Wednesday, September 4, 2002

What evolutionists will never admit: It's on faith

I see this phrase "pseudo-science" all too frequently as it relates to the debate over evolution versus intelligent design. The argument usually goes like this: Because intelligent design involves belief in a creator it is inherently unscientific that is, it cannot be accommodated within the framework of a theory where only natural processes can be considered. Therefore any notion of intelligent design must be categorically discarded.

The problem with this dismissive attitude is that we see evidence of design in all living things and throughout the universe. Yet the only scientifically acceptable cause for such design is randomness and chance.

Darwin himself found it difficult to grasp how an organ as complex as the eye could have evolved by a series of small random mutations. Remember, in evolutionary theory, each mutation must have brought about an advantage to the species allowing it to triumph over those that didn't have the beneficial mutation. This is "natural selection and survival of the fittest."

Since the eye is composed of numerous complex components, the elimination of any single structure, such as the retina, would render the eye useless. It would seem that for the eye to have been an advantage to the evolving organism that it would need to have been fully formed in one rapid sweeping series of chance mutations. Otherwise a partially constructed eye would have offered no advantage and the mutation would have been harmful rather than helpful to the evolving organism.

Those who guide our science curriculum prefer to think that an evolutionary scenario leading to a fully functioning eye is more scientific as a collection of random mutations that just happen to coincidentally produce a highly complex structure. And yet when the possibility of purposeful design is invoked, the student gets an F or the teacher gets fired or denied tenure.

Why? Because it is "unscientific". But I think the problem goes deeper. The truth of the matter is that both evolution AND intelligent design qualify as "pseudo-science" because they both deal with past events that cannot be observed in the present.

Science is a study of the here and now. It tries to understand how and why things work. It develops a set of hypotheses that become theories and ultimately known as the laws which govern our physical universe. Without understanding the laws of aerodynamics there would be no Delta Airlines.

A theory becomes a law because every time, without fail, when the theory is tested, the same result occurs. You wouldn't get into a jet if that were not the case. In the same way every theory starts out as a hypothesis that becomes a theory after much testing and proof of its validity. Each hypothesis must be able to be proven true or false. It cannot remain in some ambivalent gray area. The ability to falsify a hypothesis is key to the scientific method.

Darwin hypothesized that the fossil evidence would eventually prove his theory to be true. After 150 years of paleontology, there have been virtually no transitional fossils found to support "gradualism" as Darwin's theory has come to be known. The last big find was a "transitional" bird from China that turned out to be a hoax.

So blatant is the lack of fossil evidence that most paleontologists now support a theory popularized by the late Stephen J. Gould of Harvard known as "Punctuated Equilibrium." This new twist says that evolution didn't happen gradually but in very rapid spurts so fast that it didn't have time to leave a trail of fossils.

Isn't that convenient? The lack of transitional fossils has effectively falsified gradualism according to Darwin's own measure. Why isn't that in your tenth grade biology text? Instead, an alternative theory is proposed that can never be falsified or verified. How is this even a hypothesis? It's not, it is conjecture or as some would say pseudo-science.

Proponents of evolution talk of insects becoming resistant to pesticides or bacteria becoming resistant to drugs as evidence of evolution. This is pure semantics. Every organism has the ability to adapt to its environment and be well within the genetic capabilities of the organism. But how adaptation can then be offered as proof of evolution on a macro level stretches logic to the breaking point. Because bacteria become resistant to drugs is a proof that all living things on the planet evolved from a common ancestor? Can the "evidence" get any more anemic?

Here is the bottom line that no evolutionist wants to admit. Both intelligent design and evolution are based on faith.

A science writer reviewing Stephen J. Gould's book, "The Burgess Shale," wrote, "One of the ways we have lived with Darwinism, and the knowledge that the biblical story of creation is at best metaphor, is the reassurance that Nature herself embodied a god-like plan, leading inevitably to ourselves."

What can be clearer? It's OK to believe that nature has a god-like plan, but we dare not call it creation or intelligent design. Somehow nature's plan has to be completely determined by randomness and chance, otherwise it's "religion."

The origin of life is a religious question in the first place that can never be answered with science. To see things in the present and then make untestable, unprovable assumptions about the past is not science it's faith.

I would like to see some intellectual honesty. Don't teach my kids a picture-perfect story of evolution that has little basis in actual proven facts. Teach the controversy. There is much conflicting evidence, there are facts that can be interpreted in different ways and facts that are nothing more than fabrications that still show up in the text books.

The truth is that, in accordance with the rules of the scientific method, evolution has never moved beyond the stage of an unproven hypothesis.

Either teach the subject with all the controversy, both pro and con, or don't teach it at all. Anything short of a full discussion representing all sides of the debate is deliberate distortion and manipulation.

Russ Breault

Peachtree City


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