Crossposted on 43rd State Blues
In my ongoing dialogue with conservative Idaho State Journal columnist Richard Larsen, some interesting assertions arise in his views on evolution, stated in a recent column.
Larsen writes:
To apply the valid tenets of evolution and then make Kierkegaardian "leaps of faith" to make assertions that are not supported by the science is what Darwinism does. Such assumptions include, but are not limited to, trans-genus, trans-class, or trans-species evolution. There is no paleontological evidence of gradual and progressive evolution of bugs to mice, or frogs to birds, etc. And to make the presumption that this all started from a big bang which itself is causally inexplicable to scientists is another such leap of faith.
Larsen cites Stephen Gould, Professor of Geology and Peleontology at Harvard, who although an evolutionist, has admitted that the absence of fossil evidence for intermediary stages between major transitions in organic design ... "indeed our inability, even in our imagination, to construct functional intermediates in many cases, has been a persistent and nagging problem for gradualistic accounts of evolution." Gould continues, “All paleontologists know that the fossil record contains precious little [actually, nothing] in the way of intermediate forms; transitions between the major groups are characteristically abrupt.”
Larsen asserts that even pre-Cambrian fossil discoveries in China did not provide the evidence sought by Darwinists.
Another major gap in Darwinism is the genetic component. Dr. Stephen Meyer, director of the Center for Science and Culture at the Discovery Institute in Seattle, has said that the information stored within our DNA is essentially a genetic code, much like a computer language. Because of this characteristic, mathematical probabilities can be calculated based on presumptions of Darwinistic evolutionary theory.
One such calculation has been conducted by Dr. Frank Salisbury of the Division of Biomedical and Environment Research at the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission many years ago. He examined the chance of one of the most basic chemical reactions for Darwinistic evolution to take place. This reaction involves the formation of a specific DNA molecule within a 4 billion year time period. He calculated that chance as 10 x 415-power. This number has 415 zeros after it! That’s for one molecule. The evolutionary improbability grows exponentially when you consider there are billions of such molecules in human DNA. ... A Darwinist must exercise faith to come to the conclusion that all life evolved from a single organism, just as a man of faith might accept an intelligent design explanation. I, for one, would prefer a theological possibility, rather than a paleontologically unverified mathematical impossibility.
Are faith and the Theory of Evolution necessarily at odds, in the first place?
Does it matter?
How come?