Letter to the Scientific Community

LETTER TO THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY

Sam Harris’ new book entitled “Letter to a Christian Nation” was quite an experience. As a born again Christian, familiar with the Scriptures, I was thrilled to read his comments about the absurd doctrines and interpretations that are being pumped out of pulpits with formidable zeal and without the slightest regard for context, meaning or (what Mr. Harris calls) intellectual integrity. I thought, as I read further, that it was ironic that I could identify fully with the views of a self - proclaimed atheist as he illuminated the hypocrisy and theological inbreeding that govern the major religions of our world, causing so much violence and hatred. I was also astonished by his blunt admission that “no-one knows how the universe began”. (I found that honesty refreshing). My enthusiasm was shattered, however, when he smoothly announced that we should all just accept that God does NOT exist, and that the amazing spectrum of the existence that surrounds us is not the result of “ID” (Intelligent Design) but has been created by a combination of random genetic accidents (called “mutations”) and a severe natural selection (called “survival of the fittest”) over billions of years. I felt like I had been invited to step out of the absurd and into the preposterous.

Although the Evolutionary Theory (let’s call it ET) is taught as “gospel” in our schools, and cites the modern carbon dating techniques and the fossil record as irrefutable evidence, I wonder why the same critical examination that Mr. Harris applied to religious dogma was not used to question this “scientific” belief that is presently being propagated on a global scale. I am skeptical about the accuracy of the “scientific” model of the earth’s history for two reasons. Firstly, there is no way to verify the findings – if the scientists say a million years, it must be a million. If they say that the number is revised to a billion years, then we just have to accept their word for it. Secondly, I suspect that the law of “cause and effect” might be in operation, since “ET” would be implausible in a frame of thousands or even millions of years, it is convenient that the “more refined” dating process now affirms that “evolution” actually had billions of years to take place.

In my opinion, even with billions of years the entire concept of “evolution” is bizarre! I assume that this development only applies to living organisms since inorganic material tends to DEVOLVE over long periods of time. (I know for sure that if I park my car in a field, in a billion years all that will be left is a pile of rust.) Decay is the fundamental result of time.

If natural selection is applied to living organisms, logic dictates that the single cell amoeba would therefore be the “highest” form of life, while the more complicated species of plants and animals would be more vulnerable, and therefore not products of the “survival” code, but escapees. In fact, using the “natural selection” formula would contradict the idea of the “balance of nature”, as every species of life would be in competition, and not inter-dependent.

At the core of ET however, is the miracle of life itself. We are all comfortable with the reproductive powers that exist in every species, including humans. This is the arena that the scientists have chosen as the battleground of evolution through genetic mistakes. In our modern wisdom, we know that the genetic codes that guide the growth of any organism can be altered, causing mysterious abnormalities, and the conclusion that ET has reached is that these alterations MUST have occurred randomly (over billions of years) and MUST have produced deformities that improved the chances of survival, thus paving the road for fish, birds, cats, dogs and elephants to “evolve” from common ancestry. I find this far – fetched to say the least. I simply can’t remember a single case of genetic dysfunction that resulted in improvement without the meticulous supervision of human will. Scientists can alter genetic structure for their purposes, but random mutations are consistently debilitating. Even with billions of years, the chances of enough “benign” genetic mutations occurring to explain our myriad life forms is less than remote.

The last struggle that I have with ET concerns the origin of life. We are asked to believe that one day, a long, long time ago, a small chip of granite rolled into a puddle of acid and at the same time lightning struck and a “random” miracle took place! Inorganic became a living organism. My question is this – how many billions of times must this miracle have taken place until the living organism that was produced turned out to have the ability to reproduce itself? It makes no sense.

What does make sense is very simple. Humans have used selective breeding to create new types of animals, either for a purpose, or just for their appearance. Humans have developed new strains of wheat and tomatoes for increased profit. Humans invented the wheel and refined and improved upon their invention until they can produce a Swiss watch. The fossil record of the “evolution” from the first stone wheel to the watch would ATTEST to the creator of both. It seems to me that our own creative urge, and our ability to build things from our own imagination might just be a mirror of the attributes of God. We might actually be “made in His image!”