A popular narrative in secular Western culture goes like this. There was a time called The Dark Ages when religion reigned in Western civilization, and all people were benighted, miserable, and poor. Then came a Renaissance when ancient literature and languages were rediscovered after religion had ruined everything. Once Western thinkers realized that reason was the highest form of attaining knowledge, religion and God were superfluous. This period of time was of course called The Enlightenment. During these years math and science made great strides in knowledge and discovery, and it was obvious to Western educated elites that religion’s days were numbered because math and science could tell us everything we need to know about reality.
The fundamental assumption of secular elites, and the narrative pushed in many overt and covert ways, has been that the more science advances, the less plausible religion becomes, and one day it will fade into irrelevance. Unfortunately for these elites that is proving, for them, to be uncomfortably wrong. In fact, the explosion of scientific knowledge has completely turned this secularist narrative on its head! Why? Because the fundamental assumption upon which their worldview is based is proving increasingly implausible and impossible to defend. That would be materialism.
The secularist narrative assumes (it cannot be proved) that the material, matter, is all there is, and that this matter is blindly transformed by evolution to somehow produce everything that exists. As I put it they, with a straight face and in all seriousness, believe that everything came from nothing for no reason at all. Absurd, I know, but many or most of our “educated” secular Western elites believe exactly that.
One of the things I’ve loved doing with my kids over the years as a persuasive Christian parent, is to point out how utterly, completely, and totally ludicrous the materialist/atheist view of the universe is. Advances in scientific knowledge only make this job that much easier. A recent article at Evolution News and Science Today can help us do this. All I could think of as I was reading the insane complexity of tendons is, THERE IS A GOD!!! What else could explain such complexity? Chance? I don’t think so, and one would have to clutch at very flimsy atheistic straws to claim such a thing.
In the olden days when science thought cells were simple blobs of matter, atheism a la Darwinism could claim a certain amount of plausibility, but no longer. The growth in scientific knowledge is straining atheistic credibility to the breaking point. There are too many examples, and more every day, of science revealing a natural world that cannot explain itself exactly because of its complexity. What was once thought of as the simple tendon is a marvelous example. The article reviews a recent paper about tendons. The writers at one point say, “tendons appear to have evolved” their surprising characteristic . . . When you read this, you tell me chance is a plausible explanation:
Thinking like design engineers, the authors detect reasons for the ways the fibrils are wrapped and organized. Trade-offs are compromises made to optimize the highest design goal. In a laptop computer, for instance, light weight and battery life require trade-offs in disk size or screen dimensions. A “necessary trade-off” implies a design constraint. In positional tendons, we see a possible reason for susceptibility to mechanical disruption that would be catastrophic for energy-storing tendons. The body provides a workaround for the trade-off by creating a structure that facilitates repair and remodeling. Energy storing tendons cannot afford to be “down” as long, and so have a more robust “normal structure” at the nanoscale.
The nanoscale? And we’re supposed to believe per the materialists that tendons were not designed? That tendons do not have a telos, a purpose? If your child, or anybody for that matter, is having a hard time believing in an Almighty God, have them read this short article. Then ask them this simple question: Do you have a better explanation than a Creator God for the tendon? I didn’t think so.
Recent Comments