Darwinism as Applied Materialistic Philosophy

Transcription

1 Darwinism as Applied Materialistic Philosophy In 1996, British Darwinist Richard Dawkins wrote that the sheer weight of evi-dence, totally and utterly, sledgehammeringly, overwhelmingly strongly supports the conclusion that evolution is true. By evolution, he meant not only that a tiny bacterium who lived in the sea was the ancestor of us all, but also that macroevolution is nothing more than microevolution stretched out over a much greater time span. 124 So where is this sledgehammeringly, overwhelmingly supportive evidence? As we saw above, Darwin had no actual evidence for natural selection; he could only give one or two imaginary illustrations. Yet Darwin believed that natural selection was the principal means of modification and that there is no more design in it than in the course which the wind blows. The first belief is biological and the second is theological, but neither could have come from the evidence; instead, they followed from Darwin s under-lying philosophy. Biologists now have evidence for natural selection. Yet it has never been ob-served to do anything more than produce minor changes within existing species, so it still falls far short of justifying Darwin s belief that it was the principal means of modification in evolution. Nevertheless, modern Darwinists continue to draw sweeping biological and theological conclusions from the evidence. Peppered moths are one example. As we saw above, there are serious problems with the evidence for the classic story of camouflage and bird predation, but the story still has its defenders. In 2007, British biologist Michael Majerus reported that he had been watching peppered moths out his back window for seven years. During that time he had observed 135 of them resting, of which 37% had been on tree trunks. He concluded that most pep-pered moths do, in fact, rest on tree trunks and that this confirmed the truth of the classic story. Of course, by looking out his back window Majerus had missed the thousands of peppered moths resting in the upper branches during those seven years, and his results were obviously biased toward the lower parts of the trees. Yet he concluded that this flawed evidence not only constituted proof of Darwinian evolution but also that humans invented God, and that there will be no second coming; no helping hand from on high. 125 Clearly, the evidence did not justify Majerus s theological statement about God and the second coming; it didn t even justify his biological statement about the natural resting-places of peppered moths. As for the other element in Darwin s theory of modification variations Darwin

2 confessed he did not know their origin, though (as we saw above) that did not stop him from confidently rejecting Asa Gray s view that variation had been led along certain beneficial lines. In the twentieth century, Neo-Darwinists attributed new variations to DNA mutations, though the vast majority of these are useless or harmful, and the rare beneficial ones have never been observed to produce anything more than minor changes within existing species. Yet the limitations of the evidence didn t stop molecular biologist (and Marxist) Jacques Monod from declaring in 1970 that with the understanding of the random physical basis of mutation that molecular biology has provided, the mechanism of Darwinism is at last securely founded, and man has to realize that he is a mere accident. 126 Since there is no evidence that mutations can produce the beneficial anatomical changes needed by Darwin s theory, Monod s statement couldn t possibly have been based on the evidence. Like Majerus, Monod was presenting materialistic philosophy as though it were an inference from empirical science. So selection and variation have never been observed to produce anything more than minor changes within existing species, and the problem Darwin set out to solve the origin of species remains unsolved. The extrapolation from microevolution to macro-evolution, which started as an assumption in the 1930s, is still nothing more than an assumption. Nevertheless, modern Darwinists insist that the descent of all organisms from one or a few common ancestors is so well established that it can be called a fact. In 1981, Stephen Jay Gould wrote: Evolution is a theory. It is also a fact Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them Humans evolved from ape-like ancestors, whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other. According to Futuyma s Evolution, although scientists continue to debate the mechan-isms of evolutionary change, evolution is a scientific fact. That is, the descent of all species, with modification, from common ancestors is a hypothesis that in the last 150 years or so has been supported by so much evidence, and has so successfully resisted all challenges, that it has become a fact. 127 Or has it? It is true that some patterns of geographic distribution are consistent with the Darwinian hypotheses of migration from a center of origin or fragmentation of an orig-inally widespread population. But there are many cases in which very similar species are present in widely separated places even though those species originated long after their habitats might have been connected. Flightless birds and freshwater

