Marc Hauser, a Harvard evolutionary biologist, believes that “evolution hardwired us to know right from wrong . . . based on instincts encoded in our brains by evolution.” He “argues that millions of years of natural selection have molded a universal moral grammar within our brains that enables us to make rapid decisions about ethical dilemmas.”[1] Dr. Robert Henkin of the Taste and Smell Clinic in Washington tried to persuade his readers that “Evolution taught humans to smell. . . . When people can’t smell, they can’t taste and they end up getting poisoned by food.”[2] What happened before animals could develop the necessary smell mechanism to detect poisons? They would have died. So how could they have evolved if they kept dying from ingesting poisons?

Douglas R. Hofstadter, writing in the Preface to the twentieth-anniversary edition of his book Gödel, Escher, and Bach, states that the purpose of his book “is a very personal attempt to say how it is that animate beings can come out of inanimate matter. What is a self,” he asks, “and how can a self come out of stuff that is as selfless as a stone or a puddle?”[3] How indeed!

Two questions immediately come to mind after reading the above attempts to explain our world and we who live in it and ask questions about who we are and how we got here. First, who is this “evolution” person who did these things? Point him/her/it out to me. Of course, there is no such thing as an “evolution.” There are mechanics, scientists, physicians, artists, and writers. They are “selfs.” This makes them capable of thinking and acting. Evolution, on the other hand, is an idea developed from a “self’s” mind; it’s not a person, place, or thing. It can’t do anything because there is no “it” to do anything.

When pushed, evolutionist would have to admit that no one has ever seen the invisible entity that has been named “evolution.” Is evolution like the Force of Star Wars that “ surrounds us, penetrates us, and binds the galaxy together”? Even the fictional Force is benign. It had to be acted on by persons with a mind and a will to be effective for either good or evil. Then there is the question of where does the standard for good and evil come from? This is never explained. The mechanism “whereby life arose from non-living matter and subsequently developed entirely by natural means”[4] (evolution) is invisible as is the method to extract meaning from it (reason).

But the invisibility factor creates a fundamental problem for materialists. Atheist James A. Haught, writing in 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt, argues that it’s irrational to believe in invisible “things”:

For anyone scanning the past and surveying the current world scene, it is nearly impossible to find any outstanding person—except for popes, archbishops, kings, and other rulers—who says the purpose of life is to be saved by an invisible Jesus and to enter an invisible heaven. But it is easy to find many among the great who doubt this basic dogma.[5]

While belief in the invisible nature of God is a philosophical no-no;[6] it’s OK to believe in the invisibility of this “evolution” entity that has supposedly created life out of non-life and has developed a moral code for us to live by.

Footnotes:
[1]. Josie Glausiusz, “The Discover Interview: Marc Hauser,” Discover (May 2007), 62.**
[2]. Kristin Eddy, “Evolution taught humans to smell,” Atlanta Constitution (December 18, 1996), B3. [3]. Douglas R. Hofstadter, Gödel, Escher, and Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid (New York: Basic Books, [1979] 1999), P-2
[4]. Michael Behe, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution (New York: The Press, 1996), xi.
[5]**. James A. Haught, 2000 Years of Disbelief: Famous People with the Courage to Doubt (Amherst, NY: Prometheus Books, 1996), 14. [6]. Actually, neither Jesus nor heaven is invisible.