What Natural Selection Can and Cannot Explain

I continue to be amazed that some people still choose to believe that natural selection proves evolution when evidences of intelligent design are all around us and when new scientific discoveries continue to support intelligent design while causing evolutionists to continually modify their theories in light of the conflicting new findings. (Read about how new scientific discoveries led geneticist Francis S. Collins to rethink his views on evolution here.)

Charles Darwin proposed natural selection as the mechanism for evolution. 

Natural selection may explain why black moths survive better than white moths in a black environment while white moths survive better in a white setting, but it cannot prove that one species can transform into an entirely different one. (Read more about the moth study here.) Such moth observations may also bear witness of a loving omniscient creator who designed such adaptions and genetic mutations to preserve His species. Observations of nature and interpretations of data are all colored by our varying worldviews which are each accepted by faith.

Natural selection cannot even explain the mathematical impossibilities of the great complexities found within a simple cell. Natural selection cannot explain how 40 unique parts with no advantage or function on their own suddenly came to be all together inside a single cell with the exact size and shape to fit together according to precise detailed assembly instructions (instructions by definition require a thinking instructor, suggesting intelligent design, not natural processes) to build a complex flagella motor that rotates more efficiently than any other motor in the world at 100,000 rpm. This same motor can stop within 1/4 turn and spin the other way just as fast. If natural selection cannot explain the complexities of a single motor inside a simple cell, then how can it explain the extraordinary design throughout the complex universe or even the set of ordered information contained within DNA? (To learn more about irreducible complexity as evidence of intelligent design, visit www.ideacenter.org.

Bacterial Flagellum (Source: www.arn.org)

Natural selection cannot explain the most powerful force on earth which is love. It cannot explain human thought, free will, complex emotions, human virtue (such as compassion), or universal moral law. Under the supposition of evolutionary theory, there are no inalienable human rights. The only rights natural selection will allow are those that the superior ones who have gained power over us will allow if those rights in some way advance the survival of the fittest.

Natural selection can, however, explain how people could have justified (in their own minds anyway) some of the most horrific acts of human history. Natural selection and the theory of evolution suggest that we are all cosmic accidents with no intrinsic value. Life is meaningless except for it's ability to pass on genetic combinations deemed superior for survival. Thus, if Hitler believed one race was superior to another, then he felt justified in slaughtering millions of Jews, and he could use that same reasoning to brainwash his people into following him and doing his dirty work for him.

Darwin's writings about natural selection feed racism and all types of bigotry. Natural selection gave people an "excuse" to own and even abuse slaves, for they falsely considered their slaves to be genetically inferior. Natural selection encouraged Planned Parenthood founder Margaret Sanger to advance her philosophy of eugenics, for she was convinced she was helping nature along by providing contraceptives and sterilization to prevent those she deemed unfit (the poor and African Americans) from reproducing. Natural selection explains why so many in this country support the brutal dismemberment of babies in the womb over the inconvenience of asking a mother to carry and deliver her child and of supporting that mother throughout the process. Natural selection also explains why so many European nations have chosen to abort babies with Down's syndrome instead of allowing these precious, joy filled children to live and infuse extraordinary love into the world. It explains why so many nations with socialist healthcare programs use death panels to determine which classes of people can receive limited medical care and live and which people are undeserving and must therefore die (shout out to England and Canada).

Natural selection explains why women and children are abducted, abused, and murdered without remorse by the perpetrator and why we have had so many school shootings. If life isn't sacred, and if one life is deemed superior to another, then any life judged to be inferior need not be cherished or protected, and taking the life of another has no moral implications.

Natural selection is held up as an excuse to deny God exists, but if you take God out of the equation, then life is joyless and meaningless, and we are mere cogs in the wheel of nature's mechanical processes. For the evolutionist, this life is all there is, yet I've never met an evolutionist who possesses lasting joy or peace. They may derive temporary pleasure from feelings of intellectual superiority or fleeting carnal pursuits, but their hearts and lives are empty, always longing but never satisfied.

Creation, on the other hand, is a philosophy of freely chosen (vs. mechanistic or instinctive) love and life. Through the Gospel of Christ, to which all of creation testifies, love conquers both sin and death and life takes on infinite meaning and purpose while bringing unconditional joy and peace, not just now but for all eternity.

For faith and love to be sincere, they must be freely chosen, so each of us gets to choose what we will believe and who or what we will worship.  But clinging to natural selection as an excuse to deny God will only push us further away from the healing, reconciliation, peace, love, unity, and hope our world so desperately needs.