be design versus evolution in the universe, and you have a right to know by what kind of qualification I stand before you to talk upon such a topic.
I am, in the first place, let me honestly confess to you, I am a Christian, and not a very good one at that, uh, as my friends will tell you, but a Christian nonetheless, and the kind of a Christian that believes the Bible, both Old Testament and New. You may rightly conclude, therefore, that when I come to talk upon a topic like this, I am biased, you fish. That I freely admit, and I declare my bias right from the beginning. I do believe in God, creator and designer of the universe. Having said that, part of my thesis tonight will be simply this, that they who espouse the theory of evolution are likewise biased.
Shocking as it may sound, I shall advance the thesis that those scientists who believe in evolution do not believe in it because the evidence compels them to believe in it. They believe it, if they do, on a priori grounds of materialistic philosophy. Now that to you may sound a rather boastful, arrogant, uh, claim made by a Christian. So let me quote to you the recent confessions of Professor Roose of the United States. Professor Roose is a leading evolutionary scientist in the States.
Indeed, you may recall that some years ago there came up a trial before the High Court in America. It was about one of the states, I think it was Arkansas or somewhere, uh, like that, who had passed a law in their state that schools who taught evolution to the children as science must also teach what they called creation science, and thus be fair to the children in the school. But the anti-creationists, uh, formed, got together and pursued the state of Arkansas right up to the high federal court in the States to decide this issue.
The case came before a judge, and the judge gave it as his verdict that, uh, evolution must be taught in the schools, all state schools, that is, because it is science. What Christians have called creation science, that is the doctrine that there is a God creator who has designed the universe. Creation science must not be taught in the state schools of America, because creation science isn't genuine science. It is a philosophy. It is a faith. The judge wasn't saying that people shouldn't have that faith. He was simply remarking that a faith is open to your choice.
You can choose to believe it or not to believe it, and therefore it should not be taught in the schools as if it was science. Whereas evolution, said the judge, was science, and therefore must be taught in the schools. Faith deals with value judgment. Science deals with facts, and therefore, if evolution is a science and is a fact, it must be taught as a fact and received as a fact. But of course, to believe in God the Creator is only a belief, it isn't science, it isn't a fact, and therefore it should not be taught in state schools. Well, at that trial, Professor Roose was the leading witness for the evolutionists, and put before the judge that the case was precisely, uh, that, that evolution is a science founded on science, whereas belief in a creator is not science, it is a faith, it is a philosophy.
Much through the personal friendship and the argumentation of this now famous gentleman, Philip Johnson of the States, who some five or six years ago wrote the book Darwinism, Darwin on Trial. Professor Roose has publicly acknowledged in a meeting of scientists drawn from the whole United States, as he gave the keynote address, he confessed to the assembled scientists that he had come to the opinion that evolution is not a science, it is a philosophy. He hastened to add that he still believed evolution, but he had now to admit that evolution, strictly speaking, is not a science, certainly isn't a fact, uh, uh, uh, put down by science.
It is a theory based upon philosophy, and of course that philosophy would be what we call materialistic philosophy. There is an increasing number of folks in this world, even in the scientific community, that are beginning to see that evolution, Darwinian evolution, that is, is as much built on philosophy as is the Christian doctrine of a creation. So yes, I admit my bias. I am a Christian. I believe the Bible. I believe in God. I want to want to remind all evolutionists present that they too are based on a philosophy, not strictly speaking on science.
Our topic then is design versus evolution in the universe, and I ought perhaps to spend the f- our first few moments, uh, pointing out what we, I mean tonight in this title by evolution. For evolution has become a very slippery, uh, term, difficult to take it by the tail and hold it in the fingers of your mind when you are discussing these things with other people of a different view. For instance, evolution is commonly used today in a sense that is not really evolution at all. Just let me remind you of, uh, instances of that.
Generations of school children have been taught in their schools, I hasten to add, by honest school teachers, uh, the evidence for evolution, which, as they say, is, uh, provided by the story of the peppered moth. So if you haven't seen a peppered moth recently, let me tell you all about peppered moths, as far as I can tell you. These peppered moths, at one stage in the last century before the Industrial Revolution, were mostly whitish in col- color, but were with dark streaks here and there, hence the name peppered moth, you see.
In those days, even in the black country, so-called, well, it wasn't black then, it was green, the barks of the tree were often whitish, you'll see, or speckled, and so were many a lichen on a rock. And these peppered moths, being largely white but just flecks in them and so on, would alight on such trees, where, of course, the tree bark being whitish or grayish but speckled, the moths was very difficult for the birds to see, and the birds therefore only managed to gobble up just a few. Those, uh, peppered moths, however, which had more dark in their wings than light, stood out against the whitish gray background, and the birds got them.
So that by natural selection, there's a good example of natural selection, natural selection does take place in the world. The birds, because they were hungry for their dinners, selected, uh, the black moths because they saw them and didn't see, uh, the lighter colored peppered moths. So there came to be more whitish peppered moths than there were blackish peppered moths. But then came the industrial revolution, belching out its smoke and fumes of every color under the sun, till even the silver poplar barks were all blackened and sooty, and the lichens had turned sooty.
