Dear Friends of the Kolbe Center,
Glory to Jesus Christ!
One of most painful experiences of my life has been to watch people in positions of authority use their power and influence to bully truth-seekers into submission to their institutions’ cherished myths. More often than not, decision-makers have been so thoroughly indoctrinated into myths like “molecules-to-man evolution,” that they sincerely believe the arguments that they make in favor of these fantasies. However, it is intensely liberating to realize that there is one childishly simple argument that exposes the fact that molecules-to-man evolution has no viable mechanism and that it requires its adherents to transgress the proper boundaries of natural science and descend into scientism.
Creation-Based Science vs. Evolution-Based Scientism
On the Feast of the Holy Transfiguration I will give a presentation on “Creation-Based Science vs. Evolution-Based-Scientism” at a venue arranged by the Credo organization in St. Louis. If you have family or friends in the St. Louis area, please encourage them to spread the word and to attend the event. It is quite providential that this presentation will take place on the Feast of the Holy Transfiguration, because the Gospel account of the Transfiguration holds the key to exposing the arrogance of a host of brilliant intellectuals of modern times who have formulated and exalted their own individual (and erroneous) interpretations of Holy Scripture without regard to Sacred Tradition.
One of the most important words in the New Testament appears only three times. It is the Greek word metamorpho. Translated as “transfiguration,” “transformation” or even as “changed,” the Greek word means a transformation of one kind of thing into another—hence, our English word “metamorphosis,” meaning a transformation like that of a caterpillar into a butterfly. The first use of the word occurs in St. Matthew’s Gospel, chapters 16 and 17. In Matthew 16:28, Jesus tells his Apostles, “There are some standing here who will not die until they see the Son of Man coming in His Kingdom.” Modernist Scripture scholars, like Alfred Loisy, saw in this remark proof positive that Jesus did not know what He was talking about—that He was wrong about the future. Had Loisy and his disciples respected the wisdom of the Church Fathers, they would have been able to explain the apparent failure of Jesus’ prediction. Indeed, the Fathers had found the fulfillment of Matthew 16 in the verses immediately following—perhaps all the more easily because their Gospel scrolls were not divided into chapters and verses:
And after six days Jesus took with him Peter and James and John his brother, and led them up a high mountain apart. And He was transfigured before them, and his face shone like the sun, and his garments became white as light (Matthew 17:1-2).
The Eastern Fathers of the Church understood that this was “the Son of Man coming in his Kingdom”: The manifestation of the divinity of Christ in his Humanity. And in the Byzantine Vesper Verses for the Feast of the Transfiguration, the Church still proclaims:
Through your transfiguration, You returned Adam’s nature to its original splendor, restoring its very elements to the glory and brilliance of Your Divinity. Wherefore we cry out to You, the Creator of All, “Glory be to You.”
Thus, the first use of the word metamorpho in the New Testament refers to the full manifestation of Christ’s Divinity in His Humanity. But the other two uses of the word do not refer to Christ. They refer to ordinary believers—like you and me.
“Be Transformed by the Renewal of your Mind”
In St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans, Chapter 11, St. Paul predicts the ultimate conversion of “all Israel” when the “fullness” of the Gentiles enter in to the Kingdom of God. This “fullness” can be interpreted in at least three different ways—as the total number of Gentiles who will be saved; as a representative number of Gentiles from every nation on earth; and as a remnant perfected by the Holy Spirit in whom the fullness of divinity dwells bodily as it did in Christ’s Humanity. It is this last interpretation that makes the most sense in relation to the verses that follow—because St. Paul begins his next section, Chapter 12, verses 1-2, by saying to his Gentile audience:
I appeal to you, therefore, brethren, by the mercies of God, to present your bodies as a living sacrifice, holy and acceptable to God, which is your spiritual worship. Be transformed (metamorpho) by the renewal of your mind that you may prove what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect (Romans 12:1-2).
