Okay, let me get it straight - you're asking what objections Christians have against atheists? Am I hopelessly tired, or are you just bored? And btw, I hope I didn't come off as arrogant in that last post or in here.
I'll pretend there was an actual question in there - as far as objecting to evolution "proves" Genesis false or whatever-it-was, there was an interesting, though brief slideshow at a Friday bible study I went to once which offered some interesting evidence against Darwinism about "irreducibly complex systems". Here's the meat of it, more at absk.org under the "recent FAQs" section.
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Darwin conceded himself about the potential downfall of his theory in The Origin of Species:
“If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
Darwin understood that if his theory would ever be accepted, he had to show that evolution could create complex organs like the eye in a step-by-step process.
It would have seemed like an end to Darwin’s career, but he cleverly defended his theory.
He defended his theory NOT by presenting a real pathway that evolution might have used to create the eye, but by pointing to living animals with different kinds of eyes (ranging from the simple to the complex) and suggesting a similar, possible sequence of development.
SLIDE 8: A Proposal for the Progression of Eye Development
It is important to understand what Darwin actually said and what he did not say. Again, he did not provide any evidence (experimental or historical) for a pathway for the development of a complex organ like the eye. Nor did he offer an answer as to how the most primitive light-sensitive cells (presumably the starting point of eye development) came in the first place.
He only pointed to a series of already existing types of eyes and hypothesized that evolution could have proceeded through such a sequence of increasing complexity.
Little did people know back then how complex even the simple “eyespot” of a planarian (a kind of flatworm) is.
Though Darwin never really answered the question of complex organs, his arguments were plausible enough to satisfy his supporters and take the punch out of his critics.
SLIDE 9: The Advent of Biochemistry
But with the advent and progress of modern biochemistry in the latter half of the 20th century, it’s been increasingly more difficult to support the kind of bold and assertive assumptions Darwin made.
Why?
Because when you examine life at the so-called “nuts and bolts” level—at the cellular and molecular level—you find it’s full of complex systems that could not have ever come about by “numerous, successive, slight modifications” over time.
SLIDE 10: Irreducible Complexity
These complex systems are what’s called IRREDUCBLY COMPLEX systems, which describes any system composed of multiple well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to a basic function, wherein the removal of any one of the parts causes the system to effectively cease functioning.
This concept is best understood by an illustration. Let me show you…
SLIDE 11: Example of an Irreducibly Complex System
Here is a common mousetrap. This is an example of an irreducibly complex system. How so?
Identify parts and coordinated functions of each…
Here are some key points to notice:
- For this device to function properly, all the parts must first be there at the same time.
- All the parts must work together in a highly coordinated and interrelated fashion. For example, the hammer cannot be attached to the end of the holding bar.
- No single part in and of itself has any function apart
- The system has Zero function only until all the parts exist in just the right manner.
SLIDE 12: Some Irreducibly Complex Biological Systems
And Irreducibly complex biological systems like those that produce vision, blood clotting or an immune response are far more complex than any mechanical system.
SLIDE 13: Bacterial Flagellum
Even the “simplest” cell, a bacterium, is full of an array of irreducibly complex systems. Here is the whip-like “tail” that some bacteria use to move around.
SLIDE 14: Challenges to Darwinian Evolution
By definition, it is impossible for Irreducibly complex systems to be produced by the step-by-step accumulation of mutations. It’s an all or nothing kind of thing. Either the system works or it doesn’t.
Natural selection can only select for functioning systems that already exist, not “to-be-completed” systems.
SLIDE 15: A Theory in Crisis
Biochemistry has exposed the utter inadequacy Darwinian evolution to explain how complex molecules came to be.
There are some evolutionists who concede this problem.
Dr. Colin Patterson, Sr. Paleontologist at the British Museum of Natural History (the mother of all Natural History museums) has this to say:
"One of the reasons I started taking this anti-evolutionary view, was ... it struck me that I had been working on this stuff for twenty years and there was not one thing I knew about it. That's quite a shock to learn that one can be so misled so long. ...so for the last few weeks I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people. Question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'I do know one thing -- it ought not to be taught in high school'."
Dr. Patterson was not misinterpreting the evidence through a narrow, religious lens, but objectively, as a scientist and evolutionist.
SLIDE 17: An Experience that Blew My Evolutionary Sock Off!
At a national meeting of the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology in Boston a few years back, I had the opportunity to hear Professor Lynn Margulis, a giant in the field of evolution for her endo-symbiosis theory, give the plenary session lecture along with the late Stephen J. Gould. I will never forget what I heard her say and the response of the audience (a hotel conference room with a over a thousand professors, researchers and graduate students).
She said that “history will ultimately judge neo-Darwinism as “a minor twentieth-century religious sect within the sprawling religious persuasion of Anglo Saxon biology.”
SLIDE 18: Another Experience that Blew My Other Evolutionary Sock Off!
To my utter amazement, she also issued a direct challenge to anyone in the room to site her one example of a single, unambiguous example of a new species being created by the accumulation of mutations. I looked back from the where I was sitting and just saw blank faces. There was complete silence. She went on to say that proponents of the textbook orthodoxy of Neo-Darwinism, “wallow in their zoological, capitalistic, competitive, cost-benefit interpretation of Darwin—having mistaken him… Neo-Darwinism, which insists on (the slow accrual of mutations), is in a complete funk.” Ouch.
Why the unflinching confidence in Darwinian evolution by most scientists? It is because there simply isn’t any better explanation—unless of course you start to consider the possibility of an Intelligent Designer. But to infer design is to infer a Designer and that is not the kind of conclusions science likes to make.
SLIDE 18: Evolution’s Philosophical Underpinnings
Science has an a priori commitment to methodological naturalism.
Philosophical naturalism functions as a filter to determine what even qualifies as data.
With this kind of philosophical framework that defines what is and is not plausible, there simply cannot be any other explanation other than a natural one. Everything must be attributable to some physical law or phenomena. That is the dogma.
Evolution turns out to be bad science because interpretations and conclusions aren’t based on the weight of the evidence but on a bias toward philosophical naturalism.
SLIDE: 19: Conclusion
- Evolution attempts to explain how life and the cosmos came to be by purely natural, physical and purposeless forces but does so a priori— i.e., It is first assumed that there can only be a natural answer and then the data is interpreted to fit that conclusion.
- Evolution really just turns out to be the atheist’s own creation story.
- The existence of irreducibly complex systems at the biochemical level of life poses a serious challenge to Darwinian evolution as a viable theory to explain the origin and development of life.
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