IN last years Many scientists associated with biology and zoology are raising their voices against the more than century-old omnipotence of Darwin's theory of evolution. And they do this under the pressure of facts, which, as you know, cannot be argued with. Nevertheless, our children still not only study Darwinism in schools, but also pass a very difficult exam on it, which is also a state exam. Are we really teaching the younger generation something that is pure fiction?
HTo answer the questions, the easiest way is to turn to the very facts that “press” scientists. And to do this, just take a close look at the natural world around us in order to understand who is right: evolutionists who claim that modern plants, animals, birds and insects, and after them you and I, became what we are, in the process of a long historical development. Or is the Bible right when it claims that today’s world was created by the Creator in six days, and all animals, birds and even the smallest midges from the first moment of creation were immediately the same as we see them now.

But first, let's talk about... the woodpecker. This living jackhammer manages to hit wood at 8-10 beats per second! Moreover: a weak-looking bird is capable of making a hole not only in the hardest wood, but even in concrete! With such speed and force of impact, his brain should definitely suffer, but he does not suffer. How is this possible?

Perhaps because the woodpecker has a very special head structure, including special shock absorbers. Most birds have beak bones attached to the skull that covers the brain, but only the woodpecker has a porous pad between the beak and the skull: a sponge-like substance that dampens the shock of each blow. This natural shock absorber is so good that, according to experts, it is far superior to anything created by human hands.

Moreover, the devices that protect the bird’s brain are not limited to just a shock absorber: it turns out that the woodpecker also has special muscles that move the skull away from the beak at the moment of “slotting” - for each blow. But now the hole is made. Now, in order to dine, you need to remove the insects from there and eat them. And another amazing device is used - an incredibly long sticky tongue, longer than the bird’s body!

The question is: what to do with such a pagan when he is not busy?

All birds, except the woodpecker, have a tongue in their mouth - just like you and me. But for a woodpecker this is unacceptable: such a tongue cannot be “stored” in the mouth - it will get tangled and turn into a ball. So it grows not from his mouth, but from his right nostril and, passing right under the skin, wraps his entire head. Very convenient and quite neat! And all this taken together is an absolutely insoluble problem for those who believe in evolution...

How could such organs specialized for one purpose evolve gradually? The shock absorbers had to work from the very beginning, otherwise Woodpecker No. 1 would have simply blown his brains out before he could produce offspring, and the whole species of woodpeckers would have ended. And if the first woodpeckers had eaten differently and had not chiseled at trees, the shock absorber simply would not have been needed. What about the long tongue? After all, he wouldn’t be needed then! Moreover, to imagine that once upon a time a woodpecker’s tongue was normal, and then suddenly grew, detached itself from the back wall of its mouth, climbed into its nostril and wrapped itself around its head, perhaps only a cartoonist could... But that’s exactly what and evolutionary theory insists! Based on the fact that all modern “adaptations” of animals and birds that allow them to get food and “fight for existence” were formed over thousands of years - gradually!

But the facts are really stubborn things: in order to survive, the woodpecker had to be like it is today, right away. Any gradualism would simply cross out this amazing creature from the lists of living creatures on the planet. In other words, this is how he was created, and created by someone who knew for sure that the woodpecker would have to chisel trees, which means that his brain needs special protection from constant vibration, which absolutely guarantees the survival of the species.

The interesting thing is that if we analyze any living creature on the planet from this point of view, we will get the same result. But if someone were to suggest choosing one single animal and using its example to prove that evolution simply could not have happened, a better creature than the sea snail aeolis could not be found for this purpose.

Eolis looks nothing like the snails that live in gardens and orchards. She is very beautiful, with hairs on her back that look like wool. And it feeds on another sea creature - anemones. Anemone, in turn, is one of the most poisonous creatures in the ocean. It is literally covered entirely with tiny stinging cells that shoot powerful poison at anyone who accidentally approaches it. From shrimp to fish. Then how does a sea snail manage to feed on this floating flask of poison? Today's science is unable to understand this. All she knows is that she tears the sea anemone into pieces along with the poisonous cells and swallows it all without any harm to herself. But the most interesting thing happens next.