3 crabs are just two examples; Léon Croizat (see above) described many more. But there is no evidence apart from biogeography itself for Croizat s hypothesis that these patterns are due to parallel evolution or orthogeny. In fact, if the only two options for explaining such patterns were Darwin s theory of descent with modification or the theory of independent creation against which he repeatedly argued, much of the biogeographical evidence would fit the latter better than the former. The fossil record fails to justify Darwin s belief in the universality of descent with modification, not only because of striking anomalies such as the Cambrian explosion, but also because it lacks the innumerable transitional forms predicted by Darwin s theory. In 1972, Stephen Jay Gould and fellow paleontologist Niles Eldredge pointed out that the fossil record is characterized largely by punctuated equilibria : Species tend to appear abruptly and fully formed, then they remain unchanged until they disappear. To explain the disparity between the evidence and Darwin s theory of gradual change, Eldredge and Gould suggested that most species originate rapidly in small, geographically isolated populations that leave no fossil record. 128 And so they might. But where is the evidence? Eldredge and Gould simply assumed Darwinism to be true and then formulated a hypothesis to explain why the evidence doesn t support it. But the lack of evidence didn t stop Gould (who, like Monod, was a Marxist) from insisting that human beings are just one tiny, largely fortuitous, and late-arising twig on Darwin s great tree of life. Biology took away our status as paragons created in the image of God, he wrote in 1977, and in 2001 he de-clared: Evolution substituted a naturalistic explanation of cold comfort for our former conviction that a benevolent deity fashioned us directly in his own image. By taking the Darwinian 'cold bath,' and staring a factual reality in the face we can finally abandon the cardinal false hope of the ages. 129 Like so many other statements by Darwin and his followers, this is materialistic philosophy rather than empirical science. Even if the fossil record were not plagued with anomalies, and even if it were full of transitional forms, it would still not justify inferences of ancestor-descendant relation-ships. Darwin s followers see ancestors in the fossil record only because they start with the assumption that his theory is true. In an interview reported in 1986, Gareth Nelson (mentioned above) characterized the typical Darwinist s search for fossil ancestors as follows: We ve got to have some ancestors. We ll pick those. Why? Because we know they have to be there, and these are the best candidates. That s by and large the way it has worked. I am not exaggerating. 130 The only category of evidence for common ancestry that Darwin didn t defend

4 with theological argumentation was embryo development. Darwin believed that verte-brate embryos are most similar in their earliest stages and become different as they mature thus replaying their evolutionary history. But (as we saw above) Darwin was totally mistaken on this point. Vertebrate embryos start out very different, then converge somewhat in appearance midway through development before becoming different again as adults. Instead of early similarity followed by later differences, the pattern is early differences followed by later similarity followed by still-later differences. If early em-bryos showed us the condition of the progenitor of the whole group in its adult state, as Darwin thought, then vertebrate embryos would provide evidence for separate origins, not common ancestry. What Darwin thought were the strongest facts in favor of his theory were not facts at all. Nevertheless, Darwin s modern followers defend him on this point, and the way they do it is revealing. Evolutionary biologist Jerry A. Coyne claims that Haeckel s faked drawings were merely doctored and that embryos of different vertebrates tend to resemble one another in early stages, but diverge as development proceeds. Anthropol-ogist Eugenie C. Scott, director of the militantly pro-darwin National Center for Science Education in California, says that Haeckel may have fudged his drawings somewhat, but the basic point that's being illustrated by those drawings is still accurate. By making excuses for Haeckel s fraud and by misrepresenting well-established facts about embryo development, Coyne and Scott reveal that their commitment to Darwinism has nothing to do with evidence. It is worth noting that both have also publicly stated their commitment to atheism. 131 The evidence for common ancestry from vestigial organs and junk DNA is an argument from ignorance that collapses once a function is discovered for a supposedly useless feature into an argument from homology. And since homology (if defined classically as structural similarity) could be due either to common design or to common ancestry, Darwinists have re-defined homology to mean similarity due to common ancestry. But then homology can no longer be used as evidence for common ancestry without arguing in a circle. In addition to being plagued by widespread inconsistencies in the evidence, molecular phylogeny suffers from the same circularity. So the descent of all organisms from a common ancestor the so-called fact of evolution is not a fact at all. Indeed, many of the facts in biogeography, paleontology, embryology, anatomy, and molecular biology need to be explained away in order to protect the dogma of universal common ancestry. Berkeley law professor (and Darwin critic) Phillip E. Johnson wrote in 1993:

