Excerpt taken from "Darwin's Universe: Survival for Nothing", pages IV and 1-10

Copyright © 2021 by Yan T Wee. Reproduced by permission.

Preface

Most atheists do not give much thought as to where Darwinism is taking them. Like the pied piper of Hamelin who, as the legend says, led the town children away with his magical tune, and they were never to be seen again, atheism has a charming 'magical tune' that enchants millions of followers. But many are unaware of its true intent or the disastrous destination it is leading them.

Darwinists hope to kill God but, like conjoined twins, in killing God, they kill themselves. They end up being: From Nothing, By Nothing, For Nothing. Looking further ahead down the foggy road of Darwinism, it reveals a dark, gloomy and depressive landscape — life has no real meaning and survival has no ultimate purpose. Man is nothing more than a cosmic orphan, caged up in a dying universe, propagating his DNA, and waiting to return to stardust. Above all, most Darwinists are unaware that Darwin and Darwinism are Killing them Softly.

"When Darwin deduced the theory of natural selection to explain the adaptations in which he had previously seen the handiwork of God, he knew that he was committing cultural murder. He understood immediately that if natural selection explained adaptations, and evolution by descent were true, then the argument from design was dead and all that went with it, namely the existence of a personal god, free will, life after death, immutable moral laws, and ultimate meaning in life." (William Provine)

Science encourages us to think critically and let us place Darwinism in the crosshairs and examine it in the light of empirical science — is it observable, falsifiable and repeatable? If not, it is not experimental science. And, as we shall see, Darwinism is an unobservable and unreproducible pseudo-science.

This book will walk us through cosmology, biology, philosophy and end with theology, the queen of the sciences. Empirical science buries Darwinism and resurrects Creationism. We are more than cosmic orphans lost in an accidental, uncaring and dying Universe; we are living souls, made in the image of God, and designed to have a wonderful relationship with an awesome Creator.

•  •  •  •  • 


CHAPTER 1

From Nothing


The First Dirt

A scientist approached God and said, "Listen, we've decided we no longer need you. Nowadays, we can clone people, transplant hearts, and do all kinds of things that were once considered miraculous."

God patiently heard him out, and then said, "All right. To see whether or not you still need me, why don't we have a man-making contest?"

"Okay, great!” the scientist said.

"Now, we're going to do this just like I did back in the old days with Adam," God said.

"That's fine," replied the scientist, and bent to scoop up a handful of dirt.

"Whoa!" God said, shaking his head in disapproval. "Not so fast, pal. You go get your own dirt!"1

'Get your own dirt' — that is basically the crux of the matter. Despite all the latest discoveries in every discipline of science, all the cosmologists, physicists and biologists will inevitably converge at the edge of a vast cosmic chasm they cannot cross — where did the 'first dirt' come from? And to go a step further, where did all the physical laws governing this material universe come from — from gravity to electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force? Who defines these and the many other laws of nature and calibrates them with such fine precision without which matter and life can never exist. Scientists today are both stunned and stumped by this exquisite fine-tuning of the universe and by what is now commonly known as the 'Anthropic Principle' — the universe appears to be patently contrived to permit intelligent life.

No matter how many theories of evolution we posit — from cosmic to biological, and no matter how far we kick the can down the road with regard to the beginning of the universe, we must end up in this curious cul-de-sac and stare in the face of this spooky conundrum —what was before all this came into being? It is like putting your hand outside the edge of the universe. This is where science ends — ex nihilo nihil fit (from nothing nothing comes) and the supernatural begins — "In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth."2 (Bible)

The universe has a now scientifically proven, finite, one-time beginning in time past and the inexorable law of cause-and-effect must be called upon to explain its inception. The visible creation we see demands a necessary, causal Creator that transcends space, time, matter and energy. And, as this universe cannot bring itself into existence from no existence and by no existence, there must be an uncaused First Cause that brought into existence the 'first dirt' and set in motion everything we now see. Welcome to the world of God!

"It isn't rational to argue that the world which is based on cause and effect is Itself uncaused."3 (Michael Green)

References:

1. Source Unknown

2. Bible, Genesis 1:1

3. Michael Green



Pseudo-Science is Religion

“Even if all the data point to an intelligent designer, such a hypothesis is excluded from science because it is not naturalistic.”1

When Christians proclaim, “In the beginning there was nothing, and God created everything”, the atheists would cringe in horror and label it as a fairy tale. But when secular cosmologists, with regard to the Big Bang theory, posit, “In the beginning there was nothing, and nothing created everything”, they would unashamedly call it 'science'. Really, you got to be kidding? Nothing created everything? Doesn't it sound like another fairy tale?

