The Theory of Evolution

During the past century The Theory Of Evolution was adopted by some people as a way of explaining the origin of life.

The theory suggests that life came about by accident, with no need for a Creator.

It is a theory, which is at best an educated guess.

For many people, this theory does not satisfactorily explain the vast degree of order and interdependence that is evident in the biological world and all of its parts. Order and interdependence indicate design, intent, and therefore a Creator.

For example, it is possible that this web site was authored and typed from scratch by my four year-old child. What if I claimed that he was playing with the mouse and keyboard and I found it afterwards on the disk.

How much would you be willing to bet that this is true? Five cents? Your life and all of your future?

While possible, this way of explaining the origin of this material is not credible. It is intuitively absurd. It is so unlikely that it requires an unnatural leap of faith to accept it as true.

For a similar reason many people have rejected the Theory Of Evolution as the explanation for the origin of life.

Many of those who reject this theory do not rule out the possibility that an evolutionary mechanism was used by the Creator as part of His creation process.

In closing, the following discussion was provided by Rabbi Kalman Packouze in his weekly column Shabbat Shalom, courtesy of Aish HaTorah.

The Theory of Evolution is an attempt to understand the infinite variety of life, yet tremendously ordered and purposeful universe, through a process of random chance -- that given enough time, random forces can accidentally produce order and life. This happens through spontaneous generation -- life arising from a primordial chemical soup and the eventual development of species via mutations.

Some of the problems scientists find with random chance evolution:

1. "There is no evidence that a 'primeval soup' ever existed on this planet for any appreciable length of time," (Drs. J. Brooks & G. Shaw in "Critical Assessment of the Origin of Life")
2. There are missing vital links in the fossil record. "The fossil material is now so complete that the lack of transitional series cannot be explained by the scarcity of the material," (Prof. N. Heribert-Nilsson, Lund University, Sweden)
3. Mutations produce limited changes usually detrimental, but haven't produced new species (Ernst Mayr, Harvard)
4. The Second Law of Thermodynamics (Law of Entropy) describes the constant decay of order in the Universe as opposed to random forces creating order.
5. The need for coordinated evolution of different random mutations -- i.e.. snakes "evolving" poison and immunity to their poison at the same time
6. The impossibility of randomly assembling even a simple bacterium (consisting of 2,000 enzymes) was calculated by Robert Shapiro, professor of chemistry at New York University to be one in 10 to the 39,950 power. Nobel laureate Fred Hoyle said that it was more likely that "a tornado sweeping through a junkyard might assemble a Boeing 747 from the material therein.
7. Roger Penrose, one of the top mathematicians, calculates the impossible probability of conditions for life coming together by chance as a number which "...Even if we were to write a zero on each separate proton and on each separate neutron in the entire universe -- and we could throw in all the other particles as well for good measure -- we should fall far short of writing down the figure..."

In Loving Memory Of Our Father, Mr. Joseph Black (Yosef Ben Zelig) O"H In Loving Memory Of Our Mother, Mrs. Norma Black (Nechama Bas Tzvi Hirsh) O"H

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