 Natural selection is often considered the very engine of evolution. Are adaptive traits due to external ecological variables that shape an organism's genetic information? Or are an organism's abilities to adapt due to non-natural internal capacities programmed into them by God? Discover how to properly identify the true cause of an organism's dramatic capacity to self-adjust to different environments, revealing a powerful display of God's creative design. Coming up on today's edition of Origins, Darwin's Sacred Imposter Part 1 with Dr. Randy Galloosa. Hello and welcome to Origins. I'm Ray Hypal and it's an honor to be your host today. During this program, we showcase interesting guests who present evidence from science, along with other important facts validating the truth of creation and the accuracy of the Bible. Today's guest, Dr. Randy Galloosa has undergraduate degrees in engineering and theology. He has earned an M.D. and also a Master of Public Health from Harvard University. Dr. Galloosa is a registered professional engineer. In 2008, he retired as Lieutenant Colonel from the U.S. Air Force. Now he's the President of the Institute for Creation Research in Dallas, Texas. Welcome to the program, Dr. Galloosa. Thank you so much, Ray. We're so glad you can be back. We are going to start a new two-part series on this show called Darwin's Sacred Imposter. What are we going to talk about? We're going to talk about how Darwin fundamentally changed the way people understand biology and look at creatures. So what did he do? How come people see biology different today after Darwin than they did before Darwin? I mean, he made some major changes. Everybody recognizes that. That's why he has statues all over the place. And unless we understand exactly what he changed and why he did it, we can never really, really push back and argue against it authoritatively and rationally. And so this is the main thing. Darwin designed what is a fundamentally anti-designer framework to interpret biological observations because what was hanging over the mind of so many biologists before Darwin was, why do creatures look like they were designed if there wasn't a designer? And there was really some undertones that have nothing to do with science why people didn't want to recognize a designer. You know, those from a theological perspective. But how do you get past the fact that creatures really, really look designed? He personifies nature to act as a substitute agent in lieu of God. And he personifies it by projecting onto nature the ability to select for or select against creatures or to favor other creatures along those lines. Scientists often would talk about the creator, whether he was the god of deism who just wound up the clock and now it's running on its own. But still, there was regular recourse in the scientific community. Well, of course, there was a creator. Darwin changed all that. Exactly. And we as creationists haven't really understood exactly what he did and therefore we really haven't been responding in the right way. Our traditional approach is to basically concede Darwin's framework. Oh, Darwin was right that nature is selecting for against creatures and that there's survival of the fittest and those kinds of things. But to say that even though he's right on all that stuff it really isn't enough to explain the design in creatures and as we can see on the screen there we've been arguing that it's inconsistent or insufficient or incomplete or maybe even inaccurate. But what we really should not have done right from the beginning is to concede that this whole framework that Darwin invented, this framework of selectionism, it's really a worldview was right from the beginning. Sounds like what you're saying is the problem is we're picking away at the details but it's the foundation that really we need to remove. Exactly. And so we're going to dig in today about what is that foundation and what really Darwin did and why we need a fresh break, a fresh break from Darwin's framework altogether and so that we don't treat all of his metaphorical elements and he came up with a lot of metaphors as if they were real explanations and that's what we're going to break away from is we've already talked about this and other programs that there's a design-based framework but on this one I hate to say we have to dig in to a lot of what evolutionists say so I have to do a lot of reading in this program of what they say themselves about natural selection. Well, I think our viewers should not be afraid to get ready to dig in and really get into the details. Let's read, let's learn what the issues are. Okay, exactly. We're going to put those on and so what Darwin really did is he ended up inverting the cause of things so when organisms have innate mechanisms that they're solving problems and it looks like when the environment changed and they changed he said no it's the environment that's changing them whereas we really need to see that they've been changing themselves but the biggest one is number two there, he personified nature he projects on to nature intelligence and volition he's able to treat nature as if it is an actual agent able to craft and change creatures and so that's what we're going to look at. So this word nature that we hear all the time the way Darwin really begins to use it is as if nature is an intelligent person who has these abilities. Exactly and we need to really look and see where the cause of all of these changes are and really I have to again go up on the board and start talking about some of those things. Well let's