Christians are stereotyped as 'religious' when they cannot answer the question: “If God created the universe, who created God?” But atheists are reckoned to be scientific even when they do not have the answer to: “If gravity created the universe, who created gravity?”

To have an inexplicable God that created this world is a lazy answer to the secular scientific community, but to have an inexplicable law of nature that birthed this universe seems justifiable by the same crowd. 'Shut up and calculate' is fine with the unexplained laws of nature but not with an unexplained God. This fundamentalist nature of pseudo-science is in plain sight.

Secular scientists are deemed to be very noble and honest when they admit that they do not know but are still figuring things out. But Christians are often condemned to be unscientific when they say, “We don't know and are still working on it.”

According to the Darwinist, since there are so many religions and oftentimes they disagree with one another — therefore, none is true. In the same breath, they will tell us that there are many competing, scientific hypothesis - but, in this, we should celebrate! Okay, but why?

To believe that God created the world is a religious faith that is devoid of any evidence — we cannot see it happening — so say the Darwinist. But, to believe that nothing created the universe, or inorganic chemicals self-organized into the first living cell, or the first living critter blossomed into the Darwinian tree of life, is science — despite the fact that it has never been observed to have happened — no different from the belief in an unseen God or in Bertrand Russell's flying teapot orbiting the sun. This is the materialist's faith: “Even though we have never observed the mechanism of something from nothing, it must have happened!” Let us try this: “Even though we have not observed the mechanism of how God created the universe from nothing, it must have happened.” What is the difference?

On the one hand, science boasts of being open-minded to all the possible explanations for the many mystifying and perplexing observations in the universe - no matter how counter-intuitive they may be — like the 'spooky action at a distance' in quantum mechanics. But strangely, on the other hand, secular scientists would slam the door shut on the supernatural — the only logical solution to this obvious conundrum — how did we get something from nothing apart from the uncaused First Cause, the Creator of this Universe? Occam's Razor would have shaved off all the other endless speculations on the origin of the universe and leave us with this most simple, elegant and logical uncaused First Cause that kick-started all the other secondary causes.

True science is not about the search for naturalistic truths, but all kinds of truth, and that includes the metaphysical and the supernatural. Objective science goes where the evidence leads — no matter how counter-intuitive it may be — even if it leads to a divine Designer that created the cosmos from nothing. Impartial science is bold as well as objective. It is not subjective or shackled by its own personal biasness. Let us see how skewed the mainstream, secular, scientific community is, and how pseudo-science (in contrast to objective science) today is the result of a faith-based, a priori bias towards only one set of conclusions in the search for truths — a materialistic explanation at the exclusion of all others, even if they make good, logical sense.

“We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its constructs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter- intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is an absolute, for we cannot allow a Divine Foot in the door.”2 (R. Lewontin)

“There is a kind of religion in sciences… every effect must have its cause; there is no First Cause… This religious faith of the scientist is violated by the discovery that the world had a beginning under conditions in which the known laws of physics are not valid, and as a product of forces or circumstances we cannot discover. When that happens, the scientist has lost control. If he really examined the implications, he would be traumatized. As usual when faced with trauma, the mind reacts by ignoring the implications — in science this is known as 'refusing to speculate.'”3 (Robert Jastrow)

Empirical science begins with the data and it gives the data a free hand to define the paradigm. Scientism commences with a yet-to-be-proven, materialistic paradigm that must be held on at all costs and rejects all others. Science is an objective discipline but Scientism is a religious faith that permits no other explanations. Science is a blessing but Scientism is a curse to science. Edward F. Blick lays it down squarely the protocol in objective science — it decides after it investigates, and not concludes before it exhausts its findings.

“To simply dismiss the concept of a Creator as being unscientific is to violate the very objectivity of science itself.”4

In spite of all the charms about science — science is objective, science is self- correcting, and science goes where the evidence leads, there is a dark side to pseudo-science — it cannot tolerate a personal Causation to its existence because such a Creator will ruin the happiness of its ardent followers. They want Him out of their bedrooms, out of their sinful pleasures, and out of their cosmos. They do not want to be accountable to a God who someday will judge them for their sins. All non-personal causations to the existence of the universe are gladly welcome; any personal Causation will be thrown out of the window.

This is the religious nature of pseudo-science. It is, as Ben Stein puts it, the ABG hypothesis (Anything But God)5. It has scant little to do with evidence; it is more about a deep-seated prejudice — I don't want there to be a God. There is a world of difference between a statement made by a scientist and a scientific statement. At times, scientists do make incredibly baseless statement like: “Something can come from nothing.”

