Here Is How Gnosticism Informs Evolution

More Religion in Science

Evolution professor John Avise ends his book, Inside the Human Genome, with a gnostic crescendo. The National Academy of Sciences member writes:

This welcome sentiment—that the evolutionary sciences and religion both have important and complementary roles to play in philosophical discussions about the human condition—has been expressed in many notable statements

Avise then provides several quotes, including this from Michael Zimmerman’s The Clergy Letter Project:

We ask that science remain science and that religion remain religion, two very different, but complementary, forms of truth.

And this from Francis Collins:

Science’s domain is to explore nature, God’s domain is the spiritual world, a realm not possible to explore with the tools and language of science. It must be examined with the heart, the mind, and the soul.

Gnosticism is sometimes viewed as an ancient belief, but the division of the material and the spiritual into separate realms is alive and well in evolutionary thought.

Nor is this merely a recent fad. Avise could have quoted from, for example, Baden Powell, mathematician at Oxford and Anglican priest who wrote In 1838 that scientific and revealed truth are of different natures, and any attempt to combine and unite them would “infallibly injure both.”

And of course if the spiritual world is so isolated from the material world, then the latter, including the species, must have arisen without any help from the former. In other words, the world must have arisen naturally, as Powell explained in 1855, a few years before Darwin published his book:

No inductive inquirer can bring himself to believe in the existence of any real hiatus in the continuity of physical laws in past eras more than in the existing order of things; or to imagine that changes, however seemingly abrupt, can have been brought about except by the gradual agency of some regular causes. … But however little we know of the laws or causes of these changes, one thing is perfectly clear, the introduction of new species was a regular, not a casual phenomenon; it was not one preceding or transcending the order of nature; it was a case occurring in the midst of ordinary operations going on in accordance with ordinary causes. The introduction of a new species (however marvellous and inexplicable some theorists may choose to imagine it) is not a solitary occurrence. It reappears constantly in the lapse of geological ages. It recurs regularly in connexion with those changes which determined the peculiar characters we now distinguish in different formations. It is part of a series. But a series indicates a principle of regularity and law, as much in organic as in inorganic changes. The event is part of a regularly ordained mechanism of the evolution of the existing world out of former conditions, and as much subject to regular laws as any changes now taking place.

But, as Avise explains, there is a problem. This gnostic truth may be firmly in hand, but there remain those who won’t go along—those who allow for the spiritual and material to intersect. These evolutionists conveniently label as fundamentalists and warn that in fundamentalism, religion has overstepped its bounds. And so in the final paragraph Avise makes his plea:

The evolutionary-genetic sciences thus can help religion to escape from the profound conundrums of Intelligent Design and thereby return religion to its rightful realm—not as the secular interpreter of the biological minutiae of our physical existence but rather as a respectable philosophical counselor on grander matters including ethics and morality, the soul, spiritual-ness, sacredness, and other such matters that have always been of ultimate concern to humanity.

Again, the sentiment is nothing new as Avise could have been quoting from Andrew Dickson White, cofounder of Cornell University who in the late nineteenth century targeted those "mediaeval conceptions of Christianity" (evolutionists had not yet hit upon the “fundamentalism” label). Once this “dogmatic theology” is excised, White explained, the separation of God and nature will be complete, and all will be well:

My belief is that in the field left to them—their proper field—the clergy will more and more, as they cease to struggle against scientific methods and conclusions, do work even nobler and more beautiful than anything they have heretofore done. And this is saying much. My conviction is that Science, though it has evidently conquered Dogmatic Theology based on biblical texts and ancient modes of thought, will go hand in hand with Religion; and that, although theological control will continue to diminish, Religion, as seen in the recognition of “a Power in the universe, not ourselves, which makes for righteousness,” and in the love of God and of our neighbor, will steadily grow stronger and stronger, not only in the American institutions of learning but in the world at large.

Today’s evolutionists express the same thoughts and concerns as their forbearers. This is not because today’s evolutionists are mining the literature from centuries past but rather because there are consistent threads of belief that run through time. Evolution is a genre in the history of thought. And one of its cornerstones is Gnosticism.

Try to imagine that you believed in this Gnosticism. Then you too would be an evolutionist. Religion drives science, and it matters.

When I Pointed Out the Absurdity an Evolution Professor Gave Me Pushback

More Religion and More Denials

Perhaps the biggest myth in today’s origins debate is that evolution is the result of good, objective scientific research. And so anyone who would reject evolution’s mandate that the world arose spontaneously must be religious while those who, on the other side, insist on our modern-day Epicureanism are simply all about science. In order to prop up this myth we must tell ourselves that all those scientific arguments against evolution are nothing more than disingenuous ploys by those religious rascals, and that all those religious mandates for evolution also don’t matter because they are nothing more than helpful explanations offered up by the secular good guys. Both of these are false of course. The significant scientific problems with evolution are not contrived, they are real. And the religious mandates for evolution are not a sidebar, they underwrite evolutionary thought. Without them there would be no evolution. So maintaining this myth requires some effort. We must deny the obvious scientific problems while at the same time presenting evolution as good science. And we must deny any religious mandate while at the same time proclaiming our metaphysical certainties that require evolution. I repeat this sad state of affairs not only as a public service, but also because two convenient examples presented themselves yesterday. Let’s look at the first one.

First, an evolution professor told me I was all wrong about this. This professor had made the non scientific statement that “the gap in understanding of the molecular evolution of eye components is all but closed.” You can read about this here.

But when I pointed out that this was another example of religion driving science the professor pushed back. That was before he made his religious pronouncement for evolution. Here is what he wrote:

“Religion drives science and it matters,” Is completely false, and opposite to the truth. Throwing up our hands and saying “God did it” gets us no farther, gains us nothing. … “Godddidit” gets us nowhere. With that attitude, we’d all still be hunter-gatherers allowing our fates to be determined by superstitions.

That, in case you didn’t notice, is a religious argument. And it’s not just any religious argument. It is one of the dozen or so metaphysical pillars that motivated evolutionary thought and justify it to this day.

Evolution’s metaphysical arguments and mandates fall into two broad categories, one about God and one about man. I use the labels “Greater God” and “Intellectual Necessity” for these two categories and you can see my phylogeny here.