And then, lo and behold, there was no longer advantage in being a whitish peppered moth, because you stood out if you latched upon the tree trunk, you stood out, you see, and the birds could see you. Where now, contrary to what it used to be, there was every advantage in being a black peppered moth, you see, because you didn't stand out. Natural selection got to work, and the whitish peppered moths were gobbled up by ravenous birds, but the blackish peppered moths were overlooked, and therefore there came to be more blackish peppered moths. Now we've got clean air laws, and even in the Black Country, the smoke is much less than it used to be, and the silver birches and things are turning back, if you please, to being predominantly whitish or grayish or silverish.
Ah, the moths have adapted as well. Natural selection once more, of course. Now the black moths show up and the birds eat them, and they can't see the white moths so much, and so they don't get eaten. Natural selection, and everybody agrees, of course. Nobody wants to dispute natural selection. It is a thing that goes on in nature. But when school children are taught that here is a marvelous example of evolution, then it is quite plain, surely, to see, after a moment's thought, that this isn't evolution at all. This is simply a moth population in whose gene there is a certain range.
And of course, in those different circumstances, natural selection will operate, and in some circumstances, the moths that, um, come out more white than black will survive better than the others, and vice versa. That's not evolution. Take, for instance, the human race itself. Red and yellow, black and white, as we used to sing in our Sunday school days. How did all these different colored, different coloredly humans come to be. Well, the Bible will tell you God didn't create one lot black and one lot white and one lot yellow and one lot red.
The Bible says that all human beings, whatever their colors, come from one. That is the biblical doctrine. And all the massive developments of colorizations and so forth, and physiognomy that have since developed are truly called not evolution, but development within the limits of natural physiological and biochemical, um, development. The different colors have arisen by development. But it's, if you ask, but how did the human race start? Well, now that's another story. The moths change according to the possibility of change in their genes, yes.
That tells us nothing about how moths came to be in the first place. So this business of peppered moths, though generations of school children have been taught it is an example of evolution, that is not true, and it doesn't begin to support Darwinian theory of evolution. You can call it evolution if you like, you must call it then perhaps microevolution and very carefully distinguish it from macroevolution. So that's a very different thing. Variation within species, the Bible itself therefore talks about that. But, uh, as I say, that's not we what we mean, not what I shall mean tonight by evolution.
Let me, uh, quote a thoroughgoing evolutionist, and let him tell you what Darwin, Darwinists mean by evolution. There is Professor Futuma, leading evolutionist in the States, and he says, anyone who believes in Genesis as a literal description of history must hold a worldview that is entirely incompatible with the idea of evolution, not to speak of science itself.
Where science insists on material mechanistic causes that can be understood by physics and chemistry, the literal believer in Genesis invokes unknowable supernatural forces. Now that is the sense in which I shall be talking about evolution tonight. And this isn't my Christian viewpoint, putting up an Aunt Sally so I can knock it down. Here is a leading expert in evolutionary theory telling you what, at heart, evolutionists of the Darwinian, neo-Darwinian kind actually believe.
Now, there are Christian people and others who would call themselves evolution and tell you that they believe in Darwinian evolution, only they hold that evolution is the method that God has used for the development of the universe and the human race. And I respect them. I think they are wrong. I respect them. I shall not be discussing that view tonight, the view that God himself has used evolution as a technique for developing the universe. As I say, I shall be showing evidence that, if we followed it, would, in my opinion, show that that view is quite mistaken. But those who say they believe in Darwinian evolution and think God has used it should listen, perhaps, to the thoroughgoing evolutionist.
He, uh, not only doesn't believe in God, but as you see, he points out that there is an utter, complete, absolute, irre- irreconcilable difference between Darwinian evolution as neo-Darwinian evolution as currently taught and a belief in a creator. The two are irreconcilable. Science insists on material mechanistic causes that can be understood by physics and chemistry. So that the world came to be not by the creation of God, not by any intelligence, it came simply by mindless, mechanistic, materialistic forces, no supernatural forces involved at all, not in the initial coming to be or any stage in the development.
That is neo-Darwinianism. And as you'll see, Futuma points out, uh, you'll see that there is this direct, irreconcilable con- uh, contra- uh, uh, opposition between the two views. Let nobody persuade you otherwise. You will see the practical implications of this materialistic philosophy, which we call evolution. Look at his next paragraph here. Perhaps more importantly, if the world and its creatures developed purely by material physical forces, it could not have been designed. So what? Well, if it wasn't designed, then it has no purpose.
The fundamentalist, in contrast, that's people like me, I suppose, believes that everything in the world, every species and every characteristic of every species, was designed by an intelligent, purposeful artificer, and it would, it was made for a purpose. Nowhere does this contrast apply with more force than to the human species. Notice his final paragraph. Some shrink from the conclusion that the human species was not designed, has no purpose, and is the produce of mere mechanical mechanisms. People shrink from that.
I expect you do too. I certainly do. Pot of jam has more purpose in it and behind it than a human being, apparently, according to him. Because behind every pot of jam stands a jam maker, and it's made for a purpose. But if the evolutionists be right, there's no purpose behind you, you're worse than a pot of jam. Things are. The gentleman at the front here objects, but I'm just pointing out the implications of the theory. You will say, this seems to be the message of evolution. And it is a good thing if we wake up and listen to the evolutionists themselves, what exactly are they saying? You will see that this is, so to speak, a fight to the death.