My mind is made up. Don't confuse me with facts.

References:

1. S. C. Todd, correspondence to Nature 410, 6752:423, 30 Sept 1999

2. R. Lewontin, Billions of Demons, New York Review, 1997

3. Robert Jastrow, God and the Astronomers, p. 113-114

4. Dr. Edward F. Blick, Special Creation vs. Evolution, 1988, p. 29-31

5. Ben Stein, Expelled



The Supernatural in the Natural

The Universe is objectively unnatural; it is astonishingly supernatural!

We have lived in this naturalistic world for so long that we forget that it is an unnatural world to begin with. It is unnatural to get something from nothing. It is unnatural to have a whole ocean of distinct, finely calibrated, subatomic particles materializing from nothing. It is unnatural to have random and unrelated physical laws governing the universe from nothing. It is even more intriguing for these laws of nature to be fine-tuned to sometimes one in a million million part to birth a life-permitting universe from nothing. And it is even more mind-boggling for these laws of nature to be exquisitely fine-tuned to each other to sustain this universe from nothing.

Gravity, electromagnetism, the strong nuclear force, and the weak nuclear force, and the whole plethora of subatomic particles are alien to the world of absolute nothing — the 'before' of the universe. We have lived so long with these matter and laws that we forget that they are exceedingly strange to a world of absolute nothing — for out of nothing, nothing comes. Objectively speaking, can nothing prefabricate these complex atomic structures from nothing, and then shackle them with even more complex laws of nature governed by even more complex mathematical equations to which they must subserviently obey? Is it not perfectly logical that the more improbable an event, the more it points to design and a designer?

If it is improbable to get an airplane or a car through chance or necessity, then it becomes a very scientific and logical proposition to attribute them to a designer. In this 'chance or design' explanation, the evidence to the contrary is the evidence — if chance cannot build a skyscraper or a space shuttle naturally, then design becomes the only alternative — there is no third option. Objective science knows when it runs out of options and turns to divine creation. Pseudo- science will carry on indefinitely believing in the impossible — even in the ridiculous notion of a naturalistic creation of something from nothing. The 'science of the gaps' argument has its limitations — scientism can never cause a wind mill, a car, a space shuttle, or an exquisitely, fine-tuned universe to appear naturally from nothing.

“At what point is it fair to admit that science suggests that we cannot be the result of random forces… Doesn't assuming that an intelligence created these perfect conditions require far less faith than believing that a life- sustaining Earth just happened to beat the inconceivable odds to come into being?”1

And all this, according to the atheistic community, must be constructed from nothing and by nothing — a most ridiculous proposition by all accounts. And over time, we take it for granted that our milieu is 'natural' — it has always been like this. But for those observing from the outside or for the first time, it is unnatural or rather supernatural — how did we get all these complex atoms and the even more complex laws of nature from a simple Nothing without a brilliant Creator?

And to go a step further, because we are 'trapped' in this Cosmic Mall, the Universe, we can only look through the lens of natural science and interpret everything by its preset design often failing to realize its obvious implications and limitations. All that science is doing is discovering how this prefabricated Cosmic Mall works — E=mc2, gravity attracts, light consists of photons, or the Higgs field gives mass to the particles. But the apparatus of science cannot extricate us from this Cosmic Mall and look at it objectively from without and answer the question: “Who created the Universe or why is there something rather than nothing?”

Max Planck, the father of quantum theory and Nobel Laureate for Physics, saw the obvious drawback of this restrictive science to explain how our universe came about in the first place. He writes:

“Science cannot solve the ultimate mystery of nature. And that is because, in the last analysis, we ourselves are part of nature and therefore part of the mystery that we are trying to solve.”2

It is akin to a bunch of natives who were locked in a shopping mall. Over time, they figured out how it worked — the lights, escalators and air conditioners. And imagine how foolish they would appear if they were to say that this is all to their whole existence? And they would further conclude that since we now understand how the mall works, there is therefore no need for the existence of the architect of the mall? We managed to squeeze out the 'architect of the gaps'. We don't need a designer to explain the mall. We now know how it works. Plain silly isn't it? Such thinking misses out the most obvious fact — who constructed the mall? It could not have materialized from nowhere. Someone has to build it and organize the whole running. The understanding of how a mall works does not do away with its builder. Instead, it helps us to appreciate his ingenuity even more. And the understanding of how the Universe works does not do away with its Maker, but rather, it reveals Him.