These death-stinging cells in the aeolis's stomach are not digested. Because it has special channels covered with villi. These peculiar paths lead from the stomach straight to the same skin outgrowths on the back of the snail, similar in appearance to wool. And, having sent them there, now eolis herself uses the stings borrowed from the anemone for her protection!

The question arises: was it possible to acquire such a cunning “nutrition-protection” system in the process of evolution, that is, gradually? Of course not, since it is impossible to develop such abilities in yourself without dying: after all, the poison of an anemone, directly injected into a snail, is still fatal for it today! Even if we assume that in time immemorial, a single snail, out of desperation from hunger, managed to devour a gaping anemone, it would still have died: the cells with poison would have burned its stomach, which is currently devoid of special tubules. Thus, only one option is inevitable: the very first specimen of the snail, even in time immemorial, looked and was structured the same as any modern one, with an equally complex, mathematically verified power supply and protection system! And if even much simpler systems (for example, security) require the participation of reason in the process of their emergence, only a madman can admit that a blind, unreasonable and soulless nature is capable of a work equal in complexity to an aeolis...

Just like tens of thousands of other no less thoughtfully arranged living beings on the planet, aeolis could only be created. Created by a mind immeasurably superior to that of man, that is, as the Bible states, by God. In those same six days of creation, which we learn about from Genesis and which in the biblical history of the world are called the Sixth Day.

But perhaps the most powerful modern argument for the Six Days against evolution is that world-famous document that we call the Red Book.

It is known that this is a book in which now endangered animals and plants are included. There is a widespread opinion, completely inconsistent with the actual state of affairs, that those species of animals and plants that man himself has intensively exterminated throughout the history of his existence are disappearing. It is not true! Any zoologist or botanist knows that of the huge number of living creatures included in the Red Book, no more than two dozen can be blamed on our vandalism, which includes a passion for hunting. The remaining thousands and tens of thousands of species were unable to cope with climate and environmental changes.

But what are environmental changes, or environmental deterioration in general? First of all, this is a much more gradual process than changes in the same climate, for example, during ice ages. This is proven by archaeological finds in eternal ice Antarctica. A few decades ago, a perfectly preserved family of mammoths was discovered there, frozen in a variety of positions, and even with tree branches in their mouths. This means that the glaciation of the poles occurred, as the Bible claims, instantly! At that second, when the last drops of the world’s first rain, which accompanied the Flood, poured out and the clouds that had previously wrapped it in a dense protective layer disappeared over the Earth for the first time in the history of its existence. And the sun appeared in the sky, on which from now on it depended on who would live after the Flood and who would not, since the sun became the only source of heat on the planet. This means that climatic zones were formed simultaneously. Taking the same mammoths, and at the same time their main food - antediluvian trees - by surprise, immediately covering them with ice.

Let us now return to the theory of evolution. If we assume that some ancestors of modern animals, instead of dying, did not freeze out along with the rest, but adapted, and even gradually, despite the sharp and rapid climate change, why then do modern species demonstrate a complete lack of adaptability to the current climatic and environmental conditions? conditions, inability to fight for survival?.. Here is a simple example.

It would seem, why would it be easier for trees that are dying out from air pollution to switch to the same food system that exists for ficus and several other species of this genus? It is known that ficus very well purifies the air of any room, because it “eats” not oxygen, like most plants, but what other oxygen-breathing plants exhale. However, both plants and animals, in the process of steady climate change over the past two centuries, either migrate in search of a zone more suitable for their organism, or die out. And in each subsequent generation, contrary to the same theory of evolution, more and more weakened individuals are born, completely unadapted to the struggle for life, than in the previous one. This is not the progress that evolutionists talk about, but the regression that the Bible predicts.

Finally, one cannot help but mention Charles Darwin himself, the author of this theory... The only question is: is it a theory? After all, Darwin himself never called it that way even once in his life, defining it as a scientific hypothesis, that is, an assumption! Moreover, this assumption seemed, in his presentation, to put it mildly, almost
just like his current followers.

Charles Darwin was always not just a believer, but also a person with a theological education - a fact that materialist atheists tried so hard not to mention. But it is precisely this fact that is important in order to correctly understand the original source of Darwinism.

