Has Darwin Become Dogma?

500 years ago science revolted against theological dogma as the source of all knowledge. Today it is science that is trying to assume the mantle of the sole arbiter of truth. On magazine covers such as this month's National Geographic and in legal battles across the country, the scientific community has become absolute in its belief that evolution will answer all of the questions regarding our beginnings. They have become so dogmatic that anyone who questions this belief is considered a heretic who should be ridiculed into silence.

Nearly a century and a half has passed since the publication of Charles Darwins Origin of Species. Evolution has been taught as an undeniable fact in high school textbooks for well over a half century. Why all of the sudden do we find the cover of the November 2004 issue of National Geographic emblazoned with the question, "Was Darwin Wrong?" It's that like asking "Was Copernicus Wrong?"

So, what's up? When we turn to the first page of the article, we find the same question again, this time written across the gray feathered breast of a domestically bred Jacobin pigeon, the outlandish plumage of which reminds one of the costumes of the late Liberace. Flip to the next page and we find our answer, a resounding 'NO' printed in a font a third of the page high. But if the answer is such a large and definitive NO, why would the venerable National Geographic entertain (even rhetorically) the apparently foolish question 'Was Darwin wrong?"

If you read the article, you'll wonder what all the shouting is about. The author David Quammen paints a calm picture of an established science unburdened by serious criticism. The only critics, so we are told, are 'fundamentalist Christians','ultraorthodox Jews', and 'Islamic creationists', all of whom view evolution as a threat to their scientifically uninformed theology. Obviously, they aren't the ones ruffling National Geographics feathers.

Who else arouses the great NO? As it turns out, 'Other' people too, not just scriptural literalists, remain unpersuaded about evolution. According to a Gallup poll, no less than 45 percent of responding U.S. adults agreed that God created human beings pretty much in their present form at one time within the last 10,000 years or so.

"Why are there so many antievolutionists?' they ask impatiently. Why indeed? Unfortunately, you won't find the real answer in the article, which merely offers a fluff and flash, unambiguous public relations presentation of evolution.

The real answer is this. To the question 'Was Darwin Wrong?' the proper answer is not a clamorous 'NO' but a well-informed 'Yes and No'. While there are merits to his theory, there are also serious problems, serious scientific problems.

Listen to these words: 'despite the power of molecular genetics to reveal the hereditary essences of organisms, the large-scale aspects of evolution remain unexplained, including the origin of species. So Darwin's assumption that the tree of life is a consequence of the gradual accumulation of small hereditary differences appears to be without significant support." Are these the words of a 'fundamentalist Christian', 'ultraorthodox Jew', or an 'Islamic creationist'? No, they are the words of Dr. Brian Goodwin, professor of biology, one of a growing number of scientists who find that the powers of natural selection are woefully insufficient to perform the amazing feats promised in the title of Darwins great work of producing new species.

But that was the great promise of Darwin. Small variations among individuals are 'selected' by nature because they make the individual more 'fit' to survive. Those more 'fit' characteristics are passed on to the offspring. Add enough little changes up over time, and the species becomes gradually transformed. Given enough time, evolution will have produced an entirely new species.

So it was that Darwin assumed that little changes in character and appearance (microevolution) would eventually yield, through natural selection, enormous changes (macroevolution). From a single living cell, given millions upon millions upon millions of years, the entire diversity of all living things could be produced.

That was the grand promise of Darwins theory. And Darwin wasn't wrong about microevolution. But the case for macroevolution is far from closed. In fact, biologist Mae-Wan Ho and mathematician Peter Saunders contend that, "All the signs are that evolution theory is in crisis, and that a change is on the way." Darwins theory is in crisis, they argue, because it has failed to explain the one thing that made its promise so grand; how new species arise.

I quote the words of Brian Goodwin, Mae-Wan Ho, and Peter Saunders because they represent the growing number of scientific dissenters from orthodox Darwinism (or more accurately, neo-Darwinism). National Geographic makes no mention of them. That would make the quick and confident 'No' into a rather sheepish "well, sort of".

They also purposely avoid mentioning the growing Intelligent Design movement, a group of scientists, philosophers, and mathematicians who have very serious doubts about many other aspects of Darwins theory. One suspects reading between the lines that the real reason that National Geographic suddenly 'doth protest too much' against doubters of Darwinism, is that the Intelligent Design (ID) movement has done so much to bring the scientific and philosophical problems with evolutionary theory into the public spotlight. They cannot draw attention to the ID movement, however, or people might become more informed about the difficulties that beset Darwinism. So, we return to the question, 'Was Darwin Wrong?" National Geographic says "NO". But readers who aren't satisfied with such simple answers should read the following books.

