Miracles are a Glaring Problem for Evolution, and Here’s Why

Begging the Question

A commenter recently reminded me of one of the many fundamental fallacies of evolutionary thought. When I point out problems with evolution, and make arguments against evolutionary thought, it is not because I am against the idea or want it to be false. Life would be much easier if the evidence simply supported evolution, if evolutionary thought was a stellar example of intellectual progress, if—to put it simply—evolution was an undeniable scientific fact, just as evolutionists insist. But it’s not. Evolution is not any of those. Evolution is not supported by the empirical evidence, it is not a rational, intellectual movement, and it is not a scientific fact, undeniable or otherwise. I’m not grinding a personal ax here, I’m simply pointing out the obvious. It makes no difference to me if evolution is true, false, or somewhere in between. But it does make a difference when we lie to ourselves.

One of the lies we tell ourselves is about miracles and how they relate to evolution. Specifically, evolutionists have been making arguments against miracles for centuries. A convenient starting place is seventeenth century church history, when Roman Catholic and Protestant elements of the church argued with each other, and between themselves, about miracles. It is a long story, but the upshot was that miracles were increasingly viewed with disdain for several reasons.

By the time David Hume arrived in the mid eighteenth century, the dust was settling. Hume is well known for his arguments against miracles, but he was largely repackaging sentiment that had long since been expressed.

Some arguments were epistemological. Others were theological, philosophical or ontological. But the short version is that evolutionary thought emerged in a milieu in which miracles were on the way out, both as explanatory mechanisms and as historical reality. Darwin contemporary David Friedrich Strauss, and his Life of Jesus, is but one of many examples of this broad, robust movement.

The movement against miracles was, not surprisingly, influential in the natural sciences. Simply put, if we’re not to appeal to miracles, then the world must have arisen naturalistically. This had a profound effect on the critical thinking, or lack thereof, of the time. Speculative hypotheses, with little basis in fact, enjoyed serious consideration and triumphant acceptance.

The bar was placed exceedingly low for such theories as pure conjecture became acceptable and celebrated science. Monumental scientific problems with the notion of spontaneous origins went ignored and evolutionary theories (from cosmological to biological) soon became “fact.”

Today strictly naturalistic, evolutionary, theories are a given. They simply are accepted as true, or as true as anything in science can be. And it also is a given that miracles are false. But what evolutionists prefer to overlook is that there is a causal relationship here. The latter made way for, and mandated, the former.

What an incredible coincidence it would be if, on the one hand, miracles were known to be false and, on the other hand, the empirical evidence turned out to prove a naturalistic origins. Theology, philosophy and science would have converged on the same truth.

But there is no such convergence.

The “convergence” that occurred is artificial. It is artificial because the empirical scientific evidence was interpreted according to the cultural mandate. Science was told what to do.

Indeed, from an objective, theory neutral, perspective, evolution is unlikely. It is not good science. In fact it is an outstanding example of bad science, breaking all the rules of what the textbooks tell us about how science is supposed to work. The idea that the multitude of species, the cosmos, consciousness and, well, everything, arose spontaneously by the interplay of chance contingencies of history and natural laws is silly. And that is being kind.

The problem of miracles is another example of the failure of evolutionary thought. Religion drives science, and it matters.

Here is David Penny’s New Confirmation of Evolution

The Phylogenetic Signal Myth

David Penny and co workers are out with another confirmation of evolution. In a Darwin’s God exclusive, Penny assures us that there is no question about the fact of evolution, but from his Popperian perspective, it is always important to put forward testable models. And the result, as usual, is that evolution wins yet again. One result, from Column 7 of Table 2 of the paper, shows that the probability that the proteins in question could have arisen by chance is 1.94 x 10^-19. And that is just one of their many tests. In other words, evolution is pretty much a done deal. As they conclude: “The analyses establish that some form of ancestral convergence is occurring.” There’s only one problem: This is all junk science.

There are lies, damn lies, and then there are statistics. Penny’s new paper relies on an age-old evolutionary contrastive argument that goes like this. Either nature is random, or evolution is true. In this case, any relationship or pattern, that can be found between proteins in different species, proves that the proteins are not randomly designed. Therefore they must have evolved.

The reasoning here may seem to be upside down. After all, if the results show that the proteins could not have arisen by chance, then how can that prove evolution—the theory that says proteins (and everything else for that matter) arose from random events such as mutations? Would not that finding be a problem for evolution?

The answer is that, for evolutionists, such results falsify creation and design. As Kant explained three centuries ago in his theory of the solar system evolution:

Thus, God's choice, not having the slightest motive for tying them [planetary orbits] to one single arrangement, would reveal itself with a greater freedom in all sorts of deviations and differences.

In other words, there should be no pattern to the planetary orbits if they were designed. Otherwise God is capricious, selecting certain designs for no reason.

Evolution is not about science. It’s about God.

Evolutionist Professor Quotes Laplace

Getting Destroyed

The brilliant Isaac Newton could harmonize Aristotle’s super- and sub-lunar worlds, show that nature’s laws were universal and in the process explain how the solar system worked, but the Cambridge professor could not explain how the solar system arose or how it will end. Most troublesome was his finding that the planets circling about the Sun formed one giant accident waiting to happen. One day the planets were liable to careen about and the only solution seemed to be an occasional divine finger to adjust the errant machine. That sent Newton’s continental nemesis Gottfried Leibniz into his own instability, for the Lutheran co-founder of calculus could not envision God creating a less than optimal world. Certainly not a world so crude so as to be in need of occasional adjustment. Newton also said that his new physics was not capable of evolving the solar system in the first place. Like Adam’s naval, the planets had to get their start somehow other than their normal operation. Did God then also have to interfere with His creation to set the planets initially in their orbits and with the proper speeds?

Newton had left the world in a shambles and the cultural mandate was on. A respectable origins and end game were needed and a century later Pierre Laplace supplied both. His Nebular Hypothesis described a condensing cosmic cloud that evolved the solar system and the brilliant Frenchman solved Newton’s instability problem and showed the solar system to be stable after all. The planets would safely and steadily oscillate around their orbits until the end of time.

