Several years
ago I asked a friend of mine to come and preach at my church. He is a skilled
evangelist, in fact, he taught me how to evangelize when I was a new Christian.
He is also quite a capable apologist, as all good evangelists need to be.
During his message he said something that really caught my attention. He
mentioned that some atheists like to argue that religion is the cause of all
wars, but in reality, the Encyclopedia of Wars shows that religion is
only the cause of 7% of wars.
Why did this
get my attention? Because I immediately recognized this was an argument based
on Vox Day’s 2008 book The Irrational Atheist. It was not completely
correct, the number is 6.98%, and it was Vox who calculated that number based
on the Encyclopedia of Wars and his own extensive military history
readings. But it was unmistakably an argument based on Vox’s book.
I asked my
friend after the sermon if he had read or heard of Day’s book The Irrational
Atheist. He had not. Had no idea who Day was and had never read the book.
This story is
relevant to our review here, because it highlights how influential Vox Day is,
how influential his ideas especially are, and also how they are often very
effective. You hear much less today about how much war is caused by religion,
have you noticed that? You are more like to hear people say that all wars are
bankers wars, or the result of imperialism or something like that. This is in
part because of Day’s 2008 book. It changed the cultural understanding of what
the fundamental causes of war are, and took away one of the so-called New
Atheists favourite weapons.
The reason he
was able to do this was simple: he did the math. He did what none of us thought
to do, he sat down and actually calculated, to the best of our history
knowledge at the time, how many wars were known to be caused by religion. And
this simple examination pulled apart the threads of a powerful rhetorical
argument against Christianity.
Vox has done
this again with Probability Zero: The Mathematical Impossibility of
Evolution by Natural Selection.
The premise
of Vox Day’s argument is relatively simple: if something happens in the
physical world then it can be quantified. This is a simple enough concept. The
way it applies to Day’s book is as such: if evolution is happening, what is the
average rate of evolution? This is the thread which Day has pulled on to bring
down the whole Evolution by Natural Selection edifice. A simple question to an
evolutionary biologist in a debate in 2019, that could not be answered, has
turned into a demonstration of the impossibility of evolution via any proposed
natural means. The mechanisms simply do not work. They do not have the horse
power to achieve what we were told they could achieve.
I recommend
that every Christian, and non-Christian, who is interested in the origins
debate, in apologetics, or in understanding the way our world works, should
read this book. Because Day has effectively put the nail in the coffin of
evolution by natural selection. Genetics was always going to be a threat to the
naturalistic evolutionary argument, because it was going to allow the
theoretical claims of Darwin’s theory to be examined by direct observations of
the genes of living organisms. But we just had to wait for the data to be
properly analysed, and now it has been.
The
mechanisms proposed to seek to make the evolutionary hypothesis possible do not
work. As another good book on this subject notes (Origin, by Graeme and Geoffrey Messer) evolution is not a
recent theory but was originally proposed by the ancient Greeks, who believed
in spontaneous generation, and also that all life evolved from simple forms to
more complex forms. What Darwin did was propose the mechanism that made this
origins hypothesis compelling, and allowed it to become the dominant academic
theory of the diversity of life on earth. What genetics has done is show that
Darwin’s mechanism is not powerful enough. What Day and Tipler have done is lay
this out for us. The Messers (they are brothers) even note in their book that
the theory of evolution by natural selection is the last hold out of the
ancient Greek scientific established left to be turned over. And they predicted
that as more data is collected it will be. They were right, Day and Tipler have
done just that. And rather elegantly too.
Despite the
title of this book, Probability Zero, at its core MITTENS (the
mathematical impossibility of the theory of evolution by natural selection) is
not a probability argument, though the book does go into probability to some
degree. Rather Day’s argument is a capability argument. It is a complete
deconstruction of the ability for evolution to explain the diversity of
biological life through natural means. It is rather simple, really. We now
know, from genetics, how long it takes for genes to be fixed in various
populations, this can be called the rate of evolution. And the rate at which
natural selection fixes genes is far too slow to account for the amount of
genetic differences between Humans and Chimpanzees and really anything else.
Even the fastest recorded fixation events in history fall far short of being
able to make up the time problem. I encourage you to read the book so you can
see how Vox Day uses Mick Jagger, Genghis Khan and lactose intolerance to show
that naturalistic evolution just cannot achieve what has been claimed by
secular scientists for 170 years that it could achieve.
To explain it
very simply. You do not need to be an engineer or a physicist to know that if I
told you that I travelled from Sydney to Melbourne in 60 minutes, there is not
a car on the planet that could have gotten me there. To travel that distance
another means is needed. The laws of physics and mathematics require it. You
just can’t get around this fact. Natural selection (plus parallel fixation,
gene drift, sex selection, etc which have been added since by other biologists)
is effectively the car, or vehicle, that Darwin proposed as driving evolution.