William Dembski, Uncommon Dissent: Intellectuals Who Find Darwinism Unconvincing

Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion

The origin of life: Darwin conjectured that all life was descended from a single, simple form. But where did the first living thing come from? In a now famous private letter to Joseph Hooker, Darwin offered a conjecture: if (and oh! what a big if!) we could conceive in some warm little pond, with all sorts of ammonia and phosphoric salts, light, heat, electricity, etc., that a proteine [sic] compound was chemically formed ready to undergo still more complex changes, then we could explain the origin of life as a lucky chemical reaction. Against this hope, origin of life researchers have fallen on hard times. While there were some initial victories in the laboratory, generating small amounts of pre-biological molecules, scientists are unable to generate anything more biologically interesting unless they artificially rig their experiments in ways that contradict the actual conditions of early Earth.

The problem is so acute that many origin of life scientists have given up, and are now turning their efforts to trying to discover ways that complex, life-seeding molecules may have been delivered from space. Alas, the problems facing such efforts are just as severe.

The fossil record: According to Darwin, evolution had to occur very slowly, through slight changes not by leaps and bounds. Unfortunately, the fossil record does not support such gradual transformation. Instead, species seem to appear quite suddenly, fully formed, stay the same for millions of years, and then just as suddenly disappear. The most significant problem for Darwinism is the Cambrian explosion, where quite suddenly, about 550,000,000 years ago, all the major phyla of the animal kingdom appear in the fossil record.

The Truth About Inherit the Wind "Of course, such a simple choice between bigotry and enlightenment is central to the contemporary liberal vision of which Inherit the Wind is a typical expression. But while it stands nominally for tolerance, latitude, and freedom of thought, the play is full of the self- righteous certainty that it deplores in the fundamentalist camp. Some critics have detected the play's sanctimonious tone-"bigotry in reverse," as Andrew Sarris called it-even while appreciating its dramatic quality and well-written leading roles. The play reveals a great deal about a mentality that demands open-mindedness and excoriates dogmatism, only to advance its own certainties more insistently-that promotes tolerance and intellectual integrity but stoops to vilifying the opposition, falsifying reality, and distorting history in the service of its agenda.

In fact, a more historically accurate dramatization of the Scopes Trial than Inherit the Wind might have been far richer and more interesting-and might also have given its audiences a genuine dramatic tragedy to watch. It would not have sent its audience home full of moral superiority and happy thoughts about the march of progress. The truth is not that Bryan was wrong about the dangers of the philosophical materialism that Darwinism presupposes but that he was right, not that he was a once great man disfigured by fear of the future but that he was one of the few to see where a future devoid of the transcendent would lead. The antievolutionist crusade to control what is taught in the schools may not have been the answer, and Bryan's own approach may have been too narrow. But the real tragedy lies in the losing fight that he and others like him waged against a modernity increasingly deprived of spiritual foundations." Carol Inannone First Things

The Debate Rages On Although nearly 100 years have passed since the infamous Scopes Monkey Trial, the debate rages on. In Grantsburg, Wisconsin a firestorm of critique was leveled against the school board this month for revising its science curriculum to include more than one model/theory of origin in the districts science curriculum. Current Wisconsin state law mandates that evolution be taught but the school board viewed the law as too restrictive.

Similar skirmishes are being fought around the country. Ever since the Scopes Trial, the ACLU has been an active player, bringing lawsuits against any group who questions the Darwin dogma in school curriculum. After a group of parents in Cobb County Georgia complained about the exclusive presentation of evolution as the sole theory of origin in three biology textbooks in 2002, stickers were placed in the science texts intended to remind students to keep an open mind. Now the ACLU is representing another group of parents in a lawsuit against that school district claiming that the stickers promote the teaching of creationism and discriminate against particular religions.

The Dover Area School Board in Pennsylvania recently voted to include the theory of 'intelligent design' and other alternative theories to evolution in their science curriculum. Similar action was taken by the Ohio board of education this spring when they narrowly approved a similar plan. Critics charge it risks a return to teaching creationism.