go ahead. So we're backing up again a little bit Ray we're talking about Francis Ayala and he published this paper in the proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and it was called Darwin's Greatest Discovery Design Without a Designer that's what Darwin was trying to come up with and so this is exactly what he says in this paper with Darwin's discovery of natural selection now he really didn't discover it he really invented this concept the origin and adaptations of organisms were brought into the realm of science the adaptive features of organisms can now be explained like the phenomenon of the inanimate world as a result of natural processes without recourse to an intelligent designer Darwin's theory of natural selection accounts for and here it is the design of organisms. Notice he's not talking about the diversity of organisms it's the design of organisms that he was trying to explain and for their wondrous diversity as the result of natural processes the gradual accumulation of spontaneous little risen variations which are mutations sorted out by natural selection so right there you can immediately see some personification of nature nature is doing what? Sorting out it's doing this kind of action and as a result of that he concludes that this was Darwin's fundamental discovery that there is a process that is creative although not conscious now does that even make sense? Have you ever seen a creative process that was unconscious or was unconscious? Yeah they're again using the borrowed capital of a system that they're rejecting and yet they have to use that terminology Jerry Coyne professor now retired at the University of Chicago in his book on evolution is true he summarizes the impact of what selection did and he points out that really Romans 1 is true because he begins by saying everywhere we look in nature we see animals that seem beautifully designed to fit their environment whether that environment be the physical circumstances of life like temperature and humidity or other organisms and competitors predators and prey that every species must deal with it is no surprise that early naturalists believed that animals were the products of celestial design created by God to do their jobs he's saying Romans 1 he sees it very clearly but then he adds this Darwin dispelled this notion in the origin in a single chapter he completely replaced centuries of certainty about divine design with the notion of a mindless materialistic process not evolution but natural selection that could accomplish the same result it is hard to overestimate the effect that this insight had not only on biology but on people's worldview and that's an important one and many people haven't even overcome it is what he's going to say he's pointing out that it was this idea that a mindless process could be creative and this is where Darwin was going what he's really doing is really appropriating the innate ability for organisms to solve problems but he's attributing the cause to nature and so when an organism solved the problem and it moved into a niche he said nature selected for it nature favored it and every time he adds those words those verbs he is personifying nature taking away credit from what the Lord built into the creatures and he is giving that to nature it's almost like a word game nature becomes a word to not say the word God and to not use the concept God but then you plug in all the same things nature is selecting, nature is favoring nature is enabling and they're just playing a game and it's very important, it's very subtle it's a very clever, it's a very crafty game on why he's doing this but this is what we find in textbooks and this is a picture from just a basic high school biology textbook but they explained what Darwin did Darwin not only demonstrated that evolution has occurred but also proposed its principal mechanism natural selection the key factor in natural selection is what the environment the environment now look at these personifications it presents challenges that individuals with particular traits can better overcome now look here, it's the organism with the traits that overcome it thus the environment selects which organism will survive and reproduce so they see that it's the organism that has the trait that does it but suddenly it's the environment that selects all the environments presenting the environment is selecting for they're building up this entire personification of nature and another source points out that this is an externalistic world view and that underlies all of biology and what is it? the unifying theme for much of modern biology is based on Charles Darwin's theory of evolution the process of natural selection by which, here it comes nature selects the fittest best adapted organisms to reproduce, multiply and survive you know what? it's organisms that have the ability to solve those problems it's the organisms that have the traits and they suddenly switch causality to nature selecting nature favoring what we should be really looking at is the abilities within organisms to solve these problems and we should never even jump to this personification of nature or we say that it can select a favor the kids are being taught evolution is a fact it's demonstrated, it's been proven and yet at the same time they use the language well it's the theory of evolution and I don't know about you but that bothers me too do you see some kind of a similar process being used here in word games? it is, there is a word game and the biggest word game is his subtle subtle slight of hand where he says