Theists could rest assured that God was, after all, the master designer, and skeptics such as Laplace could replace God with natural laws. When Napoleon wondered why the Creator was not mentioned Laplace could respond that he had no need of that hypothesis.

But while Laplace was one of the greatest mathematicians in the world, he wasn’t much of a metaphysician. Every freshman philosophy student knows that inserting natural laws doesn’t give one a theory of everything.

First there is that little problem that natural laws don’t actually explain what they’re supposed to explain (Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis was bloated with unfounded speculation and the solar system stability problem ended up being far more complex than Laplace ever imagined. The problem is so difficult that we speak of probabilities of instability). In fact what we do know today is the incredible level of fine-tuning design built into the solar system. For instance the Earth-Moon system (EM) has profound and subtle effects on the solar system stability. As one paper from 1998 explained:

Evidence from self-consistent solar system n-body simulations is presented to argue that the Earth- Moon system (EM) plays an important dynamical role in the inner solar system, stabilizing the orbits of Venus and Mercury by suppressing a strong secular resonance of period 8.1 Myr near Venus’s heliocentric distance. The EM thus appears to play a kind of “gravitational keystone” role in the terrestrial precinct, for without it, the orbits of Venus and Mercury become immediately destabilized. … First, we find that EM is performing an essential dynamical role by suppressing or “damping out” a secular resonance driven by the giant planets near the Venusian heliocentric distance. The source of the resonance is a libration of the Jovian longitude of perihelion with the Venusian perihelion longitude.

This is just one example of the fine-tuning of the solar system’s design.

And second, even if there was a convincing naturalistic narrative, it wouldn’t mean one has “no need of God.” Rid yourself of God if you like, but don’t fool yourself that you have established some intellectual basis for your metaphysical priors.

This is an elementary mistake by those who desire materialism and reminds us of the cartoon showing two tiny insects on the back of a dog. As they walk through the forest of hairs the one insect says to the other, “Sometimes I wonder if there really is a dog.”

Unfortunately this reflects the level of thought not only with Laplace but in today’s atheism as well. In fact Laplace’s retort to Napoleon is one of their favorite slogans, as we were reminded this week when atheist-evolutionist Jerry Coyne wrote this gem in his naïve response to a challenger:

I have always argued that most scientists, including myself, take the absence of God as a provisional working hypothesis based on the history of science, for, like Laplace, we have never needed the assumption of God. I am, and have always been, willing to entertain evidence for the presence of a divine being. I just haven’t seen any.

There you have it. More cogent insights from the evolutionary camp. Their ignorance is exceeded only by volume level at which they proclaim it. As Paul warned Timothy, “For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine, but according to their own desires, because they have itching ears, they will heap up for themselves teachers; and they will turn their ears away from the truth, and be turned aside to fables.”

Of Gaps, Fine-Tuning and Newton’s Solar System

New research is providing a fascinating new perspective on fine-tuning and a three hundred year old debate. First for the context. When Isaac Newton figured out how the solar system worked he also detected a stability problem. Could the smooth-running machine go unstable, with planets smashing into each other? This is what the math indicated. But on the other hand, we’re still here. How could that be?

According to the Whig historians, Newton, a theist, solved the problem by invoking a divine finger. God must occasionally tweak the controls to keep things from getting out of control. It explained why the solar system hasn’t come to ruin, and it provided a role for divine providence which, otherwise, might not be needed for the cosmic machine that ran on its own.

About a century later, Whig history tells us, the French mathematician and scientist Pierre Laplace solved the stability problem when he figured out that Newton’s bothersome instabilities would iron themselves out over the long run. The solar system was inherently stable after all, with no need of divine adjustment, thank you.

Newton’s sin was to use god to plug a gap in our knowledge. What a terrible idea. First, using god to plug gaps is a science-stopper. Why investigate further if god fixes the tough problems? And second, it damages our faith when science eventually solves the problem and the divine role is further diminished. The key to avoiding this problem is to sequester religious thinking to its proper role. Science and religion must be separated lest both be damaged.

That’s the Whig history. Now for what actually happened. Instead of Newton being wrong and Laplace being right it was, as usual, the exact opposite. Newton was right and Laplace was wrong, though the problem is far more complex than either man understood.

And Newton was not the doctrinaire and Laplace was not the savior as the Whigs describe. Again, the truth would be closer to the exact opposite. Newton was more circumspect than is told, and Laplace didn’t actually solve the problem. True, he thought he had solved the problem, but his claim may indicate more about evolutionary thinking than anything to do with science.

And Newton’s allowing for divine creation and providence never shut down scientific inquiry. If that were the case he never would have written the greatest scientific treatise in history.

After Newton, the brightest minds were all over the problem of solar system stability (though it is a difficult problem and would take many years to even get the wrong answer). And no one’s faith was shattered when Laplace produced his incredibly complicated calculus solution because they were banking on some Newtonian interventionism.

But what did raise tempers was the very thought of God not only creating a system in need of repair, but then stooping so low as to adjust the controls of the errant machine. The early evolutionary thinker and Newton rival, Gottfried Leibniz found the idea more than disgraceful. The Lutheran intellectual accused Newton of disrespect for God in proposing the idea the God was not sufficiently skilled to create a self-sufficient clockwork universe.

The problem with Newton’s notion of divine providence was not that it is a science stopper (if anything such thinking spurs on scientific curiosity) or a faith killer when solutions are found. The problem is that it violates our deeply held gnosticism, which is at the foundation of evolutionary thought.

Darwin and later evolutionists have echoed Leibniz’ religious sentiment time and again. Everyone knew what the “right answer” was, and this was the cultural-religious context in which Laplace worked.

Indeed, Laplace’s “proof” for his Nebular Hypothesis of how the solar system evolved came right out of this context and was, not surprisingly, metaphysical to the core. You can read more about that here.

Today the question of the solar system’s stability remains a difficult problem. It does appear, however, that its stability is a consequence of some rather fine-tuning. Fascinating new research seems to add to this story. The new results indicate that the solar system could become unstable if diminutive Mercury, the inner most planet, enters into a dance with Jupiter, the fifth planet from the Sun and the largest of all. The resulting upheaval could leave several planets in rubble, including our own.

