For more than a century, Darwinism has enjoyed a peculiar privilege. It is not merely taught as a scientific theory; it is treated as a final authority. Question it, and you are not mistaken — you are suspect, a heathen guilty of fidelity to first principles.

And yet the deeper one looks, the less sense it makes.

Darwinism is not merely incomplete; it is internally inconsistent. It claims to explain life while excluding what life most plainly displays.

Dr. J. Scott Turner, an American physiologist with decades of serious biological research behind him, is not a Bible-thumping believer or a culture-war activist. He is a scientist who followed the evidence where it led — and discovered that modern Darwinism could not follow him there, a conclusion he shared with me in a recent interview.

‘Marvelous contrivances’

The trouble, Turner explains, began with a quiet but decisive shift. Darwin’s original theory centered on organisms — living, striving creatures with what Darwin himself called “marvelous contrivances.” Modern Darwinism replaced them with something colder. Genes took center stage. Organisms were pushed aside.

Neo-Darwinism, Turner argues, became “a form of gene determinism embedded in a statistical framework that largely shoved organisms off the stage.” What disappeared with them were the qualities that make life recognizably alive: “intentionality, intelligence, and purposefulness.” What passed for progress was, in fact, reduction.

Christians have long sensed this loss, even without the language to name it. They were told that purpose was an illusion, design an accident, and meaning a projection — that life was nothing more than chemistry with better branding. Turner’s work shows what happens when that story is taken seriously.

Termite testimony

His research on termite colonies posed a problem Darwinism could not absorb. The termites were not merely adapting to their environment. They were building it — massive mounds precisely regulated for temperature and humidity, engineered for their own survival. The environment was not selecting them. They were shaping it.

“The old idea that organisms adapt to environments is only half the story,” Turner explains. “Organisms also adapt environments to themselves.” This is not unique to termites. Coral reefs, beaver dams, and human cities all tell the same story. Life has always been an active force, not a passive one.

Once organisms shape the conditions of their own survival, the Darwinian account begins to strain. Selection still operates, but it is no longer blind or passive. It is infused with preference — with direction, with desire.

Darwinism has no language for that.

Faced with obvious design — termite mounds, bird flight, the cantilevered structure of mammalian bones — modern Darwinism retreats into qualifiers. Design becomes “apparent” design. Purpose becomes “as if” purpose. Intelligence is reduced to coincidence wearing a lab coat.

RELATED: Science’s God-denying narrative just got crushed again

Mongkolchon Akesin/iStock/Getty Images Plus

Darwin vs. design

Turner refuses the dodge. “I couldn’t support the notion of ‘apparent’ design or ‘apparent’ intentionality any more,” he says. “These weren’t illusions. They were fundamental properties of life.”

That refusal has consequences.

Darwinism is not merely incomplete; it is internally inconsistent. It claims to explain life while excluding what life most plainly displays. It demands silence precisely where the evidence speaks.

This is why Turner concludes — without theatrics or bitterness — that Darwinism cannot be true. Not because evolution is false, but because Darwinism lacks the conceptual tools to describe what evolution actually entails.

The hardest line Darwinism draws is at meaning.

Turner is blunt about this. Darwinism’s deepest limitation is not scientific but metaphysical. It operates within what he calls an “epistemic bubble” — a closed system that refuses to admit evidence challenging its assumptions.

That is not how science advances. It is how dogma survives.

An overdue truce

Christians are often told that faith and science are natural enemies. Turner’s work suggests something more unsettling: the conflict was never necessary. It was constructed.

Between militant Darwinism and intelligent-design polemics lies a broad, neglected middle ground — one Turner openly occupies, along with scientists and philosophers like Stuart Kauffman and Terrence Deacon, as well as researchers working on the Extended Evolutionary Synthesis — who accept evolution while rejecting the dogma that purpose and agency are illusions.

Here, intelligence is neither smuggled in from theology nor erased by materialism. It is treated as a real feature of living systems.

This view has ancient roots. Turner describes himself as an Aristotelian — not an atomist, reducing life to particles and chance, nor a Platonist, locating purpose outside the world altogether. Aristotle began with what could be observed: living things striving toward ends. That vision sits comfortably alongside religious belief, which has always held that life is ordered, directed, and intelligible. Turner’s approach simply takes life as it appears — purposeful, directed, alive.

For Christians, this matters.

A world without purpose is corrosive. It erodes responsibility, dignity, and moral meaning. It tells us that desire is a delusion and intention an error — that life is busy, but empty.