The professor’s argument, that appealing to special divine action is not allowed, is a classic religious claim squarely within the various Intellectual Necessity traditions such as the seventeenth century Protestant doctrine of cessationism, religious rationalism and deism, all of which eschewed miracles.

In the eighteenth century various versions of the argument were heavily promoted by Lutherans on the continent and Anglicans in England. By Darwin’s day any such “Godddidit” explanations were increasingly out of vogue and at Oxford Baden Powell gravely warned that they would “endanger all science.”

And so not surprisingly this Intellectual Necessity of evolutionary thinking was a recurring theme for Darwin in his formulation and justification of his new theory. Later in the nineteenth century Joseph Le Conte at Berkeley continued the theme:

the origins of new organic forms may be obscure or even inexplicable, but we ought not on that account to doubt that they had a natural cause, and came by a natural process; for so to doubt is also to doubt the validity of reason

The very validity of reason was at stake and in the twentieth century evolutionists continued to issue their metaphysical warnings for the Intellectual Necessity of their theory.

And so when the professor insists that “Godddidit” gets us nowhere and would lead to primitive superstitions, he is simply regurgitating the same old metaphysics that evolutionists have been proclaiming for centuries.

That, after assuring us that religion certainly does not drive science, and that any such thinking is “completely false, and opposite to the truth.”

Right. Completely false.

Of course the professor is an evolutionist. Of course he believes that the eye, and everything else for that matter, arose spontaneously. His religion requires it. Only religion could produce such absurdity.

That evolution is a scientific theory is the biggest myth in today’s origins debate.

Here is That Secret Gnosis Evolutionists Have

In the previous post we learned that evolutionists have a secret gnosis. They say science must be limited to naturalistic explanations (the so-called methodological naturalism), yet their science knows no limits (the so-called property of completeness) and is presented as a reasonably accurate model of reality (the so-called property of realism). Now there’s nothing wrong with constraining science to methodological naturalism, but what if there is a phenomenon that is not natural? Then the methodological naturalism constraint could not provide an accurate explanation. We would either have to avoid such phenomena (incompleteness), or we would have to settle for inaccurate explanations (anti realism). But evolutionists do not settle for such limitations. How can they mandate method (specifically methodological naturalism) and yet enjoy completeness and realism? The answer lies in their secret gnosis, of which we give an example here.

SIDEBAR: Does evolutionary science really entail completeness?

One evolution professor wrote to me that evolutionary science does not claim completeness. Evolutionists readily agree that phenomena may lie outside the realm of strict naturalism. Is that true?

One sure sign of incompleteness at work is a scientist, when grappling with a difficult problem, allowing for even just the possibility that the problem may not be strictly naturalistic. One would expect these scientists to be found, at least on rare occasions, discussing the boundary between naturalism and non naturalism, even if they are not sure where it lies or even if there are any non naturalistic phenomena. But such conversations are hard to find amongst evolutionists.

And it is not as though they don’t have their share of hard to crack problems. After all, there is no scientific evidence that something (in this case everything) comes from nothing, as they believe. Nor does science support their rather heroic contention that life and all the millions of species arose spontaneously. There certainly are no easy answers for consciousness but again, evolutionists rush in, where wise men fear to tread, with their unlikely explanations.

Evolutionists don’t even hesitate when it comes to the origin of the universe itself. And when problems arise they even call upon a multitude of universes—the so-called multiverse. From multiverses to the origin of life and emergence of complexity, evolutionists evidence little awareness or concerns about potential incompleteness limitations.

So how did this evolution professor defend his claim that evolutionary science does not claim completeness? Believe it or not, his source was that fount of knowledge, the famous Judge John Jones, as though the judge was now an authority on the subject. Yes, this is the same judge who, regarding his preparation for the Dover trial, explained that  “I understood the general theme. I’d seen Inherit the Wind.”

One of the many examples of the evolutionist’s secret gnosis comes from an essay written by Theodosius Dobzhansky entitled “Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution.” It is a fitting example because that title has become a popular phrase in the evolutionary literature, including the popular literature and peer-reviewed research papers.

In that essay Dobzhansky rehearses the typical theological naturalism (i.e., theological arguments mandating a strictly naturalistic creation narrative) which is endemic to the evolution literature. For instance, Dobzhansky explained that the fossil record reveals many extinctions, and while this would be understandable under evolution, it would make no sense for God to do this:

but what a senseless operation it would have been, on God's part, to fabricate a multitude of species ex nihilo and then let most of them die out!

Or again, can we really believe that all existing species were generated by supernatural fiat a few thousand years ago, pretty much as we find them today? For “what is the sense of having as many as 2 or 3 million species living on earth?”

The beauty of natural selection is that it does not work according to a foreordained plan. But it would make no sense for a Creator to intentionally create the species we find. As Dobzhansky explains:

Was the Creator in a jocular mood when he made Psilopa petrolei for California oil fields and species of Drosophila to live exclusively on some body-parts of certain land crabs on only certain islands in the Caribbean?

Echoing Kant from centuries ago, who theorized of creation by natural means to avoid a capricious Creator, Dobzhansky explains:

The organic diversity becomes, however, reasonable and understandable if the Creator has created the living world not by caprice but by evolution propelled by natural selection.

And what about the fundamental biochemistry built into the species? Again, evolution is mandated for intentional design and creation of such a pattern is offensive to us, as Dobzhansky explains:

But what if there was no evolution and every one of the millions of species were created by separate fiat? However offensive the notion may be to religious feeling and to reason, the anti-evolutionists must again accuse the Creator of cheating. They must insist that He deliberately arranged things exactly as if his method of creation was evolution, intentionally to mislead sincere seekers of truth.

These are the types of powerful religious arguments that motivate and justify the evolutionary thought. It is all about metaphysics. Evolution must be a fact and so, of course, evolutionists enjoy completeness and realism along with their methodological naturalism. This is their secret gnosis.