5 There is no real distinction between the fact of evolution and Darwin s theory. When we posit that the discontinuous groups of the living world were united in the remote past in the bodies of common ancestors, we are implying a great deal about the process by which the ancestors took on new shapes and developed new organs. Ancestors give birth to descendants by the same reproductive process that we observe today, extended through millions of years. Like begets like, and so this process can only produce major trans-formations by accumulating the small differences that distinguish offspring from their parents. Some shaping force must also be involved to build complex organs in small steps, and that force can only be natural selection. There may be arguments about the details, but all the basic elements of Darwinism are implied in the concept of ancestral descent. 132 So the fact of evolution is nothing but Darwin s theory rightly understood, and recasting the theory as fact serves no other purpose than to protect it from falsifi-cation. Johnson continued: Darwinists sometimes find confirming evidence, just as Marxists found capitalists exploiting workers and Freudians analyzed patients who said they wanted to murder their fathers and marry their mothers What they never find is evidence that contradicts the common ancestry thesis, because to Darwinists such evi-dence cannot exist. The fact of evolution is true by definition. 133 Declaring something true by definition is a hallmark of philosophical reasoning. So is claiming that something is true in principle. As we have seen, Dawkins s sledgehammeringly, overwhelmingly supportive evidence for Darwinism is a mirage. Yet he asserted in 1986 not just that the Darwinian world-view happens to be true, but that it is the only known theory that could, in principle, solve the mystery of our existence. Dawkins concluded: Darwin made it possible to be an intellectually fulfilled atheist. 134 But the in principle part of his argument reveals that his atheism preceded, rather than followed, his belief in Darwinism. So the fact of evolution is a philosophical construct. In effect, Darwin s theory was simply a restatement of ancient materialistic philosophy, illustrated with examples from the nineteenth-century study of nature. Since those examples were not sufficient to justify Darwin s claims, he relied on theological argumentation. But Darwin s creator was a nineteenth-century caricature of God what rhetoricians call a straw man but in this case could be called a straw god. Darwin assumed that a creator would not have created similar species in geographically separated places, that he would not have created the succession of forms we see in the fossil record, and that he would not have used simi-lar bones for flying, walking, swimming

6 and grasping. The only alternative (according to Darwin) was a natural and unguided process of descent with modification. According to historian Neal C. Gillespie, it is sometimes said that Darwin con-verted the scientific world to evolution by showing them the process by which it had occurred, but it was more Darwin's insistence on totally natural explanations than on natural selection that won their adherence. The Darwinian revolution was primarily philosophical, and Darwin's philosophy limited science to the discovery of laws which reflected the operation of purely natural or secondary causes. Furthermore, there could be no out-of-bounds signs When sufficient natural or physical causes were not known they must nonetheless be assumed to exist to the exclusion of other causes. 135 So not only does Darwinism limit science to the search for natural explanations, but it also insists that such explanations exist even when they cannot be found. Thus Darwin wrote in 1859: I would give absolutely nothing for the theory of natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent. Instead of proposing a tentative hypothesis to explain some things, Darwin took an all-or-nothing approach that is characteristic of dogmatic philosophy, not empirical science. 136 Some people would argue that Darwin was right to limit science to the search for natural explanations. According to this argument, the very success of modern science depends on such a limitation: To be scientific, a hypothesis must be testable, but hypo-theses about the supernatural cannot be tested. This is sometimes called methodological naturalism, to distinguish it from metaphysical naturalism. The former implies a limit to what science can study; there may be aspects of the world that are beyond its reach. The latter, by contrast, is a statement about the whole of reality; it is just another term for philosophical materialism. Critics of this distinction point out that a science constrained by methodological naturalism may give us a distorted picture of reality. According to Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga: If you exclude the supernatural from science, then if the world or some phenomena within it are supernaturally caused as most of the world's people believe you won't be able to reach that truth scientifically. Observing methodological naturalism thus hamstrings science by precluding science from reaching what would be an enormously important truth about the world. It might be that, just as a result of this constraint, even the best science in the long run will wind up with false conclusions. 137 Advocates of methodological naturalism object that there cannot possibly be evi-dence for supernatural causes. But then if someone were to find evidence that

7 seems to point to a supernatural cause, methodological naturalism would block the inference and require a never-ending search for natural causes. Under the circumstances, science would be prevented from following the evidence wherever it leads. Critics of methodological naturalism also point out that it may induce people to cling to ideas that are unsupported or actually contradicted by the evidence. If a person refuses to question the doctrine of universal common ancestry simply because it is the best naturalistic explanation available, even though the evidence is inconsistent with it, then that person is no longer engaged in the activity most of us think of as science namely, determining whether hypotheses fit the evidence. The same could be said of a person who insists that microevolution can be extrapolated to macroevolution simply because that is the best naturalistic explanation for macroevolution, even though the evidence strongly suggests that it is false. Gould s Harvard colleague (and fellow Marxist) Richard C. Lewontin wrote in 1997: We take the side of science in spite of the patent absurdity of some of its con-structs, in spite of its failure to fulfill many of its extravagant promises of health and life, in spite of the tolerance of the scientific community for unsubstantiated just-so stories, because we have a prior commitment, a commitment to materialism. It is not that the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori ad-herence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. 138 So Darwinism starts by assuming philosophical naturalism, or materialism. Only from that perspective does the fragmentary and inconsistent evidence from nature seem to support the theory and then only because no other perspectives are allowed. It is no wonder that so many of Darwin s followers find support for atheism in his theory; it was there from the start. Although appearing to be based on evidence from nature, Darwinism is just applied materialistic philosophy.