Expelled: Leader's Guide

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Revision as of 21:27, 26 March 2008


This is a point-by-point refutation of the "Leader's Guide" to the film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed found here.

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Leader's Guide[1]

RationalWiki Response

Introduction

Despite the fact that most Americans believe that God created life, the only “origin of life” theory taught in the majority of American schools is Neo-Darwinism, which at its core holds that a random undirected process has led from non-life to all of the marvellous complexity we see in the living world.

RationalWiki's Introduction

Recent scientific discoveries have raised serious questions about the theory of Darwinian evolution, while at the same time giving birth to a scientific theory called intelligent design. Despite the compelling modern science in support of intelligent design, and despite the fact that most Americans want the evidence for and against Darwin’s theory taught in schools, any questioning of Darwinism is systematically suppressed in nearly all academic and scientific communities3.

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The suppression of new scientific ideas – particularly those that pertain to the origins of life – presents today’s students with a onesided argument in the court of public opinion. It’s as if they’re a jury being shown evidence for only ONE SIDE of the case. All evidence from the opposing side is being thrown out of court, not by the jury or even the judge, but by the side presenting the contrary argument!

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It’s suppression at its worst, where the implications reach far beyond the classroom. Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed seeks to expose this suppression and give today’s students a glimpse into the amazing discoveries that modern science is revealing. In the pages of this Expelled Discussion Guide, you’ll be given the facts being hidden from most students today.

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The Facts

The Theory of Darwinian Evolution

The term evolution can have different meanings, such as “change over time” or even “progress.” However, in modern biology, evolution centers on two ideas. The first is that all the organisms we see are descended from a single common ancestor somewhere in the distant past. The second foundational idea is that an unguided process of natural selection (“survival of the fittest”) has the power to produce fundamentally new forms of life through random mutations. This view of evolution is known as “Neo-Darwinism,” which will be shortened simply to “Darwinism” through the rest of the guide. At its core, Darwinism explicitly excludes purpose or intelligent guidance from the history of the development of life.

The Theory of Intelligent Design

The scientific theory of intelligent design holds that certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random mutations.

“Darwin’s dangerous idea cuts much deeper into the fabric of our most fundamental beliefs than many of its sophisticated apologists have yet admitted, even to themselves.” Daniel Dennett – Darwin’s Dangerous Idea .

What Does The Evidence Say About These Theories?

Despite what we continue to read in the popular press and textbooks, modern science is increasingly raising serious questions about Darwinism along with other key elements of the “materialistic” worldview. At the same time, new scientific research is revealing incredible support for the theory of intelligent design, especially in these key fundamental areas of science:

  1. Cosmology (The Origin of the Universe)
  2. Molecular Biology (The Origin of Life)
  3. Paleontology (The History of Life)

The real facts

Cosmology

Cosmology has shown that the universe had a beginning and that it is filled with exquisite order.

The origin of the universe

As Dr. Charles Townes, a Nobel Prize-winning physicist, has said, “Intelligent design, as one sees it from a scientific point of view, seems to be quite real. This is a very special universe: it’s remarkable that it came out just this way. If the laws of physics weren’t just the way they are, we couldn’t be here at all.”

Galaxy Motion

Scientists have discovered that galaxies are moving away from each other as the very fabric of space is expanding. Because of this and other evidence, most scientists now believe that the universe (matter, energy, space, time, and the laws that govern them) exploded into existence from a single point. Simply put, there was a beginning to the universe (the “big bang”)—and such a beginning implies a cause outside the universe that brought it into existence.

Elegance of Physical Laws

Scientists also have recognized the exquisite order and mathematical elegance of the physical laws governing the universe as pointing to cosmic design. As physicist Paul Davies has stated, “The temptation to believe that the Universe is the product of some sort of design, a manifestation of subtle aesthetic and mathematical judgment, is overwhelming. The belief that there is ‘something behind it all’ is one that I personally share with, I suspect, a majority of physicists.” Without intelligent design, neither the beginning of the universe nor its order and elegance have an adequate explanation.

The Physical Universe

The “Anthropic Principle” states that if the physical structure of the universe were even slightly different, life would not exist. For example: • If the gravitational force constant were larger by just one part in ten billion billion billion, we would be crushed out of existence. • If the cosmological constant governing how fast the niverse expands were smaller by just one part in ten followed by 120 zeros, the universe would have collapsed right after it was born. • If the earth’s orbit were elliptical—like most other planets—rather than circular, or if it were just a bit closer or farther way from the sun, its temperature would not stay in the very narrow nrange required for life supporting chemical processes to function.

Cosmology Summary:

  • The universe had a beginning and therefore requires a cause beyond itself.
  • The universe has an exquisite order that is governed by mathematical laws that testify to a designer.
  • The universe and the earth are tailor-made for advanced life. If any factor were slightly different, life could not exist.