Darwin in no way questioned the creation of our world by God. He, first and last, was busy trying to understand what exactly is hidden behind the word “day” in the Bible: are there really 24 daily hours or hundreds of thousands of years?.. After all, the Hebrew word for “day”, which is used in the original Bible, written in Hebrew, has another translation into other languages ​​- not only “day”, but also “period”! Darwin the theologian was keenly interested in this, and
Darwin the naturalist made an attempt to find out, to satisfy this interest...

He failed to get an answer to his own question during his lifetime. Because the main evidence of evolution was not found - the transitional link between ape and man. Dying, doubting the correctness of his assumptions, Darwin bequeathed to his students: search, dig, dig again and - search...

And, as happens with the devil's disciples, his disciples also turned out to be too diligent. So much so that they allowed themselves to falsify the desired transitional link, mixing human and ape bones and, where necessary, carefully tinting them... For more than a hundred years, the fake lay under glass in the London Museum of Archeology, the only one in the world and therefore untouchable, copied in the form of dummies, with whom Darwinian scientists were allowed to work. Ten years ago, the glass was opened, and thunder struck... But for some reason, it did not destroy either the entire network of Darwinian institutes that had grown over the century all over the world, or school textbooks. The reason may lie with equal probability both in the inertia of thinking inherent in the human mind and in problems of economics or politics.

But no matter what it is, not a single impartial scientist will deny the fact itself: evolutionary theory is just another figment of human imagination, another unconfirmed hypothesis. If there is something that distinguishes it from others of the same kind, then, as one of the Russian academicians said at the World Meeting of Archaeologists in Dubna two years ago, “unlike other untenable hypotheses, Darwinism managed to reject the development of a science called biology, at least a hundred years ago..."

Prepared by Maria VETROVA

It is difficult to exaggerate how brilliant and grandiose Charles Darwin's evolutionary theory of natural selection was and remains. It literally shocked Victorian England - at least to the extent that traditional and stuffy Victorian England could be shocked by people who dared to raise their voices a little in polite protest. But some representatives of that society, especially staunch adherents of Christian teaching, did not really like the idea that nature could well exist and develop independently, without the pointing finger of a higher power. They didn't like her at all.

Although few people know it today, scientists had been mulling over the idea of ​​evolution since before Darwin—even Charles's grandfather, Erasmus, mentioned it in one of his poems. Charles's contribution was directly to the theory of natural selection, which holds that living things change over time, and these changes allow them to better adapt to their environment, increasing their chances of passing on their characteristics to future generations. (Interestingly, Darwin's friend, the brilliant naturalist Alfred Russel Wallace, came to the same conclusion at about the same time as Darwin himself. Both of them presented their preliminary findings to the Linnean Society of London, and only then did Darwin produce the real revolution by publishing his work On the Origin of Species.)

However, there was one weak point in his theory of natural selection: Darwin could not fully explain how exactly it works. The descendants undoubtedly possessed the traits of their parents. But how did this work? What happened at the moment of conception? This was a gigantic gap in Darwin's theory of evolution. Therefore, in 1868, almost a decade after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Darwin tried to fill this gap with his theory of “pangenesis” - a completely erroneous theory, which in general terms is as follows.

Each cell in our body exudes tiny particles called gemmules, “which are distributed throughout the whole system,” as Darwin wrote, and, “having received the necessary nourishment, these particles begin to multiply by division and are ultimately converted into units similar to those from which they originally happened.” In essence, from Darwin's point of view, gemmules are the seeds of cells. “They are collected from all parts of the system and concentrated in the reproductive elements. Their development in the next generation leads to the formation of a new being.”

Since the sex seeds of both parents are united at the moment of conception, their offspring ultimately possesses the characteristics of both the mother and the father. But what about a child who has adopted more traits from one parent than the other? This occurs when “the gemmules in the fertilized embryo are in excess” and when “the gemmules of one parent have some advantage—in number, similarity, or strength—over the gemmules of the other parent.” In other words, they seem to put more effort into the process of forming the embryo.