Using Newton’s model of gravity, the chances of such a catastrophe were estimated to be greater than 50/50 over the next 5 billion years. But interestingly, accounting for Albert Einstein’s minor adjustments (according to his theory of relativity), reduces the chances to just 1%.

Like so much of evolutionary theory, this is an intriguing story because not only is the science interesting, but it is part of a larger confluence involving history, philosophy and theology.

Is the Current Solar System Evolution Theory Nearing the Next Flip?

The epistemological foundation of evolution is interesting. Evolutionists know that evolution is a fact, but they do not know how evolution happened. In fact there is tremendous uncertainty about how the world could have spontaneously originated all by itself. This extreme epistemological difference between the fact and theory of evolution may seem contradictory but it isn’t. The fact of evolution is not contingent on how it happened. It merely is contingent on the end product. It is, as mathematicians say, path independent. The end product makes evolution a fact because the end product obviously would not have been intended by any intelligent agency otherwise capable of designing and creating the world. So Aristotle had it right with his disinterested and oblivious Prime Mover. Nature must have created itself. This makes for a striking dichotomy between evolutionary apologetics and evolutionary research. The former has no doubt evolution is a fact while the latter is full of doubt about how evolution occurred. In fact, evolutionary theories display an often humorous level of flexibility of explanation. Evolutionary explanation must be strictly natural, but beyond that anything goes, no matter how heroic, unlikely and cartoonish. And when the unlikeliness becomes too extreme even for the evolutionist, he simply calls upon the multiverse to improve the odds. If there is a near-infinity of universes, then anything can happen. An early example of this flexibility of explanation was in the theories of how the solar system evolved which to this day have continued to amass just-so stories. Now it appears the current theory of solar system evolution may be approaching another flip.

A century before Lamarck, Darwin and Wallace were imagining how biological evolution could have occurred, Bernoulli, Kant, Buffon and Laplace were imagining how the solar system could have evolved. In both cases the naturalists were certain evolution had occurred, though they had nothing but unfounded speculation about how it occurred. Bernoulli, Kant and Laplace had proven the solar system evolved with the usual silly evolutionary proofs.

A false dichotomy

Bernoulli’s explanation, that the sun’s atmosphere caused the planetary motions and alignments, was reminiscent of Descartes’ whirlpools. And while Bernoulli’s explanation was later discarded (as most evolutionary explanations eventually are), he introduced a powerful argument that became crucial in evolutionary thought and remains pervasive today.

Bernoulli argued that there are two possibilities: random design or a single mechanistic cause. Like ripples in the sand, patterns that we observe in nature are, according to evolutionists, necessarily a consequence of mechanism. It is yet another evolutionary argument that is difficult to explain because it is so silly. But that is the argument. In this false dichotomy, random design is evolution’s null hypothesis.

It was well known that the planetary orbits were aligned so as to form a striking pattern. Surely this could not have arisen by chance, argued the great mathematician. Bernoulli argued that either the planets fell into their orbits by chance or some mechanism caused their alignment. Bernoulli used a calculation to show the long odds of random design, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that a mechanical cause did the job. He who would deny this, Bernoulli fallaciously concluded, “must reject all the truths, which we know by induction.”

Twenty years later Immanuel Kant elaborated Bernoulli’s argument. Why do planets revolve about the sun in the same direction? “It is clear,” explained the great philosopher, “that there is no reason why the celestial bodies must organize their orbits in one single direction.” If God had directly arranged their orbits then we would expect them to reveal deviations and differences:

Thus, God’s choice, not having the slightest motive for tying them to one single arrangement, would reveal itself with a greater freedom in all sorts of deviations and differences.

Theology was not discarded in the Enlightenment, as is often said, it was internalized. Laplace followed with his version of Bernoulli’s random design null hypothesis calculation, and cosmic evolution increasingly became accepted. The details were yet to be worked out, but it was fast becoming a fact.

Thus Laplace could on the one hand assure Napoleon of his evolutionary theory while, on the other hand, fail to explain new observations such as the anomalous orbits of Uranus’ moons, discovered by William Herschel. Here is how historian Stephen Brush describes it:

Laplace was familiar with Newton’s opinion that the regular motions of the planets proved their divine design. We know he was acquainted with Daniel Bernoulli’s prize essay of 1734 on the subject, since in an earlier paper he had cited Bernoulli’s method for calculating the probability that n bodies all move in the same one of two possible directions if their motions are selected by chance: 2^(–n+1). In that paper Laplace had applied the method to six planets and ten satellites, finding the probabilities to be 2^–15 = 1/32768. By 1796 he had made the coincidence even more unlikely by including the seventh planet, Uranus (discovered by William Herschel in 1781), as well as four more satellites, Saturn’s rings, and the rotations of five planets, the Sun, the Moon, and one of Saturn’s satellites (Iapetus). Thus of the 30 known motions in the Solar System, all are in the same direction. If these motions had been determined by chance, the probability that at least one of them would be different from the rest is extremely high (1–2^–29). [Nebulous Earth, Cambridge, 1996, p. 21]

It is astonishing that thinkers such as Bernoulli and Laplace promoted such metaphysical madness. Brush continues:

Laplace was aware when he first published his theory that Herschel had found the two satellites of Uranus to have orbits in a plane nearly perpendicular to the plane of the ecliptic. In 1798 Herschel announced that the satellites of Uranus have retrograde motion. While this amounted to only a slight revision of his earlier result—the orbit plane is still nearly perpendicular but is tilted in the other direction—it was still [Herschel explained] “a remarkable instance of the great variety that takes place among the movements of the heavenly bodies” since previously all known motions took place in the same direction.

