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tion has persisted, and many botanists hered since the 1920s has proven that the
have concluded that the problem is not universe came into being from nothing
capable of solution, by use of fossil evi- at a particular point in time called the
dence. 23
Big Bang. That is, the universe is not
And Daniel Isaac Axelrod’s article, eternal, but was created from nothing.
“The Evolution of Flowering Plants,” (See Big Bang Theory.)
had this to say: In the first half of the 20th century,
Georges Politzer became a great suppor-
The ancestral group that gave rise to an-
giosperms has not yet been identified in ter of materialism and Marxism. In his
the fossil record, and no living angios- book, Elementary Principles of Philo-
perm points to such an ancestral allian- sophy, he came out in favor of the model
ce. 24 of an eternal universe, as opposed to one
that was created:
The fact that the fossil record of an-
giosperms reveals no evolutionary an- The universe was not a created object. If
cestor, and that such highly complex li- it were, then it would have to be created
ving things such as flowering plants ca- instantaneously by God and brought into
me into being all at once is an indication existence from nothing. To admit creati-
on, one has to admit, in the first place,
that they were created.
the existence of a moment when the uni-
verse did not exist, and that something
Inorganic evolution came out of nothingness. This is somet-
hing to which science cannot accede. 25
Inorganic evolution attempts to exp-
In supporting the idea of the eternal
lain by chance processes the formation
universe, he thought that science was on
of the world and the universe before the
his side. But before long, science called
appearance of living things.
Politzer’s bluff: To admit creation, one
Those who try to explain everything
has to admit . . . that something came out
in terms of evolution espouse the mate-
of nothingness. In other words, the uni-
rialist proposition that the universe has
verse did have a beginning.
existed forever (that it was never crea-
ted) and that it is a product of chance,
with no plan, design or purpose. Evolu- Anthropic Principle, the
th
tionists in the 19 century, with its pri-
One of the several claims demolis-
mitive scientific level of achievement,
th
hed by 20 -century science is that of
actively supported this view, but its cla-
th
ims were invalidated in the 20 century. chance. Research conducted since the
1960s has shown that all the physical ba-
The idea of an eternal universe was
lances in the solar system—indeed, in
first to be abandoned. Information gat-
the entire universe—have been very fi-
THE EVOLUTION IMPASSE I