Eh, why should we bother about these things? Well, some of us who are older will say, but we've always believed in God. We've, uh, believed in the Bible, so why should we bother to listen to you? I can't think, so if you care now to go to sleep for the next half an hour, you will be rewarded by buns and tea at the end. But on the other hand, if we are to keep our minds awake and afresh to the thinking of the world, then we ought to know something about what the world is thinking. We can start with our children in the school, where many of them are taught evolution as a fact, not merely as a theory.
And so they listen to you in Sunday school, and then they go to school and hear the very opposite, and there develops a schizoid mentality in school, uh, they believe they're, uh, Darwinian evolution, which has its pre, uh, concern, there is no God. In church, you talk to them about God, and as they get older, it sounds like a fairy story, a Little Red Riding Hood to cover, to comfort people when they go to bed in the dark, but nothing more than a yarn. And anyway, nowadays there are multitudes of grown-ups who think science has proved there is no God.
When they listen to you, therefore, preaching your gospel, think you must be cranky if you don't know that science has proved there is no God. Look at, uh, Julian Huxley. I had the honor for many years in working in a Greek department with a great nephew of his. He's talking in nineteen fifty nine, and the famous meeting at Chicago in honor of Darwin. Uh, look at the second paragraph, if you will. This is one of the first public occasions on which it has been frankly faced that all aspects of reality are subject to evolution, from atoms and stars to fish and flowers, from fish and flowers to human societies and values, indeed that all reality is a single process of evolution.
In the evolutionary pattern, says Huxley, in the evolutionary pattern of thought, there is no longer either need or room for the supernatural. The earth was not created. It evolved. So did all the animals and plants that inhabit it, including our human cells, mind and soul, as well as brain and body. So did religion. Religion in evolved. It doesn't come from any God because there isn't any God. It's something that in evolved, like indigestion has done in the human stomach. Finally, says Julian Huxley, the evolutionary vision is enabling us to discern, however complete, incompletely, the lineaments of a new religion.
And though he was an extremist, of course, and said some silly things, ladies and gentlemen, when this world has been soaked from end to end in generations of people brought up to the notion that evolution is a fact established by science, and science has thus proved that there is no God. It is easy to imagine the kind of religion that will dominate the West before our Lord comes in power and great glory. It will be a religion that says there's no God out there. Man is God. Millions will flock to the propaganda put out by his chief of propaganda, and they shall say, who is like to the beast, claiming divine honors for man.
For if there be no God. Julian Huxley himself said, you see, we were now in a position as a human race, having understood there is no God, we'd now evolved far enough that we ourselves could take control of evolution. Marvelous thought. He said the trouble was there are so many silly people about, you see, who are liable to get angry if you step on their toes and set off an atomic bomb. And that's unfortunate, because if somebody set off too many atomic bombs, you'll see, then we shouldn't have the possibility of controlling evolution and developing into a beautiful, marvelous, peaceful society. How can we persuade these idiots not to set off atomic bombs? We need to get hold of their hearts, says he.
Well, how do you get hold of their hearts? Well, you can't get hold of people's hearts by a scientific test tube. People are not given to falling down on their knees and saying, thy kingdom come, oh test tube, uh, do see. So how do you get at their hearts to stop them playing the fool and setting off atomic bombs and eliminating the planet Earth? He said, we want a new religion. Well, if there's no God, what, uh, you have a religion. What will you worship now? You won't go to worshipping centipedes, do you? Well, obviously not. Well, what, what is the highest thing you know in the whole of the universe? That will be mankind. And then man will worship man, that is the forecast of Bible.
And we should be concerned about these things, of course, eh, because it is in fact given out, uh, by people commonly and to be heard to this day, that, uh, evolution is a fact. Let's take two examples here, just to remind you. Here's Julian Huxley once more, and I cannot trouble you with him anymore after this, sorry. And Julian was saying at that same conference, the first point to make about Darwin's theory is that it is no longer a theory, but a fact.
Darwinianism has come of age, so to speak. We are no longer having to bother about establishing the fact of evolution. Wow, if only he had known what the science has brought forth in this last forty years. But there's him saying it, and he has been repeated at all kinds of levels, and alas, in schools and in many a textbook, it is taught like that. Here is his modern equivalent, Professor Dawkins. Some media people recently endowed him a chair, did they not, in Oxford. There's much to be heard. He is an exceedingly clever man. His books are a delight to read from their sheer ingenuity and their sparkle.
He is, in fact, an evangelist more than a scientist. He preaches Darwinianism as though it were a gospel. I wish I had half his ability to preach the truth as a gospel, as he preaches Darwinianism, and there's much to be heard, of course, on BBC. Says, uh, uh, uh, Dawkins, not Hawkins, you will distinguish those two, I'm sure. Hawkins is a thoroughgoing scientist. Uh, Dawkins says in his book, the theory, that is the theory of evolution, is about as much in doubt as the earth goes round the sun. And Michael Denton, who quotes this, I'm quoting from Michael Denton's book, says, adds, of course, now, of course, such claims are simply nonsense.
For Darwin's model of evolution is still very much a theory and still very much in doubt when it comes to macroevolutionary phenomena. Furthermore, being basically a theory of historical reconstruction, it is impossible to verify evolution by experiment or direct observation, as is normal in science. It is a confusion of categories, therefore. Evolution is, strictly speaking, not a science, it is a theory, and it's certainly not a fact. So tonight I want, eh, to put before you, uh, ideas drawn from different areas of science, eh, to show that the evidence for evolution is substantially lacking.