Cosmology

Molecular Biology

The origin of life Darwinian evolution argues that life arose from a primordial sea on a lifeless planet through a chance collision of chemicals, and that over billions of years, this biological accident gave rise to all of life, including humans. In other words:

NOTHING + TIME AND CHANCE = EVERYTHING

Modern science has now revealed incredible problems with this explanation.

The Living Cell

When Charles Darwin first proposed his theory, the world within the cell was unknown. Darwin and his contemporaries built their early theories believing the cell was very simple. They could not have been more wrong.

The inner workings of the cell are a fantastic assembly of intricately intertwined biological machinery which is vastly more complicated than anything humans have engineered. Modern genetics has shown us that a single human cell contains as much digital information in its DNA as the Encyclopedia Britannica—all thirty volumes—three or four times over. Just one microscopic cell! And the cell contains not just information, but also highly sophisticated processes that convert that information into biological parts, such as proteins.

What is the source of that information encoded in the DNA? Dr. Stephen Meyer points out that

“Everything we know from our uniform and repeated experience is that information always comes from an intelligent source. So when we find information in the cell in the form of the digital code in DNA, the most likely explanation is that DNA also had an intelligent source.”

Modern high-speed supercomputers have now used large-scale number crunching to calculate the eons of time and probabilities that are required to develop a cell through chance and mutation. The result? The odds are essentially zero, no matter how many millions or billions of years pass.

The famous astronomer Sir Fredrick Hoyle (Professor, and Founder of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University) compares the probability of spontaneous life to lining up 1x1050 (one with 50 zeros after it) blind people, giving them each a scrambled Rubik’s cube, and finding that they all solve the cube at the same moment.

Dr. Michael Behe (Professor of Biochemistry, Lehigh University) says, “Molecular evolution is not based on scientific authority. There is no publication in the scientific literature—in prestigious journals, specialty journals, or books—that describes how molecular evolution of any real, complex, biochemical system either did occur or even might have occurred.”

Genetics

But what about all those textbooks that talk about “genetic engineering” and the breeding of plants and animals to “evolve” new forms?

Those classic textbooks depicting various breeds of dogs as “evolution in action” are misleading. Why? Because all those poodles, labs, and shepherds are still dogs! Yes, there is evidence of change within a species, but there is no evidence of one species changing into a truly different form.

Breeding essentially mixes and matches among all the genes in an existing gene pool, much like you would shuffle and deal a deck of cards. But breeding cannot create new genes, any more than shuffling a deck can create new cards. Plus, selective breeding of plants and animals is a process guided by intelligence, not mere chance and survival of the fittest—unlike Darwinian evolution.

Yet Darwinists from Charles Darwin to Francis Crick to Richard Dawkins have continued to cite selective breeding as if it were a powerful example of unguided “evolution”!

The Mutation Conundrum

What about the power of mutations to promote evolution by introducing dramatic changes in an organism—like adding an extra pair of wings to a fruit-fly? Scientists are still struggling to understand the full impact of mutations on living things, but what they do know is that the vast majority of mutations are damaging to an organism or neutral. Far less than one percent might actually be beneficial. So how can incomprehensibly complex organisms be the result of mutations that are rarely if ever beneficial?

As biologist Lynn Margulis at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, has concluded: “New mutations don’t create new species; they create offspring that are impaired.”

Molecular Genetics

Irreducible Complexity

Darwinism requires existing biological structures to have evolved in gradual yet unplanned steps from simpler structures – such as feathers evolving from scales, or wings evolving from forelegs. But many of the structures we see in living organisms are difficult to understand as the result of a gradual unplanned process. Biochemist Michael Behe in his book Darwin’s Black Box challenges Darwinian gradualism with the concept of “irreducible complexity.”

A system is considered irreducibly complex if it consists of several interrelated parts so that removing even one part destroys the system’s function. Much if not most of the biological machinery present in the cell exhibit such irreducibly complex structures.

Behe explains the concept by using the example of a mousetrap. We don’t start with a wooden platform and catch a mouse, then add a spring and catch a few more mice, then add a hammer, etc. We start with a functioning mousetrap. Even if all the parts of the trap were available, to start catching mice, all the parts must be properly assembled.

Many organisms are made up of similar, irreducibly complex interacting parts. Continuing with the example of the mousetrap, if one part such as the spring evolved with no function, it would sit dormant while the other necessary components such as the base and lever were evolved until the entire system was assembled to work. However, according Darwin’s theory of “natural selection,” the dormant component such as the spring would be eliminated if it didn’t provide a survival benefit. The biological world is full of irreducibly complex structures, suggesting that something beside the brute forces of random mutations and natural selection are generating complexity in nature. It is a significant challenge for many living organisms to change one piece at a time. Any change in one part of the organism often disrupts other parts of the organism.

