Jerry D. Kaifetz, Ph.D.

A Neurosurgeon, Not A Darwinist
Michael Egnor, 02.05.09, 06:00 PM EST
Why I don’t believe in atheism’s creation myth.
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I am a professor of neurosurgery and a medical scientist. As an undergraduate biochemistry major, I was uncomfortable with Darwinian explanations for biological complexity. Living things certainly appeared to be designed. Yet evolutionary biologists asserted that the scientific evidence was clear: All biology could be explained by random variation and natural selection.

So I accepted the Darwinian explanation. I considered religious explanations for biology unscientific at best, dogma at worst. But Darwin’s explanation, too, was a matter of faith because I did not know the evidence.

Several years ago, I came across Michael Denton’s book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. Denton’s argument–that the biological evidence for Darwin’s theory was much weaker than evolutionary biologists claimed–rekindled my doubts. Just how strong was the evidence that all biological complexity arose by chance and natural selection?

I read all that I could find. Johnson. Dawkins. Wells. Berra. Behe. Dennett. Dembski. What I found is this: The claims of evolutionary biologists go wildly beyond the evidence.

The fossil record shows sharp discontinuity between species, not the gradual transitions that Darwinism inherently predicts. Darwin’s theory offers no coherent, evidence-based explanation for the evolution of even a single molecular pathway from primordial components. The origin of the genetic code belies random causation. All codes with which we have experience arise from intelligent agency. Intricate biomolecules such as enzymes are so functionally complex that it’s difficult to see how they could arise by random mutations.

I saw that Darwinism was a Potemkin village. But it wasn’t clear to me why evolutionary biologists were so passionately devoted to such pallid science. The evidence that the Darwinian understanding of biological origins was inadequate has been in hand for quite a while.

Why, when the genetic code was unraveled, didn’t scientists question Darwin’s assumption of randomness? Why didn’t Darwinists ask the difficult questions that are posed for their theory by the astonishing complexity of intracellular molecular machinery? Why do Darwinists claim that intelligent design is untestable, and simultaneously claim that it is wrong?
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Why do Darwinists claim that intelligent design theory isn’t scientific, when both intelligent design and Darwinism are merely the affirmative and negative answers to the same scientific question: Is there evidence for teleology in biology? Why do Darwinists–scientists–seek recourse in federal courts to silence criticism of their theory in public schools? What is it about the Darwinian understanding of biological origins that is so fragile that it will not withstand scrutiny by schoolchildren?

When I read about the ostracism of Dr. Richard Sternberg, a biologist and editor of a biology journal at the Smithsonian Institution who dared to approve the publication of a paper that was sympathetic to intelligent design, I contacted Sternberg and expressed my sympathy and support. He introduced me to the Discovery Institute, which is a think tank devoted to raising the important questions about biological origins, and I began blogging for them.

I came to learn why evolutionary biologists are so fiercely devoted to Darwinism. I was vilified on the Internet. Calls came to my office demanding that I be fired.

And much of the venom was ideological. The vast majority of evolutionary biologists are atheists. I’m Catholic, and my religious faith was mocked by my fellow scientists. Many Darwinists openly express their hatred for Christianity–atheist biologist P.Z. Myers desecrated a Eucharistic host on his Web site.

In 1989, Oxford evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins wrote in the New York Times book review section that people who don’t accept evolution are “ignorant, stupid, insane … or wicked.” He has described the religious upbringing of children as “child abuse.”

In his book, Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, atheist philosopher and Darwinist Daniel Dennett has written that “[s]afety demands that religions be put in cages too–when absolutely necessary.” The fight against the design inference in biology is motivated by fundamentalist atheism. Darwinists detest intelligent design theory because it is compatible with belief in God.

But the evidence is unassailable. The most reasonable scientific explanation for functional biological complexity–the genetic code and the intricate nanotechnology inside living cells–is that they were designed by intelligent agency. There is no scientific evidence that unintelligent processes can create substantial new biological structures and function. There is no unintelligent process known to science that can generate codes and machines.

I still consider religious explanations for biology to be unscientific at best, dogma at worst. But I understand now that Darwinism itself is a religious creed that masquerades as science. Darwin’s theory of biological origins is atheism’s creation myth, and atheists defend their dogma with religious fervor.

Michael Egnor is a professor and vice chairman of the department of neurosurgery at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

My beliefs are based on four simple words
Guest Commentary by Dr. Jerry Kaifetz
Northwest Indiana Times, Feb. 10, 2006

Proponents of evolutionary theory seem to often leave off that last word: theory. It is routinely assumed that evolution is science, when in fact it has never been more than theory.

For a theory to become science, it must meet two criteria: 1.) It must be observable; 2.) It must be reproducible in a laboratory. Evolution fails on both counts! The fossil record does not contain any intermediary species. The missing links are still missing.

More than 400 scientists have now signed onto a growing list of skeptics doubting that random mutation and natural selection can account for the complexity of life, according to the Seattle-based Discovery Institute.

“Darwin’s theory of evolution is the great white elephant of contemporary thought,” said David Berlinski, a mathematician with The Center for Science and Culture.

About 700 scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States attended the “Darwin and Design” conference recently to press their contention that evolution cannot explain the origins of life.

Other prominent biologists who have signed the CSC list include evolutionary biologist and author Stanley Salthe and Richard von Sternberg, an evolutionary biologist at the Smithsonian Institution. The list also includes scientists from Princeton, Cornell, UC Berkeley, UCLA, Ohio State University, Purdue and the University of Washington.

Darwin theorized that all living things evolved from simple organisms. Over countless generations, he claimed, random mutations have occurred with the strongest surviving.

The great embarrassment to evolutionists is the complete absence of evidence to indicate that any random mutation has ever been beneficial to an organism. No wart has ever become an eye!

A recent CBS poll has shown that most Americans believe the Bible is true in teaching that God created man in the last 10,000 years. Hundreds of top-flight scientists from the world’s best schools do not believe in evolutionary theory.

So why are evolutionists so desperate to marginalize creationists and proponents of intelligent design? Why can they not allow a rational debate to take place in an open public forum?

Perhaps they hold to the belief that we Americans are simply too dumb to make a choice, and they should function as our self-appointed guardians of an unproven theory whose inventor held no degree in any field of science.

I have no quarrel with anyone’s right to express faith in evolutionary theory.

I simply prefer to place my faith in the first four words of a book that has been upheld by more than 50,000 scientific discoveries in the field of archaeology alone: “In the beginning, God.”