It isn't there, so to speak. And for this purpose, I'm going to quote people that are not, as far as I know, Christians, but themselves evolutionists. We'll start with the fossil record. Many a book has been written and beautifully colored, particularly for schools again and for the young, showing all sorts of, uh, wonderful things from the supposed fossil record. And from the fossil record, uh, they build up marvelous chains and trees of evolutionary development, you see. And people are taught that that's where we come from.
You're on that branch here, and that branch joins a bigger branch, and the other branch joins another branch, and this comes down to the central trunk, and it goes down to the bit of slime or whatever it was where it all started. But, uh, and all sorts of marvelous pictures are pictured, uh, things that were meant to be not quite human. We're not talking about people who meet on the tube, but, uh, uh, you know, imaginary things, you see. So let's listen to David Raup. Get this right in a minute. Raup is an evolutionist. He is the expert, perhaps the world's most respected, uh, of paleontologists, that are the people that deal with the fossil record.
And this is what Routt says. A large number of well-trained scientists outside of evolutionary biology and paleontology-ology have unfortunately got the idea that the fossil record is far more Darwinian than it is. So don't believe me, believe him, because he's an evolutionist. He's an expert paleontologist. And he is telling, it's a pity, isn't it? People who are not experts as he is experts, scientists indeed that don't work in paleontology but in other disciplines, have got the idea that the fossil record is much more full than it actually is, says he.
This probably comes from oversimplification, inevitable in secondary sources, low level textbooks. That's not meant to be a moral low level, but you know what I mean. Elementary textbooks, shall we put it that way, you'll say. The oversimplification inevitable in, in secondary sources, low level textbooks, semi-popular articles, and so on. Also, there is probably some wishful thinking involved. He's being honest, isn't he, this evolutionist? People like to believe evolution, just like I like to believe in the creativity. Some people like to believe evolution. Eh, in the years after Darwin, his advocates hope to find predictable progressions.
In general, these have not been. Yet the optimism has died hard, and some pure fantasy has crept into textbooks. All you young folk at school that might be listening tonight, do listen to this chap, won't you? And if your textbooks say the kind of thing he's complaining at, don't tell your teacher that that gospel preacher in the gospel hall said it was nonsense. Tell them that Raup said it was nonsense, will they? Hm. Uh, one of the ironies of the evolution creation, and this is a very choice bit from Raup.
One of the ironies of the evolution creation, uh, debate is that the creationists have accepted the mistaken notion that the fossil record shows a detailed and orderly progression. That's mistaken, but they say the, the creationists have unfortunately accepted that and have gone to great lengths to accommodate this fact in their flood geology. Whereas if only they knew the fact, they wouldn't bother to try and, uh, reconcile it with flood geology, because it ain't true to start with. That's Ralph Rout talking. Ah, here's Rout again. Darwin predicted that the fossil record should show a reasonably smooth continuation of ancestor descendant pairs, primitive and developed, and then primitive and more developed, and so on.
With a satisfactory number of intermediates between the major groups. After all, if things evolve little by little by little by little by little by little, there ought to be many fossils in the record, don't there, that are a little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit, little bit different and developed. And Darwin predicted there would be such, you see. Darwin even went so far as to say that if this were not found in the fossil record, his general theory of evolution would be in serious jeopardy. That's Darwin himself. Such smooth transitions were not found in Darwin's time. And he explained this in part on the basis of an incomplete geologic record, and in part on the lack of study of that record.
Now let's look at that next paragraph by Ralph. He's the expert in the record of the rocks. We are now more than a hundred years after Darwin, and the situation is little changed. Since Darwin, a tremendous expansion of paleontological knowledge has taken place, and we know much more about the fossil record that was known in his time, but the actual situation, the basic situation, is not much different. We actually may have fewer examples of smooth transitions than we had in Darwin's time, because some of the old examples have turned out to be invalid when studied in more detail.
You don't have to believe, you young folks in your school, you don't have to believe what so many charts in so many museums put across as though it were fact. You don't have to believe it. It is not founded on facts, what Rout calls a lot of wishful thinking. But let's take another a- angle from the paleontological record. Let's think of how all you enchantingly beautiful and complicated and sophisticated ladies and gentlemen came to be, you'll see. How did life start on our planet? And shall we limit ourselves for the moment to human life?
You'll see. How did it start? Was it, as the Bible says, by the creating- creative act of God? Or did it happen by chance, without any design, without any plan, just by chance? Blind forces gradually, uh, producing life, which then became more and more complicated and sophisticated. Here is the combined opinion of two eminent professors. There's Professor Hoyle, Frederick Hoyle, retired professor of astronomy from Cambridge, and Chandra Wickramasinghe, who is still a mathematician, practicing mathematician, an Indian, or no, a Sri Lankan rather, in the University of Cardiff.
Neither of those gentlemen believes in the God of the Bible. Neither of them believes in Christ. Hoyle accepts a kind of evolution, evolution from space, he says. But now look to what he says about the possibility of life developing here on Earth by evolution. A simple calculation shows that the chance of obtaining the necessary total of two thousand enzymes by randomly assembling amino acid chains is exceedingly minute. So let's stop over that because there's some big words there, uh, difficult for me to take in.
