The View From Nowhere

The objective of science is to be objective. Measurements, observations, explanations, hypotheses, theories, and laws should be free of personal opinion. Science should not depend on one's perspective, but rather it should escape parochial viewpoints. It should take on, as Thomas Nagel put it, the view from nowhere.

Some may argue that such objectivity is impossible. Others may contend it is not even desirable. Perhaps so, but nonetheless many scientists do strive for such objectivity.

Evolutionists, no less than others, claim their methods are objective. Indeed, evolutionists not only claim their science is independent of parochial viewpoints, they claim evolution is an inescapable, objective, fact, every bit as much as gravity is a fact.

This means that the scientific evidence, interpreted from a theory-neutral perspective, necessarily requires us to conclude for evolution. As Ernst Mayr put it, the fact of evolution is so overwhelmingly established that it would be irrational to call it a mere theory.

Strangely enough, these same evolutionists use subjective arguments to prove their point. As Stephen Jay Gould explained:

Odd arrangements and funny solutions are the proof of evolution—paths that a sensible God would never tread but that a natural process, constrained by history, follows perforce. No one understood this better than Darwin. Ernst Mayr has shown how Darwin, in defending evolution, consistently turned to organic parts and geographic distributions that make the least sense.

This is about as far from objectivity as a science can go.

And stranger yet, after making such parochial arguments evolutionists accuse dissenters of their own crime. True, the dissenters make no such subjective claims, but evolutionists say they do so secretly. It is their religious beliefs that drive them, say the evolutionists, whether they admit it or not. Pay no attention to the dissenters—what they say doesn't matter, it is obvious they have ulterior motives.

In making these accusations, evolutionists are their own judge. They pronounce subjective arguments, such as religious claims, as scientifically out of bounds. They rule themselves to be non scientists.

There is an obvious way out for evolutionists. They can exonerate themselves with one simple move. All they need do is to prove their claim. The key to their innocence lies in the objective, scientific data. All that is needed is an explanation of why the scientific evidence makes evolution a necessary conclusion from a theory neutral perspective. Why is evolution true from the view from nowhere?

We probably should not expect evolutionists to produce this new argument anytime soon. For centuries they have been making their high claims that evolutionary histories are undeniable, and each time they invoke subjective, parochial, interpretations. In fact, the stronger the proof, the more subjective the premises. Religion drives science, and it matters.