Page 177 - The Errors the American National Academy of Sciences

The NAS's Error in Portraying Molecular Biology as
Evidence of Evolution

these terms:
The hold of the evolutionary paradigm is so powerful that an idea
which is more like a principle of medieval astrology than a serious
twentieth-century scientific theory has become a reality for evolu-
tionary biologists. 58

No matter how much the concept of the molecular clock is given
an extraordinary scientific and technical gloss, it is still, as Denton has
made clear, the product of circular reasoning and actually explains
nothing. That is because in order to construct a molecular clock, one
must first accept the claim that living things descended from a com-
mon ancestor. Evolutionists first construct molecular clocks on the

basis of their preconception, and then use them, just as the NAS au-
thors do, as proof of descent from a common ancestor. Phillip Johnson
describes how evolutionists seek to impress people with this theory,
which may look very scientific, but is in reality an empty shell:

Darwinists regularly cite the molecular clock findings as the deci-
sive proof that "evolution is a fact." The clock is just the kind of thing
that intimidates non-scientists: it is forbiddingly technical, it seems
to work like magic, and it gives impressively precise numerical fig-
ures. It comes from a new branch of science unknown to Darwin, or
even to the founders of the neo-Darwinian synthesis, and the scien-
tists say that it confirms independently what they have been telling
us all along. The show of high-tech precision distracts attention
from the fact that the molecular clock hypothesis assumes the valid-
ity of the common ancestry thesis which it is supposed to confirm. 59
As Johnson makes clear, the complex-appearing calculations that
so impress people cause them to believe that the molecular clock is a
scientific hypothesis that actually illuminates extraordinary truths.

The fact is, however, as we have already seen, that the concept of the
molecular clock employs circular reasoning, and is incapable of pro-

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