But, um, if you're going to have life, you'll have to have things called enzymes, and you who are not chemists, uh, you needn't bother about what they are. They're funny sounding things, say Kellogg's cornflakes if you like, uh, whatever they are. You've got to have these things called enzymes, and to get enzymes, you have to start with another stuff. They're called amino acids, and there's a plenty of amino acids, and they call these acid things, well, you can call them if you like, you don't have to, A and B and C and D and what have you, you'll see. And to get, uh, these aforesaid enzymes, you've got to have a whole array of these amino acids, and they generally come in groups of four, but they've got to be in exact right order.
They can't be in just any old order, and of course the en- the order changes with the, with different ones, and you've got to get about two thousand of them. They've all got to be in exact the right order, else you don't have life. You don't have the enzyme, anyway, and enzymes are a long way off being life. You don't even get started with the old enzymes. So he says, what is then the chance of getting these old amino acids, two thousand of them, all exactly in the right order? And it's a very complicated order indeed. What is the chance of it happening by accident? Well, he says he points it out to you.
The random chance is not a million to one against, or a billion to one against. You don't do the lottery, so you won't understand that, but try and take it in. Or even a trillion to one against. The chance of it happening by accident is P to one against, when P means minimally an enormous, super, astronomical number equal to ten to the to the power of forty thousand. Ah, that is one followed by forty thousand zeros.
The chance of it happening by chance, the likelihood of it happening is one to this vast, vast number against. The odds we have thus computed, he says, are only for the enzymes, and of course, correct arrangement with many other important macromolecules of life besides empi- uh, uh, enzymes must also be considered. He quotes two, don't bother about them, uh, even pronouncing the names here. These two things are two such ex- each other, uh, each with exceedingly small probability of being obtained by chance. The odds of one in ten to the forty thousand against are horrendous enough, but that would have to be increased to a major degree.
Such a number exceeds the total number of fundamental particles throughout the u- the observed universe by very, very many orders of magnitude. So great are the odds against life being produced in a purely mechanistic way that the difficulties for an earthbound mechanistic biology are, in our view, intrinsically impossible. That is a, a one, was before he retired, one of the leading astronomers in the world. He doesn't believe in the God of the Bible, nor in our gospel. But here's him pointing out the odds against life having started by chance.
He's the author of that famous phrase, you say that life happened by chance, and the, the amino acids and the enzymes and all the other things came together by chance to form life. You might as well talk of a hurricane blowing through a scrapyard producing a Boeing seven four seven. Don't let your teachers, will you, you, you young chaps and girls, don't let your teachers tell you that, uh, evolution has been proved and is a scientific fact. Or if they start to tell you that, uh, tell them about what Hoyle says. Another line of approach to this matter, not only the intrinsic unlikelihood, the odds, I repeat, did you notice that as we read it?
The odds against it are so big that you'd have to, the odds, the number is more than the whole particles in the whole universe. Um, that's Hoyle. But now let's take another approach, and that is what is called these days, uh, irreducible complexity. I was present at a conference recently in the States and profited much by listening to Professor Michael Behe, who has recently produced this book, Darwin's Black Box, and he takes Darwinianism to pieces in a very gentlemanly way, but a very firm fashion, you'll see, points out its sheer impossibility.
And, uh, to help us understand what the biochemists nowadays mean by irreducible complexity. Michael Behe uses the very potent and simple illustration of a mousetrap. Ladies and gentlemen, pray look at, well, you'll know what a mousetrap is, won't you? Now I've got to be careful not to nip my fingers and get caught by my own argument. But here is a mousetrap, says Michael Behe, you'll see. It consists of the basic board, you see, or it can be of iron or anything here, this platform here. And then it has to have a hammer affair that comes over and smites the mouse. Yes?
But that would be no good unless you also had a string to make it come down. And then, of course, you have to have a catch, you'll see. So there's a long thing here that holds this whatnot up, and the cheese is put on that end, and when the unfortunate mouse, uh, not being a scientist, uh, steps on this, um, end here, uh, you see, it doesn't foresee the fact that it will spring the trap and the hammer will come down and, uh, kill it. Now that is a very simple mechanism. You have one, two, three, four uh, bits and pieces, or five in it, you see. But Michael B points out that that is what you might call irreducibly complex, meaning that the whole five bits have got to be there all at once, else the thing doesn't work.
Well, you can see that, can't you? You can't just start off with the platform and catch, say, ten mice, and then one day add a hammer bit on without the spring and catch a few more mice. And then put the spring on, but no catch, and catch a few dozen mice. And gradually evolve over millions of years until all the parts are there. Because the fact is, until they're all there, you wouldn't catch any mice. It is complex, but it's irreducibly complex. Take one bit away and nothing works. Now you say, what's that got to do with evolution?
Well, Mike Behe is a biochemist and therefore studies the chemistry that goes on inside the cells in the body. He points out in Darwin's day, dear old Darwin, he he thought of the cell as a bit of jello or something, because in those days folk didn't know what was inside the cell, so it might have been a bit of plasticine for way was concerned, a live plasticine, and they thought it quite reasonable that a little bit inside it could change, and you'll get a bit of a advantage, and then a few millions years later, another little bit inside would change, you'll get another advantage, we hope, and so on. And that was reasonable, I suppose, supposition in those days when people didn't know what was inside the cell.
But the astonishing advance of technology nowadays, and in bi- applied to biochemistry, has showed us that inside the cell there is such a complicated and sophisticated mechanism as beggars description, and that it has all got to be there, else the thing doesn't work at all. So might be he gives us a one and many examples in that book. I recommend it to you. Don't believe everything he says, uh, but uh, believe this, these thoughts as a, when he talks as a biochemist. Take, for instance, that process of what happens if you cut a finger.