The gemmules must develop in the correct order to result in a healthy organism. Therefore, when some kind of failure occurs, congenital malformations occur. Darwin writes: “According to the doctrine of pangenesis, in the early stages the gemmules of displaced organs begin to develop in the wrong place due to union with the wrong cells or collections of cells.”

However, the merit of Darwin's theory of pangenesis was that it finally explained the existence of differences between organisms - that unrefined fuel of evolution. There are two reasons for this. Firstly, “fluctuating variability” arises as a result of “lack, excess and movement of gemmules, as well as a new round of development of those gemmules that were previously for a long time were latent." In other words, some gemmules may be embodied in their grandchildren, skipping a generation, although they themselves “do not undergo any changes.”

The second reason has to do with the now discredited theory of Lamarckism, according to which the characteristics that an organism acquires during life are due to the action of factors environment- can then be inherited by his offspring. Darwin believed that gemmules could change during the life of an organism and that these changed gemmules could multiply and displace previous gemmules. (Lamarckism is dead, but some modern scientists believe that because behaviors such as our language are acquired through life, they are examples of nongenetic inheritance that can change the course of an organism's evolution. However, this is still a highly controversial issue. which we will not dwell on now.)

Let's summarize: gemmules are the seeds of cells that the body receives at the moment of its conception. They must be formed in the correct order to produce a healthy organism, and mixing them leads to variations. Some gemmules may become latent for a time, causing some traits to appear after one or more generations, or they may change during the life of the organism, so that its offspring will inherit the traits that their parents developed due to environmental factors. .

Any theory must be proven experimentally, and this task fell on the shoulders of Darwin's cousin, Francis Galton. To prove that gemmules caused variation, he took the blood of one rabbit and injected it into another, assuming that the descendants of the second rabbit would have the characteristics of the first. In his essay entitled “Darwin and Heredity: The Evolution of the Pangenesis Hypothesis,” Gerald Geison writes: “These experiments, like all subsequent ones, failed to prove Darwin’s hypothesis, and when in addition the idea of ​​inheritance of acquired characters was discredited, the theory of pangenesis was quickly supplanted by other, more convincing explanations.”

“As a result,” Geyson writes, “the theory of pangenesis has often been perceived as one of the mysterious and inexplicable errors of genius. Perhaps it is precisely because many want to focus only on Darwin’s genius that some biographers completely forget to mention pangenesis.”

I have written about this before and I will write again: in science, errors are a completely normal and very useful phenomenon, because when someone disproves a particular theory, this is already progress. Of course, quite annoying progress for the person whose theory is being refuted, but progress nonetheless.

The foundations of genetics were laid, as strange as it may seem, by a monk who conducted experiments with peas in the 1850s - just when Darwin was working on his work On the Origin of Species. While growing peas and carefully recording how traits were inherited from generation to generation, Gregor Mendel noticed that offspring were not simply some amalgamation of parents, as biologists of the time had believed. That is, as a result of crossing a plant with smooth peas and a plant with wrinkled peas, for example, you will not get a plant with slightly wrinkled peas - it will be a plant with either smooth or wrinkled peas. These are what we now call dominant and recessive alleles or variations of a particular gene: for example, if you have blue eyes, this is a manifestation of the recessive allele, and Brown eyes is a manifestation of a dominant allele. This happens because you receive two copies of each gene, one from your mother and one from your father.

“Hey guys, I found something interesting here,” Mendel probably said to the deafening sound of crickets. But in those days no one noticed his work. It was only in the 1900s that botanists began to seriously study his work, laying the foundations for the era of genetics. Scientists soon found out that it is DNA that contains information that determines the presence of certain characteristics, and in 1953 Watson, Crick and their colleagues finally formulated the famous theory of the double helix.

We now know that the inheritance of traits has nothing to do with the mixing of gemmules. Of course, we receive our DNA, which contains the genes of our mother and father. But each time these genes produce unique combinations, which leads to differences between brothers and sisters. Diversity can also be caused by gene mutations: when our cells divide, sometimes they reproduce their DNA with errors (you may be carrying a huge number of mutations that you don't even notice) So these mutations, combined with the mixing of genes at conception, underlie variability and therefore evolution: some people are born with traits that make them better adapted to their environment, increasing their chances of surviving and passing on their genes to future generations.

