When I was a medical student, long before I became a Christian, I liked to use the ‘fact’ of evolution to argue against the existence of a creator. I found this to be a useful way to counter Christians’ attempts to speak to me about God. For many, the situation is much the same today. Darwinism rules OK? Well, not quite – at least not to those who have really looked hard at the evidence.

Darwinism maintains that all life has come about through entirely accidental and random mutations acted upon by a ruthless natural selection. As such it runs counter to any Christian concept of purpose and design in nature.

Despite the fact that bookshop shelves groan under the outpourings of atheist Darwinists such as Richard Dawkins, there is a growing body of scientists who cannot accept the orthodoxy any longer. The Darwinian edifice is creaking.

I hope in this brief article (which is a summary of my recent book)[1] to outline just a few of the many reasons why a believer can point to solid scientific evidence for design in nature. God has not deliberately covered his tracks. He is a God of truth and, for the scientific enquirer there are wonderful signs of his creative power.

A fine-tuned universe

The universe is very finely tuned, rather like a Steinway piano prepared for a concert pianist - every string has to be at exactly the right tension. The fine tuning of the universe is a fact – any cosmologist of any faith or none will agree with this. What this means is that the laws and constants of physics have to be precisely as they are for us and the universe to exist. I will give a few of the many possible examples.

At the very start of the universe, during the Big Bang, there was matter and anti-matter. If the amounts of these had been the same then they would have entirely cancelled each other out, leaving only energy. It is now known that there is a very slight asymmetry, which favoured matter over antimatter in the early cosmic expansion. The difference is just one part in a billion. As Martin Rees, the Astronomer Royal, writes: ‘we owe our very existence to a difference in the ninth decimal place’.[2]

In the very first moment of the Big Bang it was crucial that the expansion energy was finely balanced with the gravitational force. It has been calculated that at one second after the Big Bang, in order for any galaxies to form, the universe’s kinetic (expansion) and gravitational energies must have differed by less than one part in a million billion (one in 1015).

These are just a couple of the many ways in which the universe has been beautifully set up to allow the existence of an earth where you and I can sit here thinking about these things. Almost the only way out of this for an atheist is to suggest that there are multiple universes and ours is just one that struck lucky. This ‘multiverse’ idea is not based on any evidence. Many see the entire universe as ‘anthropic’, which means that it looks very much like a designer has created the cosmos for the purpose of life and humanity. As we know more about the details of our universe and gaze at the night sky, we can be in complete agreement with the psalmist who saw all this as evidence of an awesome creator.[3]

The first life

Far too often we are told that the appearance of life on earth was almost inevitable. Many seriously hope to find life on Mars. How likely is it that the first replicating cells arose entirely by blind ‘natural’ processes? The fact is that the odds against it are phenomenal. The first fossil bacteria are found in rocks

3.46 billion years old and there is chemical evidence for life from rocks in Greenland of about 3.8 billion years old. Given that the earth is around 4.5 billion years old and that it was a molten inferno until about 3.8 billion years ago, the first life seems to have appeared very early indeed, at the first available time geologically. Those ancient fossil bacteria are fully complex cells that could carry out photosynthesis.

No-one has any idea how DNA was first formed, even if it was preceded by an ‘RNA world’, as some have suggested. Biochemists admit that making DNA from scratch is theoretically unachievable. No one has ever managed to construct DNA in a laboratory. Life depends on DNA encoding the proteins upon which all else is based. Even to have properly functioning DNA there would need to be proof-reading enzymes to correct mistakes – which are themselves encoded by DNA. This is one of the many ‘chicken and egg’ problems that theorists of early life stumble upon. The meaningful information (software) that constitutes the DNA code had to come itself from somewhere. Just as the software that drives your computer depends on a programmer, information in DNA needs a designer.

It is true that organic compounds can be found in space and would have been present on the earth, including some of the amino acids. This however does not help the biochemist to see how life could appear from them, any more than an Apollo space rocket could appear spontaneously out of a scrap heap. Even this is not a great analogy because an Apollo space rocket is far less complex than those first bacterial cells.

The cambrian explosion

About 530 million years ago there was an explosion of complexity in the fauna of the earth. Known as the Cambrian explosion, this event is acknowledged by palaeontologists to be a real challenge to Darwin’s theory. Darwin knew this was a serious problem and predicted that we would find a series of gradually evolving fossils leading up to the explosion, as Darwinism depends on slow, gradual change. These precursors are still missing. What we see are single celled organisms until about 600 million years ago. We then find fairly simple soft bodied fossils known as the Ediacaran fauna and following these there is the Cambrian explosion. However, there seems little if any continuity between the Ediacaran and Cambrian animals – quite the reverse of what Darwinism predicts. The most famous collection of Cambrian fossils comes from the Burgess Shale in Canada.[4] Here we see a vast number of brand new complex and often bizarre sea-bottom dwelling creatures. One of the best known is the trilobite, which appears suddenly, without precursors and is a large arthropod with advanced compound eyes.