What Evolutionists Don’t Understand About Methodological Naturalism

[Ed: An oldie-but-goodie from July 5, 2011]

OK let’s try this again. One more time, this time with pictures. In their celebrated volume  Blueprints, evolutionists Maitland Edey and Donald Johanson argued that “What God did is a matter for faith and not for scientific inquiry. The two fields are separate. If our scientific inquiry should lead eventually to God … that will be the time to stop science.” Similarly for evolutionist Niles Eldredge, the key responsibility of science—to predict—becomes impossible when a capricious Creator is entertained:

But the Creator obviously could have fashioned each species in any way imaginable. There is no basis for us to make predictions about what we should find when we study animals and plants if we accept the basic creationist position. … the creator could have fashioned each organ system or physiological process (such as digestion) in whatever fashion the Creator pleased. [The Monkey Business, p. 39, Washington Square Press, 1982.]

Or again, evolutionist Paul Moody explains that:

Most modern biologists do not find this explanation [that God created the species] satisfying. For one thing, it is really not an explanation at all; it amounts to saying, “Things are this way because they are this way.” Furthermore, it removes the subject from scientific inquiry. One can do no more than speculate as to why the Creator chose to follow one pattern in creating diverse animals rather than to use differing patterns. [Introduction to Evolution, p. 26, Harper and Row, 1970.]

Likewise Tim Berra warns that we must not be led astray by the apparent design in biological systems, for it “is not the sudden brainstorm of a creator, but an expression of the operation of impersonal natural laws, of water seeking its level. An appeal to a supernatural explanation is unscientific and unnecessary—and certain to stifle intellectual curiosity and leave important questions unasked and unanswered.” In fact, “Creationism has no explanatory powers, no application for future investigation, no way to advance knowledge, no way to lead to new discoveries. As far as science is concerned, creationism is a sterile concept.” [Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, pp. 66, 142, Stanford University Press, 1990.]

In his undergraduate evolution text Mark Ridley informs the student that “Supernatural explanations for natural phenomena are scientifically useless,” [Evolution, p. 323, Blackwell, 1993] and commenting on the Dover legal decision Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education explains that supernatural explanations:

would be truly a science stopper, because once we allow ourselves to say, “Gee, this problem is so hard; I can’t figure out how it works—God did it,” then we stop looking for a natural explanation; and if there is a natural explanation, we’re not going to find it if we stop looking.

Over and over evolutionists today agree that science must strictly be limited to naturalistic explanations. One finds this throughout the evolutionary literature and it is a consistent refrain in discussions and debates about evolution.

But this sentiment by no means arose with today’s evolutionists. In 1891 UC Berkeley professor Joseph LeConte argued strenuously for this philosophical mandate:

The origins of new phenomena are often obscure, even inexplicable, but we never think to doubt that they have a natural cause; for so to doubt is to doubt the validity of reason, and the rational constitution of Nature. So also, the origins of new organic forms may be obscure or even inexplicable, but we ought not on that account to doubt that they had a natural cause, and came by a natural process; for so to doubt is also to doubt the validity of reason, and the rational constitution of organic Nature.

Likewise Darwin argued that whether one “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: for he who admits this as a great truth has a wide field open to him for further inquiry.”

Explanations needed to be naturalistic for scientific inquiry. And as usual the foundations for this evolutionary mandate long predate 1859. Miracles were increasingly eschewed by leading thinkers and a century before philosopher David Hume had made persuasive arguments against miracles. Much of Hume’s material came from theological debates earlier in the century. On the continent leading Lutherans had already discarded the supernatural.

Method, completeness and realism in pictures

So when an evolutionist today insists that science must be naturalistic he is standing on a deep foundation of ideas. But setting aside this history for a moment, what about this argument? Remember that these same evolutionists claim their idea is also a fact. Is there not something curious about these tandem claims? I was once in a debate where the evolutionists claimed that we know evolution is a fact, and that it also is necessary in order to do science. How did they know that? Let’s have a look.

First, imagine the set of all possible explanations, as represented by the blue area below:

Because the blue area contains all possible explanations, it includes false as well as true explanations, lousy as well as good explanations, aesthetic and clumsy ones, and natural and non natural ones. It is every possible explanation in one set.

Now consider the set of all solutions that are according to a particular method, such as naturalism, as illustrated in the orange area below. All explanations that are strictly naturalistic are in the yellow area, and all other explanations are outside the orange area. Because the blue area contains all possible explanations, the orange area is a subset—it is wholly within the blue area.

Next consider the set of all true explanations as represented by the green circle below. These true explanations provide realistic models of nature. Again, this set of explanations must be wholly within the blue area, but otherwise we don’t know just where this green circle is. It could be in the orange area, it could be outside the orange area, or it could overlap. We don’t know what the true solutions all are, which is why we do science.

I have drawn the green circle above as partly inside and partly outside the orange area merely to illustrate the possibilities. But we don’t know where it is, and therefore whenever we mandate, a priori, a method such as naturalism, we automatically exclude a set of explanations that might be true.

In the early days of modern science philosophers were keen to this issue. Francis Bacon, for instance, wanted science only to pursue true explanations. But Bacon also wanted science to restrict itself to naturalistic explanations. Bacon realized that the restriction to naturalism would exclude any realistic, true, explanations that were not strictly naturalistic.

Bacon said that such non naturalistic phenomena should not be pursued by science. So Bacon insisted on naturalism and realism, but forfeited completeness. Science would not investigate all things. The thick black line below illustrates how this position limits itself to explanations that are both realistic and naturalistic, while potentially forfeiting some true explanations (depending on where exactly the green circle really is).

Like Bacon, another early philosopher, Rene Descartes, also insisted on naturalism. But he didn’t like the idea of forfeiting completeness. Descartes wanted science to be able to investigate all phenomena. But what if some realistic, true, explanations fall outside of naturalism? So what.

Descartes solution was to forfeit realism. Science, according to Descartes, would occasionally produce untrue explanations that otherwise could very well be useful. This approach is illustrated by the thick line below that encompasses all the naturalistic explanations, but misses some of the true explanations. Science might produce useful fictions along the way. Descartes mandated method and completeness, but in doing so had to forfeit realism.

After Descartes several scientists did not like this idea of forfeiting realism, as Descartes did, or forfeiting completeness, as Bacon did. These empiricists were interested in true solutions for all phenomena. This approach is illustrated below with the thick line encompassing the true solutions. But in order to maintain such realism and completeness, this approach cannot guarantee what method would be necessary. They might require non naturalistic explanations, for instance. So this approach provides realism and completeness, but forfeits any guarantee of method, such as naturalism.

