Students Question Darwinian Evolution on Campus

Although it claims to hold true to the most unshakable principles of biology and anatomy, evolution falls far short of adhering to any sound scientific doctrine. In fact, the progression of science, instead of validating Darwin's hypothesis, casts a very dark shadow upon his theory. Advances in genetics and molecular biology bring to light facts that cannot be explained using evolutionary theories and, indeed, raise more questions than answers. These barricades to evolution are indestructible because they are founded on the absolute and irrefutable truth of the existence of God proven by Saint Thomas Aquinas; and to justify their beliefs, Darwin's followers often delve into the illogical and the absurd.

There is no better way to understand this than by experiencing it first hand, on a campaign. TFP volunteer Cesar Franco was handing out the TFP flier, "Who really believes Darwin?" when a self-proclaimed pagan came up to him and began criticizing the flier, sparking a debate. Affirming that nothing can be proven with absolute certainty, she began to assert that evolution is certain. Caught in blatant contradiction, she began to deny absolute truth. To this denial, Mr. Franco said, "If I flip a coin in the air, I can say with absolute certainty that it will come back down." She responded, "That's not true! There is an infinitesimal chance that the coin will float out into space." Stuck in a web of inconsistent arguments and dead-end reasoning, the woman departed.

Natural selection, which, according to Darwin, is the process by which an organism keeps traits that favor its propagation and discards those which are detrimental, is not consistent in the development of certain animals. The giraffe, for example, with its elongated neck, has an extremely powerful heart which exerts a tremendous amount of force in order to pump blood up to its brain. This pressure is so strong that when the animal lowers its head to drink, the force behind the blood would cause a cerebral aneurism were it not for a special mechanism that lessens the force behind the blood, allowing the animal to bend its head down to a watering hole. But, if natural selection takes generations to successfully adapt traits in a species, then the giraffe would have surely died off long before this mechanism was developed. When confronted with this question several students simply stated that science did not have an answer. This hole in their reasoning, however, did not deter their affirmation that evolution is still more plausible than Intelligent Design.

At the end of the day, TFP Student Action members handed out hundreds of fliers and did a radio interview for the student radio network at Gettysburg College. After debating with students for several hours, no logical argument was raised which could prove macroevolution. Quite to the contrary, proponents of Darwin's theory cast more doubt on the issue.