Confusion in the World of Natural Selection

This statement in a book by the late theoretical evolutionary biologist and geneticist John Maynard Smith is nothing less than astonishing. Richard Dawkins, who wrote the above Foreword, claims that natural selection has created a "compelling illusion of 'design' that pervades" the universe. As we have previously asked, if natural selection were true, why would it create an "illusion" that undermines the whole theory of evolution? And, on top of that, why would natural selection, at the same time, design the human brain to reject this illusion? We know that John Maynard Smith, Richard Dawkins, and many of their fellow evolutionists are confused, but this is an intriguing idea—that the process of natural selection is itself confused in overseeing the alleged evolution of man.

What would be an appropriate epitaph on Richard Dawkins's tombstone? Several possibilities come to mind: "Here lies a man who dedicated his life to the purpose of proving that life has no purpose because there is no God." Will the final line add, "Unfortunately, he failed to produce an ironclad proof of his thesis"? Or will it say, "He died a hero to all mankind, having become the first to accomplish the worthy goal of proving to everyone's satisfaction that life has no goal"? Which will it be?

Will it even matter? As we have seen, this is the necessary conclusion to which materialism leads. Clearly, atoms and molecules have no concept of purpose and meaning--and if that is all we are, then we have no purpose or meaning either. It is worth quoting Francis Crick again to see the hopelessness and worthlessness of this philosophy:

Dawkins claims to have lived a very happy and fulfilling life. He often says that he feels very lucky to be alive, to have been one of the few gene containers whose genes won the natural selection lottery, since most of them die along the way. We have also quoted him saying that there is no significant difference between a man and a garden slug.

In describing the wonders of nature, atheists find themselves unable to avoid using terms that imply an all-knowing and all-powerful Creator. Dawkins claims to have a great admiration and appreciation for the marvels of life. As we have quoted earlier, he declared: "When you were first conceived you were just a single cell, endowed with one master copy of the architect's plans." He would surely have avoided using such a word were there any better way to say it! Obviously, he knew of no other appropriate word.

Yet Dawkins denies the existence of the only "architect" who possibly could conceive these detailed instructions for building every nano-chemical machine in every cell, and supervise from start to finish (as architects do) this incredible construction project, the end of which is about 100 trillion living cells, all perfectly fitted together to become one unique human body. To conceive these plans and to supervise them from the very beginning until a complete body is formed in the womb is infinitely beyond the capabilities of the most brilliant team of scientists and computers that could be assembled today.

Remember, Dawkins admits that it could take centuries for scientists to understand the process:

Only the infinite Creator would be capable of this feat, yet atheists deny His existence. Clinging to materialism as their only hope of denying the Creator, atheists search year after year for some key to human behavior in the anatomy of the brain. They are beating a dead horse. There is no location in the brain where the most important parts of what makes a man can be found: the hopes, ambitions, determination, goals, artistic ability, aesthetics, scientific genius, etc.

A major problem that the materialist tries to sweep under the carpet is the fact that in spite of the herculean effort in the lab to explain human behavior by the brain alone, in the real world of daily human experience, common sense will not allow the ordinary person to countenance the theory that he doesn't have his own opinions and doesn't by his own initiative make real decisions. And still the atheist slogs on through life with the single-minded purpose of proving that life has no purpose.

Why would proving that God does not exist, if it could be proven, make the atheist happy? The only one who could impart meaning to life would be a personal Creator. To prove there was no meaning in life would be tantamount to proving that God, who alone could impart such meaning, either does not exist or does not care.

Is there evidence justifying rejection of God as the supreme Architect? No, there is none. No one has been able to produce proof that God does not exist. Is there evidence for His existence? Indeed there is. As we have proved throughout this book, such evidence is overwhelming. The evidence from DNA alone is irrefutable. It is self-evident, as Einstein declared, that matter cannot arrange itself into information. Whatever the form in which it appears, information can come only from an intelligent source. Period!

Clearly, the intelligence behind DNA could only be described as infinite. Then why the irrational rejection of the God to whom all the evidence so clearly points? It is not for scientific reasons but because atheists would both lose credibility if they admitted the obvious and would face ultimate justice after they died.

These atheists claim to be on the side of nature. Then why do they reject what seems to have been the intuition of almost the entire human race from the beginning of time right up to the present? Dawkins mourns in hopeless despair the agonizing death of his god Darwin, "It is almost as if the human brain were specifically designed to misunderstand Darwinism, and to find it hard to believe." Then why cling to this bankrupt theory? And how can this be, when everything we think, say, and do was supposedly produced by evolution?

Richard Dawkins cheerfully insists, "Flowers and elephants are 'for' the same thing as everything else in the living kingdoms, for spreading Duplicate Me programs written in DNA language. Flowers are for spreading copies of instructions for making more flowers. Elephants are for spreading copies of instructions for making more elephants." And Dawkins delights to declare that none of them has any purpose or meaning.

"I regard it as an enormous privilege to be alive . . . especially at the beginning of the twenty-first century, to be a scientist and therefore to be in a position to understand something of the mystery of existence . . . why we exist. I think that religious explanations are now petty and parochial. The understanding we can get from science of all those deep questions that religion once aspired to explain are now better, more grandly, and in a more beautiful and elegant fashion, explained by science."

"Why we exist"? But Dawkins vociferously denies that there is any meaning. Certainly matter, if that's all we are (as he claims), knows nothing of meaning or purpose.

—Excerpted from Dave Hunt's new book,

Cosmos, Creator, and Human Destiny, pp 508-512.