Bacon, Descartes and the empiricists represent three different approaches to doing science. All are logically consistent. And who knows, the different methods might yield different insights—let a thousand flowers bloom.

But of course all three approaches have a limitation. Like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you cannot have realism, completeness and method all in one. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

This brings us back to the evolutionists. Unlike Bacon, Descartes and the empiricists, evolutionists do have their cake and eat it too. They claim evolution is a fact, they mandate naturalism, and their science knows no limits. They have realism, method, and completeness all together. How can this be?

The answer is simple. One cannot have realism, method, and completeness simultaneously without some extra, non scientific, knowledge. Evolution’s gnosis is, of course, that true solutions are, indeed, naturalistic. This is illustrated below by the thick line that encompasses all true explanations, but it is also wholly naturalistic. How so? The trick is that the green circle has been moved. It is completely within the orange area. Knowing the location of the green circle, even before doing the science, is evolution’s gnosis—their secret knowledge.

It is this secret knowledge the evolutionists possess that allows them to have their cake and eat it too, and this brings us back to the history of the idea. There is no great mystery here, for evolutionists have for centuries made strong theological arguments that the world must have arisen naturalistically. The true explanations are all naturalistic. Therefore it is little wonder that, while not knowing how the world could have evolved, evolutionists are sure it did evolve. Evolution, one way or another, is a fact.

It is here that many fail to appreciate evolution’s conundrum. They often criticize evolution’s method mandate. Have not evolutionists been wrong to insist on methodological naturalism? No, such a method is perfectly fine.

The problem with evolution is not its insistence on method, but on its underlying theology. By insisting on method and realism and completeness, evolutionists are literally not equipped to consider other legitimate possibilities. They have already made a metaphysical commitment, without knowing whether or not it is true. They have confined themselves to a box. For when problems are encountered there is no way to tell whether the correct naturalistic solution has simply not yet been found, or whether the phenomenon itself is non natural. Of course evolutionists must always opt for the former, no matter how absurd the science becomes.

So the problem with evolution is not that the naturalistic approach might occasionally be inadequate. The problem is that evolutionists would never know any better. The evolutionists truth claims, and the underlying theology, have immense consequences. Religion drives science, and it matters.

An Evolutionist Coauthor of James Watson is a Gnostic

Evolution’s “just-add-water” view of life has led to a massive underestimation of life. Evolutionists expect simplicity but biology is full of complexities. Bruce Alberts, one of James Watson’s co authors of Molecular Biology of the Cell, once admitted:

We have always underestimated cells. Undoubtedly we still do today. … we can walk and we can talk because the chemistry that makes life possible is much more elaborate and sophisticated than anything we students had ever considered. Proteins make up most of the dry mass of a cell. But instead of a cell dominated by randomly colliding individual protein molecules, we now know that nearly every major process in a cell is carried out by assemblies of 10 or more protein molecules. And, as it carries out its biological functions, each of these protein assemblies interacts with several other large complexes of proteins. Indeed, the entire cell can be viewed as a factory that contains an elaborate network of interlocking assembly lines, each of which is composed of a set of large protein machines.

Indeed, even this description leaves out much of the story of how cells work. But it all must have evolved because evolution is a fact. And evolution is a fact because it must be. Evolutionists have a dozen or so metaphysical mandates that require evolution. One of them is Gnosticism, as shown on this phylogenetic tree representation of evolutionary thought:

Alberts, as with many evolutionists, is a Gnostic. As President of the National Academy of Sciences, one of the most prestigious positions in science, Alberts once penned this Gnostic ode to evolution:

Scientists, like many others, are touched with awe at the order and complexity of nature. Indeed, many scientists are deeply religious. But science and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience. Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each.

It’s good to hear that scientists are touched with awe. Unfortunately many are, as Alberts tells us, “deeply religious.” That is precisely the problem. In fact Alberts is one of them. And he displays this in his next two sentences. Alberts did not learn these truths from science.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

Infra Dig: What Goes Around Comes Around and Why Evolution is a Fact

re•li•gion [ri-lij-uhn], noun: A set of beliefs concerning the cause, nature, and purpose of the world, especially when considered as the creation of a god or gods.

The view that God should work according to natural laws rather than direct providence has always been attractive to religious believers. These believers prefer a more distant God for many reasons. For instance, is it not obvious that God would not have directly created such an evil world? Instead, God must have created the laws and went away. Like Aristotle’s Prime Mover, God is removed from the evil and not culpable. But there are several other theological traditions that argue just as strongly against divine intervention, and for creation by natural law. One is that the world, especially the lowly things of the world, are beneath God’s dignity.

In the era of modern science the infra dignitatem argument, or infra dig for short, traces at least back to the Cambridge Platonists in the seventeenth century. The idea was that God would not, as the Anglican botanist John Ray put it, “set his own hand as it were to every work, and immediately do all the meanest and trifling’st things himself drudgingly, without making use of any inferior or subordinate Minister.”

The subordinate minister or agent was Plastic Nature which, unlike the Creator, was not infallible or irresistible. Instead, Plastic Nature had to contend with the ineptitude of matter. The results were those “errors and bungles” of nature.

Such gnostic tendencies by no means ceased with the seventeenth century. Indeed, this view seemed to have a divine sanction. After all, to control the world exclusively through natural laws—God’s secondary causes—required an even greater God. In 1794 Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus Darwin wrote this Gnostic-sounding vision of how natural history should be viewed:

The world itself might have been generated, rather than created; that is, it might have been gradually produced from very small beginnings, increasing by the activity of its inherent principles, rather than by a sudden evolution by the whole by the Almighty fiat. What a magnificent idea of the infinite power of the great architect! The Cause of Causes! Parent of Parents! Ens Entium! For if we may compare infinities, it would seem to require a greater infinity of power to cause the causes of effects, than to cause the effects themselves.

A striking example of these gnostic tendencies in Darwin’s time arose when John Millais’ painting Christ in the house of his parents was first exhibited at the Royal Academy in 1850. In the painting, the boy Jesus had injured his hand in his father’s carpentry shop. Mother Mary attended to the boy while Joseph continued with his work. Outside the door sheep patiently awaited their future savior. The scene was both symbolic and realistic, with wood scraps lying all about and workers going about their duties.

