Let’s Get Religion Out of the Biology Textbooks
I’ve been convinced for a long time that evolution as an all-encompassing creation story is very influential in undermining religious faith, in establishing materialism as a sort of philosophical default. I’m getting steadily more convinced that it has massive intellectual problems. Attack!
–Maclin Horton
As a contrarian by nature, I’ve always had an issue with evolution myself. In the search for conclusive evidence, I’m afraid we assume causation far too often. Specific to humans and primates, it is similar to saying that a rectangular evolved from a square, because they each have four sides. The each certainly do, but I would not entertain the notion that squares caused rectangles.
Then when you get into the age of the earth and carbon dating, you come across the logic that states anything that is able to be synthesized must be organic. Despite carbon atoms being present in various states of decay presently on earth, those that have decayed signficantly are considered to have originated from a particular era. Now I’m certainly not against carbon dating, but it doesn’t strike me as unable to be reconciled with a Godly creation. I would not deny God the ability to put things upon this earth in various states of decay. Orderly Creation in other words doesn’t strike me as a disproof of God.
So yes, I’m in agreement with Mr. Horton and the author that science should stick to science and not teach as fact that which she hasn’t established.
Tho’ I’m not a biologist and I’ve not read exhaustively the scientific literature (perhaps a vicitm of apathy), one thing I’ve never seen and the one thing that I’d like to see is a precise estimate of the power of “random” mutation (i.e., mutation at rates that we can observe in populations of various types of organisms) and natural selection. Can such mechanisms fully account for observable speciation in the required amount of time (e.g., the amount of time life has existed on earth)? Just how many genes would need to be altered to get from say algae to say a chimp? Approximately how many intermediate steps would be needed? Approximately how many of those intermediate species would be viable? Approximately how often would the mutations be advantageous? Etc. My (admittedly limited) understanding of ID is that it takes Darwinism to task on this particular (mathematical) issue.
I’m certain that philosophical materialists would insist that random mutation plus natural selection is sufficient, whether or not (what I’d assume to be) highly complex calculations tell us so or not. If not, the materialist simply need wait (in confident hope) of future information to prove the hypothesis correct. Surely this is a religious bias that should be expunged from scientific literature.
I’m equally certain that the philosophical theist would not change his stance should the results of the calculation support the materialists’ assumption. If we find that there is sufficient “power” in these mechanisms for apparent speciation, then that still doesn’t rule out an “intelligent design” of the mechanisms themselves. (“Random” mutation… very clever!)
Perhaps the calculation is too close to call or too dependent upon estimates of initial values. But perhaps the calculation tips one way or another by several orders of magnitude. This would at least give us an operating hypothesis based on actual data rather than philosophical bias. It is, at least, a scientific question, one which doesn’t get answered (AFAIK) in high-school textbooks.
At any rate the philosophical materialist and the philosophical theist ought to hammer out their conflict in philosophy class and not in science class. But alas, philosophy is not a common subject in high schools (or US colleges for that matter). Thus it is left to science instructors, often poorly prepared for the hard work of philosophy, to do the work.
Steve,
It’s always seemed to me, too, that some sort of mathematical/statistical approach is the only, or perhaps I should say most, credible avenue of attack. This is the tack taken (mainly) by David Berlinski in the Commentary piece I mentioned (which, last time I looked, could be purchased online but wasn’t available for free). Also William Dembski. Both are associated with the Discovery Institute, as is Benjamin Wiker, who if I remember correctly has commented here before.
I find it hard to imagine any experimental work which could definitely prove or disprove either the Darwinian or ID hypotheses. I think what has to be done is a sort of shaking up of what people are accustomed to think of as plausible. I’m more and more convinced that the Darwinian mechanism is not, and simultaneously more convinced of the damage the theory has done.
And if that is in fact what Darwinists and IDers are arguing about, i.e., statistical probabilities based on guessed at initial variables, then it is a scientific question, perhaps an interesting one, a highly technical one, but not a terribly earth shattering one for me… One I suppose that affects two groups quite differently. Materialists NEED a theory that requires no designer. Theists, by and large, could take it or leave it.
Darwinism, as it is popularly conceived, has indeed been the near occasion for agnosticism, practical materialism, for many in the West if not the West as a whole. But I’d say the problem is not Darwinism, per se’, and rather a poor understanding of where the boundaries lie between science and philosophy, and piteously little help from either side of Scopes Divide for it.
Well, I’d have to let an IDer speak for them regarding the question of whether mathematical analysis is really their chief thrust. I don’t think it’s their only point of challenge. And yes, the boundary problem is really the whole problem.