The closing words of Darwin's greatest book (The origin of Species) are these:
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Down House where Darwin worked.
Darwin gives the smallest possible nod to a deity in these words but we cannot suppose that he was serious in wanting to acknowledge that the origin of life was caused by an intelligent designer since his life was devoted to the removal of the notion of teleology from biology. What he did not know however was how inappropriate was his statement about the simplicity of the organisms that supposedly started the dance of life.
"There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."
Down House where Darwin worked.
Darwin gives the smallest possible nod to a deity in these words but we cannot suppose that he was serious in wanting to acknowledge that the origin of life was caused by an intelligent designer since his life was devoted to the removal of the notion of teleology from biology. What he did not know however was how inappropriate was his statement about the simplicity of the organisms that supposedly started the dance of life.
"If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.”
(Charles Darwin)
There are two examples which (as far as I am concerned) provide exactly what Darwin failed to find.
1. The origin of life (abiogenesis) - far from being simple is the greatest problem for naturalistic biology that I know (despite the failure of modern biology to acknowledge its immensity)
2. The origin of complex structures showing many complex interdependent parts like the bacterial flagellum.
I think if Darwin were alive today he would be honest enough to admit defeat in the face of modern molecular biology and acknowledge that his theory had in fact ..."absolutely broken down."
No comments:
Post a Comment