The German
biologist Hoimar von Ditfurth, a prominent evolutionist, is
a good example of this bigoted materialist understanding.
After Ditfurth cites an example of the extremely complex composition
of life, this is what he says concerning the question of whether
it could have emerged by chance or not:
Is such a harmony that
emerged only out of coincidences possible in reality? This
is the basic question of the whole of biological evolution.
...Critically speaking, we can say that somebody who accepts
the modern science of nature has no other alternative than
to say "yes," because he aims to explain natural phenomena
by means that are understandable and tries to derive
them from the laws of nature without reverting to supernatural
interference.392
Yes, as Ditfurth states, the
materialist scientific approach adopts as its basic principle
explaining life by denying "supernatural interference," i.e.,
creation. Once this principle is adopted, even the most impossible
scenarios are easily accepted. It is possible to find examples
of this dogmatic mentality in almost all evolutionist literature.
Professor Ali Demirsoy, the well-known advocate of evolutionary
theory in Turkey, is just one of many. As we have already
pointed out, according to Demirsoy, the probability of the
coincidental formation of cytochrome-C, an essential protein
for life, is "as unlikely as the possibility of a
monkey writing the history of humanity on a typewriter without
making any mistakes."393
There is no doubt that to accept such a possibility
is actually to reject the basic principles of reason and common
sense. Even one single correctly formed letter written on
a page makes it certain that it was written by a person. When
one sees a book of world history, it becomes even more certain
that the book has been written by an author. No logical person
would agree that the letters in such a huge book could have
been put together "by chance."
However, it is very interesting to see that the
evolutionist scientist Professor Ali Demirsoy accepts this
sort of irrational proposition:
In essence, the probability
of the formation of a cytochrome-C sequence is as likely
as zero. That is, if life requires a certain sequence, it
can be said that this has a probability likely to be realized
once in the whole universe. Otherwise some metaphysical
powers beyond our definition must have acted in
its formation. To accept the latter is not appropriate
for the scientific cause. We thus have to look
into the first hypothesis.394
Demirsoy writes that he prefers the impossible,
in order not to have to accept supernatural forces-in other
words, the existence of a Creator. However, the aim of science
is not to avoid accepting the existence of supernatural forces.
Science can get nowhere with such an aim. It should simply
observe nature, free of all prejudices, and draw conclusions
from these observations. If these results indicate that there
is planning by a supernatural intelligence, then science must
accept the fact.
Under close examination, what they call the "scientific
cause" is actually the materialist dogma that only matter
exists and that all of nature can be explained by material
processes. This is not a "scientific cause," or anything
like it; it is just materialist philosophy. This
philosophy hides behind such superficial words as "scientific
cause" and obliges scientists to accept quite unscientific
conclusions. Not surprisingly, when Demirsoy cites another
subject-the origins of the mitochondria in the cell-he openly
accepts chance as an explanation, even though it is "quite
contrary to scientific thought":
The heart of the problem
is how the mitochondria have acquired this feature, because
attaining this feature by chance even by one individual,
requires extreme probabilities that are incomprehensible...
The enzymes providing respiration and functioning as a catalyst
in each step in a different form make up the core of the
mechanism. A cell has to contain this enzyme sequence completely,
otherwise it is meaningless. Here, despite being
contrary to biological thought, in order to avoid
a more dogmatic explanation or speculation, we have
to accept, though reluctantly, that all the respiration
enzymes completely existed in the cell before the cell first
came in contact with oxygen.395
The conclusion to be drawn from such pronouncements
is that evolution is not a theory arrived at through scientific
investigation. On the contrary, the form and substance of
this theory were dictated by the requirements of materialistic
philosophy. It then turned into a belief or dogma in spite
of concrete scientific facts. Again, we can clearly see
from evolutionist literature that all of this effort has
a "purpose"-and
that purpose requires maintaining, at no matter what cost,
that living things were not created .
  
392 Hoimar
Von Dithfurth, Im Anfang War Der Wasserstoff (In
the Beginning Was Hydrogen), vol. 2, p. 64. (emphasis
added)
393 Prof. Dr. Ali Demirsoy, Kalitim
ve Evrim (Inheritance and Evolution), Meteksan Publishing
Co., Ankara, 1984, p. 61. (emphasis added)
394 Ali Demirsoy, Kalitim ve Evrim
(Inheritance and Evolution), Meteksan Publishing Co., Ankara,
1984, p. 61. (emphasis added)
395 Ali Demirsoy, Kalitim ve Evrim
(Inheritance and Evolution), Meteksan Publishing Co., Ankara,
1984, p. 94-95. (emphasis added) |