Here the Holy Spirit, in and through St. Paul, applies the same word for the revelation of the Divinity of Christ in His Humanity to the manifestation of the Divinity of Christ in the humanity of His disciples. And lest this should scandalize anyone, St. Paul uses the word a second time, in the same sense—as if to remove all doubt about its meaning—in his second letter to the Corinthians. He writes:
We beholding the Lord are being changed (metamorpho) from one degree of glory into another, into His perfect image and likeness. This is the work of the Lord who is the Spirit (2 Corinthians 3:16-18).
In this passage St. Paul once again affirms that every Christian is called to be transformed into the perfect image and likeness of Christ, from one degree of holiness to another, by the power of the Holy Spirit. The Church Fathers clearly understood the similarity between the transformation to which all Christians are called and the transformation that takes place on the altar during the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass. This example highlights the fatal flaw in all evolutionary accounts of the origins of life and living things because it points to the supernatural, deliberate, and intelligent character of all creative acts.
In the Beginning Was Information
The first words of St. John’s Gospel tell us that “In the beginning was the Word.” With the discovery of DNA by Watson and Crick, these inspired words took on an even greater significance. Indeed, these opening words of the St. John’s Gospel actually sounded the death knell for the hypothesis of the natural origin of life from non-life and of all the different kinds of living things from one or a few one-celled organisms.
One of the first Catholic academic centers to recognize the importance of biological information in the origin and development of life was Gustav Siewerth Akademie, a small Catholic university founded by the German philosopher Dr. Alma Von Stockhausen. With the assistance of then-Bishop Josef Ratzinger, a life-long friend, Dr. Alma founded the Akademie in her parents’ summer home in 1988. As a fledgling university in an academic world in which molecules-to-man evolution reigned supreme as scientific orthodoxy, Gustav Siewerth Akademie distinguished itself early on as an oasis of original and independent thought on the subject.
A remarkable scholar of extraordinary academic accomplishments played a big part in making the Akademie one of the few Catholic universities in the world where the fatal flaws in the evolutionary hypothesis—in its theistic and atheistic forms—could be openly discussed. A. E. Wilder-Smith was a British scholar and three-star NATO general with three Ph.D.’s in different areas of physical science. As a visiting lecturer at the Akademie, he left an unforgettable impression on the whole community, as a great natural scientist and a magnificent teacher, who unashamedly professed his faith in the Word of God and in the doctrines of traditional Christianity, including the doctrine of special creation derived from the sacred history of Genesis.
In the years after the discovery of DNA, A. E. Wilder-Smith blazed a trail for other defenders of the Faith by recognizing that organic life could no longer be reduced to matter and energy—as so many natural scientists and philosophers had been trying to do since the days of Rene’ Descartes. Instead, Wilder-Smith pointed out that the coded information in the cells of all living things from bacteria to human beings proved that organic life could only be understood in terms of a trinity of matter, energy, and information. This amazing insight completely transformed the debate between the advocates for molecules-to-man evolution and the defenders of special creation because it was easy for Wilders-Smith to demonstrate that information is an immaterial entity—something that can only be produced by an intelligent mind with a free will. Indeed, only a mind could decide that a particular sequence of nucleotides would code for a particular amino acid; but only a free will could decide that this particular sequence of nucleotides X would code for amino acid Y. And only a Supreme Intellect and Will could provide the vast amounts of highly-ordered biological information to guide the development and activity of everything from a one-celled organism to the body of a human being.
In his recent book Evolution: Fact or Fiction, software engineer Greg Clovis has demonstrated that new discoveries in the field of genetics have only strengthened the case for the special creation of all things. When I was an undergraduate at Princeton University in the early 70’s, the consensus view in biology held that 98% of human DNA was “junk” left over from the millions of years of human evolution. Richard Dawkins went all over the world winning converts to atheism with this bogus claim, while most Catholic intellectuals remained silent or concurred. Yet when Project Encode studied the so-called “non-coding” DNA, scientists discovered that it’s not junk. It operates at a higher level of functioning than the DNA that codes for protein, often switching on and off genetic programs that enable plants and animals to adapt to changing environments.
We now know that the DNA sequences in the cells of all living things can be:
- Read in one direction to give a meaningful set of instructions
- Read in the opposite direction to give a different meaningful set of instructions
- That there is a pattern whereby every so many letters can be read to give a third set of meaningful instructions
- And the sequence can be translated into another language to give a fourth set of meaningful instructions.