A great example is the bat. Evolutionists believe the bat evolved from a mouse-like creature whose forelimbs gradually evolved into wings. But think through this evolutionary progression: The mouse’s front limbs mutate and grow longer, and skin begins to grow between the toes. Now the animal can’t run without stumbling, yet its forelimbs are not long enough to function as wings. So during this transitional stage, the mouse-bat has limbs too long for running and too short for flying. Unable to efficiently get around, it would become extinct.

It is difficult to explain or imagine how bat wings could have been formed in unplanned gradual stages – which may be why there is no geological evidence of this “transitional” process; the first time bats appear in the fossil record, they are fully formed, with wings.

Irreducible stupidity

Molecular Biology Summary:

  • A single cell is vastly more complicated than anything humans have ever engineered.
  • Genetic information requires an intelligent source, because in our uniform and repeated experience information always comes from an intelligent source.
  • The probability of a cell being formed through chance and mutation is zero.
  • Breeding of plants and animals produces variations within species, not fundamentally new organisms.
  • Mutations are almost always harmful or neutral, and those that are beneficial cannot create genuinely new genetic information.
  • Organisms contain complex, integrated systems that could not have developed one piece at a time through an unplanned process.

Molecular Biology Summary:

Paleontology

The fossil record

For the sake of argument, let us say that somehow, even in the face of these “impossible” odds, the first cell could have formed, and over time developed into all the various biological organisms that now populate the earth. Even Darwin assumed that we would eventually find a substantial record of such evolution among the millions of fossils uncovered in the 130+ years of searching. In his own words: “The number of intermediate and transitional links between all living and extinct species must have been inconceivably great.” In fact, the fossil record as a whole, contrary to conventional wisdom, actually gives persuasive evidence against Darwinian evolution, as we shall see…

Transitional Gaps

Top scientists agree about the weak evidence for Darwinianism in the fossil record:

As Dr. Michael Denton (Senior Research Fellow, University of Otago, New Zealand) observes, there are huge gaps between species, and further, “The gaps which separate species: dog/fox, rat/mouse, etc. are utterly trivial compared with, say, that between a primitive terrestrial mammal and a whale, or a primitive terrestrial reptile and an ichthyosaur; and even these relatively major discontinuities are trivial alongside those which divide major phyla such as mollusks and arthropods. Surely such transitions must have involved long lineages including many collateral lines of hundreds or perhaps thousands of transitional species. “To suggest that the hundreds, thousands, or possibly millions of “transitional” species which must have existed in the interval between vastly dissimilar types were all unsuccessful species occupying isolated areas and having very small population numbers [i.e., we just haven’t found them yet] is verging on the incredible!” If there were such animals, we would have a very well documented record among the millions of fossils already cataloged.

THE CAMBRIAN EXPLOSION

Paleontology confirms the abrupt appearance of the major groups of animals—dozens of genetic types—in the fossil record during a geologically sudden explosion of life in the Cambrian period, the so-called “big bang” of biology. How were all those major animal groups produced in such a relatively short span of time (a few million years according to conventional geologic dating)? According to Dr. Stephen Meyer, to produce each new organism during the Cambrian Explosion “you needed a whole bunch of new cell types, and then you needed new proteins to service the different unique cell types; and to build the proteins you needed genetic information in the form of DNA.” If information comes from an intelligent source, the best scientific answer would appear to be intelligent design. “The big question that the Cambrian Explosion poses is where does all that new information come from? Where does the new information come from needed to build those proteins, to service those new cell types, to build these fundamentally new forms of animals?”

Paleontology Summary:

  • Darwin’s theory requires thousands of transitional species, and yet there is an incredible lack of transitional fossils among the millions found.
  • New animal groups appear abruptly in the fossil record fully formed, requiring a massive increase in new genetic information to be produced—information that points to intelligent design.

To Summarize:

  • We have seen evidence from Cosmology that there is an intelligent cause outside of time or space that produced a universe filled with matter, energy, space, time, and all the natural laws that govern them.
  • We have seen from Molecular Biology the purposeful design of life in the information encoded in DNA and the amazing complexity of the cell.
  • We have also seen from modern Paleontology the lack of transitional fossils, and the abrupt appearance of new animal groups, requiring massive amounts of new genetic information to be produced.

To Summarize

Why Does It Matter?

The implications of Neo-Darwinian evolution are immense and reach far beyond the “scientific realm.” Darwinism has become the substitute “creation story” for those who embrace materialism. Materialism is a philosophy which says that the physical realm is the only reality that exists. This worldview fosters relativism, religious skepticism, and a dehumanized view of men and women.

