-Caveat Lector-
The Wall Street Journal
August 16, 1999
Commentary
The Church of Darwin
By Phillip E. Johnson, professor of law at the University of
California, Berkeley, and the author of "Darwin on Trial"
(Intervarsity Press, 1993)._
A Chinese paleontologist lectures around the world saying that recent
fossil finds in his country are inconsistent with the Darwinian theory
of evolution. His reason: The major animal groups appear abruptly in
the rocks over a relatively short time, rather than evolving gradually
from a common ancestor as Darwin's theory predicts. When this conclusion
upsets American scientists, he wryly comments: "In China we can
criticize Darwin but not the government. In America you can criticize
the government but not Darwin."
That point was illustrated last week by the media firestorm that
followed the Kansas Board of Education's vote to omit macro-evolution
from the list of science topics which all students are expected to
master. Frantic scientists and educators warned that Kansas students
would no longer be able to succeed in college or graduate school, and
that the future of science itself was in danger. The New York Times
called for a vigorous counteroffensive, and the lawyers prepared their
lawsuits. Obviously, the cognitive elites are worried about something a
lot more important to themselves than the career prospects of Kansas
high school graduates.
Two Definitions
The root of the problem is that "science" has two distinct definitions
in our culture. On the one hand, science refers to a method of
investigation involving things like careful measurements, repeatable
experiments, and especially a skeptical, open-minded attitude that
insists that all claims be carefully tested. Science also has become
identified with a philosophy known as materialism or scientific
naturalism. This philosophy insists that nature is all there is, or at
least the only thing about which we can have any knowledge. It follows
that nature had to do its own creating, and that the means of creation
must not have included any role for God. Students are not supposed to
approach this philosophy with open-minded skepticism, but to believe it
on faith.
The reason the theory of evolution is so controversial is that it is the
main scientific prop for scientific naturalism. Students first learn
that "evolution is a fact," and then they gradually learn more and more
about what that "fact" means. It means that all living things are the
product of mindless material forces such as chemical laws, natural
selection, and random variation. So God is totally out of the picture,
and humans (like everything else) are the accidental product of a
purposeless universe. Do you wonder why a lot of people suspect that
these claims go far beyond the available evidence?
All the most prominent Darwinists proclaim naturalistic philosophy when
they think it safe to do so. Carl Sagan had nothing but contempt for
those who deny that humans and all other species "arose by blind
physical and chemical forces over eons from slime." Richard Dawkins
exults that Darwin "made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled
atheist," and Richard Lewontin has written that scientists must stick to
philosophical materialism regardless of the evidence, because "we cannot
allow a Divine Foot in the door." Stephen Jay Gould condescendingly
offers to allow religious people to express their subjective opinions
about morals, provided they don't interfere with the authority of
scientists to determine the "facts"-one of the facts being that God is
merely a comforting myth.
There are a lot of potential dissenters. Sagan deplored the fact that
"only nine percent of Americans accept the central finding of biology
that human beings (and all the other species) have slowly evolved from
more ancient beings with no divine intervention along the way." To keep
the other 91% quiet, organizations like the National Academy of Sciences
periodically issue statements about public school teaching which contain
vague reassurances that "religion and science are separate realms," or
that evolutionary science is consistent with unspecified "religious
beliefs."
What these statements mean is that the realms are separate because
science discovers facts and religion indulges fantasy. The acceptable
religious beliefs they have in mind are of the naturalistic kind that do
not include a supernatural creator who might interfere with evolution or
try to direct it. A great many of the people who do believe in such a
creator have figured this out, and in consequence the reassurances
merely insult their intelligence.
So one reason the science educators panic at the first sign of public
rebellion is that they fear exposure of the implicit religious content
in what they are teaching. An even more compelling reason for keeping
the lid on public discussion is that the official neo-Darwinian theory
is having serious trouble with the evidence. This is covered over with
the vague claim that all scientists agree that "evolution has occurred."
Since the Darwinists sometimes define evolution merely as "change," and
lump minor variation with the whole creation story as "evolution," a few
trivial examples like dog-breeding or fruit fly variation allow them to
claim proof for the whole system. The really important claim of the
theory-that the Darwinian mechanism does away with the need to
presuppose a creator-is protected by a semantic defense-in-depth.
Here's just one example of how real science is replaced by flim-flam.
The standard textbook example of natural selection involves a species of
finches in the Galapagos, whose beaks have been measured over many
years. In 1997 a drought killed most of the finches, and the survivors
had beaks slightly larger than before. The probable explanation was that
larger-beaked birds had an advantage in eating the last tough seeds that
remained. A few years later there was a flood, and after that the beak
size went back to normal. Nothing new had appeared, and there was no
directional change of any kind. Nonetheless, that is the most impressive
example of natural selection at work that the Darwinists have been able
to find after nearly a century and a half of searching.
To make the story look better, the National Academy of Sciences removed
some facts in its 1998 booklet on "Teaching About Evolution and the
Nature of Science." This version omits the flood year return-to-normal
and encourages teachers to speculate that a "new species of finch" might
arise in 200 years if the initial trend towards increased beak size
continued indefinitely. When our leading scientists have to resort to
the sort of distortion that would land a stock promoter in jail, you
know they are in trouble.
If the Academy meant to teach scientific investigation, rather than to
inculcate a belief system, it would encourage students to think about
why, if natural selection has been continuously active in creating, the
observed examples involve very limited back-and-forth variation that
doesn't seem to be going anywhere. But skepticism of that kind might
spread and threaten the whole system of naturalistic belief. Why is the
fossil record overall so difficult to reconcile with the steady process
of gradual transformation predicted by the neo-Darwinian theory? How
would the theory fare if we did not assume at the start that nature had
to do its own creating, so a naturalistic creation mechanism simply has
to exist regardless of the evidence? These are the kinds of questions
the Darwinists don't want to encourage students to ask.
Kansas Protest
This doesn't mean that students in Kansas or elsewhere shouldn't be
taught about evolution. In context, the Kansas action was a protest
against enshrining a particular worldview as a scientific fact and
against making "evolution" an exception to the usual American tradition
that the people have a right to disagree with the experts. Take
evolution away from the worldview promoters and return it to the real
scientific investigators, and a chronic social conflict will become an
exciting intellectual adventure.
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