Darwin took a shot at the problem of inheritance and, of course, failed, but let's not forget that he formulated one of the greatest theories in human history - the theory of evolution by natural selection. He simply did not live to see the last piece of the puzzle fall into place (the last major piece of the puzzle, I must say - we still have a lot to learn about evolution).

And doesn't the thought that even the greatest minds in history could make serious mistakes bring us at least some peace? Personally, I find it very reassuring, considering that until recently I didn’t even know that avocados were a fruit. I mean, who could have guessed it would turn out like this?

For many, this news came as a shock, because Darwin's theory was completely debunked. Every year more and more scientists speak against evolution.

Any sane person should have this information: The theory that we are taught in school actually has no scientific or logical basis.

The person who put forward the theory of evolution is the English amateur naturalist Charles Robert Darwin. Darwin was never really trained in biology, but had only an amateur interest in nature and animals.

Most people consider Darwin's theory (Darwinism) to be a scientific fact. In fact, this theory, refuted by modern science, nothing more than a 19th century fairy tale.

From the inception of this theory to the present day, developing fields of science such as biochemistry, microbiology, genetics, paleontology and anatomy have shown that Darwinism is just a figment of the imagination.

Modern science, while proving the inconsistency of Darwin's theory, simultaneously reveals the real reason for the origin of life - creation. All living beings were created (!!!) at the genetic level in perfect form and have not undergone any evolution.

Microscope

The study of cell structure became possible with the invention of the electron microscope. In Darwin's time, a cell could be studied only superficially using a primitive microscope.

Darwin, while refining his theory, was influenced by the evolutionary biologists who came before him, especially the French biologist Lamarck. According to Lamarck, living beings pass on from generation to generation the characteristics they acquired during life, and thus evolve.

For example, giraffes evolved from a species of gazelle-like animal whose necks elongated on their own because they were forced to forage for leaves from tall trees.

However, both Lamarck and Darwin were wrong. Because at that time, the study of living organisms was carried out using primitive technology and to an insufficient extent. At that time there were not even names for such fields of science as genetics and biochemistry. The theory relied only on the power of imagination.

Darwin himself understood that there was much that was unresolved in his theory. He admits this in his book Difficulties of Theory. These difficulties lay in the complex organs of living organisms that could not appear by chance (for example, the eye), as well as fossil remains. Darwin hoped that these difficulties would be overcome through the process of new discoveries.

DNA completely ruined the theory

While Darwin was monitoring responses to his “scientific theory,” the Australian botanist G. Mendel discovered the law of heredity in 1865. However, Mendel's discoveries were not heard until the end of the century and only gained significance in early 1900 with the discovery of genetics. During these same years, the structure of genes and chromosomes was discovered.

And the discovery in 1950 of DNA, which stores genetic information, subjected the theory to complete collapse. Because the structure of living organisms turned out to be much more complex than Darwin believed, and the inconsistency of the mechanism of evolution came to light.

As a result of all these discoveries, Darwin's theory was to be relegated to the dusty shelves of history. However, some circles insisted on the need to update the theory and tried by any means to put it on a scientific platform. It was clear that all these efforts had more ideological purpose than scientific concern.

Modern scientists have refuted Darwin's theory but that evolution is a constant process. The result of numerous experiments and experiments states that speciation occurs under the influence of dramatically changing environmental conditions, and Darwin's theory of mutation and natural selection can only describe the evolution of species by 8%.

Scientists' work shows that natural selection Darwin may not be the source of new species on Earth at all, and they are confident that they will be able to convince most scientists of this as a result of future experimental and modeling work.

This conclusion was reached in a recent review article by American biologist and evolutionist Michael Rampino. No, this does not mean the notorious “Darwin was wrong”; rather, it only corrects the generally accepted point of view on the Theory of Evolution and how the evolutionary process proceeds.