Relativism

Relativism is the idea that there is no absolute moral “truth” that applies to every time and culture. Darwinism encourages relativism by portraying morality as simply another evolving product of natural selection. According to Darwinism, morality evolves into whatever best promotes physical survival in a certain time and place. In the words of Harvard biologist E.O. Wilson and Darwinist philosopher Michael Ruse: “Morality… is merely an adaptation put in place to further our reproductive ends… In an important sense, ethics as we understand it is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.” Such a view has real-world consequences. Dr. Michael Denton has observed that, “The social and political currents which have swept the world in the past 80 years would have been impossible without [Darwin’s] intellectual sanction.”

THE DEHUMANIZATION OF LIFE

In a Darwinian framework, human beings are no better than any other animal and ultimately may be treated as animals by those who consider themselves to be greater, more human, enlightened or evolved.

Princeton University bioethicist Peter Singer, who advocates infanticide for handicapped infants and euthanasia for the elderly, defends his view by stating: “All we are doing is catching up with Darwin. He showed… that we are simply animals. Humans had imagined we were a separate part of Creation, that there was some magical line between Us and Them. Darwin’s theory undermined the foundations of that entire Western way of thinking about the place of our species in the universe.”

Similar arguments have been used by Darwinists to justify abortion. In fact, some Darwinists have argued that babies in the womb can be eliminated because for most of the pregnancy they represent lower stages of man’s evolutionary history.

According to biophysicist Elie A. Shneour, “Abortion is justified because the unborn baby progresses over 38 weeks through what is, in fact, a rapid passage through evolutionary history: From a single primordial cell, the conceptus progresses through being something of a protozoan, a fish, a reptile, a bird, a primate and ultimately a human being. There is a difference of opinion among scientists about the time during a pregnancy when a human being can be said to emerge.” Beyond Abortion Once you have devalued humanity to the level of animals, abortion is only the first step.

Dr. James Watson (Nobel Laureate) suggested that, “If a child [with birth defects] was not declared alive until three days after birth…the doctor could allow the child to die if the parents so choose and save a lot of misery and suffering.” Dr. Margaret Sanger (Founder of Planned Parenthood) said, “The most merciful thing that the large family does to one of its infant members is to kill it.” [from Chapter V of Woman and the New Race]

Dr. Peter Singer (Professor of Bioethics at Princeton) openly advocated permitting parents to kill their disabled babies on the basis that they are “non-persons” until they are “rational and self-conscious.” And he went on to advocate the killing of incompetent persons of any age if their families decide their lives are “not worth living”. Abortion, infanticide and euthanasia are all cut from the same moral cloth: the devaluing, and ultimately disrespect for human life.

WHERE CAN DARWINISM LEAD

In The Descent of Man, Darwin argued that:

“The weak members of civilised societies propagate their kind. No one who has attended to the breeding of domestic animals will doubt that this has been highly injurious to the race of man… Hardly anyone is so ignorant as to allow his worst animals to breed.”

While Darwin (who was compassionate) could not follow his own reason to its logical end, it was his cousin, Francis Galton, who coined the term “eugenics,” the supposed science of breeding better humans through Darwinian principles. Subsequently, many evolutionary scientists supported eugenics policies in the U.S., and also in Nazi Germany.

Hitler and the Nazis followed Darwinian eugenics to an extreme, carrying “survival of the fittest” to the radical conclusion of exterminating “unfit” and “inferior” races like the Jews and Gypsies, and “weak” members of society like the handicapped.

In his own work, Mein Kampf, Hitler said,

“If Nature does not wish that weaker individuals should mate with the stronger, she wishes even less that a superior race should intermingle with an inferior one; because in such a case all her efforts, throughout hundreds of thousands of years, to establish an evolutionary higher stage of being, may thus be rendered futile.”

In his book From Darwin to Hitler, California State University historian Richard Weikart concludes:

“Darwinism by itself did not produce the Holocaust, but without Darwinism, especially in its social Darwinist and eugenics permutations, neither Hitler nor his Nazi followers would

have had the necessary scientific underpinnings to convince themselves and their collaborators that one of the world’s greatest atrocities was really morally praiseworthy.”

Why Does It Matter?

What does it matter? Summary:

  • According to Darwinism, traditional morality is an illusion, and morality evolves over time to promote physical survival (relativism).
  • According to Darwinism, life is the product of an undirected process,so if God exists, He must have little or no impact on the world.
  • According to Darwinism, human beings are not fundamentally different than other animals, so humans can be treated like animals.
  • Darwin’s “survival of the fittest” teaching inspired eugenics and supplied a “scientific” rationale for Hitler and the Third Reich in their attempts to exterminate “inferior” races and the “unfit.”

What does it matter? Summary:

  1. http://www.getexpelled.com/_downloads/expelled_leadersguide.pdf
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