All animals are grouped into major categories called phyla – each phylum having a different and distinct body plan. All the modern phyla (around 35) appear in the Cambrian period, including a representative of our own phylum, the chordates. Not only that, but there were many more phyla then than there are now. We see therefore a riotous, highly varied and complex group of animals appearing suddenly in the Cambrian explosion, with even more phyla than we have now. This turns completely upside down the almost iconic tree of life of gradual diversification, which Darwin drew up.

The fossil record

As we look carefully at the fossil record thereafter, there is indeed a trajectory of ‘progress’ from sea creatures to land dwellers and all the variety that we see around us. Man appears at the last minute. What is very clear, however, is that major new structures such as legs and feathers always appear suddenly. This discontinuity is entirely contrary to Darwinism (and its modern form of neo-Darwinism). When we come to look at the fossil record of primates and hominids leading to man, we also see this discontinuity.

The appearance of man

If we were to put together all the known hominid fossil bones from the past three to four million years they might fit into a large suitcase. Each of these fragments is separated by huge distances of time and space, yet very confident claims are made about our descent from them.

Neuroscientists and palaeontologists are seriously talking of a saltation (a sudden unexplained leap in complexity) being responsible for the human brain – particularly our innate language skills.[5] As such this is outside of any Darwinian framework. It is not generally appreciated just how much had to happen to give humanity language: entirely new areas of the brain cortex, a unique vocal tract (no other primate could speak even if it had our cortex) and processing of hugely complex sounds. Each child born has an inbuilt and hard-wired ‘universal grammar’ that enables him or her to learn any language very fast.[6] The brain has tripled in size over just three million years. This is a very short time given that the number of generations is comparatively small. What we see in the fossil record leading up to mankind is not a slow and smooth continuum. In a brief geological moment man appears on the scene with all his faculties – demonstrated in the magnificent cave art of our forebears.

The genetics of darwinism

It is the genetics of Darwinism that really fails to convince us. We do know that microevolution occurs, particularly when part of a species is separated geographically from the parent stock. This occurred with the different species of finches in the Galapagos Islands that Darwin used to support his theory. Within every gene pool of a species there are a variety of alleles for each gene. This means that under different circumstances and pressures, there will be variation depending on which of the existing alleles are expressed. This is seen easily in domestic breeding (of dogs for instance) – there are no new alleles or genetic information but much variety. Microevolution occurs in nature but can only account for small changes and no really new genetic information. All new information in modern evolutionary theory must come from mutations – random mistakes in the nucleotide sequence of DNA. The problem for evolutionists is that mutations are very rare and are usually detrimental or neutral. Almost the only ‘beneficial’ mutations ever observed are the changes in viruses or bacteria conferring resistance to drugs or antibodies. These hardly constitute new structures or evolutionary advances. Countless generations of fruit flies have been subjected to mutagenic chemicals and radiation over many years and not one beneficial mutation has been seen (remember the brain of hominids tripling in size over a similar number of generations without any mutagens). And so the ‘macroevolution’ that mutations are supposed to bring about is still a complete mystery.

One of the most fascinating discoveries in recent years is the existence of Hox genes. These co-ordinate the most basic processes of the early development of animals. They determine such arrangements as front-to-back and top-to-bottom orientation of organisms and the order and position in which certain organs and structures appear. What is amazing is that some of these genes do the same job in very unrelated animals. For instance: the Hox6 group gives the instruction to ‘make legs’ and is much the same in both fruit flies and mammals – even though their legs are entirely different and they are thought to have quite different evolutionary histories. Even more astonishing is the Pax6 gene that instructs the embryo to ‘make eyes’ in both arthropods and vertebrates. So when a human Pax6 gene is inserted into a fruit fly it will cause an ectopic compound (insect) eye to form. This defies normal evolutionary explanation because the eyes of arthropods and vertebrates developed entirely separately. It does however point to a common designer.

How do we see our own position in relation to apes? How do we square our uniqueness with the fact that 96% of our genome is the same as the chimp down in the zoo?

Firstly, we need to see how different we are from chimps or indeed any other primate. We are uniquely self aware and conscious, we have language of a complexity that is entirely different from any other animal. We have freedom of will – to do good or evil (indeed, real self-sacrificial goodness, most perfectly seen in Jesus, is inexplicable in the heartless Darwinian world of survival of the fittest). We also have an appreciation of beauty. As Christians we know that we are made in the image of God and are never complete until we find our rest in him. All these aspects of our nature have appeared in our own species and not others.

Secondly, a recent detailed comparison of chimp and human genomes showed that the 4% difference includes 35 million single nucleotide changes and five million insertions or deletions of nucleotides,[7] so that 4% constitutes a huge difference. We are also very much in the dark as to how genotype translates into phenotype. Why, for instance, are we not 60% banana – given that we share 60% of the banana genome?

