The mainstream scientific community proclaims that evolution is a fact, as well established as the fact that the earth goes round the sun. Dissenters from the orthodoxy are presented by the media as extreme religious fanatics who reject Darwinism solely on the basis of emotional appeals to the Bible. Some evolutionary scientists appear to be sympathetic toward religion, even if they themselves are not theists, and assert that evolution and religion are compatible. They claim that science and religion are different, deal with different questions, and should not encroach on each other's territory. Creationists are seen as attacking science itself, their irrational objections to evolution all the more unintelligible in light of the fact that evolution and religion are compatible anyway.

The effect has been to protect the theory of evolution from scrutiny. The arguments of those who find fault with evolution are dismissed as "religion" and for those who might be doubtful, the "both are compatible" strategy convinces many that a critical examination of the evidence is not necessary. However, one does not need to follow the creation/evolution controversy for long to notice that those very same evolutionists who claim that evolution and religion are compatible maintain that the idea of God's existence is itself a product of evolution. And if, as Steven Jay Gould has written, science deals with factual reality while religion struggles with morality, why do evolutionary scientists claim authority on a whole host of moral issues, such as abortion, infanticide and rape? And if God isn't factually real, then what basis is there for religion?

Often Darwinism is communicated to the public in such a vague way that one might get the impression that evolutionists actually find it plausible that God created the world through evolution. On closer examination, and from the example of outspoken atheists like Richard Dawkins, it becomes clear that Darwinism proposes that God had nothing to do with creating at all. Many Christians seem to think that the theory of evolution teaches that the Genesis account of creation is a myth, and stops there. They have devised all kinds of techniques of getting round this, and there is no end of interpretations of Genesis that have been suggested. However, the theory really teaches that the whole concept of creation is a myth, and this is where Darwinism's power lies.

Unbeknownst to the general public, while the scientific community declares that evolution is a fact, evolutionists within that community do hold differing opinions. For instance, some look at the fossil record and explain the lack of transitional forms by declaring the record to be hopelessly incomplete, consisting of mere snapshots from enormously long stretches of time. This was Darwin's approach. Others declare that a lack of transitional forms is to be expected, that it would even be predicted by evolution rightly understood. However, all agree that the variation required for evolution to occur is random and many use the theory to justify atheism. Often evolutionists will say that evolution is not really a random process because natural selection preserves the fittest organisms. However, this is a fudge. The variation is supposed to be random; therefore it is essentially a random process.

In fact, this randomness is of great importance because it is precisely this element of the two-fold mechanism which is used to support and justify atheism. A God-guided evolutionary process, or a process whereby the potential for variation was not random but was already "built in" to the organism, would not support the view that the existence of life, especially man, can be explained without reference to God.

It is this randomness that Dr. Spetner seeks to refute in his book. The book is technical, and deals with mathematical probabilities, genetics and the like, but I have no background in the natural sciences and I could follow Dr.Spetner's argument without difficulty. When it comes to the subject of probabilities, he provides analogies so that one can at least get some kind of grasp of how minuscule the probabilities are.

The book begins with a good concise overview of the history of the argument from design and ideas about evolution, which establishes the context for what is to follow. The layout is logical and explains the Neo-Darwinian Theory well, so that it is not necessary to have an intimate knowledge of Darwinism to begin with.

When I was younger I used to read a lot of thrillers, but nowadays I confine myself to non-fiction. I also used to read a lot of Michael Crichton (author of Jurassic Park) books, which were always a blend of science and action. This book took me back to the days of reading such books; from the start there was a buzz of anticipation as I realised that Dr. Spetner was unveiling something very important, something that a lot of people will find philosophically threatening. This was the excitement. And the science? I have read books that refute evolution before. What made this book different was that Dr. Spetner calculates. Without calculations, whether one can believe in evolution or not may in a large part be subjective. But when one sees the impossibility - and I use that word in its extreme sense - of Darwinism mathematically then it is different, and rather than the dissenter being ridiculed for doubting evolution, the evolutionist must be shamed for not believing mathematics.