Suppose you cut a finger very badly, and it starts to bleed. Well, if it kept on bleeding, you would die, of course. So what happens, as we all know, when you cut your finger, first of all, the blood comes, and that's very good because it helps to wash away any germs that are there, but then presently the blood coagulates and seals the wound. It's got to do that, or you'll bleed to death. What is it then that happens inside the cell? What is the mechanism that causes the blood to clot and fill the wound?
It's no good just saying, well, it just happens, really. But actually, what happens inside the cell, uh, to cause the blood to, uh, clot is an exceedingly complicated thing. Let me begin to, to remind you. When you cut your finger, uh, Josie, there is a stuff in your body that eventually will cause the blood to clot precisely at that point. Where do you get the stuff from? Well, it's no good going down to the chemist if you're in the jungles of Peru and you cut your finger very badly, you was on a machete or something, no good saying half a minute, I'll go to the nearest chemist.
You'll be dead anyway before you got there. So the stuff has got to be in the blood, somehow, somewhere, in the cells in the blood. Ah, but wait a minute. It can't be in a form that's active, otherwise it would make the blood clot everywhere and you wouldn't be alive two minutes, would you? So it's got to be in the blood, but it can't be in the form that makes blood clot. It's got to be able somehow to be in the bloodstream, in the cells, and when your finger is cut, somehow something has got to be transformed and changed so that now it becomes active and causes blood to clot. Ah, but wait a minute, it can't be clotting while it's still going round and hasn't reached your finger, because if it clotted in your brain, you'll be less thinking than you are even at the moment, you'll see.
And uh, and uh, and uh, if it, if it clotted down your arm, you could be dead, couldn't you, you see. So, how has it worked? By what kind of mechanism? Uh, this simple matter of blood clotting so you don't, um, die. Oh, here it is. This is what has happened to molecules in your, oh, sorry. Uh, molecules... in the cells, when you cut your finger. From the time that the wound is made to the time when the, uh, the scab has done its job, the wound has been healed, the flesh has been restored, and the wound falls off.
Here is the molecules involved. Now, you don't have to learn the names. You don't have to strain your eyesight to follow every arrow on that. But this is the kind of process that has to happen within the cell. And what is more, if one or two of them are lacking, well, you die, don't you? You bleed to death. Can you see what Professor Behe means by irreducible complexity? They've all got to be there, or else it doesn't work. How could a little bit of that have happened one millions of years ago, and then a mouse nearly survived, but he didn't manage quite to survive, and another one was cut, and somehow two million years later, another little bit was added.
It is sheer nonsense. And this is not old conservative Christians putting their conservative Christian heads in the sand and trying to ignore science. This is the kind of thing that modern science and technology is bringing to light in the workings of the human cell. This effect is called a cascade effect. That doesn't mean that all scientists, all biochemists, uh, uh, are now converted and no longer believe in evolution. Far from it. But some of them will honestly admit, and there are many, many honest scientists, aren't there?
Eh, do they? We're not despising them, nor I hope talking rudely about them. On the back cover of Professor Behe's book, there is a, a, a review by Professor Robert Shapiro, author of Origins, a Skeptic's Guide to the Creation of Life on Earth. He's an evolutionist. He remains an evolutionist. This is what he says. Michael Behe has done a top-notch job of explaining and illuminating one of the most vexing problems in biology, the origin of the complexity that permeates all of life on this planet.
Professor Behe selects an answer that falls outside of science, namely the original creation of life by an intelligent designer. That is true, that is Mike Behe's position. He does believe in God. He's Catholic, actually, but he believes in God, of course. And he believes this points to a designer who designed the whole system and installed it complete, not that it evolved bit by bit. So, says Professor Shapiro, who's the evolutionist, Michael Behe chooses the answer outside of science, says he. The original creation of life by an intelligent designer.
Now listen to what he says next. Many scientists, myself included, will prefer to continue the search for an answer within science. And you see the implication, don't you? Is Shapiro admitting they have no answer to this problem. Dawkins of li- of Oxford, he gets rather un- uh, angry with Mike Behe, calls him all sorts of funny things, you'll see. But he would say, yes, you have, we have no answer to it, but why doesn't Behe go on with his science and find an answer within science instead of calling on a designer outside?
Why does Dawkins continue with his atheism, I wonder? It's Dawkins who described himself on one occasion, said he, Darwinianism makes it possible for me to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. Because he wants to be an atheist, and he's looking around for intellectual justification for being an atheist. One other interesting little diagram you'll find in Behe's book, and I won't keep you too much longer, but, uh, if you can endure another ten minutes, you'll get two buns instead of one. Just have a look at that. Oh, you would do if you could, wouldn't you?
That's the best I can do. You say, what on earth is that? Well, that's a diagram of how a certain bacterium works. I don't know if you've ever seen a bacterium, they might be difficult to see, but you'll see they are very, uh, lowly creatures in the process of life. But some of these bacteria, they need to transport themselves around about the place, and to them a cell is an enormous, vast stadium. To a bacterium, bacterium is so small, you see. So some of these bacteria, they have, uh, got means of propelling themselves around about the place.
