Darwin’s secular theory of evolution contains an exclusive focus on what is already living, and discounts any of his peers' attempts to add the possibility of Intelligent Design. In his attempt to explain how man became the superior species on Earth, Darwin didn’t include the origin of life in his theory of evolution, saying that science didn’t yet have enough to theorize on the answer.1 He sought to explain the world through purely scientific and secular means, though he grew up religious. While it is entirely feasible that God uses natural processes to build and maintain the world, if he were to use evolution as his chosen method – why did it stop? Assuming mankind came about because we evolved into a superior species; why wouldn’t we continue letting mankind evolve from lower forms instead of resorting to sexual reproduction as the only way to perpetuate mankind’s existence on Earth? Aristotle says that the multiple causes involved in the generation of the works of nature are the “final cause” or the purpose of the thing, and the “motor cause” or the driving or agent cause.2 So where did these causes originate?
In the pursuit of finding the scientific origin of life, you will find a breakdown from man to animal to organism. But where does the organism get the information that will make it evolve into an animal then into a man? Similar to Deoxyribonucleic acid (DNA), Ribonucleic acid (RNA) is a molecule essential in various biological roles, such as coding, regulation, and expression of genes.3 But where do these coding proteins come from? It doesn’t quite make sense that they would evolve with mankind, but it doesn’t fit with Darwin’s theory if these coding molecules are just inherent in every living being, guiding them to their most present state. Aristotle said the process of evolution is for the sake of the thing (ie. Man) at the end of the evolutionary process, not for the sake of the process.4 Aristotle continues, saying “…their [man’s] existence involves the existence of other antecedents.”5 Darwin hypothesized in a letter to a friend, Joseph Dalton Hooker, that life began in a small body of water, rich in chemicals, on land. This is the beginning of the “primordial soup” idea, that chemicals in a pond stewed for a while before gaining enough sentience to walk out of the pond and beginning the evolutionary journey until man has run of the planet.6
In Stephen Meyer’s book “Darwin’s Doubt: The Explosive Origin of Animal Life and The Case for Intelligent Design”, he addresses the possibility of Intelligent Design. “Many evolutionary biologists see intelligent design as a religiously based idea…Others think the theory denies all forms of evolutionary change.” He continues, saying that “Darwin not only affirmed that his mechanism could generate significant biological change, but that it could explain the appearance of design – without invoking the activity of an actual designing intelligence. In doing so, he sought to refute the design hypothesis by providing a materialistic explanation for the origin of apparent design in living organisms. Many neo-Darwinists also affirm that organisms look as if they were designed.”7 This resounds with what Plato said in Timaeus: “Now everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created of some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created…Was the heaven then, or the world…always in existence and without beginning, or created, and had it a beginning? Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and all sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense, and are in a process of creation and created.”8 Everything has a driving cause, an agent, as Aristotle (Plato’s student) stated. Without a cause, a purpose, the subject is pointless. Plato says that the world must have been created because it’s not only visible and tangible but logically ordered (sensible), therefore it must have had an intelligent mind behind its creation. Meyers believes that intelligent design doesn’t have to be a solely religious theory – that it can be a secular theory. However, by saying there is an intelligent mind that is superior to ours, which created the world, is to suggest what we call a divine being. When you look at the incredible precision with which the universe is assembled, the minuscule detail in each and every animal and insect and the wide variety of life on this planet – it becomes that much harder to believe that this Intelligence isn’t incredibly invested in our continuing existence.
““We talk about the origin of life like it’s something that happened in the deep past,” says Lena Vincent, a graduate of the Wisconsin Institute for Discovery in Complex Biological Systems.14 “But it’s something that could be trying to happen even now.””10 If the evolutionary process, as put forth by Darwin, were still active today wouldn’t we see more evidence of such processes? Wouldn’t we see the evolutionary timeline not as stepping stones and more as a slope – easily followed with no room for hesitation from one iteration to the next? We would see more animals much closer to man in appearance and cognitive abilities – but we don’t. Likewise, in Aristotle’s “On Parts Of Animals” he describes what he believes to be part of the evolutionary process: “… the water contained in the body causes by its currents the formation of the stomach and the other receptacles of food or of excretion; and that the breath by its passage breaks open the outlets of the nostrils; air and water being the materials of which bodies are made; for all represent nature as composed of such or similar substances.”11 However, wouldn’t there be evidence of these half-evolved beings whose stomachs leaked and didn’t hold liquids or waste as well as more highly-evolved beings’ did? If this is a rule across the board, why do we have such a variety of animals and insects which don’t have stomachs the way humans (the most highly evolved) do? Why are there some that breathe through gills or don’t breathe at all? Are they still evolving? Why don’t we see evidence for that? Why are their DNA and RNA programmed so differently from ours, if we are all supposedly evolving towards the same highly intelligent sapient species?