A remarkable instance of the great variety? Even the evolutionary false dichotomy was breaking down. But no matter, the narrative had become too compelling. Laplace simply ignored the anomalies (as evolutionists routinely do today), while including four other satellites announced by Herschel which were never confirmed:

In later editions of the Exposition, Laplace simply ignored the fact that at least two of the Uranian satellites have retrograde orbital motion, even though he added to his total the four spurious ones announced in the same paper by Herschel. Perhaps he considered that an orbit that is nearly perpendicular to the ecliptic should not be counted as retrograde; but I agree with Jaki that his treatment of this case is peculiar. Laplace did express doubt about the existence of the four satellites reported in 1798, and unless they are counted as retrograde (which Herschel did not claim) their inclusion scarcely affects the statistical argument.

In fact Laplace’s treatment of this case is not at all peculiar. Confirmation bias is standard practice in evolutionary apologetics. And that’s after the false dichotomy.

Laplace referred to his theory as the “true system of the world.” Sound familiar? Laplace could assure Napoleon that the God Hypothesis was superfluous not because Laplace had solid scientific details backing up his case—he didn’t—but by virtue of this ridiculous, fallacious line of argument.

Flexibility of explanation

Herschel’s anomalous satellites, with orbits almost perpendicular to expectations, would by no means be the only problem for Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis. Problems mounted and, as usual, the theory became more complicated.

In Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis, planet formation is a natural consequence of star formation. In Buffon’s earlier comet theory, planet formation is a separate event and not a consequence of star formation. This fundamental difference defines two categories of theories for the origin of the solar system—the monistic and dualistic categories, respectively. Monistic theories hold that all the major components of the solar system formed together. Dualistic theories hold that stars form by one process and planets form by a different process.

Since Laplace the mounting problems with the Nebular Hypothesis caused a reevaluation and search for alternate explanations. A major problem was that the sun rotates too slowly. The vast majority of the angular momentum in the solar system resides in the planets, a fact that was difficult to reconcile with the Nebular Hypothesis.

And so the twentieth century witnessed a series of monistic and dualistic theories competing to explain the solar system’s origin. There was the dualistic theory of a close encounter with a nearby star proposed by Chamberlin and Moulton and later by Jeans and Jeffreys. But such a close encounter could not reproduce the high angular momentum we observe in the planetary orbits. Also, material ripped from the sun by the encounter would be too hot to condense and form planets.

Russell proposed a new monistic theory calling for a rise in density of the collapsing solar nebula. Also, the idea of magnetic braking was considered as a mechanism for depleting the sun’s angular momentum. This was followed by the dualistic theory of Alfvén and Schmidt, and then the monistic theory of Kuiper and Urey. Schmidt’s dualistic theory was later refined in the Safronov–Wetherill model and after this Cameron promoted the “supernova trigger” hypothesis.

Both monistic and dualistic theories have been repeatedly proposed throughout the twentieth century. In fact, as Brush observes, the time scale for reversing the answer has grown shorter and shorter as we approach the present. Hence the origin of the solar system, says Brush, is an unsolved problem.

Today’s hypothesis

Today’s accepted theory for the origin of the solar system is a complex, cosmic choreography based on the Nebular Hypothesis. It goes something like this (as you read this keep in mind it is a fact because, as Bernoulli and Laplace argued, there obviously is only a single cause):

A large cloud of material, including dust, hydrogen and helium, collapses to form the sun and a surrounding disk. The rotational rate increases as the cloud collapses. It also heats up, especially in the inner region, say within the orbit of Jupiter. In this inner region, only rocky materials can withstand the high temperatures and they collect to form the inner planets, initially as molten blobs. Later they are coated with particles that collect on their surface. These become the crusts of the inner planets.

Between Mars and Jupiter there is no planet but instead we find the asteroid belt. This is because Jupiter perturbed the nascent planets that formed in that region, causing them to collide rather than coalesce. The result is a ring of asteroids, rather than a planet, circling the sun.

In the outer regions of the solar system, where the temperature is lower, icy dust collects to form small planetesimals that later attract the hydrogen and helium gases. Left over planetesimals may be captured as moons or are ejected to the outer reaches of the solar system to become comets. Hence the composition of comets and meteorites should represent the early solar nebula.

Later, the sun’s radiation and solar wind drive any remaining gas out of the solar system, and the sun’s rotation is dramatically slowed by magnetic braking. This is the rendition of Laplace’s Nebular Hypothesis from recent years, but there remain several anomalies to explain. For instance, Venus and Uranus have anomalous spin characteristics. Also, about a third of the more than one hundred moons in the solar system have irregular orbits, revolving about their host planet in the wrong direction for example. And some revolve faster than their host planet spins. This would not occur if they were formed by a condensing cloud. Also, Pluto’s orbit is more elliptical than the other planets, and significantly inclined from the ecliptic.

There is no general explanation for these many anomalies. It could be that huge impacts reversed the spin of Venus and tipped Uranus on its side. Perhaps moons that revolve too fast have dropped from a higher orbit, and thus increased their rate of rotation. Or they may have been captured by rather than formed with the planet.

As for Pluto, one idea is that a large planetesimal passed near Neptune, lost some energy and fell down near Jupiter which ejected it to beyond Pluto. In the process the orbits of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune are all perturbed and Neptune, in turn, perturbs Pluto into its highly eccentric and inclined orbit we observe today.

Another difficulty with today’s theory of the solar system origin is the great size of the outer gaseous planets. In order to accumulate so much light gas they must have formed very quickly because early on the sun’s solar wind would have blown the gas out of the solar system altogether.

One explanation for this is that these planets formed via a faster acting mechanism known as disk instability. But if this works for Jupiter and Saturn, it leaves open the question of why Uranus and Neptune are not so large. If the disk instability mechanism gave Jupiter and Saturn their thick atmospheres, why didn’t it give thick atmospheres to Uranus and Neptune?

One answer is that our solar system formed in a cluster of stars. Perhaps the neighboring stars were so close that radiation heated the gases in the outer reaches of our solar system, making them more difficult for Uranus and Neptune to capture

A new flip?

In recent years the Nebular Hypothesis has met with even more failures. For instance, discoveries of distant planets have revealed star systems that make no sense on the Nebular Hypothesis. As one researcher commented, “These discoveries are making it very difficult to stick to the party line endorsing the so-called standard model.”