No human being can create information at this level of density and complexity—and, as Greg Clovis has demonstrated, information this dense and complex cannot be improved by mutations. It can only degenerate. Thus, we know for certain that we are not evolving into Superman. We are devolving from an original state of perfection, just as God revealed in the sacred history of Genesis.
Male and Female He Created Them
One of the features of the biosphere that highlights the absurdity of hypothesizing a materialistic origin for the diversity of life is sexual differentiation. According to evolutionary mythology distinct male and female sexes evolved from asexual ancestors over a billion years ago, with the earliest evidence of sexual reproduction appearing in eukaryotes around 1.2 billion years ago (e.g., Bangiomorpha pubescens). This astonishing claim has become the consensus view in Catholic as well as non-Catholic academia, not because anyone has offered a scintilla of evidence for it, but because it has been repeated with so much confidence for so long that the intellectual elite has been programmed to believe it without evidence. According to a recent article in Psychology Today:
Life on Earth began with simple asexual organisms, such as bacteria and single-celled eukaryotes, reproducing by binary fission or budding. These processes involved no mates and produced genetically identical offspring. This efficiency raises the question: Why evolve the more complex and costly mechanism of sexual reproduction? Research suggests that the key advantage of sexual reproduction lies in genetic diversity, which increases adaptability in changing environments (Crow and Kimura, 1965). However, in those earliest days, only one reproductive type existed—a precursor to what we might now identify as “female.”
As sexual reproduction evolved, particularly in fungi and protists, a crucial innovation occurred: the development of gametes (Heitman, 2015). Initially, these gametes were isogamous—morphologically identical. Over time, anisogamy developed, leading to distinct gametes: large, resource-rich eggs and small, motile sperm. The egg, which carries most of the cytoplasm and nutrients necessary for embryonic development, resembles what we associate with female reproductive cells today. The sperm evolved later as a means to enhance dispersal and fusion probability. From this model, the female role—egg provider—can be considered evolutionarily primary (Baker and Parker, 1973).
It all sounds so reasonable, doesn’t it? But if we shake ourselves out of the hypnotic trance that this kind of scientistic propaganda induces, we may pluck up the courage to ask how the asexual organisms “discovered” the advantages of genetic diversity so that they could conveniently “evolve” the new genetic code for radically different but complementary mechanisms for sexual reproduction between male and female forms of the same kind of organism! To even describe the intelligent steps required for such a coordinated transformation from an asexual organism into complementary male and female descendants of the asexual organism capable of sexual reproduction defies the capabilities of the most knowledgeable natural scientists in the world. Yet we are supposed to believe that this transformation took place through unguided material processes.
The Alleged Plasticity of Sex and the Evolutionary Add-On of Males
In the almost three-quarters of a century since DNA was discovered, the evolution-believing scientific community has failed to produce a single example of a genetic mutation or any other material process that has added new functional biological information to the genome of any plant, animal, or human. Under examination, all of the so-called “beneficial mutations” that students are forced to read about in their biology textbooks turn out to be instances of an organism losing one or more functions for some kind of short-term gain. In a recent newsletter, our chief biologist Pamela Acker analyzed one of the “best” examples of an allegedly “new” function arising through genetic mutation—an example cited by Catholic theistic evolutionist Dr. Kenneth Miller, among others. She showed that, like Lenski’s celebrated E. coli mutations, the mutations initiated by evolutionary biologist Barry Hall did not actually evolve anything new. The mutations merely de-regulated an existing function to the overall detriment of the organism. As Pamela Acker explained:
Briefly, Hall “knocked out” the ability of E. coli to metabolize lactose by deleting the lacZ gene. This gene codes for a protein called beta-galactosidase, which breaks lactose down into the simple sugars glucose and galactose. (The term beta-galactosidase is also used generally to refer to any enzyme that can break down a disaccharide that includes the sugar galactose.) When Hall plated these knockout bacteria on lactose medium, within a few days a colony of bacteria arose that was able to metabolize lactose – despite still not having a functional lacZ gene. So they regained a function that they had lost, but in this case it was not from the restoration of the lacZ gene, but from a different gene altogether, named ebg. This gene produced a protein in the mutated bacteria which has the designation ebgA, and was able to catalyze enough lactose to keep the bacteria alive on the growth medium.
