Evolution as Efficiency Expert
Who would have thought that a lowly bacterium is a “master of industrial efficiency”? That’s what a researcher at the Weizmann Institute of Science called it. E. coli, the best-studied microbe, “can be thought of as a factory with just one product: itself,” a press release said. “It exists to make copies of itself, and its business plan is to make them at the lowest possible cost, with the greatest possible efficiency.”
Dr. Tsvi Tlusty at Weizmann marveled at the efficiency of the machinery in the factory: RNA polymerase, which transcribes DNA into messenger RNA, and ribosomes, which translate the RNA into proteins. He described with equations the optimum cost of construction of a bacterium. The model accurately predicted how the bacterium would alter its construction strategies under stress. Experiments showed that is what happens.
But then, Dr. Tlusty assigned its origin to chance – the opposite of efficiency: “Evolution, in other words, is a master efficiency expert for living factories, meeting any challenges that arise as production conditions change.” For personifying a mindless process, for breaking the Darwinist rules against teleology, and for stating self-contradictory nonsense, Tlusty has earned Stupid Evolution Quote of the Week.
The Weizmann Institute is located in Rehovot, Israel, within a triangle formed by ancient cities Gezer, Ashdod and Lydda. During the Bronze Age, this was a Canaanite area. In the Iron Age it was Philistine. Though Joshua passed through here briefly during the Conquest, and Solomon later made Gezer a fortified city, during much of its BC history it was a pagan cultural center on the north-south coastal highway through which Egyptian pharaohs and Mesopotamian conquerors passed.
Local Canaanite and Philistine priests attributed the wonders around them to their idols. They believed the wonders around them had emerged through the spirits of natural forces – the storm god Baal and his consort Ashtoreth. Even Israelites living in the area frequently compromised with the their pagan neighbors and joined in their idolatrous practices. They worshiped Baal and sacrificed their children to false gods. They persecuted the prophets of the Lord, who warned them of the evil of refusing to acknowledge their Maker and obey His word.
History repeats itself. Today’s apostate Israelites worship Baal-Charlie, the god of natural selection, and sacrifice to Ashtoreth-TinkerBaal, the goddess of sexual selection. They sacrifice their children to their idols in the public schools. They practice divination (07/26/2008, 10/09/2008). They think they are so smart and enlightened as they turn the glory of the Creator of the masterly-designed living things around them into offerings for their chosen idols, not realizing how silly they sound calling Evolution a master efficiency expert with a business plan. They have polluted this holy land with their pride and foolishness.
God is not mocked. Near Rehovot a long time ago, Philistines captured the Ark of the Covenant and placed it in front of their fish-idol Dagon (modern Tiktaalik) in the Temple of Dagon at Ashdod (I Samuel 5). The priests found their idol fallen over the next morning in obeisance to the Ark, a symbol of the true God, Maker of heaven and Earth. They set their idol up again, only to find it fallen once again the following morning with its head and hands broken off. Perhaps there’s a parable here for modern idolaters. Skip the Weizmann Institute and join the Wise Man institute. Wise men still seek Him. Wise men do better science.
