Recent news stories about the inconvenient truth of fossil discoveries in Africa illustrate the hypothetical guesswork in Darwinian evolution that passes for science. Extracts from coverage by the New York Times, hardly an unfriendly voice for atheistic materialism, are representative:
Fossils in Kenya Challenge Linear Evolution
By John Noble Wilford
August 9, 2007
New York Times
Two fossils found in Kenya have shaken the human family tree, possibly rearranging major branches thought to be in a straight ancestral line to Homo sapiens. Scientists who dated and analyzed the specimens — a 1.44-million-year-old Homo habilis and a 1.55-million-year-old Homo erectus found in 2000 — said their findings challenged the conventional view that these species evolved one after the other. Instead, they apparently lived side by side in eastern Africa for almost half a million years…
If this interpretation is correct, the early evolution of the genus Homo is left even more shrouded in mystery than before...Although the findings do not change the relationship of Homo erectus as a direct ancestor of Homo sapiens, scientists said, the surprisingly diminutive erectus skull implies that this species was not as humanlike as once thought. Other paleontologists and experts in human evolution said the discovery strongly suggested that the early transition from more apelike to more humanlike ancestors was still poorly understood...
Dr. Spoor, speaking by satellite phone from a field site near Lake Turkana, said the evidence clearly contradicted previous ideas of human evolution “as one strong, single line from early to us.” The new findings, he added, support the revised interpretations of “a lot of bushiness and experimentation in the fossil record.” [Emphasis added]
The point here is not that inconsistent data have been encountered. Even in true sciences such as nuclear particle physics, inconsistencies crop up. But, in the true sciences, scientists rethink their basic assumptions, seeking a new hypothesis that will account for the inconsistency. Then they devise experiments to test the new hypothesis.
In sharp contrast, all data, no matter how contradictory, must be warped to fit within the original Darwinian framework.
To those who ask if this is real science, Darwinian champion Richard Dawkins replies in the typical, open-minded Darwinian fashion, It is absolutely safe to say that, if you meet someone who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).
Professor Dawkins not withstanding, Darwin’s hypothesis of evolution is one very large circular argument:
(1) Darwinians start with the assertion that there is no God Who created the universe and imposed upon it the laws of mathematics, chemistry, and physics. This they “prove” by declaring that they don’t believe in God.
(2) Next they assert that life on earth commenced by a chance combination of chemicals and environmental conditions, but they have found no documentable set of conditions at the presumed beginning of life that could have supported any chain of chemical reactions that would have produced living tissue.
(3) Next they assert that all life forms on earth evolved from the single, exceedingly simple, original life form. How do they “know” this? Well, because there are so many life forms on earth that they “must have” evolved from the original life form; see (2).
But what if there were no single, exceedingly simple, original life form? What if God created many different life forms when He created the universe?
(4) This is impossible, assert Darwinians; see (1).
In short, Darwinians just make it up as they go along, always relying on compelling “logic”: it might have been, it must have been, we may speculate that it was so, etc.
Darwinian evolution is thus, not a scientific field, but a branch of the atheistic religion of materialistic determinism. Because they cannot prove a single part of their ideology, evolutionary biologists must accept the words of their Prophet Darwin on faith alone.
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