Darwinism promised a grand explanation. What it delivered was a grand refusal. And yet faith remains — not as an intrusion, but as a witness to reality.

​Faith, J. scott turner, Evolution, Darwinism, Creationism, Christianity, Extended evolutionary synthesis, Interview 

Elementary school students in Kansas reportedly chose the likes of Jesus, President Donald Trump, and Charlie Kirk as role models during an assignment — but a guidance counselor reportedly squashed those picks, KWCH-TV reported.

The incident at Marshall Elementary School in Eureka took place in late October, the station said, citing a civil rights complaint the American Center for Law & Justice filed Tuesday.

‘This action undermines trust between schools, students, and parents.’

The ACLJ is representing a parent and an elementary school student in the case, KWCH said.

The station reported that a guidance counselor assigned sixth-grade students to call out their role models in a project called “Find Your Voice” while one student designated as a “student teacher” wrote the names on a board.

The ACLJ provided the following narrative of what it said happened, KWCH noted:

“When a student identified Charlie Kirk as a role model, [the guidance counselor] got very uncomfortable and refused to allow this name to be written on the board, yelling that he was ‘not a hero,’ and that he was not a role model. The student teacher had already started writing Charlie Kirk’s name on the board, and was ordered by [the guidance counselor] to remove it. When another student selected President Donald J. Trump as a role model, [the guidance counselor] reiterated her prohibition even more angrily, stating that students could not write political or religious figures on the board, and in fact excluded political and religious topics altogether. However, [the guidance counselor] permitted other controversial figures to be listed as heroes.”

The station said it spoke with a Eureka parent of a sixth-grade student who recalled that another student wanted Jesus as a role model, but that choice also was not allowed as part of the assignment.

RELATED: Yet another SoCal HS teacher allegedly embroiled in anti-Trump controversy — this time it’s over a student’s MAGA clothing

The ACLJ’s complaint accuses the school district of religious discrimination, political/viewpoint discrimination, violation of free speech rights, and retaliation, KWCH noted.

Oh, and the law firm also accused the powers that be of encouraging students to not tell their parents about the incident, the station said.

Specifically, the ACLJ called out “egregious conduct in engaging in viewpoint-based discrimination against students who identified conservative political figures as role models, and the subsequent directive instructing students not to report concerns to their parents,” KWCH reported.

In addition, the ACLJ maintained that while students were allowed to list whomever they wanted in their written assignments, they were prohibited from calling out the names of “religious or political heroes publicly on the board,” the station said.

The ACLJ further argued that “the selective prohibition created immediate confusion among students about whose voices were valued and whose were not,” KWCH said.

More from the station:

The group also called out school’s response to what happened, saying that the administration claimed that prohibiting political and religious figures from being discussed in the “Find Your Voice” activity was in the name of being “inclusive and neutral.”

The American Center for Law & Justice particularly took issue with an alleged instruction for students to bring concerns to teachers or the principal first, not directly to their parents.

The ACLJ said the directive “instructing children not to report concerns to their parents … violates fundamental principles of parental rights, educational ethics, and child safety,” KWCH added.

The Eureka school board reportedly addressed the issue during a Dec. 8 meeting and met in executive session, the station said. However, the ACLJ said “no public response was provided, no corrective action has been announced, and the violations continue to remain unaddressed,” KWCH reported.

U.S. Rep. Ron Estes of Kansas’ 4th Congressional District, which includes Eureka, shared the following on social media about the controversy, the station said:

“It’s alarming to hear of a Kansas teacher silencing students’ voices in the classroom. Schools shouldn’t be a place where a teacher’s political beliefs are forced onto students. This is a violation of their constitutional rights and does not represent Kansas schools’ fundamental principles.

“Parents should have the confidence in schools to allow their children to grow and engage in classrooms that support their children’s ideas and opinions. This action undermines trust between schools, students, and parents. I do not condone this type of political censorship in any school.”

Marshall Elementary School Principal Stacy Coulter noted the following in response to the civil rights complaint and a request to discuss the issue, KWCH reported:

“We are aware of this incident and are always working with families and our school staff to make sure every learning activity is a positive and encouraging experience for every student.

“We are unable to comment on the individuals involved because of our commitment to the privacy of our students and employees. This information is also protected by confidentiality laws. Thank you for your understanding.”

Like Blaze News? Bypass the censors, sign up for our newsletters, and get stories like this direct to your inbox. Sign up here!

​Civil rights complaint, American center for law and justice, Jesus, Charlie kirk, Donald trump, Elementary school students, Role models, Assignment, Kansas, Education, Discrimination, Politics