Darwin’s Dilemma Part-1

Excerpts for Darwin’s Dilemma Media Presentation

Illustra Media - The Intelligent Design Collection

(Video below)

The Cambrian explosion was the most remarkable and puzzling event in the history of life. - Stephen J Gould, Paleontologist

Today most paleontologists believe that much of the animal life we see in the fossil record appeared on the earth about 530 million years ago during a geological period known as the Cambrian period. However early in the 19th century little was known about this period of time.

Darwin himself clearly stated that the mystery of the Cambrian and absence of fossils beneath the Cambrian strata – could very well render his theory as obsolete. Quoting Darwin, "the difficulty of assigning any good reason for the absence of vast piles of strata rich in fossils beneath the Cambrian system is very great. The case at present must remain inexplicable and maybe truly urged as a valid argument against the views here entertained." – Charles Darwin – The Origin of Species.

All of the known animal body plans seem to have appeared in the Cambrian radiation. - Rudolf Raff, Evolutionary Biologist

In 1831, six months after his first exposure to Cambrian geology, young Charles Darwin embarked upon an expedition that would influence the development of his theory of evolution. As the naturalist aboard the HMS Beagle, Darwin sailed to the Galapagos Islands 600 miles off the coast of Ecuador. For five weeks Darwin explored this remote island chain, home to an extraordinary assembly of animals. Here the idea for his history of life was invented. According to Darwin, as one form of life morphed into another, new species arose. And as they gradually branched apart, larger differences in form emerge. Eventually, evolution produces an even greater level of disparity, the distinct body plans of new phyla.

While what we find in the fossil record is at the top of Darwin's tree; anything below the top of Darwin's tree is not what we find in the fossil record at all. If we are using a botanical explanation as a visual, the diagram would not be a tree it would be a lawn with separate blades of grass sprouting out of the ground independent of each other. Each blade of grass would be a distinct phylum (a unique and individual group that has genetic relationship). Now within each blade there would be subsequent diversification (i.e. birds would be one phylum, and then we would see different types of birds); and each diversification we now know shares common genetic relationship (discovered via genetic and DNA research in science).

The fossil record absolutely does not support the visual of Darwin’s Theory – his classical tree of life; that suggests single cell organisms evolving into distinctly different phyla over long-long periods of time. We do not have the tree with the branches connecting, that visual is not supported in the fossil record.

With thousands of excavations around the world, and literally millions of fossils unearthed – we have not once found a fossil or series of fossils that clearly show one type of animal or plant life evolving into another.

What we have found however, in the thousands of excavations – is that complex animal life appeared in a very brief period of time; very quickly during the Cambrian Period.

Resources & Links

Darwin’s Dilemma Media Presentation, Illustra Media - The Intelligent Design Collection

Simon Conway Morris

The Burgess Shale

An Interview with Simon Conway Morris by Darwin Correspondence Project

The end of materialism -Simon Conway Morris

The Intelligent Design Collection on EQUIP.org

IS THERE A STANDARD?

I don’t think one religion can be exclusively true. Have you experienced this question before; either in your own mind or heard asked by another? I certainly struggled with this question many years ago.

If there’s no objective standard, then life is nothing but a glorified Monopoly game. You can acquire lots of money and lots of property, but when the game is over, it’s all going back in the box. Is that what life is all about?

Many tell me they believe if you do more good in life than bad; if you are a good person – you can expect to go to heaven. Many of us have a deep seated sense that we are obligated to be good; that ‘ought’ to help people. We all do. Why? And why do most human beings seem to have that same intuitive sense that they ought to do good and shun evil?

Behind the answers to those questions is more evidence for the theistic God. This evidence is not scientific—that’s what I have shared in previous posts—but moral in nature. Like the laws of logic and mathematics, this evidence is nonmaterial or tangible - but it’s just as real. The reason we believe we ought to do good rather than evil—the reason we believe we should “help people”—is because there’s a Moral Law that has been written on our hearts. In other words, there is a “prescription” to do good that has been given to all of humanity. Some call this moral prescription “conscience”; others call it “Natural Law”; still others (like our Founding Fathers) refer to it as “Nature’s Law.” We refer to it as “The Moral Law.” But whatever you call it, the fact that a moral standard has been prescribed on the minds of all human beings points to a Moral Law Prescriber. Every prescription has a ‘prescriber’. The Moral Law is no different. Someone must have given us these moral obligations.

This Moral Law is a third argument for the existence of a theistic God (after the Cosmological and Teleological Arguments). It goes like this:

1. Every law has a law giver.

2. There is a Moral Law.

3. Therefore, there is a Moral Law Giver.

If the first and second premises are true, then the conclusion necessarily follows. Of course, every law has a law giver. There can be no legislation unless there’s a legislature. Moreover, if there are moral obligations, there must be someone to be obligated to.

But is it really true that there is a Moral Law? Our Founding Fathers thought so. As Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence, “Nature’s Law” is “self-evident.” You don’t use reason to discover it, you just know it. Perhaps that’s why many of us hit a roadblock in our thinking. We know “helping people” is the right thing to do, but we cannot explain why without appealing to a standard outside ourselves. Without an objective standard of meaning and morality, then life is meaningless and there’s nothing absolutely right or wrong. Everything is merely a matter of opinion.

When we say the Moral Law exists, we mean that all people are impressed with a fundamental sense of right and wrong. Everyone knows, for example, that love is superior to hate and that courage is better than cowardice. Everyone knows certain principles. There is no land where murder is virtue and gratitude vice.1 C. S. Lewis, who has written profoundly on this topic in his classic work Mere Christianity, put it this way: “Think of a country where people were admired for running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a country where two and two made five.”2

Now this does not mean that every moral issue has easily recognizable answers or that some people don’t deny that absolute morality exists. There are difficult problems in morality, and people suppress and deny the Moral Law every day. It simply means that there are basic principles of right and wrong that everyone knows, whether they will admit them or not.

We can’t not know, for example, that it is wrong to kill innocent human beings for no reason. Some people may deny it and commit murder anyway, but deep in their hearts they know murder is wrong. Even serial killers know murder is wrong—they just may not feel remorse.3 And like all absolute moral laws, murder is wrong for everyone, every-where: in America, India, Zimbabwe, and in every other country, now and forever. That’s what the Moral Law tells every human heart.

In other words, everyone knows there are absolute moral obligations. An absolute moral obligation is something that is binding on all people, at all times, in all places. And an absolute Moral Law implies an absolute Moral Law Giver.

Jesus said to him, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me.  - John 14:5-7

Resources, Links & Notes

1. J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (Downers Grove, Ill.: InterVarsity Press, 1997), 208-209.

2. C. S. Lewis, Mere Christianity (New York: Macmillan, 1952), 19.

3. J. Budziszewski, Written on the Heart: The Case for Natural Law (Ibid).

This is an excerpt from I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist. (Good News Publishers; by Dr. Norman L. Geisler and Frank Turek, 2004).

Frank Turek (I Don't Have Enough Faith To Be An Atheist Show)