This function, however, is by no means new for the gene and protein in question. The original unmutated ebg protein, designated ebgO, was found to have catalytic activity on lactose when it was purified from the bacterial cells – in other words, the enzyme possessed a pre-existing ability to metabolize lactose (and also several other related sugars) and was ALREADY a beta-galactosidase. Its ability to break down lactose was just insufficient in the un-mutated gene to keep the bacteria alive; the point mutation that resulted in the “new function” only allowed the enzyme to bind more efficiently to that particular sugar. Even that efficiency was compromised, however, as the mutants grew 6-21 times slower than the wild type bacteria that produced normal beta-galactosidase.
Amphibian to Reptile Evolution: A Test Case
Now let us consider the amount of new functional biological information that would have been required for the evolution of reptiles from amphibians in standard evolutionary mythology. According to evolutionist Mark Jerome Walters:
When animals left the sea . . . they were deprived of the wet environment required by egg and sperm. So instead of depositing sperm and egg directly in the water, many land animals adopted a means of internal fertilization, depositing gametes in a sequestered internal environment.
It sounds so simple, doesn’t it? But just how did land animals “adopt” a means of internal fertilization? It’s not as if they could go to a local hardware store and purchase a completely different set of organs for the male and female members of their kind to support an entirely new way of reproducing themselves. The amphibians could not “adopt” new organs, structures, and microbiotics that didn’t exist without first producing the genetic code for their production and actually producing them in their bodies. Consider the amniotic egg of the reptile which Michael Denton reminds us “is vastly more complex and utterly different to that of an amphibian. There are hardly two eggs in the whole animal kingdom which differ more fundamentally.” In the words of author F. La Gard Smith:
How . . . could the first amniotic egg ever have come into existence by a process of gradual change from the radically-different reproductive system of amphibians? Until a land animal itself comes into being (in Generation One), it can’t possibly adopt a means of internal fertilization (to produce Generation Two).
In keeping with His divine plan for the human family, the Creator revealed categorically that He directly created His creatures “male and female” from the beginning of creation, and that He created the first man, St. Adam, to be the spiritual head of his wife and of the whole human family. Evolutionary mythology, on the other hand, in a satanic inversion of reality, asserts that sexual reproduction “evolved” through a purely material process that produced females first and males from females. Psychology Today pontificates:
Supporting this, many ancient organisms reproduce solely through eggs, including certain reptiles, amphibians, and insects that can perform parthenogenesis—development from unfertilized eggs. Alligators provide a modern glimpse into how gender is environmentally influenced. Their sex is not genetically fixed at conception but is determined by the temperature during egg incubation. At around 30°C, more females emerge; at around 33°C, more males are born. This plasticity implies that sex differentiation is a flexible evolutionary trait (Geary, 1998).
Such biological evidence undermines the claim that males are biologically dominant or original. Instead, the male role evolved as an addition, possibly to increase gene mixing and enhance species survival in varied ecosystems. Males carry genetic traits from both lineages and serve as vectors of genetic novelty. Still, their existence represents a strategic adaptation rather than a foundational necessity (Engelstädter, 2008).
The evolutionary emergence of the male sex did not create new life from nothing—it was built upon the biological systems already perfected by asexual or female-dominant organisms. As the genetic mixing benefits of sex became apparent, organisms with differentiated sexes (male and female) came to dominate, especially among vertebrates. Yet, the female role retained its primacy in reproduction. Even in humans, the female reproductive system is more complex and central, capable of nurturing life independently for weeks before the male contribution becomes relevant.
So: The high priests of evolution not only demand that we believe in the marvelous transformation of asexual organisms through an unguided step by step process into perfectly designed pairs of complementary male and female organisms capable of reproduction. They do so without being able to point to a SINGLE EXAMPLE of a mutation or a suite of mutations in any group of plants, animals, or humans that has produced a single new biological function! Then, to add insult to injury, the high priests of mainstream Catholic and secular academia demand that we offer a pinch of incense to their claim that males evolved from females, just to ensure that we renounce once and for all God’s Revelation that “from the beginning He made them male and female” and that He created St. Adam first, as a type of Our Lord Jesus Christ, to be the loving head of his wife and of the whole human family.