In the closing chapter of Darwin’s “Descent of Man”, he gives an unexpectedly emotional plea. Up until the last chapter, Darwin has been incredibly observant and logical. Then he abandoned his logical approach for a prideful, emotional plea – even going so far as to say that anybody capable of thinking logically would see the truth of his theory which will not be proven false: “The main conclusion here arrived at, and now held by many naturalists who are well competent to form a sound judgment…The grounds upon which this conclusion rests will never be shaken,…”12 In the last paragraph of “Descent of Man” Darwin says “Man may be excused for feeling some pride at having risen, though not through his own exertions, to the very summit of the organic scale;…We must, however, acknowledge…Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.”13 But we have to ask, does mankind bare the evidence of “lowly origin”, or evidence of an intelligent creator?
Works Cited:
1. Peretó, J., Català, J. Darwinism and the Origin of Life. Evo Edu Outreach 5, 337–341 (2012).https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-012-0442-x
2. Aristotle, “On Parts of Animals” Book 1, Chapter 1, approx. 350BC
“The causes concerned in the generation of the works of nature are, as we see, more than one. There is the final cause [the purpose] and there is the motor cause [agent, driving cause].”
3. Wikipedia, “RNA”, accessed 9/17/2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RNA
4. Aristotle, “On Parts of Animals” Book 1, Chapter 1, approx. 350BC
“For the process of evolution is for the sake of the thing finally evolved, and not this for the sake of the process….For man is generated from man and this it is the procession of certain characters by the parent that determines the development of like characters in the child.” (emphasis added)
5. Aristotle, “On Parts of Animals” Book 1, Chapter 1, approx. 350BC
6. Peretó, J., Català, J. Darwinism and the Origin of Life. Evo Edu Outreach 5, 337–341 (2012).https://evolution-outreach.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1007/s12052-012-0442-x
“Darwin never wrote about how life began in his books, but he did speculate about it in private…Darwin was proposing [in a private letter to his friend, the naturalist Joseph Dalton Hooker] that life began, not in the open ocean, but in a smaller body of water on land, which was rich in chemicals. This is in essence the primordial soup idea, but with one advantage: in a pool, any dissolved chemicals would become concentrated when water evaporated in the heat of the day. The initial synthesis of the chemicals of life would be powered by some combination of light, heat and chemical energy.”
7. Meyer, C. Stephen “Darwin’s Doubt”, HarperOne,, 2013, pp 338
8. Plato “Timaeus” 28-29
“Now everything that becomes or is created must of necessity be created of some cause, for without a cause nothing can be created. The work of the creator, whenever he looks to the unchangeable pattern, must necessarily be made fair and perfect; but when he looks to the created only and uses a created pattern, it is not fair or perfect. Was the heaven then, or the world,…always in existence and without beginning, or created, and had it a beginning? Created, I reply, being visible and tangible and having a body, and therefore sensible; and all sensible things are apprehended by opinion and sense, and are in a process of creation and created.”
9. Darwin, Charles, “Descent of Man” Penguin Classic, 1871, pp 116
10. Marshall, Michael, “Charles Darwin’s Hunch About Early Life Was Probably Right” BBC Future, Nov. 11, 2020, https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20201110-charles-darwin-early-life-theory
11. Aristotle “On Parts of Animals” (Book 1, Chapter 1, paragraph 5)
12. Darwin, Charles, “Descent of Man” Penguin Classic, 1871, pp.676
13. Darwin, Charles, “Descent of Man” Penguin Classic, 1871, pp. 689
14. Vincent, Lena, Wisconsin Institute of Discovery, accessed 9/17/2022, https://wid.wisc.edu/people/lena-vincent/
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