this organism solved the problem it moved into the niche but then it was suddenly selected for it's like having engineers solve a problem and so we come up with three or four potential solutions to the problem one of them solved the problem and you say oh the problem selected that solution nobody would ever say such a silly thing but in biology that's how they think and it's almost like another analogy would be throwing up random things in the air and saying that whatever one you choose has selected itself or something and to say that a random process can select even that itself is sort of a non sequitur that doesn't follow it doesn't follow at all and so biologists in many ways tolerate this covert mysticism in their answer about creatures' abilities because they want to avoid any recognition of purpose or what philosophers call teleology that things operate for a purpose and that has been recognized by Michael Hodge who is an historian of science who points out that even today the newer 20th century explications of natural selection have not displaced the older figurative and rhetorical life of the term so evident in Darwin's writings where do we see that? Well we see it in this man Richard Dawkins when he talks about selfish genes Michael Hodge goes on to say rather that life continues to be extended in the novel invocations of selfishness of DNA or the tinkering achieved an adaptive evolution of other people so Darwin projected disability onto nature he actually personifies nature by projecting onto it this ability to select or to think or to have volition and now we have Richard Dawkins who personify things like DNA by calling it selfish or in ways that people could act and then Hodge wraps up this whole idea where we put these, what do you call them these invocations onto nature of these abilities which it really doesn't have and he says that basically the conclusion the conclusion must be that scientific supporters he doesn't say religious supporters is that scientific supporters of natural selection have not seen this semantic and even ideological promiscuity as a ground for abandoning the term basically altogether and that has been a problem since Darwin introduced the term for selection right from the beginning immediately real scientists said nature doesn't have any ability to select you're just personifying nature the head of the French of Academies of Sciences said it was silly and called it silly right from the very beginning to do this and it is no less silly for Darwin to say nature can select or favor or for Richard Dawkins to say that DNA is selfish or for somebody else to say nature is a tinkerer all these things these are all personifications to get past God's agency and give another type of agency right to nature they want to take away the fact that God is a purposive and deliberate being and they want to get that effect but they want to attribute it to a process that by definition is random, is not intelligent, is non-proposive and you know when you say it that way natural selection you really should think of random chosenness or random preciseness and then you see wow that's really I'm really saying nothing Dr. Gluse we have to stop right there we need to take a break we'll be back right after these messages stay with us We hope you're enjoying Origins TV it all started at Cornerstone Television in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania we've been producing new episodes for over 37 years now we praise God for the success of the program and are excited to introduce you to Origins and to us if you're interested in watching more episodes of Origins you can find them on our YouTube page simply go to YouTube and search Cornerstone Television Network click the like and subscribe buttons then you'll find the best episodes of Origins in our playlist you can also visit our website ctvn.org one more way you can stay connected with us is to subscribe to our free monthly hope today newsletter which you can do from our website and if you have any questions call us here at Cornerstone Television at 888-665-4483 we'd love to connect with you thank you for watching to Origins we're talking to Dr. Randy Galuzza who's been sharing about Darwin's sacred imposter part one Randy we looked at the break just before we went to the break that the scientific supporters of natural selection are using something that is semantically promiscuous and the question comes then well why do they still use this term if it's misleading or even unfaithful yes as he ends why haven't they abandoned this term because they can't just because it is so promiscuous that you can attribute this ability to select a nature and it is all based on a misleading metaphor that Darwin used a misleading analogy where he looked at human breeders and they could select for cattle or they could select for roses and over time they could get big varieties of those creatures or those things and he said well maybe nature can do the exact same thing maybe nature can select for this kind of creature or another and we can get big varieties and if you do it over a really really really long period of time you can get the diversity of life on earth the problem is that metaphor is completely misleading because breeders have a real brain breeders have real volition and breeders have real intelligence but nature doesn't and that's why history shows that few biologists can escape the seductive power of Darwin's misleading metaphor of comparing nature to a real human breeder in fact Richard Luantin who was before he passed away a professor at Harvard