But the Victorians emphasized God’s wisdom, power and transcendence. Could he really have bruised his hand in a messy carpenter’s shop? The Times complained that the painting was revolting, for its “attempt to associate the holy family with the meanest details of a carpenter’s shop, with no conceivable omission of misery, of dirt, even of disease, all finished with the same loathsome meticulousness, is disgusting.” Blackwood’s Magazine said “We can hardly imagine anything more ugly, graceless and unpleasant,” and Charles Dickens called the painting “mean, odious, revolting and repulsive.”

The gnostics could not believe God became a man for the same reasons they could not believe God directly created the world—they could not envision God involved in a world so fraught with misery. Similarly, just as the Victorians were troubled by Millais’ depiction of the human side of Jesus, they also would have trouble with the idea that God so lowered himself to create the messy and detailed biological world, so full of not only of useless bloodshed but of anomalies and particulars. It was all beneath God’s dignity.

A few years earlier the Reverend Baden Powell had insisted that physical and moral problems had completely separate foundations and should have nothing to do with one another. God’s works and God’s word were separate and moral and physical phenomena were completely independent. He wrote in 1838:

Scientific and revealed truth are of essentially different natures, and if we attempt to combine and unite them, we are attempting to unite things of a kind which cannot be consolidated, and shall infallibly injure both. In a word, in physical science we must keep strictly to physical induction and demonstration; in religious inquiry, to moral proof, but never confound the two together. When we follow observation and inductive reasoning, our inquiries lead us to science. When we obey the authority of the Divine Word, we are not led to science but to faith. The mistake consists in confounding these two distinct objects together; and imagining that we are pursuing science when we introduce the authority of revelation. They cannot be combined without losing the distinctive character of both.

The message here is that religion and science are to be kept separate. God is retained to supply the former, but it would never do to consider him in the latter. So it is not too surprising that in his 1844 book Vestiges, Robert Chambers reissued the infra dig argument:

How can we suppose an immediate exertion of this creative power at one time to produce the zoophytes, another time to add a few marine mollusks, another to bring in one or two crustacea, again to crustaceous fishes, again perfect fishes, and so on to the end. This would surely be to take a very mean view of the Creative Power.

Divine providence could engage in the noble activity of impressing laws upon matter, but not grovel in the muck of nature.

Alfred Wallace agreed. Evolution’s cofounder argued that the universe was self-regulating according to its general laws and in no need of continual supervision and rearrangement of details. “As a matter of feeling and religion,” concluded Wallace, “I hold this to be a far higher conception of the Creator of the Universe than that which may be called the ‘continual interference hypothesis’.”

Darwin, for his part, was keen to the implications of this modern gnosticism. If God was not intimately involved in the world, then was He involved at all? In a letter Darwin challenged his American friend Asa Gray to think this through:

I see a bird which I want for food, take my gun and kill it, I do this designedly. An innocent and good man stands under a tree and is killed by a flash of lightning. Do you believe (and I really should like to hear) that God designedly killed this man? … If you believe so, do you believe that when a swallow snaps up a gnat that God designed that that particular swallow should snap up that particular gnat at that particular instant? I believe that the man and the gnat are in the same predicament. If the death of neither man nor gnat are designed, I see no good reason to believe that their first birth or production should be necessarily designed.

Many argue about whether Darwin believed in God, but Darwin certainly held strongly to the popular beliefs about God. It was reasonable for Darwin to argue that God would not be personally involved in the swallow’s attack on the gnat and then leverage his theological principle to conclude that all of biology arose on its own. Evolution is the right conclusion given a gnostic starting point. God and matter don’t mix, so life wasn’t created. If Archimedes needed only a place to stand to move the world, Darwin needed only a theological ledge.

Not surprisingly Darwin also used gnostic ideas to defend his theory against the problem of complexity. Darwin pointed out that while it is tempting to see God as the master engineer who crafted complex organs such as the eye, this would make God too much like man.

Darwin agreed that the perfection of the eye reminds us of the telescope which resulted from the highest of human intellect. Was it not right to conclude that the eye was also the product of a great intellect? This may seem the obvious answer but Darwin warned against it, for we should not “assume that the Creator works by intellectual powers like those of man.” Better to imagine the eye as the result of natural selection’s perfecting powers rather than having God too much involved in the world.

The Victorians could not believe that the boy Jesus actually labored in his earthly father’s carpentry shop. Likewise, it was reasonable for Darwin to argue that complex organs were not likely shaped by God because that would mean he works as man does.

These Gnostic tendencies remain with us today. Evolutionist Stephen Jay Gould, for example, admiringly recounted the Darwin-Gray correspondences. The problem, according to Gould, is not the religious motivation in Darwin’s supposedly scientific theory, but rather that Darwin’s position can be depressing. Gould wrote a book on how we are supposed to understand this new gnosticism. He believed that science and religion do not overlap and are non-overlapping magisteria.

Likewise Niles Eldredge takes the position that “religion and science are two utterly different domains of human experience” and Bruce Alberts, writing for the National Academy of Sciences, informs us that:

Scientists, like many others, are touched with awe at the order and complexity of nature. Indeed, many scientists are deeply religious. But science and religion occupy two separate realms of human experience. Demanding that they be combined detracts from the glory of each.

Similarly Salman Khan at the Khan Academy explains that an all-powerful God would not design the particular. God, if there is one, would use simple laws to create a complex world. Khan concludes:

That to me is a better design.

And isn’t that all that matters?

These are just a few of the many examples of modern gnosticism within evolutionary thought. God must be disjoint from creation and any attempt to force-fit them together is bound to be awkward. Or again, how is it that God could create the universe but have nothing to do with science? The answer of course is that God did not create the world, at least not directly—the world evolved. The historian’s assessment of gnosticism could just as easily apply to evolution:

The cardinal feature of gnostic thought is the radical dualism that governs the relation of God and world … The deity is absolutely transmundane, its nature alien to that of the universe which it neither created nor governs and to which it is the complete antithesis … the world is the work of lowly powers. [Hans Jonas, quoted in: Philip J. Lee, Against the Protestant Gnostics, p. 16, Oxford University Press, 1987.]