And now, new analysis of NASA’s Genesis mission reveals contradictory variations in nitrogen and oxygen isotopes. As one researcher explained:

These findings show that all solar system objects including the terrestrial planets, meteorites and comets are anomalous compared to the initial composition of the nebula from which the solar system formed.

And as another researcher concluded, that raises questions about the Nebular Hypothesis:

The implication is that we did not form out of the same solar nebula materials that created the sun—just how and why remains to be discovered.

Discovered? This has very little to do with scientific discovery. The researcher is confusing metaphysics with science. The reasons for the isotope variations will be explained, not discovered. New epicycles will be applied where needed, and perhaps there will be a flip to a new dualistic theory.

Of course there is nothing wrong with hypotheses about how the world arose. Even circuitous, heroic and unlikely theories are at least worth consideration. There should be no constraint or limit on our imagination. Theories can be posited, tested, evaluated and rejected, as appropriate. But of course evolutionary thinking isn’t about any of this. If it was then the true status of the theories would be admitted.

Evolutionary thinking is about injecting a religious agenda into science that evolutionists insist must be true. Religion drives science, and it matters.

The Evolution of Evolutionary Thought: Why Historians Analyze Evolutionists But Not Evolution

One of the reasons evolutionists are convinced their theory is true is because of the way the species compare to each other. The patterns we find amongst the species, say the evolutionists, prove Darwin’s idea beyond a shadow of a doubt. Such arguments pervade the evolution genre—from textbooks to popular literature—but what exactly do they mean? To understand this we must understand the evolutionary mind. These arguments have circuitous histories and baked-in assumptions that are now long forgotten. But they are worth remembering. Here is one example.

In the early years of modern science it was argued that motion was caused by contact between masses. In this mechanical philosophy, influences in the natural world were assumed to be transmitted only by direct mechanical contact. And while this may seem intuitive, the related assumption that there can be no vacuum was less obvious. But it was taken to be a fact. As Rene Descartes wrote in 1644, “some make the mistake of imagining [the heavens] to be a totally empty space … there can be no such vacuum in nature.”

For Descartes the planets moved around the sun because they floated in a cosmic whirlpool. And although Isaac Newton later disproved any such Cartesian whirlpool effect, the Lutheran philosopher and mathematician Gottfried Leibniz later promoted Descartes’ ideas. As Leibniz explained in 1715, the principle of plenitude disproves the existence of vacuums in nature:

Now let us fancy a space wholly empty. God could have placed some matter in it without derogating in any respect from all other things. Therefore he has actually placed some matter in that space; therefore there is no space wholly empty; therefore all is full.

It was a good example of how rationalism can produce certainty in even the most obscure notions. Empirical evidence gives one a healthy respect for nature’s complexities, but thought experiments lead to tidy conclusions.

Not surprisingly this mechanical philosophy objected to Newton’s idea that gravitational attraction acted at a distance, and even through a vacuum. How could Newton, Leibniz asked, “have the sun to attract the globe of the earth through an empty space?” Such a notion, Leibniz objected, took on occult qualities.

Another theological objection was that Newton’s solar system was, ultimately, not stable. Over eons to time it could occasionally become chaotic. While Newton allowed that God could fix things when needed, this was unacceptable to the rationalists. God was not an unskilled designer who would create a faulty machine. Therefore God would not use miracles to fix nature, and whoever thinks otherwise, Leibniz said, “must have a very mean notion of the wisdom and power of God.”

Despite the many theological objections Newton’s new physics was compelling. But as Newton cautioned, while it explained the motion we observe, it did not explain the origin of that motion. Newton could explain how the planets moved, but not how they got going. That question was attempted by a series of brilliant thinkers in the eighteenth century.

In 1734 Daniel Bernoulli wrote an award winning paper on the origin of the solar system. His explanation, that the sun’s atmosphere caused the planetary motions and alignments, was reminiscent of Descartes’ whirlpools. And while Bernoulli’s explanation was eventually discarded, he introduced a powerful argument that became crucial in evolutionary thought and remains pervasive today.

The planetary orbits were aligned so as to form a striking pattern. Surely this could not have arisen by chance, argued the great mathematician. Bernoulli posited random design as the null hypothesis. Either the planets fell into their orbits by chance or some mechanism caused their alignment. Bernoulli used a calculation to show the long odds of random design, thus proving beyond a shadow of a doubt that a mechanical cause did the job. He who would deny this, the Christian argued, “must reject all the truths, which we know by induction.”

Twenty years later Immanuel Kant elaborated Bernoulli’s argument. Why do planets revolve about the sun in the same direction? “It is clear,” explained the great philosopher, “that there is no reason why the celestial bodies must organize their orbits in one single direction.” If God had directly arranged their orbits then we would expect them to reveal deviations and differences:

Thus, God’s choice, not having the slightest motive for tying them to one single arrangement, would reveal itself with a greater freedom in all sorts of deviations and differences.

Theology was not discarded in the Enlightenment, as is often said, it was internalized. Buffon and Laplace followed with their versions of Bernoulli’s random design null hypothesis calculation, and cosmic evolution became accepted fact. The details were yet to be worked out, but it was a fact. Sound familiar?

Not surprisingly Bernoulli’s random design null hypothesis became a key argument in Darwin’s new theory of biological evolution. For like the planets, the species show striking patterns. Over and over, they are “aligned.” As Darwin pointed out, “We never find the bones of the arm and forearm, or of the thigh and leg, transposed.” If God created the species, the evolution inventor pointed out, then we should find “a sudden leap from structure to structure?”

Such rationalism was rampant in Darwin’s thought, and it is pervasive in the literature today. Biological patterns, and there are many, disprove creation and therefore prove evolution. Mark Ridley, in his textbook Evolution, explains to the student that protein comparisons between 11 different species should not reveal the patterns we find if they did not evolve:

If the 11 species had independent origins, there is no reason why their [traits] should be correlated.

This is nothing more than seventeenth century rationalism in the guise of twentieth century molecular biology.