University said nothing creates more misunderstanding of the results of scientific research than scientists use of metaphors it's not only the general public that they confuse but their own understanding of nature that has led astray unfortunately even modern evolutionary biologists as well as theorists are not always conscious of the dangers of that metaphor the metaphor that he's talking about there is comparing nature to a real human breeder and they do get misled if you could read the scientific papers like I do you would see that they use selection as a causal agent over and over again attributing to it the abilities to act like God it sounds like it's precisely and ingenuous or even misleading nature of the term that's why they keep it that's the answer to the question why are they using this misleading term yes because it's misleading therefore they're using it because really they're not they're not accurately representing reality so at some point there's got to be a bait and switch there's got to be a deception there's got to be a falsehood and this falsehood works so well because it's so unseen a term that we use sometimes in theology self deceptive or somebody can be self deceived and that's what it sounds like we're talking about that's what it sounds like this evolutionist is saying that many of his colleagues even this isn't a creationist this isn't you or I saying this right this is an evolutionist saying hey this terminology is is unseen and guys are using this improperly that's right and they have deceived themselves they've gone on what you just said is actually summarized in the next gentleman we're going to look to John O'Rease another evolutionist and as we've mentioned we are not really quoting creationists here we're quoting evolutionist and he's an honest evolutionist who talks about how they have as you just said deceived themselves but they don't want to abandon the term precisely because it is deceiving and he says and I quote him here I argue that we have never been able to overcome the major weakness of the metaphor of natural selection the one that led Wallace and Wallace is attributed as one of the co inventors of the concept of natural selection Alfred Russell Wallace with Charles Darwin but even he saw well maybe this this term is way too misleading and that's the context of what O'Rease is talking about here he says the one that led Wallace to object so strongly to its use the weakness is the implication that there is in nature here's the key word an agent with actions analogous to those of the breeder that we can see something like that a theological a theological goal oriented agent that intentionally and with foresight selects variations directed towards the improvement of the organism the teleology or that is the purpose that we would see there implicit in the metaphor of natural selection subtly permeates many of the most basic concepts of evolutionary biology now there's a lot to unpack of what he is saying here but he's pointing out that people have seen this for a long time it has misled them for a long time it describes agency and it has overcome God's teleology well it sounds like I mean Wallace a contemporary then of Darwin right yes so from the very beginning there's never been a time in a sense when this terminology didn't have credits within that school of people who were embracing the theory and they were seeing the misleading so all along some have seen it others are using it seems like the majority are being misled by it but the first half of this quote I mean doesn't that sound a lot like God theological teleological agent purpose of agent intention foresight selecting predestining I mean we can bring in a lot of scriptural terms here suddenly we have God we do we have a substitute God and that's why this show is basically called Darwin's sacred imposter right here and unless we as creationists know what Darwin did know how he changed it it was really a this personification of nature as it says here he changes that view of organisms from internal to external so he's look at the environment and then he personifies the environment with a type of agency that can act in the place of God and that's why we're basically talking about in part one here Darwin's sacred imposter in part two we'll show how evolutionists actually point out the idolatry of this position the sacred imposter a terminology that gets rid of the holy one God and yet still maintains his effects exactly well dr. gluser I really appreciate you being on the show hope you'll be able to join us soon to finish up to do part two yes I'm looking forward to it me too for centuries scientists in every field recognized the inherent observable design in all living things this recognition led to the regular admission that God was the ultimate designer however all of this changed with Charles Darwin who in his concept of natural selection incongruously personified nature so that he could affirm the presence of design while denying the reality of a designer today's program exposed that incongruity and once again acknowledged the necessary presence of an ultimate designer for every single instance of design it just goes to show you once again that we know what the Bible says is true and the proof is all around you if you enjoyed origins we sure hope that you could help us to keep this creation television program on the air your support both prayerfully and financially will make a big impact so join with us and let's work together to reveal how awesome our creator 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