The gnostic’s hope in “lowly powers” was fulfilled in evolution’s natural selection. And the acceptance of evolution, in turn, reinforced gnosticism in modern thought. Darwin gave form to the gnostic’s vision, but that brought with it a movement towards gnosticism. The influence of gnostic thought today is not often acknowledged or understood. It is, according to Harold Bloom, the most common thread of religious thought in America. He calls it the American Religion, and he finds it “pervasive and overwhelming, however it is masked, and even our secularists, indeed even our professed atheists, are more Gnostic than humanist in their ultimate presuppositions.”

It is perhaps one of the great enigmas in religious thought that one can profess to be an agnostic, skeptic, or even atheist regarding belief in God yet still hold strong opinions about God. Evolution may breed skepticism, but its adherents have continued to make religious proclamations. Indeed, those proclamations are really no different than those made by Darwin and his fellow Victorians.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

David Penny’s Reversal and Why Evolution’s Falsified Predictions Don’t Matter

When Charles Darwin introduced his theory of evolution he explained how it could be tested. As the sage of Kent explained:

If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down. But I can find out no such case.

While providing a test of falsification sounds scientific, this was just another one of Darwin’s protectionist moves. For in science, theories should be tested against realistic criteria, not universal negatives. How could a scientist, who is skeptical of the notion that all of biology spontaneously arose on its own, prove that a biological structure “could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications.”

Biology is chocked full of such structures, but there is a catch. Darwin was requiring that the skeptic prove that such structures “could not possibly” have evolved. Given the evolutionist’s liberal use of imaginative just-so stories, this requirement would seem practically impossible.

Darwin was not looking for examples that show evolution to be unlikely. He did not say “did not likely” evolve. He said “could not possibly” evolve. Darwin was erecting high walls around his idea.

Nonetheless, Darwin’s defensive strategy was doomed to fail. The idea is so scientifically flawed that even its own Maginot Line could not save it. Today, the question is not is there a structure that “could not possibly” have evolved, but rather which one of the thousands and thousands of examples in biology should we pick? In recent years proteins have provided yet another army of examples where even the evolutionist’s own numbers show a twenty seven order of magnitude shortfall between expectations and reality.

What is interesting about all this is not that evolution is riddled with failures, but the denial that is universal amongst evolutionists. In fact, evolutionists not only deny there is any problem, they insist evolution is a fact, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Some wonder why the failure of Darwin’s own Maginot Line left evolution unharmed. How could evolution be the worst theory of all time yet nonetheless continue to hold onto its facthood status?

The answer is that evolution is deemed a fact because evolutionists know the world could not have been intelligently designed. The world’s evil, inefficiency and inelegance all mandate a thoughtless creative force. Like a fancy sports car with its steering wheel on backwards, this world doesn’t make sense. No designer capable of creating this world would have intended for it in the first place.

But of course intent is not a scientific quantity. The evolutionary mandate derives from secret knowledge, not public knowledge. Its foundation is gnosis, not scientia.

And so how well evolution fares in light of empirical science matters very little. That is a topic for research. It falls in the category of how evolution occurred, not if evolution occurred. No amount of empirical, public, evidence can change the private fact of evolution. Gnosis trumps scientia every time.

All of this means that one cannot argue with evolutionists from the scientific evidence. What a designer would and would not have intended cannot be learned from a scientific experiment. It does not derive from empirical findings. Rather, evolution is mandated by personal, religious beliefs that are not open to debate. Evolutionists accuse their skeptics of religious bias when they themselves are the ones who infected science with a metaphysical Trojan horse.

All of this means that evolutionary predictions and their falsifications mean very little. If a prediction or a test, such as Darwin’s proposal above, turns out to be false, it simply means that the test was ill conceived. Perhaps evolution needs to be modified, but it cannot be refuted.

As Lakatos explained, the sub hypotheses can be forfeited. They are the protective belt shielding the theoretical core. Evolution’s theoretical core is creation by natural means. The particular details don’t so much matter. Selection can be replaced by drift, gradualism can be replaced by saltationism, random mutation can be replaced by pre programmed adaptation, the evolutionary tree can be replaced by a web, even common descent can be replaced. But naturalism cannot be replaced.

So when a prediction goes bad, it is the fault of the sub hypothesis, not the theoretical core. Naturalism can never be questioned, regardless of the evidence. A good example of this came in a paper by evolutionist David Penny published last month in which Penny explained how we should understand the failure of a prediction he used to uphold evolution thirty years ago.

As I have explained, evolution predicts that different traits point to the same tree. Various evolutionary effects may cause occasional differences between the trees, but roughly speaking, if different traits are used to reconstruct the evolutionary tree, they should produce similar trees.

Thirty years ago Penny attempted to use this prediction to make evolution truly testable. In a paper published in the world’s leading science journal, Penny argued that dissimilar trees would “refute the existence of an evolutionary tree”:

Our strategy is to take different protein sequences for a common set of taxa, find all the minimal (and near minimal) evolutionary trees and then compare them. Should the probability be high that these trees are unrelated, this would indicate that the protein sequences do not contain similar evolutionary information, and hence would contradict the existence of an evolutionary tree for those taxa.

Penny used five proteins (cytochrome C, hemoglobin A, hemoglobin B, fibrinopeptide A and fibrinopeptide B) to infer the evolutionary relationships between eleven different species (rhesus monkey, sheep, horse, kangaroo, mouse, rabbit, dog, pig, human, cow, and ape). There are millions of different ways that eleven species can be arranged in an evolutionary tree. Penny used the protein comparisons between the different species to judge which of the arrangements would be more likely if they indeed were related via evolution. Penny repeated this process five times, once for each protein, and he obtained similar results. That is, the most likely evolutionary trees suggested by the five different proteins were all similar (actually there were significant differences, but as usual the test was against purely random trees). Penny concluded that “the existence of an evolutionary tree for these taxa is a falsifiable hypothesis.”

Today, thirty years later, things have changed. We now have orders of magnitude more sequence data and Penny’s prediction has been falsified many times over. There are plenty of protein and DNA sequences that do not agree, but produce incongruent evolutionary trees.