This is but one example of the many metaphysical arguments motivating and mandating evolution. Why don’t the historians explain this, you might wonder. The answer, it seems, is that historians allow themselves to analyze the evolutionists, but not their arguments—at least not from a theory-neutral perspective.

One helpful exception is Neal Gillespie’s Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation. Gillespie reveals many of Darwin’s metaphysical arguments, and he explores their context to a limited extent. But the Enlightenment and earlier influences, and the place and importance of metaphysics in today’s theory, are outside the scope of Gillespie’s fine work. And of course those subjects would have raised awkward questions about the theory’s scientific status—and that is not allowed.

Stuart Newman and Evolution's Testability

What is evolution? Is it natural selection acting on random biological variation? Is it gradualism or punctuated equilibrium? Is it the slow accumulation of neutral changes that eventually become useful? No, these are all sub hypotheses of evolution. Evolution is the theory that naturalistic causes are sufficient to explain the origin of species.

The idea that the world must have arisen naturally became increasingly popular before and during the Enlightenment period a century before Darwin. Christian thinkers such as Malebranche, Cudworth, Burnet, Ray, Leibniz, Wolf and Kant argued for a naturalistic origins. These traditions grew and by Darwin's day were increasingly accepted in the Anglican broad church, and Victorian society in general.

For instance Henry Peter Brougham, Lord Chancellor of England and one of the most famous people in England when Darwin was a young man, argued for such a naturalistic origins. It is hardly a shocker that Darwin and Alfred Wallace would independently "discover" that, you guessed it, the species had arisen naturally. Funny how this new "discovery" just happened to scratch old itches.

Of course Darwin and Wallace didn't know quite how this could have happened, and so they were willing to negotiate the details. As Darwin once pointed out:

Whether the naturalist believes in the views given by Lamarck, by Geoffroy St. Hilaire, by the author of the ‘Vestiges,’ by Mr. Wallace or by myself, signifies extremely little in comparison with the admission that species have descended from other species, and have not been created immutable ...

Darwin and Wallace knew the species arose naturally because they knew the species did not arise supernaturally. Darwin did not provide incontrovertible evidence that naturalism worked, but rather that supernaturalism did not work. Their arguments against supernaturalism were, not surprisingly, straight out of that earlier Enlightenment period, but applied to biology. Yesterday's theology and philosophy had become today's science.

The greater god (it is beneath god's dignity to manually create the species), problem of evil (god wouldn't create this gritty world) and intellectual necessity (naturalism is needed for good science) were a few of the non scientific arguments that were shaping today's science.

The common thread, and key to evolution, was naturalism. This is why evolutionists refer to their idea as a fact and a theory. The "fact" is that the species arose from strictly naturalistic causes. The "theory" is how this is supposed to have happened--the details behind the fact.

And this is why evolution can sustain substantial empirical contradictions. Such contrary evidence doesn't falsify evolution, it merely falsifies sub hypotheses. A recent paper by evolutionist Stuart Newman demonstrates how well protected evolution is from the empirical evidence. Early in the paper Newman reiterates the need for naturalistic explanations for all things:

The program of advancing materialism against supernaturalism and superstition is clearly a necessary one.

This is not a call for atheism, but merely naturalistic explanations. But how can naturalism be advanced in the face of apparent scientific problems? After all:

when it comes to the innovation of entirely new structures (‘‘morphological novelties’’) such as segmentally organized bodies (seen in earthworms, insects, and vertebrates such as humans, but not jellyfish or molluscs), or the hands and feet of tetrapods (vertebrates with four limbs), Darwin’s mechanism comes up short. This is a reality that is increasingly acknowledged by biologists, particularly those working in the field of evolutionary developmental biology, or “EvoDevo.”

Contrary to the expectations of the Darwinian model, the fossil record is deficient in transitional forms between organisms distinguished from one another by the presence or absence of major innovations. Niles Eldredge and the late Stephen Jay Gould emphasized this point when they propounded their scenario of ‘‘punctuated equilibria’’ almost four decades ago. And although our current knowledge of the cellular and genetic mechanisms of the development of animal forms is relatively sophisticated, it is difficult to come up with plausible scenarios involving incremental changes in developmental processes that would take an organism from one adult form (e.g., an unsegmented worm) to one embodying an innovation (a segmented worm).

And these are not the only apparent problems with evolution:

Gregor Mendel, in performing his remarkable experiments on various plants, carefully picked traits to study whose different versions were uniquely tied to alternative states of specific genes. Much genetic research in the first half of the 20th century, using a similar strategy, also identified strict gene-trait correlations (particularly with regard to simple biochemical pathways) in other organisms. This led to a deep-seated conviction that the Mendelian mode of inheritance was essentially applicable to all traits in all organisms at all stages of their evolutionary histories. But even Mendel himself, who cautiously described his most famous findings as ‘‘the law valid for peas,’’ did not suggest this, and it is demonstrably not the case.

The Mendelian paradigm deals with factors, or genes, that are associated with biological characters. As such, it focuses on the logic of intergenerational transmission of traits (the alternative forms of characters) rather than the mechanisms of character generation.

Unfortunately many evolutionists continue to insist that this failed paradigm is one of the most powerful ideas ever produced by science.

Evolution has led to many false expectations, and failures to inquire into important observations such as the incredible ability of organisms and populations to adjust to their environment:

Phenotypic plasticity, a relatively common property of developing organisms, which was appreciated by many 19th century biologists and which provided the basis for Jean-Baptiste Lamarck’s (generally mischaracterized and not entirely incorrect) pre-Darwinian evolutionary concepts, is only now reentering biology after becoming an all-but-taboo subject within evolutionary theory during the 20th century.

Darwin’s theory, in holding that the competition between individuals marginally different from one another with respect to the small, inherited, morphological, physiological, or behavioral variations encountered in any natural population, has been sufficient to generate the entire array of biologically distinct types seen on the face of planet, avoided cases in which the same organism could take on different forms under different conditions. Indeed, a major impact of Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection was to marginalize the concept of phenotypic plasticity. Once the theory’s scientific hegemony was established, all phenomena that fit this description were consigned to a theoretical limbo.