They don't all have the same means, you'll see. Some of them have got a thing sticking out the end, and they sort of skull along, you'll see. This chap, he has what is called a flagellum, because this arm here rotates, and this forms a repeller at the end of the ba- bacterium, it goes round and round like a propeller, you'll see. And this is a stylization of the me- not a photograph, of course not, a stylization of the mechanism. And you'll see it is a remarkably complicated mechanism. Here, this thing, the filament, as it's called, that's the propeller that will go round and round and round and round and round. But then you see you have to have a mechanism, because if when the propeller went round, the bacterium went round and round and round and round, you wouldn't get very far, would you?
I don't know if you've been used to driving motorboats on the broads, you see, and the propeller goes round, but if when the propeller went round, the boat went round and round and round and round, you wouldn't get very far, would you? You'd be kind of going round in circles. So you've got to have some kind of thing that keeps the boat fixed straight as the propeller goes whizzing around and doesn't whiz the boat round. Well, so has the old bacterium. And it's provided, of course, by this universal joint, the hook here, as it's called, that comes down here through bushing, if you want to use engineering terms. We're talking about a bacterium, not a motor car, of course, but we're he's using the terms from motor mechanical engineering, and that comes down here to an engine.
The engine is, uh, driven by electricity produced in the cells. Behe asked the question, how could that have happened in stages, little by little by little, because nothing would have worked. Here below is the model made of it in technical drawing are the kind of mechanisms that drive the propeller, and the propeller helps the old bacterium to move around where it wants to go. You can believe, if you like, that that all happened over millions of years, tiny little bit by tiny little bit, but that is what some of my friends in America, scientists in America, call a just so story.
You know, how did the elephant get its trunk? Because a lion or something pulled it. Well, there we are. One more line of, um, inquiry, and we shall be finished. We have talked about the, uh, record of paleontology, these fossils. We have talked about the unlikelihood of life beginning by accident in biochemistry, the amino acids and the, um, uh, all the other things that have to go to produce life in the cell. We have now talked about some of the cascade processes that go on.
They're irreducibly complex for cars. If one bit were missing, they wouldn't work. And if they didn't work, nothing would have survived until they did work. What other, uh, form of attack comes these days? Well, it's what is called information theory. To illustrate what information theory is, just let me take some of you who, uh, were experts in engineering in the fifties Uh, back to those days. You remember, ladies, when you had the last word of washing, uh, machine? Last word, weren't they?
You no longer had to pull a long handle around at the top, I think not. You were the last word. You had this big affair, and in the top there was a slit. There's a hole, of course, to put the clothes in. Now, as you know, of course, the gentleman wouldn't know that, but it is a fact, gentlemen, that if you're going to wash woolens, they've got to be washed in a different process from linens, do you see? And very many other sophisticated differences there are, you see. So, you, you wanted to do linens, so put the linen in the hole, and then you had a square of plastic, do you see? If you happen to look at it closely, there's notches down the side of the plastic, you see.
So if it was the linens, well, you got the right side of this square, there are notches on all the s- sides, you see, but you got the right side under directions from the handbook, and you put that side into the machine. And those notches on the plastic controlled the mechanism inside and, so to speak, told the mechanism, linens, please, and the machine went round the right way for linens, you'll see, at the right speed and the right temperature and everything else until the linens are done. And after the linens, if you want to put the woolens in, well, you took a bit of plastic out and you turned it round and upside down the other way, and a different set of notches, and you put that in, and that made the machine go the right way for woolens. Of course, the younger generation don't know how sophisticated we were in those far off days here, and most of the ladies are too young to have remembered it anyway.
I remember it. Now, if you'd have got that piece of plastic and you'd have said to somebody, tell me, see this square of thing here I'm holding in my hand, what is it? Uh, and I say plastic. You'll say, yes, ten, marks out of ten. Anything else? Well, not as far as I can see. It's only plastic. Oh, it's only plastic. Well, there's nothing else on it. That'd be absolutely true, wouldn't it? So it was only plastic. Was it only plastic? Well, of course it wasn't. Those notches on the side, what were they? Well, notches in the plastic, that's all.
Ah, but you see, it was more than just plastic, wasn't it? It was information, so to speak, as the engineer would call it, from the designer to the engine inside, so that when the plastic was put in this way with the right notches that side up, it made the engine do what the designer wanted it to do. Of course, the plastic couldn't speak and the engine couldn't hear, but engineers nowadays talk in terms of information theory. The information is put on the plastic, so to speak, in the form of a design, so that it is, will make the engine do what the, uh, designer wants it to do.
So it wasn't just plastic, it was plastic plus information. That's interesting, isn't it? Why is that interesting? Let's think about how the Bible talks about creation, ladies and gentlemen. You'll remember Genesis one, won't you? In the beginning, God created the heaven and the earth, and God said, let there be light, and there was light. And God said that there be a firmament. And God said. He climbs over. And God said. Creation by the word of God.
Hebrews chapter eleven says, we understand that the worlds were framed by the word of God. Material around us is not just stuff. It is stuff, and particularly living material, is stuff plus information from the designer. And of course, the easiest example, a, a child is conceived, a cell from mother, a cell from father, forming a zygote. And lo and behold, as you know, that contains enough information that will control the development of the fetus in the womb, will control the very timing of the different parts.
