Evolution to fall in 2012?

Proponents of atheistic evolution have been hit with some bad news lately, which has one leading author proclaiming 2012 may be a tough year for Charles Darwin's theory of human origins.

A Gallup survey, Google.com search trends and some Amazon.com sales numbers all suggest evolution's ideological opponent, creationism, is on the rise in America.

Last week, for example, the Gallup polling organization released a survey indicating that the percentage of young-earth creationists in the United States has not only increased in the last two years, but also remains the most common explanation for human origins believed by Americans.

The article states, "Forty-six percent of Americans believe in the creationist view that God created humans in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years. The prevalence of this creationist view of the origin of humans is essentially unchanged from 30 years ago, when Gallup first asked the question."

The Gallup article and survey went on to show that even though these figures have remained virtually the same for about 30 years, there has actually been a slight up-tick in the number of U.S. citizens who believe in a young-earth creationism account of human origins.

"Although the percentages choosing each view have varied from survey to survey," Gallup explained, "the 46 percent who today choose the creationist explanation is virtually the same as the 45 percent average over that period – and very similar to the 44 percent who chose that explanation in 1982."

The most recent survey found 32 percent of Americans believing humans evolved with God's guidance, while only 15 percent accepted an atheistic, evolutionary process.

Carl Gallups, author of "The Magic Man in the Sky: Effectively Defending the Christian Faith," says the trend is not surprising

"The more that real science – science that is truly observable, demonstrable, repeatable, and falsifiable is set forth with modern technological means and experimentation, the more evolution proposition is found 'wanting,'" Gallups told WND. "People are just not buying the drivel of much of the pseudoscience of evolution that is attempted by the academic community to be passed off as absolute, settled science. Many foundational matters of evolution proposition simply do not meet the definition of 'settled science.' I think most people are intelligent enough to figure this out."

Gallups continued, "Look, we have come a long way since Darwin's day. After all, Darwin traveled everywhere in buggies pulled by horses and ships powered only by sails. Technology has gone through the roof since the days of the HMS Beagle. With what we are now discovering in DNA/RNA experimentation and our understanding of chirality and cellular respiration, for example, we are finding more and more evidence for the amazing complexities of life. We also are understanding the decreasing statistical chances that all 20 million species of life, and their subsystems and sub-subsystems, and the necessity for their interconnectedness, could have arrived here by an accidental and random beginning in some magical, unobserved, never-recreated soup – as the evolutionists would have us to believe."

"Furthermore," Gallups said, "recent Google search trends show a marked decrease in search engine requests for articles and information on atheism in general, as well as a decline in requests for information about major atheist leaders and their material. I think this might be indicative of a growing trend that atheism is continually loosing its appeal."

Gallups also points to another bad omen for evolution, the rise of his own book, "The Magic Man in the Sky," to the No. 1 best seller in Amazon's Science & Religion category.

Gallups describes his book as a sweeping defense of the Christian faith "designed to address, in a fresh and bold new way, the common secularist arguments. The title of the book comes from one of the most debilitating of those arguments made by the atheist/evolutionist that is often stated something like this: 'I would rather believe in the settled scientific fact of evolution than in some magical man in the sky, like you Christians.'"

Gallups says, "I refute this atheistic assertion, beginning with the title of the book! Two hundred and thirty pages later, I have completely dismantled the straw-man argument of that particular secularist attack along with about a dozen other secularist assertions."

Gallups says that evolution, while holding some interesting theories and even presenting actual scientific truths from time to time, is far from settled science and should not be taught as unquestioned fact.

In Chapter 17 of "The Magic Man in the Sky," titled "Is Evolution Settled Science," Gallups writes, "Deep conundrums exist, which evolution theory has yet to answer. Proffering a theory that has unanswered questions is a legitimate part of the scientific method. However, as you will see, a number of these unanswered evolutionary mysteries are so deep, so profound and so foundational that to not have the answers to them denotes that we are not yet ready to speak of evolution theory as the answer to how life arrived here. Therefore, evolution should not be set forth as though it were established, scientific fact to the exclusion of all other possibilities."

Gallups gives many detailed examples of these unanswered evolutionary mysteries. One intriguing example comes from Chapter 18 of his book, "Pondering Pesky Puzzles":

When we ingest other living things, the DNA of those living things (fruits, vegetables, nuts, meats, etc.) just happens to be compatible with our DNA so that cellular respiration can take place. If it were not for the fact that our DNA is so akin to all other living things, we could not eat. If we could not eat, we would die.

Is the process of eating and cellular respiration the result of a mere fluke of evolution? Alternatively, could it be that a common Designer made certain that the process of eating and cellular respiration would function in such a precise and perfect manner? Which answer appears to be the most probable to you?

If the supposed cosmic and random happenstance of evolution was the real reason that all living things exist, why, when, and how did this happenstance mechanism decide that living things needed to eat anything in the first place? Would it not be odd that evolution should come up with the idea of food and energy creation through cellular respiration?

Cellular respiration is an astoundingly complex, energy-expending system. Yet in order for life to be sustained, living things must have other living things to ingest. What an odd thing for a mere cosmic coincidence to develop, by random generation. Is it not a strange convenience for evolution that all living things have such unimaginable DNA similarity that cellular respiration is possible?

When asked why he believes that so many people are still skeptical of evolution theory and the atheist movement that has attached itself to the theory as their foundational belief system, Gallups responded, "I think it is because evolution has been weighed by true science and true facts, and it simply is deeply lacking in hard evidence. I am speaking of the kind of evidence that is foundational to evolution proposition."

Gallups offered the following as examples of his assertion: "The missing link between chimps and man has still not been found. Really! In over 150 years of desperately looking for it, we have no such fossil evidence. If evolution were true, we should have many such pieces of verifiable fossil evidence. Instead, we have none."

He continued, "Not one scientifically verifiable transitional fossil has been discovered proving that one kind of living thing eventually becomes another kind of living thing."

Further, he stated, "Never has a living organism been observed or demonstrated to arise from a non-living substance or conjoining of chemicals (which is the foundational premise of origins/evolution)."

"These," Gallups says, "go to the very foundation of evolution theory. If the foundation is so unstable and so lacking in real scientific evidence, how can the entire proposition declare itself to be settled science?"

Commenting on the Gallup poll, Gallups concludes, "It appears that 2012 is shaping up to be a bad year for evolutionists, atheists and the secular worldview. I pray that my book can at least be a small part in the process of disseminating truth."