Given scientific problems such as these, how can evolutionists promote their naturalistic agenda? For starters Newman encourages his fellow evolutionists to be more forthcoming about problems with their theory. A century ago physicists had the courage to acknowledge that the old ideas were not adequate, but:

The present-day neo-Darwinists provide a poor contrast to this, insofar as they persist in the hand-waving consignment of all problematic aspects of the origination of complex subcellular entities to the putative universal mechanism of random variation and natural selection. ... Unless the discourse around evolution is opened up to scientific perspectives beyond Darwinism, the education of generations to come is at risk of being sacrificed for the benefit of a dying theory.

While such truth in advertising is certainly laudable, note what is not on the table. For the evolutionist, sub hypotheses can be freely discarded but the core theory is not testable. After all, it is a fact, regardless of the science. Religion drives science and it matters.

Evolution's Anti Intellectualism Reaching Fever Pitch

Steven Pinker, Harvard professor of psychology, is the latest evolutionist to become unglued over Stephen Meyer's op-ed piece in the Boston Globe. Pinker writes:

SHAME ON you for publishing two creationist op-eds in two years from the Discovery Institute, a well-funded propaganda factory that aims to sow confusion about evolution. Virtually no scientist takes "intelligent design’’ seriously, and in the famous Dover, Pa., trial in 2005, a federal court ruled that it is religion in disguise.

Where do we begin? We could reassure Pinker that the Discovery Institute surely is not a "propaganda factory that aims to sow confusion about evolution." Or we could politely explain to the evolutionists that Meyer's op-ed is not "creationist" as Meyer's claims and the creationist's claims do not line up. And we could point out that federal courts, while very good at ruling on interstate trade and kidnapping cases, are not always equipped to deal with more nuanced cases involving the history and philosophy of thought, as was abundantly revealed in the Dover case.

Such responses would be intended to clear the air of the false notions evolutionists carry around. The responses would be made under the assumption that evolutionists are interested in facts and objective inquiry into such matters. Unfortunately, that is typically not the case. Evolutionists are certainly not interested in understanding intelligent design--then the evolutionists wouldn't be able to brand ID proponents as creationists.

Of course such explanations and reassurances would never be considered. They would never open the mind of an evolutionist like Pinker. But what is worse is they would mask the more serious problem. Trying to explain errors of logic or erroneous assumptions would miss the utter hypocrisy that fuels the evolutionist's vitriol.

Intelligent design is an inference from the data. Agree or disagree with it, there are no religious assumptions. It may be all wrong, but its arguments are based on the evidences of nature, logic, mathematics, and so forth. In other words, it is a scientific argument.

Evolutionists have always branded skeptics as guilty of being driven by religious motivations. Surely there must be religious convictions behind anything the skeptics say. If the skeptics don't admit to their sin, then they are liars as well.

But while evolutionists stand in self-righteous judgment of anyone who disagrees, it is in fact the evolutionists who have founded and promoted a religious theory. Their hypocrisy is plain for all to see. For they commit the very crime for which they castigate others. There is no scientific argument for their claim that evolution is a fact just like gravity--it is a religious argument based on deep metaphysics. Consider Pinker's very next paragraph.

The judge referred to the theory’s "breathtaking inanity,’’ which is a fine description of Stephen Meyer’s July 15 op-ed "Jefferson’s support for intelligent design.’’ Well, yes, Thomas Jefferson died 33 years before Darwin published "The Origin of Species.’’ And Meyer’s idea that the DNA code implies a code maker is just a rehash of the ancient "argument from design’’ - that an eye implies an eye maker, a heart implies a heart maker, and so on. Darwin demolished this argument 150 years ago.

And how did Darwin demolish the argument from design? How did Darwin show that the eye evolved rather than was designed? Did Darwin demonstrate a reasonable evolutionary pathway leading to the eye? Did he convince us that vision plausibly arises on its own? Of course not.

Darwin had no such evidence. But he did have something more powerful--religion. In Chapter 6 of Origin Darwin argued that the evolution of vision is the superior view because otherwise we must say that "the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of men." Have we any such right?

This anthropomorphic warning was straight out of the theological pronouncements of Enlightenment philosopher David Hume. And it was one of hundreds of religious arguments that mandated evolution, one way or another.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Not Even Wrong

The great physicist Wolfgang Pauli once criticized a scientific paper as so bad that it was “not even wrong.” It was so sloppy and ill conceived, thought Pauli, that to call it merely wrong would be to give it too much credit--it wasn’t even wrong. Today such a condemnation applies well to the theory of evolution which relies on religious convictions to prop up bad science. It seems that every argument for evolution wilts under scrutiny. Here is a classic example.

Evolutionary thinking has always appealed to the patterns found in nature’s designs as powerful mandates for a naturalistic origin. For instance, in the eighteenth century Daniel Bernoulli, Immanuel Kant and Pierre Laplace all argued that the patterns of the solar system revealed that it must have evolved via a naturalistic process. Different processes were hypothesized and no one knew exactly how it happened, but these Enlightenment thinkers considered it to be a fact that, one way or another, the solar system evolved strictly via natural law (sound familiar?).

Exactly why did the patterns of the solar system mandate such a narrative? Because if God had designed the solar system it would not have the patterns we observe. As Kant explained:

It is clear that there is no reason why the celestial bodies must organize their orbits in one single direction. … Thus, God’s choice, not having the slightest motive for tying them to one single arrangement, would reveal itself with a greater freedom in all sorts of deviations and differences.

In other words, we observe certain patterns, but they seem to be gratuitous and god would not so limit his designs. In the following centuries this argument became a cornerstone of Darwin’s theory of evolution. Here is one of Darwin’s many arguments that his theory must be true because god would never have created the patterns we observe in biology:

How inexplicable are the cases of serial homologies on the ordinary view of creation! Why should the brain be enclosed in a box composed of such numerous and such extraordinary shaped pieces of bone, apparently representing vertebrae? … Why should similar bones have been created to form the wing and the leg of a bat, used as they are for such totally different purposes, namely flying and walking? Why should one crustacean, which has an extremely complex mouth formed of many parts, consequently always have fewer legs; or conversely, those with many legs have simpler mouths? Why should the sepals, petals, stamens, and pistils, in each flower, though fitted for such distinct purposes, be all constructed on the same pattern?