In the classic Darwinian view, the evolution of organisms under the influence of natural selection is a process similar to the slow, leisurely and gradual ascent of an escalator. Only occasionally does this or that catastrophe or some other out-of-the-ordinary event introduce an element of surprise into this picture: a species of, say, birds, accidentally finding itself on an isolated island, where it is forced to adapt to unusual types of food, begins to change extremely quickly, after which again returns to the general unhurried flow.

According to Michael Rampino, modern form the picture appears much more menacing - rather a series of poorly controlled catastrophes, mass extinctions, each of which, burying hundreds and thousands of species, stimulated the explosive development of the survivors. This view, as the scientist recalls, is close to the opinion of the Scottish landowner and naturalist Patrick Matthew, who expressed evolutionary ideas almost half a century before Darwin. By the way, for a number of reasons, Matthew’s publications became more or less known only much later than Darwin’s, and there is no reason to believe that Darwin “borrowed” the idea of ​​natural selection as the driving force of evolution from him. Moreover, the views of Matthew and Darwin really differ in many ways.

Michael Rampino explains: “Matthew discovered and clearly described the idea of ​​natural selection in relation to the origin of species, but placed it in the context of geological exploration, marked by a series of catastrophic events followed by rapid adaptation... In light modern ideas about the role of mass extinctions in the evolution of life on the planet, it is worth rethinking Matthew’s ideas as much closer to our view than Darwin’s.”

Let's briefly return to the history of the issue. Unlike Darwin, who devoted many detailed works to the consideration of various aspects of evolutionary theory, Patrick Matthew expressed these ideas in a brief appendix to his book “The Breeding of Wood for Shipbuilding,” published in 1831. Darwin’s notebooks indicate that he came to evolutionary ideas on his own , in 1838, and his first small work on this topic was published in 1842. He formally presented his ideas together with Alfred Wallace in 1858, at a meeting of the scientific community in London. The revolutionary book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favored Races in the Struggle for Life was published a year later.

Well, Matthew, almost three decades earlier, limited himself to brief description ideas. He wrote: “There is a natural law, universal in nature, which promotes the reproduction of that creature which is better adapted to its circumstances... And since the arena of existence is limited and already peopled, the stronger, more robust, more fit individuals capable of surviving are better reproduced...”

However, in revealing the forces driving this process, Matthew paid special attention to catastrophic events and mass extinctions, believing them to be the main factor when “the area of ​​existence of living beings is so reduced that uninhabited areas appear for new, adapted creatures.”

By the way, Darwin in “The Origin of Species” downplayed the role of catastrophic changes in every possible way. For him, the action of natural selection is, one might say, a daily, moment-to-moment catastrophe, a constant struggle between individuals within populations and between populations. This process, naturally, gives evolution a gradual rather than spasmodic character.

Let's return to the present day, when Michael Rampino votes in favor of the Scottish naturalist Matthew - and almost against one of the apostles modern science. As he notes, modern geological knowledge allows us to view history as long periods of comparative calm and “absence of incident” with short but key episodes of catastrophe when changes occur quickly and dramatically. Not at all like in the classical views of Darwin, in which evolutionary changes occur very slowly, due to competition between organisms becoming more and more adapted to the same old conditions.

All this, however, does not negate the brilliant genius of Darwin - who even made the very bold assumption that all living things have a single common ancestor - an assumption that is confirmed by modern genetics. Read: "