So did evolutionists reevaluate their beliefs? Did Penny conclude there is no evolutionary tree? Of course not. As Penny now writes in his new paper, he is “not rejecting the tree per se but enriching the tree concept into a network.” The new answer is horizontal gene transfer, which evolution is supposed to have created against all odds so that evolution could happen.

Evolution’s falsified predictions—and there are many, most of evolution’s predictions have turned out false—do not matter. For none of this changes the evolutionist’s certainty that the alternatives are wrong. In other words, evidence against evolution does not remedy the problems with the design hypothesis. The intent problem is no less a problem simply because biology doesn’t support evolution. Perhaps we can’t figure out how the sports car came to be, but it still has its backwards steering wheel. It must not have been intended that way.

Religion drives science, and it matters.

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.

What Evolutionists Don’t Understand About Methodological Naturalism

OK let’s try this again. One more time, this time with pictures. In their celebrated volume  Blueprints, evolutionists Maitland Edey and Donald Johanson argued that “What God did is a matter for faith and not for scientific inquiry. The two fields are separate. If our scientific inquiry should lead eventually to God … that will be the time to stop science.” Similarly for evolutionist Niles Eldredge, the key responsibility of science—to predict—becomes impossible when a capricious Creator is entertained:

But the Creator obviously could have fashioned each species in any way imaginable. There is no basis for us to make predictions about what we should find when we study animals and plants if we accept the basic creationist position. … the creator could have fashioned each organ system or physiological process (such as digestion) in whatever fashion the Creator pleased. [The Monkey Business, p. 39, Washington Square Press, 1982.]

Or again, evolutionist Paul Moody explains that:

Most modern biologists do not find this explanation [that God created the species] satisfying. For one thing, it is really not an explanation at all; it amounts to saying, “Things are this way because they are this way.” Furthermore, it removes the subject from scientific inquiry. One can do no more than speculate as to why the Creator chose to follow one pattern in creating diverse animals rather than to use differing patterns. [Introduction to Evolution, p. 26, Harper and Row, 1970.]

Likewise Tim Berra warns that we must not be led astray by the apparent design in biological systems, for it “is not the sudden brainstorm of a creator, but an expression of the operation of impersonal natural laws, of water seeking its level. An appeal to a supernatural explanation is unscientific and unnecessary—and certain to stifle intellectual curiosity and leave important questions unasked and unanswered.” In fact, “Creationism has no explanatory powers, no application for future investigation, no way to advance knowledge, no way to lead to new discoveries. As far as science is concerned, creationism is a sterile concept.” [Evolution and the Myth of Creationism, pp. 66, 142, Stanford University Press, 1990.]

In his undergraduate evolution text Mark Ridley informs the student that “Supernatural explanations for natural phenomena are scientifically useless,” [Evolution, p. 323, Blackwell, 1993] and commenting on the Dover legal decision Eugenie Scott of the National Center for Science Education explains that supernatural explanations:

would be truly a science stopper, because once we allow ourselves to say, “Gee, this problem is so hard; I can’t figure out how it works—God did it,” then we stop looking for a natural explanation; and if there is a natural explanation, we’re not going to find it if we stop looking.

Over and over evolutionists today agree that science must strictly be limited to naturalistic explanations. One finds this throughout the evolutionary literature and it is a consistent refrain in discussions and debates about evolution.

But this sentiment by no means arose with today’s evolutionists. In 1891 UC Berkeley professor Joseph LeConte argued strenuously for this philosophical mandate:

The origins of new phenomena are often obscure, even inexplicable, but we never think to doubt that they have a natural cause; for so to doubt is to doubt the validity of reason, and the rational constitution of Nature. So also, the origins of new organic forms may be obscure or even inexplicable, but we ought not on that account to doubt that they had a natural cause, and came by a natural process; for so to doubt is also to doubt the validity of reason, and the rational constitution of organic Nature.

Likewise Darwin argued that whether one “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: for he who admits this as a great truth has a wide field open to him for further inquiry.”

Explanations needed to be naturalistic for scientific inquiry. And as usual the foundations for this evolutionary mandate long predate 1859. Miracles were increasingly eschewed by leading thinkers and a century before philosopher David Hume had made persuasive arguments against miracles. Much of Hume’s material came from theological debates earlier in the century. On the continent leading Lutherans had already discarded the supernatural.

Method, completeness and realism in pictures

So when an evolutionist today insists that science must be naturalistic he is standing on a deep foundation of ideas. But setting aside this history for a moment, what about this argument? Remember that these same evolutionists claim their idea is also a fact. Is there not something curious about these tandem claims? I was once in a debate where the evolutionists claimed that we know evolution is a fact, and that it also is necessary in order to do science. How did they know that? Let’s have a look.

First, imagine the set of all possible explanations, as represented by the blue area below:

Because the blue area contains all possible explanations, it includes false as well as true explanations, lousy as well as good explanations, aesthetic and clumsy ones, and natural and non natural ones. It is every possible explanation in one set.

Now consider the set of all solutions that are according to a particular method, such as naturalism, as illustrated in the orange area below. All explanations that are strictly naturalistic are in the yellow area, and all other explanations are outside the orange area. Because the blue area contains all possible explanations, the orange area is a subset—it is wholly within the blue area.

Next consider the set of all true explanations as represented by the green circle below. These true explanations provide realistic models of nature. Again, this set of explanations must be wholly within the blue area, but otherwise we don’t know just where this green circle is. It could be in the orange area, it could be outside the orange area, or it could overlap. We don’t know what the true solutions all are, which is why we do science.

I have drawn the green circle above as partly inside and partly outside the orange area merely to illustrate the possibilities. But we don’t know where it is, and therefore whenever we mandate, a priori, a method such as naturalism, we automatically exclude a set of explanations that might be true.

In the early days of modern science philosophers were keen to this issue. Francis Bacon, for instance, wanted science only to pursue true explanations. But Bacon also wanted science to restrict itself to naturalistic explanations. Bacon realized that the restriction to naturalism would exclude any realistic, true, explanations that were not strictly naturalistic.

Bacon said that such non naturalistic phenomena should not be pursued by science. So Bacon insisted on naturalism and realism, but forfeited completeness. Science would not investigate all things. The thick black line below illustrates how this position limits itself to explanations that are both realistic and naturalistic, while potentially forfeiting some true explanations (depending on where exactly the green circle really is).