Today this argument is rampant in evolutionary thought. It runs throughout the literature and evolutionists invoke it when their theory is questioned. There are so many contradictions and absurdities in this evolutionary argument it is hard to know where to begin. Here are a few of its more egregious failures.

1. First, the argument obviates huge problems with evolution. The patterns we find in biology do not fit evolution, but this minor detail is glossed over by using this counter argument. Instead of demonstrating that evolution is a compelling story, evolutionists argue that god certainly did not design what we find in biology, so it must have evolved. No wonder they say evolution is a fact. We don’t know how it happened, but it must have happened. Consequently the bar is substantially lowered for naturalistic explanations. Speculative, untestable, and downright silly explanations are routinely contemplated.

2. Similarly, another problem is that conflicting data are not viewed as problematic because, after all, they are not random. There certainly is a pattern of sorts, and so evolutionists take this as profound support for their theory, even when the data are contradictory, under evolution. Evolution’s epistemological bar is lowered so far it is hitting the ground, as all kinds of observables become powerful supporting evidence. The massive convergence found in biology (profound similarities in otherwise distant species) become a non issue for evolutionists. I debated one professor who claimed that both similarities and differences between species are evidence for evolution. Talk about having your cake and eat it too. But it all makes perfect sense if you’re an evolutionist.

3. This leads to the next problem, which is that this argument is a science stopper. By removing the possibility that evolution may be false, a whole set of questions and research avenues are automatically eliminated. And of course, it makes evolution unfalsifiable. Different hypotheses within evolution can be tested, but evolution itself cannot be.

4. Indeed another problem, in addition to the sanctioning of raw speculation, is the massive data interpretation and filtering bias. Biological data are interpreted and filtered according to evolution. Contradictory data are usually filtered out long before the analysis step, thus improving the fit. Evolutionists make all kinds of erroneous claims about how astronomically well the data fit their theory.

5. Of course another problem is the argument is religious. It is a problem because evolutionists claim their theory is certainly not religious. Indeed, they argue strenuously that religion must absolutely be cleansed from science. Religion and science, they say, do not mix. But in fact they do mix, and quite well it seems.

A common canard is that any such religious claims do not reflect the beliefs of evolutionists; rather, it is merely a test of opposing ideas. That is, of course, irrelevant. When evaluating theories, personal beliefs are not part of the equation. When religious premises are used to prove a theory, then the theory is relying on the religious premises, period. Who actually believes or doesn’t believe in the premise is a separate matter.

6. But is it not reasonable to test opposing ideas? Can we not look for patterns as a means of rejecting the design hypothesis? Sure, but why do patterns refute design? Is there anyone (aside from the evolutionist) who says that a designer would not use patterns? A far more significant test would be to show that evolution is compelling. If naturalistic processes do the job, then design is superfluous. But evolution repeatedly fails.

7. The use of patterns to reject design reveals how arbitrary is the evolutionary criteria. Kant, for instance, realizing the data did not fit the patterns very well (and thus potentially raising problems for strictly naturalistic explanations), amended his “god wouldn’t use patterns” argument, with the additional argument that “and, oh by the way, if god were to use patterns, he would do it precisely.” So patterns prove evolution, and deviations from patterns do to.

Evolutionists can, in fact, contrive various criteria to refute opposing ideas. Imagine if nature really did consist of a series of random designs. Evolutionists could just as easily claim it as a powerful sign of natural processes. After all, a designer certainly would create according to patterns, whereas the unguided, blind forces of nature easily explain the randomness we observe.

The metaphysics in evolution run deep. It is one long religious argument, filled with non scientific claims and speculation. But it recognizes none of this in itself, and instead projects it onto opposing ideas. In the height of hypocrisy, evolutionists locate these problems in their neighbor’s eye. Opposing ideas, they say, don’t fit the evidence very well, are non falsifiable, are science stoppers, and are religious. All of this in defense of a theory that isn’t even wrong. Religion drives science and it matters.

Enlightenment Mythology

When does a misconception become a myth? When intellectuals embrace it. There is always plenty of ignorance to perpetuate misconceptions, but when the educated promote a false idea, is it not a sort of mythology? If so, then there is abundant reason to categorize today’s caricature of the Enlightenment, as a rejection of religious influence and thought, as a myth.

The caricature of the Enlightenment that is prevalent today is that, for better or for worse, those eighteenth century European intellectuals eschewed theological considerations in favor of a strictly secular perspective based on human reasoning. Religion and theology were out, science and philosophy were in. It is not difficult to see how this two-dimensional rendition can segue into the equally erroneous warfare thesis, which views science and religion in a continual conflict.

The latest example of this enlightenment mythology comes from a piece by historian Richard Wolin this week in The Chronicle of Higher Education. The title, Reason vs. Faith: the Battle Continues, indicates Wolin’s thesis. Not only does he promote the Enlightenment caricature discussed above, but he superimposes it on contemporary debates as well. The Enlightenment’s target was religion and today we have religion's neo-Darwinian detractors. Wolin writes:

A cursory glance at the major cultural divide of our day suggests that, in many respects, we haven't gotten much beyond the landmark dispute between faith and reason that separated the leading lights in Hegel's time.

In fact, both eighteenth century Enlightenment thinkers as well as today’s secularists, such as the evolutionists, are every bit as religious as anyone else, and probably more so. The fact that they conclude for reason and naturalism does not lessen the theological calculus that got them there.

Indeed, it is precisely their metaphysics, rather than mere logic and observation, that mandates their truths. When Enlightenment thinkers such as Immanuel Kant, or contemporary evolutionists such as Ernst Mayr, proclaim that their naturalistic narrative is a fact beyond dispute, it is merely a secular-sounding conclusion based on a long religious argument. We need to move beyond the simplistic “reason versus faith” caricatures of modern thought.