It's no good developing an eye unless you've got an eye socket to put it in. No good developing a brain if you haven't got a skull. I nearly said it's no good having a skull if you haven't got a brain, but some people manage it. And no good having legs if you haven't got a body to put the legs on. This tiny little pair of cells have in them all the information necessary to control the development of the fetus in the womb, to control the time of its birth, to control its growth, right up through manhood or womanhood to the time it dies.
And what is more, if the child born eventually becomes a father, the original information it got from its parents will be enough through it to control the next generation. And it's a thing to be pondered, isn't it? The original cells, whatever stuff they're made of, they long since died. The information they carried carries on, doesn't it? What is information? Where did the information come from? Listen to Wilder Smith, if you will. He's talking about the way the genes in the cells are arranged in a double helix.
And he says, by means of a double helix, that's two lines twiddled around each other, of four letters, if you just had four letters and twisted them around by that, stacked them up one after the other in special order around this helix, entire books filled with information could be written by merely altering the sequences, just as we write books by varying the sequences of the letters of our alphabet. In this manner, the double helix system with a human sperm and a human egg contains the total coded building instructions for synthesizing a complete human being.
On paper, using our alphabet system, this human genetic information on one human zygote. Now what's that? This human genetic information on one human zygote, cell from father, cell from mother joined, would fill over a thousand volumes, each of 500 pages. A total of 500,000 printed pages. That is, one human egg the size of a pinhead holds 500,000 printed pages. That is, one human egg the size of a pinhead holds five hundred thousand printed pages worth of information and chemical instructions.
And you're going to tell me, no, I'm sure you won't, that that all happened by accident. There was no mind. Well, believe it if you will. The Bible has something relative, relevant to say there, doesn't it? In Romans chapter one, God says that the invisible things of him are clearly to be seen from the creation around us, namely his divine power and Godhead, Godhood, his deity. The Bible doesn't claim that we see from creation around us that God is love.
Creation around us doesn't tell us anything about redemption. That is God's special revelation. But the Bible insists that men and women looking at creation could see, if they will, the evidence that there is a God, that we are his creatures and are responsible to him. And the Bible adds that people that refuse to acknowledge it shall be without excuse. You will see Darwinism is not forced upon us because it is a science.
You've seen enough to know it is not a science, it is a philosophy. In that strict sense, Christianity is a philosophy. And the Bible declares that creation holds the evidence that all could see if they will, that there is a divine God, almighty, powerful creator behind this universe. And to show you that that is not talking nonsense, you know it isn't, of course, I give you this last film. This is by Paul Davies in his book The Mind of God.
Paul Davies is a mathematical physicist. Um, he is not a believer in God, not the God of the Bible, nor in Jesus Christ, nor in his miracles, nor in his resurrection. I would hesitate to try and describe him. I imagine that he's some kind of a Panteus. But listen to what he says. He's talking about man made of stardust, made out of the elements produced in the gigantic atomic furnaces of the stars, but calling attention to this tremendous thing that man has an intelligence so that man, not the animals, but man and only man, can turn around and understand the way the, or begin to, the way the universe works.
And he's asking himself, how is it that man has that kind of intelligence that can understand, begin to understand how the universe works and perceive the great intelligence that is behind the universe? And he says, Dulce, the physical species of homo, of man, may count for nothing, but the existence of mind in some organism on some planet in the universe is surely a fact of fundamental significance. Through conscious beings, the universe has generated self-awareness. This can be no trivial detail, no minor product of mindless, purposeless forces.
Listen to that. We are truly meant to be here. Don't you be ashamed of the gospel, will you, you young folks? Don't be afraid to stick your toes in and very politely to make it known that you believe in a creator. You believe that there is an intelligence behind the universe. The film with which we began from Tituma that says there is no purpose behind, no mind behind. That's what evolution stands for. This man, who would still be an evolutionist, is scientist now, within the light of recent discoveries, to say there must be an intelligence behind the universe.
If he doesn't recognize it as the God of the Bible, and has come to see that we are intended to be here. We are not the product of mindless mechanical forces. There is an intelligence behind the universe. And there's the Bible, there's God's creation doing what the Bible says it was meant to do. To be the book of nature from God, to make it clear that there is a creator, there is a designer. He made us. There's a purpose behind our existence, therefore, and we are responsible to him. If more of our modern folks saw it and got it into their heads, then they perhaps they would begin to answer or ask what is the answer to the question that our consciences have told us, that we've sinned against our Creator.
But here perhaps is a place to stop. The evidence of the universe around us, that it has been designed. The Darwinianism, therefore, is not true. Thank you for your great patience. There's just one request I would ask of you. Please don't complain to the elders of this church that I've made you sit so long, because if you do, they'll never ask me back again. So control yourself, console yourself with the tea and the bishop, and that may give you an opportunity to talk about it.
So, please do. So many of us, if not all of us, we hope it's you this time, have come to know this. We remember when our saviour was here, he said, this is life eternal, that they might know thee, the only true God, and Jesus Christ who loved us. We bow before thee, our God, and we worship thee.
We give thee our thanks in the name of our Lord Jesus Christ. We now pray that thou wilt bless what remaining time we may have together, and then as we make our way home, watch over us, we pray, and guard us until we arrive safely at home. We pray thy blessing on all that has been said tonight, and in the coming week, we pray that as we study together once more, the wonder of Holy Scripture, not only the creation of this wonderful universe, as we have done tonight, but as we study the wonder of thy holy word.
And as we consider these subjects together.
