On The Origin of Man's Folly to Explain the Creation of Life

In a class of mine I'm currently taking, we've just finished covering the chapter on the theory of evolution. It's a touchy subject, no doubt, because it champions science over religion, which frequently mix as well as oil and water. Having come from a Christian background and a private high school, learning about this material in a secular college was inevitable. But it wasn't as dangerous as the people from my past made it out to be. If anything, I feel enlightened.

Turns out, the theory of evolution is all smoke and mirrors.

So why has it been accepted as fact in the public sector for the longest time? Because it's convenient.

As a quick history lesson, the theory of evolution was most prominently published by Charles Darwin – along with other similar writings by Alfred Russel Wallace – in Darwins' 1859 book On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life. It wasn't the first book to discuss this theory, but The Origin of Species was what turned evolution from a hypothesis into a theory, namely because Darwin had provided years of research into a concise argument that people and animals were once miniscule beings in the past. (For the record, a scientific theory is "an explanation of a set of related observations based on well-supported hypotheses from several different, independent lines of research" [1].)

That was over 150 years ago. In that span of time, the theory of evolution has been widely adopted by numerous scientists and academic scholars as the definitive explanation for the cause and formation of various beings on Earth, humans included. Case closed, right?

Wrong. If anything, there are several holes to turn this case into Swiss cheese.

The main contentious issue about the theory of evolution today is with regards to a missing link, the 'supposed' connection between man and a common ancestor. I say 'supposed' because there have been no solid leads to identify a conclusive organism that man ultimately descended from. Guess they don't call it the missing link for nothing.

To elucidate this anomaly further, here is a direct quote taken from my textbook, Biology – Science for Life (3rd edition) by Colleen Belk and Virginia Borden Maier, on page 243:

The common ancestor of humans and chimpanzees is often called the "missing link" because it has not been identified. However, finding the fossilized common ancestor between chimpanzees and humans, or between any two species for that matter, is extremely difficult, if not impossible.

Hmmm, sounds like a cop out to me. If it's impossible to find a common ancestor between two different species, then how is evolution still plausible? Evolution is based on the theory that different organisms slowly became other unique organisms in time. Clearly, if such a common ancestor were to have existed, it would've been discovered by now in the fossil record. This gap between man and primate is just that, a biological gap with no in-between.

Another thing, if humans did evolve from gorillas and chimps, why are there still gorillas and chimps? Another point to the theory of evolution is that organisms who do evolve adapt to their environment with greater ease and become the latest victor in the survival of the fittest, essentially killing off the inferior species before it. Considering that humans have roamed the Earth for at least several thousand years, every primate should be extinct because humans are the next step up the evolutionary chain (assuming this theory is true). The primary argument to conclude man and primate are one and the same is due to the almost identical characteristics of their DNA. True, human DNA and chimpanzee DNA have a 99% similarity, but that 1% difference cannot be swept under the rug as a minor discrepancy. Humans and primates have different anatomical features to live in different environments because they are different organisms with different purposes in life.

And of course, from a Biblical perspective, the theory of evolution starkly contrasts what is said about the sanctity of human life.

"And the LORD God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul." – Genesis 2:7

"Not all flesh is the same: People have one kind of flesh, animals have another, birds another and fish another." – 1 Corinthians 15:39

Even Jesus said,

"But at the beginning of creation God 'made them male and female.'" – Mark 10:6

Small wonder that evolution is referred to in religious, especially Christian, circles as devilution.

These verses also support the creationist view of life, which holds that God made everything as it was in six days. Whether those days were literal or figurative – i.e. a creation gap – is up for debate, but the idea of creationism has a lot of merit. In fact, the amazing thing about creationism (and the Bible, in general) is that it has yet to be refuted, regardless of what y'all have heard in public settings or through the media.

But don't get me totally wrong. I understand that reading this piece may be uncomfortable for some, and that's fine. I like pressing hot button issues; at some point, you've got to examine the evidence from a religious and a secular slant to properly make an executive decision. In so doing, I hope y'all will come to the same conclusion that the theory of evolution is an intellectual trap in preventing one from acknoledging that there still is a divine, omnipotent God who created everything with a unique lineage. Remember, just because you're smart doesn't make you wise.

"The fear of the LORD is the beginning of knowledge: but fools despise wisdom and instruction." – Proverbs 1:7

(Academic) Works Cited
[1] Belk, Colleen, and Virginia Borden Maier. Biology: Science for Life. 3rd ed. San Francisco: Pearson, 2010. Print.