The Lies Evolutionists Tell

I know lie is a strong word and I don’t like to accuse people of lying. But if I hear the tired cliché, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” just one more time I’m going to scream. //RKBentley banging head// I am thoroughly unable locate any other phrase that is so wrong yet so often repeated and with such smugness. Perhaps the people repeating it aren’t aware it is false. Then I will make it a point to educate them on the matter.

First, the pratice of grouping plants and animals into certain classifications was begun long before Darwin. Classic categorization first came from Plato where animals were grouped by their similar characteristics. Aristotle expounded on this by applying certain narrowing questions, “"Is it an animal or vegetable?", "How many feet does it have?", "Does it have fur or feathers?", "Can it fly?", etc.” We can see, for example, that birds can be grouped together by the simple fact they have wings, lay eggs, and have feathers. These can be broad categories (warm blood, live birth, & hair = mammals) or narrow ones (a snout for a nose; small eyes; a small tail, which may be curly, kinked, or straight; a thick body; short legs; four toes on each foot, with the two large middle toes used for walking = pig).

Today, evolutionists draw a nested hierarchy of organisms which groups them according to their evolutionary relatedness. But their classification system assumes an evolutionary relationship – it doesn’t establish one. So, taxonomy, a field within biology, is NOT dependent on evolution. Immediately the phrase, “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,” is shown false. But there’s more.

Louis Pasteur is a highly regarded pioneer who paved the way for microbiology. He was also a contemporary of Darwin. In his day, scientists no longer believed in the spontaneous generation of higher life forms (such as maggots from decaying meat). However, some still clinged to the idea that simple life forms could arise spontaneously. Indeed, for evolution to have happened at all, there must have been a first living organism that arose from non-living chemicals (also called abiogenesis). To them, a cell was little more than an unsophisticated blob of matter. Pasteur believed life could only come from life and, through experimentation, proved the existence of microbes. Pasteur was a devout Christian and is credited with having said, “The more I study nature, the more I stand amazed at the work of the Creator.” Pasteur, then, was also able to conduct his work in microbiology without understanding or relying on the overarching tenets of ToE.

Gregor Mendel is credited as being the father of genetics. By studying the plants in his garden, this Augustinian Priest was able to discern that traits aren’t distributed randomly but are inherited in predictable patterns. His work was largely forgotten for 40 years but was later adopted by evolutionists. This is strange since genetics should be a killer blow to evolution. Mendel’s studies, for example, could explain how there could be a recombination of traits in a population (such as light and dark moths) but it cannot explain the rise of novel features (such as feathers on reptiles). Even so, Mendel’s observations were not dependent on, nor are they “made sense of,” by evolution.

Twenty years before Darwin published On the Origin of Species, a creationist by the name of Edward Blythe wrote in the Magazine of Natural History, 1835, the following:

There has been, strangely enough, a difference of opinion among naturalists, as to whether these seasonal changes of colour were intended by Providence as an adaptation to change of temperature, or as a means of preserving the various species from the observation of their foes, by adapting their hues to the colour of the surface; against which latter opinion it has been plausibly enough argued, that "nature provides for the preyer as well as for the prey." The fact is, they answer both purposes; and they are among those striking instances of design, which so clearly and forcibly attest the existence of an omniscient great First Cause [italics in original].

There has been much speculation that Darwin actually plagiarized his idea of natural selection from Edward Blythe. Evolutionists claim natural selection is the driving force of evolution. Blythe recognized the ability of a creature to adapt to its environment as evidence of design so Blythe was able to make perfect sense of adaptation without evoking evolution to explain it.

But as far as evolutionists go, consider this quote from Larry Witham (as cited on AiG):

While the great majority of biologists would probably agree with Theodosius Dobzhansky’s dictum that ‘Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution,’ most can conduct their work quite happily without particular reference to evolutionary ideas”, the editor wrote. “Evolution would appear to be the indispensable unifying idea and, at the same time, a highly superflous one.” The annual programs of science conventions also tell the story. When the zoologists met in 1995 (and changed their name to the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology), just a few dozen of the 400 academic papers read were on evolution. The North American Paleontological Convention of 1996 featured 430 papers, but only a few included the word “evolution” in their titles. The 1998 AAS meeting organized 150 scientific sessions, but just 5 focused on evolution—as it relates to biotechnology, the classification of species, language, race and primate families.

So it seems not even all evolutionistic scientists believe evolution is integral to their fields.

The next time you hear Dobzhansky’s famous quote (which, if you discuss evolution often, will be any moment now), you’ll spot it for what it is: rhetoric, pure and simple. It’s a sound bite – not an argument.