Cowboy Bob Sorensen
[Originally published as Evolution and Teleology]
A spell back, an anti-creationist shared one of these here posts to social media and complained that I was claiming that evolution uses teleology. The article was “The Spirit of the Origin of Life” and showed how evolutionists themselves are using teleology! The atheist was a mite upset because evolution is supposed to be through chance, and does not have a purpose-driven life.
“What’s teleology, Cowboy Bob?”
Great timing, I was about to get into that. The word teleology sounds like the study of telecommunications or something, doesn’t it?
Basically, it means design in nature. Going a bit further, it means that the Creator engineered living things, and the design refutes evolution through intricate, specified complexity. Christian apologists have used the teleological argument (or fine tuning, or argument from design) for God’s existence. This child isn’t too fond of that argument by itself.
In a presentation by Frank Sherwin about the design of insects, he mentioned news a few years ago about the amazing gear design found in the nymph planthopper and also some comments made by a researcher. Annoying insects spread a plant disease called maise mosaic. But Greg Sutton was studying the way the critter was able to hop. Way down inside each leg is a gear assembly that is very similar to the kind that humans use in various mechanical applications.
Instead of giving praise to our Creator for his ingenuity, Sutton commenced to bow down to the spirit of evolution. No, evolution is not an entity, that’s the fallacy of reification. Even so, evolutionists have been acting as pantheists and making evolution (or nature) into a goal-oriented entity. Sutton said,
These gears are not designed; they are evolved – representing high speed and precision machinery evolved for synchronization in the animal world.
There ya go: teleology for evolution.
But wait, there’s more! Greg Sutton also said,
What we have is a prototype for incredibly small, high-speed, high-precision gears . . . that prototype is given to us by nature.
He is not presenting us with actual science, but sciencey statements of faith. There is no model or plausible explanation. For a short but interesting article from a creationary perspective, see “‘Living Gears’ Might Have Evolutionists Hopping Mad“.
Sorry, buckaroo, but the prototype was given to us by God, and he used it in nature. We are also told that the evidence for God the Creator is all around us and unbelievers are without excuse (Rom. 1:20), that they suppress the truth in unrighteousness (Rom. 1:18), and did not honor him (Rom. 1:21).
Mr. Sutton honors some vague spirit of evolutionism, not the Creator. Unfortunately, this kind of attitude is typical of evolutionists. God tells us that people like this have become fools (Rom. 1:22-23), and the money they spent on getting a secularist education will be worthless when they have to stand before Jesus Christ the Creator at the Final Judgement.
This is just one more instance where these people are inadvertently admitting that God is right: they know that he exists, but do not want to acknowledge him.