But it does not have the horsepower. It falls far short, and this is not
theoretical, but observed. This has been confirmed by know fixation rates.
For evolution
by natural selection to work, just for humans and chimpanzees, you need to
explain how on average about 40 genes were fixed per generation, in every
generation, from our proposed common ancestor, when it takes something like
1600 generations to fix a few genes, and we know this for a fact now. And this
time frame and length of generations is being generous to the naturalistic
argument. Vox uses a number of 1600 generations to fix genes, from E. Coli, and
this includes parallel fixations (hence why I note a few genes). This is being
generous, because even though humans have many more mutations per generation,
than E. Coli, the fixation rate is much slower, because of the birth rate
barriers, less defined generations length (this is where Mick Jagger is
relevant, read the book to see why), and other issues. This is important. Day
is not arguing that large amounts of mutations don’t happen, we know they do,
about 40 or 50 per human, per generation. His argument is about those mutations
which are fixed, that is mutations which are required to distinguish humans
from chimpanzees and other animals. This fixation takes far too long, for
evolution by natural means to be capable of producing.
This is just
a fact. A fact well demonstrated in this book.
As noted,
this is not a probability argument but is rather a capability argument.
Genetics has now demonstrated that the mechanisms that have been proposed to
drive evolution by natural selection cannot have possibly done so. Just as you
know I cannot drive my car to Melbourne from Syndey in 60 minutes, nor an even
more powerful car like a Bugatti Veyron. It is not possible.
This book is
not written by the usual creationist crowd (who I really appreciate) nor is it
written by the Intelligent Design crew (who are also great), but comes at this
from a different perspective, that surpasses the probability arguments, or
appearance of design arguments, that creationists often rely on.[1] That is what makes this
book so valuable to read. While some probability arguments against evolution do
exist in the book, they are not the core of the argument. Atheists and
naturalists like to brush aside probability arguments by simply saying they are
irrelevant, because, as they say, “We are here. Hence evolution must have
happened.” This is a tautology, using our existence as evidence of their theory
is simply dishonest, and lazy. However, it is also common. Hence, the book’s
examination of the actual capabilities of natural selection and all the
epicycles biologists have proposed to bolster their theory over the decades is
its most important contribution to this debate. Probabilities are abstract and
therefore many people cannot comprehend their significance, even if they are
conclusive. Showing the observed natural fixation rates are too slow to
vindicate Darwin’s theory is much more tangible. Everyone can understand how it
is impossible for a car to drive from New York to L.A. in an hour. But that is
effectively what proponents of evolution by natural selection are claiming has
happened to create biodiversity. And we know this could not have happened. It
is a certainty.
The book is
not very long, and therefore it is not a massive read.
Day’s and
Tipler’s writing style is clear and accessible. Day often uses humour, too,
which is good.
You also do
not need to have a degree in science, mathematics, or anything like this to
understand the vast majority of the book. However, there is some stuff in there
for the trained mathematicians and scientists to chew on, which bolsters the
strength of the book. I won’t pretend that I could follow all the math in the
book, I never studied it beyond high school, and even there not at a high
level. But this did not stop me from being able to understand the vast majority
of the book, and its implications. So, this book is accessible to the general
reader.
I should also
note that Vox proposes an alternative theory called Intelligent Genetic
Manipulation, to explain what is more likely to have happened. So, he is not
just attacking academic structures, but is also constructively making claims
about better avenues of scientific research for scientists to engage in. This
is helpful.
I suspect,
that Probability Zero will have a similar effect on Darwinism that Vox Day’s
earlier work, The Irrational Atheist, had on many other atheistic
arguments, especially about what causes wars. This is because the concept is
just so elegantly simple. Again let me state it: what is the average rate of
evolution, and is there enough time for what Darwin claimed happened? The
answer is it takes at a minimum over a thousand generations, though the average
rate of fixation is much higher, and hence there is nowhere near enough time
for Darwin’s mechanism to achieve such diversity of life. Simple. Now, it is
simply a matter for people to access the book and share it with others.
You can’t get
it on Amazon anymore*, but you can at NDM Express where both the ebook and the hard cover are
available. I highly recommend you read this, because creationists have been
predicting for years that the genetic data we are collecting would one day
prove that evolution by natural selection in the sense of goo to you change was
going to be shown to be impossible. They were right, and they were vindicated
by someone who simply did the math.
Rev. Matt's Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
Notes:
[1] These
arguments are often correct by the way. But still, there is more that needs to
be demonstrated.
*correction, it has been reinstated to Amazon.
No comments:
Post a Comment