The New Gospel

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">So here the question rises whether we have any reason to regard Nature as making for any goal at all, or as seeking any one thing as preferable to any other.&nbsp; Why not say, it is asked, that Nature acts as Zeus drops the rain, not to make the corn grow, but of necessity? … So why should it not be the same with natural organs like the teeth?&nbsp; Why should it not be a coincidence that the front teeth come up with an edge, suited to dividing the food, and the back ones flat and good for grinding it, without there being any design in the matter?&nbsp; And so with all other organs that seem to embody a purpose.&nbsp; In cases where a coincidence brought about such a combination as might have been arranged on purpose, the creatures, it is urged, having been suitably formed by the operation of chance, survived; otherwise they perished, and still perish, as Empedocles says of his ‘man-faced oxen.’</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Where could a living creature like this have come from, if not from you Lord?&nbsp; Are any of us skillful enough to fashion ourselves?</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;"><strong>It is, I mean, quite certain that we can never get a sufficient knowledge of organized beings and their inner possibility, much less get an explanation of them, by looking merely to mechanical principles of nature.</strong></em><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">&nbsp; Indeed, so certain is it, that we may confidently assert that it is absurd for men even to entertain any thought of so doing or to hope that maybe another Newton may some day arise to make intelligible to us even the genesis of but a blade of grass from natural laws that no design has ordered. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">To Darwin it was clear that the Cartesian line was indefensible simply because it was clear that we’re primates—we’re mammals.&nbsp; The continuity of nature was not going to permit one species on the planet to have miracle stuff in its brain [immaterial soul] when no other species did.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">It may metaphorically be said that natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinizing, throughout the world, the slightest variations; rejecting those that are bad, preserving and adding up all that are good; silently and insensibly working, whenever and wherever opportunity offers, at the improvement of each organic being in relation to its organic and inorganic conditions of life.&nbsp; We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the lapse of ages.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The result, therefore, of our present enquiry is, that we find no vestige of a beginning—no prospect of an end.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The only way we can determine the true age of the earth is for God to tell us what it is.&nbsp; And since He has told us, very plainly, in the Holy Scriptures that it is several thousand years in age, and no more, that ought to settle all basic questions of terrestrial chronology.</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">If it could be demonstrated that any complex organism existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.&nbsp; But I can find no such case.&nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">The true preference of evolution is genetic survival and dominance, but for the purpose of efficiently directing our behavior nature has replaced this preference with a rich body of surrogate or instrumental preferences, all too often without even revealing the trick to us.&nbsp; We like to rest after a long walk because we feel tired, and not in order to help our body restore its chemical and physical balance.&nbsp; We avoid pain because it hurts, not because we consciously want to avoid damage to our muscles, tendons, organs or joints.&nbsp; We like to eat because we feel hungry, not to refill our energy reservoirs, and we drink when we are thirsty, not because we have diagnosed that our blood has become too thick.&nbsp; We like it warm when we feel cold, and the other way around, because that gives us a pleasant feeling, not because we know that the body temperature has to stay at 37 Celsius. &nbsp; And, of course, we like to have sex when we have found an attractive partner, because this is how we feel, not because we want to reproduce our genes.&nbsp; In all cases, we use our intelligence to find ways to satisfy our surrogate preferences, which basically aim at maintaining our genetic fitness and ensure reproduction, without really making us know what we are doing. &nbsp;</em></p>

<p><em style="line-height: 1.5; background-color: initial;">Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is arguably the most powerful idea ever to occur to a human mind.&nbsp; Think what it can explain (and that really means explain, in the fullest sense of the word): your existence and mine, as well as the form, diversity, and teleonomic elegance of all living things, not only on this planet but probably wherever in the universe organized complexity can be found.</em></p>