“What God Has Joined Together”
It is mind-boggling to think that any Catholic could question the creation of all things at the beginning of time when the Creator of the universe told us so plainly that He created our first parents at “the beginning of creation”:
And the Pharisees coming to him asked Him: Is it lawful for a man to put away his wife? tempting Him. 3 But He answering, saith to them: What did Moses command you? 4 Who said: Moses permitted to write a bill of divorce, and to put her away. 5 To whom Jesus answering, said: Because of the hardness of your heart he wrote you that precept. 6 But from the beginning of the creation, God made them male and female. 7 For this cause a man shall leave his father and mother; and shall cleave to his wife. 8 And they two shall be in one flesh. Therefore now they are not two, but one flesh. 9 What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder.
Just as God made St. Adam to be the head of his wife and of the whole human family as a foreshadowing of Our Lord Jesus Christ, the Head of His Immaculate Bride the Church, so He established Theology as the Queen of the Sciences to rule over the lower sciences and keep them within their proper boundaries. When so-called Enlightenment thinkers gradually succeeded in persuading the intellectual elite of the Christian world to abandon the Creation-Providence Framework and to embrace their naturalistic framework, even the Catholic academic elite began to exalt the consensus view in fallible natural science above the Word of God as it had been understood and proclaimed in the Church from the beginning. In this way the harmonious hierarchy of the sciences that God in His Church had “joined together” under the glorious queenship of Theology was “put asunder” by revolutionary men, many of whom have been appointed to the highest offices in the Church. Thus, the prophetic words of St. Paul in his Letter to the Romans are now being fulfilled in the theological faculties of the most prestigious pontifical universities in the Eternal City:
[T]he wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and injustice of those men that detain the truth of God in injustice: 19 Because that which is known of God is manifest in them. For God hath manifested it unto them. 20 For the invisible things of Him, from the creation of the world, are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made; His eternal power also, and divinity: so that they are inexcusable. 21 Because that, when they knew God, they have not glorified Him as God, or given thanks; but became vain in their thoughts, and their foolish heart was darkened. 22 For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools. 23 And they changed the glory of the incorruptible God into the likeness of the image of a corruptible man, and of birds, and of fourfooted beasts, and of creeping things.
24 Wherefore God gave them up to the desires of their heart, unto uncleanness, to dishonour their own bodies among themselves. 25 Who changed the truth of God into a lie; and worshipped and served the creature rather than the Creator, who is blessed for ever. Amen.
26 For this cause God delivered them up to shameful affections. For their women have changed the natural use into that use which is against nature. 27 And, in like manner, the men also, leaving the natural use of the women, have burned in their lusts one towards another, men with men working that which is filthy, and receiving in themselves the recompense which was due to their error.
28 And as they liked not to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not convenient; 29 Being filled with all iniquity, malice, fornication, avarice, wickedness, full of envy, murder, contention, deceit, malignity, whisperers, 30 Detractors, hateful to God, contumelious, proud, haughty, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, 31 Foolish, dissolute, without affection, without fidelity, without mercy. 32 Who, having known the justice of God, did not understand that they who do such things, are worthy of death; and not only they that do them, but they also that consent to them that do them (Romans 1:18-32).
Through the prayers of the Mother of God, of Good St. Joseph, and of all the Holy Angels and Saints, may the Holy Ghost deliver us from all evil and error and lead us into all the Truth!
In Domino,
Hugh Owen
P.S. If you have never watched the short videos on the Kolbe website—designed especially for young people who grow restless after ten minutes of sustained attention—the utter absurdity of the evolutionary account of the origins of man and the universe is powerfully illustrated in the video “Almighty God or Mad Scientist?” at this link.
P.P.S. Today is a First Saturday. Please be sure to answer Our Lady’s appeal for the First Saturday devotions as described by the Fatima Center at this link.