The main premise of the book is that if macroevolution has occurred, it could not have come about randomly. That is, the favourable genetic mutations required for natural selection to accumulate could not appear by chance. Dr. Spetner makes some very important points, such as that if evolution occurred in small groups (the punctuated equilibrium model), so that favourable mutations could spread through the population more quickly, the probability of a favourable mutation occurring in the group will be smaller because there are less organisms to develop a mutation. Of course, the only reason the punctuated equilibrium model exists is because of the lack of transitional fossils. Often Dr. Spetner demonstrates the kind of critical thinking skills that I admire. A section on the nature of Darwin's arguments in the Origin of Species (which I have read) was a real eye-opener and also explained some things I had noticed but couldn't quite articulate.

I don't really want to spoil the book for you, but here's an example of one of Dr. Spetner's conclusions (based on a quantitative analysis):

"If copying errors are the variation of the NDT [Neo-Darwinian theory], then the theory predicts the important events of evolution to be nearly impossible. If a theory predicts events to be nearly impossible then one cannot justifiably say that it explains those events." [Page 120]

Dr. Spetner goes into a lot of detail about the information contained in organisms' DNA and states that if Darwinism really purports to explain the origin of life, it must explain how the information gets into the genome. Suffice to say, evolutionists are unable to meet the challenge. Dr. Spetner devotes a chapter to refuting Richard Dawkins, and his weasel, which I unashamedly confess I found entertaining.

Debunked "examples" of evolution such as the peppered moth quietly fade into the background, but evolutionists claim that we now have powerful evidence of evolution we can observe taking place. Bacteria developing resistance to antibiotics and insects becoming resistant to insecticides are commonly offered as proof of evolution, but Dr. Spetner shows that in all such examples, information is lost from the genome. In order for evolution (in the molecule to man sense) to occur, information needs to be built up. He writes:

"Whoever thinks macroevolution can be made by mutations that lose information is like the merchant who lost a little money on every sale but thought he could make it up on volume." [Page 160]

To summarize, this book was hard to put down and when I read it I was on holiday so I didn't put it down. It was thoroughly enjoyable and, more than that, it was important. I currently have a growing collection of books refuting evolution, but the reason I bought this one was because of the negative reviews it had received on the Amazon website. The reviewers objected to Dr. Spetner's conclusions on the basis of their (the reviewers') religious prejudices (Dr. Spetner is Jewish; the book is published by a reputable Jewish publishing house) and by use of allegedly unintelligible gibberish. But no one has been able to refute the book scientifically, and if evolution is truly "science" and not "religion", this is what evolutionists must do.

I don't think it is possible to overstate the significance that the examples of bacteria and insects do not offer evidence of macroevolution because they do not add information to the genome, especially when these examples continue to promoted strongly by Darwinists as proof of their theory. Dr. Spetner documents that there are no examples of adaptations that add information, and I am glad to say he goes further:

"Not even one mutation has been observed that adds a little information to the genome. That surely shows that there are not the millions upon millions of potential mutations the theory demands...The failure to observe even one mutation that adds information is more than just a failure to find support for the theory. It is evidence against the theory." [Page 160]

The above excerpt reminded me of a quote in Phillip Johnson's Darwin On Trial. The statement is by evolutionist Niles Eldredge:

"...But insofar as evolution itself is concerned, paleontologists usually saw stasis as "no results" rather than as a contradiction of the prediction of gradual, progressive evolutionary change." [Johnson, Darwin on Trial, Page 60]

If more evolutionists recognised evidence not supporting the theory as evidence against the theory, and acknowledged that evolution can't be random, then who knows where it would end? Similarities between different organisms are attributed to either common ancestry or convergence. In this book, Dr. Spetner shows that convergence is impossible, if variation is indeed random. If evolutionists could accept Dr. Spetner's conclusions, however philosophically threatening, who knows where it could lead? Maybe similarities could be due to that long tabooed concept of common design. How many of the assumptions of evolutionists rest entirely upon the presupposition of atheism? How might the evidence be interpreted differently if assumptions changed?

I began this review with a discussion of the religious/philosophical implications of evolution, and I end with an appropriate quote. At the end of the chapter refuting Richard Dawkins, Dr. Spetner writes:

"There may be good reasons for being an atheist, but the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution isn't one of them." [Page 174]