Like Bacon, another early philosopher, Rene Descartes, also insisted on naturalism. But he didn’t like the idea of forfeiting completeness. Descartes wanted science to be able to investigate all phenomena. But what if some realistic, true, explanations fall outside of naturalism? So what.

Descartes solution was to forfeit realism. Science, according to Descartes, would occasionally produce untrue explanations that otherwise could very well be useful. This approach is illustrated by the thick line below that encompasses all the naturalistic explanations, but misses some of the true explanations. Science might produce useful fictions along the way. Descartes mandated method and completeness, but in doing so had to forfeit realism.

After Descartes several scientists did not like this idea of forfeiting realism, as Descartes did, or forfeiting completeness, as Bacon did. These empiricists were interested in true solutions for all phenomena. This approach is illustrated below with the thick line encompassing the true solutions. But in order to maintain such realism and completeness, this approach cannot guarantee what method would be necessary. They might require non naturalistic explanations, for instance. So this approach provides realism and completeness, but forfeits any guarantee of method, such as naturalism.

Bacon, Descartes and the empiricists represent three different approaches to doing science. All are logically consistent. And who knows, the different methods might yield different insights—let a thousand flowers bloom.

But of course all three approaches have a limitation. Like the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, you cannot have realism, completeness and method all in one. You cannot have your cake and eat it too.

This brings us back to the evolutionists. Unlike Bacon, Descartes and the empiricists, evolutionists do have their cake and eat it too. They claim evolution is a fact, they mandate naturalism, and their science knows no limits. They have realism, method, and completeness all together. How can this be?

The answer is simple. One cannot have realism, method, and completeness simultaneously without some extra, non scientific, knowledge. Evolution’s gnosis is, of course, that true solutions are, indeed, naturalistic. This is illustrated below by the thick line that encompasses all true explanations, but it is also wholly naturalistic. How so? The trick is that the green circle has been moved. It is completely within the orange area. Knowing the location of the green circle, even before doing the science, is evolution’s gnosis—their secret knowledge.

It is this secret knowledge the evolutionists possess that allows them to have their cake and eat it too, and this brings us back to the history of the idea. There is no great mystery here, for evolutionists have for centuries made strong theological arguments that the world must have arisen naturalistically. The true explanations are all naturalistic. Therefore it is little wonder that, while not knowing how the world could have evolved, evolutionists are sure it did evolve. Evolution, one way or another, is a fact.

It is here that many fail to appreciate evolution’s conundrum. They often criticize evolution’s method mandate. Have not evolutionists been wrong to insist on methodological naturalism? No, such a method is perfectly fine.

The problem with evolution is not its insistence on method, but on its underlying theology. By insisting on method and realism and completeness, evolutionists are literally not equipped to consider other legitimate possibilities. They have already made a metaphysical commitment, without knowing whether or not it is true. They have confined themselves to a box. For when problems are encountered there is no way to tell whether the correct naturalistic solution has simply not yet been found, or whether the phenomenon itself is non natural. Of course evolutionists must always opt for the former, no matter how absurd the science becomes.

So the problem with evolution is not that the naturalistic approach might occasionally be inadequate. The problem is that evolutionists would never know any better. The evolutionists truth claims, and the underlying theology, have immense consequences. Religion drives science, and it matters.

More Pearls from the World Science Festival

Edward O. Wilson was not the only leading light at the World Science Festival. The sophistry was also in the air at the Festival's "Science, Faith and Religion" panel discussion, which sported two evolutionists debating two other evolutionists about profound matters. As reported yesterday in the Wall Street Journal by Lawrence Krauss, who was one of the debaters and is director of the Origins Initiative at Arizona State University, philosopher Colin McGinn "began by commenting that it was eminently rational to suppose that Santa Claus doesn't exist even if one cannot definitively prove that he doesn't. Likewise, he argued, we can apply the same logic to the supposed existence of God." Fascinating stuff.

For his part Krauss confronted the two faithful evolutionists on the panel with the miracle of the virgin birth and asked how they could reconcile this with basic biology. "I was ultimately told," reports Krauss, "that perhaps this biblical claim merely meant to emphasize what an important event the birth was." You can see we have much to learn from these evolutionists.

Krauss' main point, however, was not the debate so much as the gnosticism that he so faithfully promotes. Krauss is always quick to point out that he is not religious. After all, he believes religious beliefs are wrong. Following such eminent evolutionists as J.B.S. Haldane and Isaac Asimov, Krauss explains that science and religion cannot be mixed. A scientist can be a believer in private, but once he dons that clean white lab coat he must leave all such beliefs behind. Krauss approvingly quotes this pearl of wisdom from Haldane's 1934 book Fact and Faith:

My practice as a scientist is atheistic. That is to say, when I set up an experiment I assume that no god, angel or devil is going to interfere with its course; and this assumption has been justified by such success as I have achieved in my professional career. I should therefore be intellectually dishonest if I were not also atheistic in the affairs of the world.

While others struggled to understand why nature is uniform and how there could be natural laws, Haldane was able to see past such philosophical nuisances. His great insight was we can safely ignore such fine points.

And as Krauss points out, the very success of science which justified Haldane continues to justify our confidence today. You know, like evolution's finding that life just happened to arise from a muddy pond (or maybe from an ocean vent, or maybe from outer space), and that a multitude of universes can solve any apparent problem with this story. It's that kind of hard science that leads today's scientists to react as Haldane did. As Krauss methodically explains, they extrapolate the atheism of science to a more general atheism. This is not the shallow end folks--these truths may be a bit rough on some folks, but they certainly are truths. What we see here is cold, hard logic at work.

And for those who do harbor doubts about all this, Krauss has some very sobering and cogent insights:

Finally, it is worth pointing out that these issues are not purely academic. The current crisis in Iran has laid bare the striking inconsistency between a world built on reason and a world built on religious dogma. Perhaps the most important contribution an honest assessment of the incompatibility between science and religious doctrine can provide is to make it starkly clear that in human affairs -- as well as in the rest of the physical world -- reason is the better guide.

That really puts it all in the right perspective. You can be an evolutionist or you can oppose reason. Religion drives science, and it matters.