In my review of Ben Stein’s Expelled, I kind of opened the can of worms that is the creation science debate. I’m really not a scientist. I enjoyed my undergrad astronomy and biotechnology courses (got an “A” in both, thank you), and had a good junior high science teacher (shout out to Coach Hamilton), but beyond that, I’m really trying to quit. Biblical theology, on the other hand, is a different story. So, what I thought I’d do here is begin by recommending a couple nice lay-level resources for those of you that really want to dig deeper into the whole intelligent design debate. Then, in my next blog, I’ll move on to some Biblical thoughts about where we really need to be fighting this battle with Darwinism.
The resources I like are first a DVD called The Case for a Creator. This is a Lee Strobel documentary inspired by his book by the same name. Here you have what is essentially a well-reasoned summary of the case in favor of intelligent design. It is a well-made film that is both interesting and compelling, so you won’t have feel embarrassed showing it to your church, kids, friends, or whoever. You will have a hard time finding it at your local rental store or even your public library, so you’ll need to just buy it, but I don’t think you’ll be disappointed.
Secondly, I’d recommend a book by apologist Hank Hanegraaff called The Face that Demonstrates the Farce of Evolution. Hanegraaff is a master at presenting strong apologetic arguments i
n a memorable form. In The Face, which I read years ago, some of the most basic arguments against Darwinism are presented. Please don’t misunderstand what I mean by “basic.” I don’t mean simplistic. I mean that these are arguments that are simple to communicate and grasp but nearly impossible to answer. For example, one of Hanegraaff’s chapters is on chance. Atheistic Darwinism simply has no choice but to rely on random chance to explain the origin of biological life.* Hanegraaff provides a compelling argument based on statistical analysis to demonstrate that “chance doesn’t have a chance.”
I like to think of the chance argument in Yahtzee terms—a game that we just don’t play enough anymore. All of you who have played know how hard it is to role a Yahtzee (all 5 dice showing the same face). I mean it happens, but not every game—and you get three rolls per turn. Now, imagine you only got one roll. Well, now rolling a Yahtzee is going to be more like a once-a-year phenomenon. Now double the number of dice and all the sudden rolling a Yahtzee becomes a once-in-a-lifetime event. Make it, say, 50 dice, and now rolling a Yahtzee will simply never happen. Even if that’s all you did over and over again without so much as a potty break, you just are never going to be able to put 50 dice in a cup and have them all come out with the same value. Now, I’ll leave it to higher minds to figure out just how many dice you’d really have to put into the cup to accurately parallel your chances of “rolling” a single protein molecule. I just know it’s more than 50.
At the end of the day, this is really the old “watchmaker argument” (or teleological argument), rehashed. I once heard a Darwinist say so as if simply identifying it as “the old watchmaker argument” actually defeats the argument. It doesn’t, by the way. It is amazing how questions that are never adequately answered just don’t go away. The simple fact is that the Darwinist is in trouble on this issue because they cannot get the evolutionary engine running without someone turning the key.
So, check out these resources and let me know what you think. Also, if you have read or watched something that you found helpful on this issue, let us all know in the comments section of this blog.
Blessings.
[* Yes, I am aware that some Darwinists posit a theory of origins that suggests that biological life was “seeded” on our planet by some highly evolved organism—think: Mission to Mars, the Gary Sinise movie. This is essentially a space alien theory, which, silliness aside, only kicks the can down the road a bit further. I mean, how did the aliens come into existence?]
Posted on
Friday, January 2, 2009
by Cody C. Lorance
filed under