Science does not make God irrelevant, but instead, it is God that makes science possible. Without God, there is no science. Science is a slave, not the master. Science is the effect, not the cause. Science is the mechanism, not the Maker. That is the rightful place of science. But, secular scientists have grossly overexaggerated the importance of this humble slave called 'science', and elevated it to a pedestal it never meant to occupy.

Science may answer the question 'how', but it is not designed to answer the question 'why'. Science can tell us how gravity works, but it cannot tell us why there is gravity, and why it works the way it works. The 'how' questions belong to the world of a created science, but the 'why' questions are exclusive to the realm of a Mind, just as science may explain how a car works, but it cannot explain why there is a car in the first place. It takes a Mind to determine the 'what', 'why', and 'how' of everything in this universe — what is gravity, why gravity, how it came about to have a certain specific strength or constant, and to be fine-tuned to the rest of the other three fundamental forces to permit intelligent life to exist?

What is true of gravity is true of every other laws and matter in this universe — why space, why time, why matter, why energy, why gravity, why quantum mechanics, or why not nothing? Science is forever dumbfounded by the 'why' questions. It is 'over the head' for science because science is a humble creation of an awesome Creator. Erwin Schrödinger, the father of the quantum mechanics and Nobel Laureate for Physics, writes:

“I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is very deficient. It gives us a lot of factual information, puts all of our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.”3

And as for those secular scientists who are constantly ranting about the power of science to figure out everything in this Cosmic Mall, they forget that they are confined to a finite Universe with a one-time beginning and figuring out everything by its predetermined configurations. They are in a permanent cosmic lockdown. There are insuperable barriers and cosmic firewalls that natural science cannot cross. Scientism is forever incarcerated in this Cosmic Prison we call the Universe and spent its brief existence hopelessly banging its head incessantly and pitifully against the cold, impenetrable walls. We are like the frog that is consigned to a cosmic well, and we see our world with a tunnel vision — we feel convinced that science is the be-all and end-all. Or, as Arthur Schopenhauer puts it:

“Everyone takes the limits of his own vision for the limits of the world.”4

But science is the effect and not the cause of the universe. There was a time when there was no science. And there is a bigger world beyond our little cosmic well — the world of infinite power, infinite wisdom, and an awesome God! And all that fanciful science is doing is to take us for an endless tour in this exotic universe as more and more weird stuff are discovered. It is often a wearisome journey and we are unable to break free from its cosmic hold. And, as Steven Weinberg, Nobel Laureate in Physics, once commented:

“The more the universe seems comprehensible, the more it seems pointless.”5

The theists are not afraid of objective science as it leads them to the Creator and not away from Him. Science reveals God and buries atheism. Science says, “I rule supreme in the after of the creation event, but not in the 'before' — for I never did exist in the before.” Empirical science points to its own demise in the white dot before the Big Bang, where all the laws of science break down, and where space, time, matter and energy, as we know it, do not exist. Scientism, naturalism and reductionism died before time began! Let us pause for a moment to read the obituary of a created science in the 'before' of the universe from the world-renowned theoretical physicist Stephen Hawking:

“In real time, the universe has a beginning and an end at singularities that form a boundary to space-time and at which the laws of science breaks down.”6

Science humbly bows before its Creator and reveals the ultimate Scientist that created this supernatural cosmos together with all its built-in science from nothing. Science points us to beyond a naturalistic science to the supernatural Science-Maker. From the Bible comes these revelations:

“The heavens declare the glory of God; and the firmament sheweth (shows) his handywork.”7 (Bible)

“All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made.”8 (Bible)

“For by him were all things created, that are in heaven, and that in earth, visible and invisible… And he is before all things, and by him all things consist.”9 (Bible)

“For the invisible things of him from the creation of the world are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even his eternal power and Godhead; so that they are without excuse.”10 (Bible)

“People see God every day, they just don't recognize him.”11

References:

1. From the Documentary Collision, Christopher Hitchens vs Douglas Wilson, italics mine

2. Max Plank, Where is Science Going, W. W. Norton & company, Inc, New York, p. 217, 1932

3. Erwin Schrödinger, the founding father of the Quantum mechanics, Nobel Laureate for Physics in 1933, 'Nature and the Greeks' and 'Science and Humanism', Cambridge University Press, 1954, p. 95

4. Arthur Schopenhauer

5. Steven Weinberg, The First Three Minutes: A Modern View of the Origin of the Universe, 1977, 1933, p. 154

6. Stephen Hawking, A Brief History of Time, p. 139

7. Bible, Psalms 19:1

8. Bible, John 1:3

9. Bible, Colossians 1:16-17

10. Bible, Romans 1:20

11. Pearl Bailey