Stanley L. Jacqui, the renowned historiographer of science, writes in his new book: “Among all the most famous scientific theories, Darwinism claims to be the most important, having the most insignificant reasons for it.” A very characteristic remark, given the fame that Darwinism has gained over almost a century and a half of its existence.
Despite the theory's obvious scientific and philosophical shortcomings, evolution became part of the "naturalistic dogma." Among intellectuals it serves as the traditional explanation for the diversity of life. Indeed, the theory of evolution is so widely accepted that if you decide to doubt it, you risk being labeled an ignoramus or a religious extremist.
But the importance that the theory has acquired over the years cannot justify its shortcomings. And they have always attracted the attention of famous scientists.
The essence of Darwin's theory is that all forms of life, including bacteria and intelligent forms, arose as a result of the action of blind mechanical phenomena of nature. To explain this phenomenon, Darwin developed two basic principles. At first, he believed that the genes of an organism change randomly. Subsequently, if these random gene changes are expressed in properties favorable to the individual, then the organism survives and passes them on to its offspring. If these changes are unfavorable, nature destroys the individual and with it the new qualities of the individual. Darwin was confident that it was this endless and random process of selection that explained the evolution of life. Thus, it was easy for him to call man an evolutionary descendant of the lower primates, slightly more complicated in the biological sense, but nevertheless fundamentally the same animal. Man, in his opinion, was nothing more than the sum of all biological accidents over the past millions of years.
What was Darwin's mistake? There are two main ways to refute any scientific theory. First, the theory must correspond to the physical evidence, just as a good map corresponds to the layout of the streets of a city. For Darwin's theory, the material evidence can be fossils. If a theory is not supported by the fossil record, then it is wrong. However, the fossil record clearly shows the theory's shortcomings. Stephen Jay Gould (Harvard) relied precisely on the shortcomings of Darwin's theory when he derived his theory of “punctuated equilibrium.”
But Gould is a proponent of the same materialist philosophy as Darwin. Namely because of this the theory may be imperfect. At the heart of each theory, like the foundation of a building, are philosophical concepts. These concepts cannot always be directly proven through science. However, they must be sufficiently plausible, and at least “indirectly” correspond to the existing order of things. The fewer such correspondences they have, the weaker the theory.
What cost Darwin the most from the very beginning was his materialism. Adam Sedgwick, who was at one time a friend and teacher of Darwin, wrote: “The principles of evolution are clearly false and absurd. It (evolution) for the sake of a certain final goal rejects all argumentation. From beginning to end it is the product of terry materialism, carefully concocted and skillfully taught ... but why? Since no other serious explanation can be found, it means to make us independent of the Creator."
Darwin also had the same doubts. He writes to a friend: “Sometimes it seems impossible to prove that this whole diverse wonderful world, including us who think, arose by chance. This is the main argument in favor of the existence of God.”
These two statements are the essence of the whole problem. First, Darwin's materialism, following logic, denies God. But then why did life arise? Materialists like Carl Sagan, without blinking an eye, claim that life created itself. And they don’t care at all that this statement violates the basic principles of science, and common sense too. After all, everything must have a cause; nothing can be a cause for itself.
Then, Darwinian materialism completely ignores human consciousness. Alfred Wallace, who created the theory of evolution with Darwin, warned him that this theory was not applicable to the spiritual nature of man. Not long ago, Sir John Eccles wrote that "Darwin's theory has serious shortcomings. It does not at all consider the unusual problems associated with living organisms having brain activity of an immaterial nature." Eccles says this with knowledge, because he has worked with the human brain all his life, and even received a Nobel Prize for this work. The results show that the presence of a special brain does not explain the presence of consciousness and thinking.
Moreover, in no field of physics, chemistry, or biology there are laws regarding consciousness. And none of these sciences is even capable of registering it. The reason is that consciousness has a spiritual essence and not a physical one. So Darwin's materialism had to either explain it or deny that humans have it. Incredibly, most materialists prefer the latter.
And finally, there is the main problem - the problem of purpose. Destination implies a Creator who has some ultimate goal for which He creates His creation. Thus, when replacing destiny with chance, the Creator is completely excluded. This is why mechanists deny the existence of purpose, and why Darwin and Gould consistently argued that genetic change and natural selection occur by chance rather than by purpose. As Sedgwick said long ago, their philosophical credo is the denial of the Creator, and science serves as a cover.
Sir Ernst Chain, laureate Nobel Prize in the field of biology, stated on this occasion: “The postulates about the development and survival of the fittest as a result of a random coincidence of mutations have no evidence and contradict the facts.” Alfred North Whitehead was equally frank: "Anyone who has devoted himself to one goal - to prove that the goal does not exist - represents an interesting object for the researcher."
These questions prompted Colin Patterson, senior paleontologist British Museum Natural History, addressed a few years ago to a follower of Darwin with the question: “Please tell me what you know about evolution, but only the truth.” He also knows that evolution is really just a theory that too often pretends to be more!