The impotence of natural selection

Natural selection is the mechanism that is supposed to drive the evolutionary process. Essentially it means that only the fittest organisms will survive and thus transmit their genes. This clearly has some effect in a microevolutionary way; for example a faster cheetah will have more chance of survival and will transmit its genes for being faster. This cannot explain though how novelties appear in macroevolution (such as sonar in whales, limbs in tetrapods or Broca’s speech area in your brain). Natural selection is merely an inert ‘sieve’. It cannot produce the variety on which it acts; it merely kills off the unfit and allows the rest to survive. Where does the novelty come from to form new structures? ‘Random mutations’ is the usual answer, but the probabilities of this happening are never fleshed out; the problem is trivialised in standard evolutionary teaching. Mathematicians such as William Dembski have looked at the probabilities of complexity arising by chance and have found evolutionary theory severely wanting.[8]

Irreducible complexity

Irreducible complexity is a term coined by biochemist Michael Behe to describe the way in which the molecular machinery in cells is so often too complex to have evolved gradually.[9] Remember that, in Darwinian theory, every part of the cell must have evolved from a simpler precursor, which itself must have had some survival advantage in order to be selected. Behe elegantly shows that many systems in the cell are irreducibly complex. He uses the simple mouse trap as an illustration: the trap consists of about five parts; hammer, spring, catch, holding bar and platform. The trap cannot work unless all are in place. Similarly, the molecular systems in cells are seen often to be irreducible. There is no way that they can have evolved gradually from separate precursors, as there would have been no function and no survival advantage unless the whole system was present with all parts working.

His most famous example is the bacterial flagellum – an incredible machine with a ‘paddle’, rotor and electric motor. Others he describes include the biochemistry of vision, the blood clotting system and the complement cascade. There have been many attempts to criticise Behe’s work. The main way is to imagine each separate part of the molecular system having a totally different role in the organism and then being ‘coopted’ into the new system. It is important to watch this debate but I have read most of these counter-arguments and feel them to be very forced and indeed naive.

The mystery of homology

The best example of this is the way that all vertebrate limbs have the same overall pattern. If you look at the flipper of a whale you will see the same basic bones that you have in your arm. This is a strong argument for common ancestry for all vertebrates and Darwin felt it to be one of the best evidences for his theory. There are, however, problems with this idea. If the vertebrate limb is due to a common ancestor having the same limb bones then we should definitely expect the genes that control development of the limb to be homologous also, but we do not see this. In animals that have homologies we often do not see any obvious similarities between the genes that control development of these homologies.[10]

Whether this means there is actually no line of descent linking all vertebrates is a mystery. What we do see in the fossil record is discontinuity and sudden leaps of form (saltations). It is as though a designer had used the ancestor as a template or pattern to make something entirely new. Such macro leaps are not explicable by Darwinian processes because Darwinism depends on small randomly produced variations very gradually changing organisms. Large macro leaps or saltations must have another mechanism (because there is too much new information and complexity all at once) and they point very strongly to a designer.

Convergence

Convergence is a term used to describe the way the same or similar characteristics often appear in organisms that are distant and unrelated.[11] Perhaps the best example is that of the eye. The eye has appeared many times in different, unrelated animals. The two main types are the camera eye, which we possess, and the compound eye of arthropods. The camera eye has appeared at least seven times in entirely unrelated animals. The octopus has a camera eye almost identical to ours. Other convergences seen in animals include electrical generation by fish, the use of sonar and the production of silk. All of these are quite uncanny. The evolutionist must try to imagine that convergences are the inevitable adaptational, evolutionary responses of different beasts to similar environments. However, one’s logical reaction to seeing the octopus and human eye together is to say that they had the same designer. Now this is anathema to the Darwinist – but the facts stare us in the face.

Conclusion

The universe is exquisitely fine-tuned, complex bacteria appear abruptly at the first possible geological time, the fossil record consistently shows sudden jumps of new ‘designs’ (including mankind), the molecular machinery of the cell is irreducibly complex, random mutations fail to account for the novelties that appear and natural selection itself is seen to be inert and powerless. An impartial scientist must conclude that we are here by design and for a purpose.

As you have seen, along with many other Christians, I have taken the position of believing in an ancient earth and a very old universe. Along with this I still hold Genesis to be God’s revealed truth. This of course conflicts with those who believe in an earth just a few thousand years old and a creation of six 24-hour days. Our position also conflicts with Christians who fully accept Darwinian theory. None of us has all the answers. Creation will always be mysterious by its very nature, but the evidence for design is staring us in the face. This is not a ‘God of the gaps’ argument (where God is put in when we do not understand something yet) – quite the contrary; the more we see in science the more God is needed to explain the data.

I hope at least that this article will stimulate you to look at the evidence, respecting each other and entering into informed debate with a world that is absolutely starving for meaning and purpose.