To say that evolution has not answered all the scientific questions regarding our origins does not suggest you have to teach creationism in schools as a scientific theory. What should be taught is an honest assessment of what science does and does not know regarding our beginnings. The questions regarding our origins are too big for science alone to answer. People of faith should not allow themselves to be relegated to an anti-science position for questioning Darwin. Questioning the validity of theories is what science is supposed to do.

Benjamin Wiker Benjamin Wiker holds a Ph.D. in Theological Ethics from Vanderbilt University, and has taught at Marquette University, St. Mary's University (MN), and Thomas Aquinas College (CA). He is now a Lecturer in Theology and Science at Franciscan University of Steubenville (OH), and a full-time, free-lance writer. Dr. Wiker writes regularly for a variety of journals, including Catholic World Report, New Oxford Review, Crisis Magazine, and First Things, and is a regular columnist for the National Catholic Register. Dr. Wiker just released a new book called Architects of the Culture of Death (Ignatius). His first book, Moral Darwinism: How We Became Hedonists, was released in the spring of 2002 (InterVarsity Press). He is writing another book on Intelligent Design for InterVarsity Press called The Meaning-full Universe.

Hi back! Was not ignoring you. Sorry it took so long in replying! Sigh. :-(

The number of Days however reconciles quite nicely with relativity for this universe. Fifteen billion years (roughly) at our space/time coordinates in this four dimension block (3 spatial, 1 temporal) is equal to 6 equivalent solar "days" from the space/time coordinates of the inception of this universe.

If it was just the timeline, I would be right with you, however, the sequencing is way off as well. For instance, take a look at the evolution of flowering plants.

Damage to the brain is more revealing that damage to extremities.

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1277171/posts?page=318#318

I have posed a number of questions on this thread regarding the necessity of the brain for consciousness. None of these questions has elicited a direct response.

If the brain is just a radio reporting interactions with matter, why is the mind affected by damage to the brain?

The color-blind painter is a great example. Why should knowledge and memory of color be affected by brain damage if the brain isn't creating the consciousness of color? If my TV fails, I still remember programs I've seen.

This is not a trivial question. These phenomena have been studied for more than 150 years, and there are countless examples.

Thank you for the links and the excerpt! They were both interesting.

This evidence supports Gerald Edelman's contention that memories are're-constructed' each time we remember them and do not exist as separate entities stored in a mythical filing cabinet.

That statement speaks to the process of memory rather than whether the mind is an epiphenomenon of the physical brain. IOW, the trial suggests that the process of recall is more like a hologram than an access of a database - each slice giving the whole view but from a different aspect. I believe the trial may eliminate a networked database structure but I do not see where it has eliminated either a relational or a hierarchical structure or has establish a holographic type structure.

Moreover, it does not settle whether the mind is an epiphenomenon of the physical brain or whether the physical brain is the mechanism of mind (like a transmitter/receiver). I know of no clinical test which could falsify either worldview.

Machinery I deal with will always have a human operator, ultimately, who uses it for his ends. Our body also has a human operator, who directs it, and that human is somehow separate from his machinery, although he clearly can't live on earth, in this dimension, unless his machinery operates properly. The machinery fails, and he must depart this dimension or die. We cannot separate ourselves from our flesh and remain here, but we are not our flesh.

Well said, marron!

I agree, machines require "outside" operators -- be they programs or human operators -- in order to work. A Boeing 747 sitting on the runway, or a Porsche parked in your driveway, are not going to do anything at all to manifest what they are designed to do until a human being gets in them and makes them do something. Machines aren't self-actualizing systems. As you say, they do not possess will.

But human beings do possess will, and thus are self-actualizing systems. Ever since I was very young, I've been able to distinguish that "I" am not the same thing as my "robot," though "I" do inhabit it. I guess that makes "me" "the ghost in the machine."

Will, though, is something else. Will is an attribute of spirit. Will is the operator, the driver, the pilot. Will is you. At death, "will" disengages from the machinery by some means, and at that point your brain and body become cleverly designed meat.

Yes, I'd say we're on the same wavelength, marron. Thank you so much for the excellent post!

Thank you so much for the ping to your excellent post! I'm sorry - I meant to ping you to my above reply to js1138. Sorry about that.

BTW, nowhere have I suggested that by being an existent in its own right, the mind can get along without a brain. But just because synergistic relation exists, that doesn't necessarily mean the mind is an epiphenomenon of the brain.

I do believe the existent continues without a brain, but it obviously would not have sensory inputs or bodily access to this four dimensional block. At this level, we would instead refer to the existent as soul or spirit.

My confidence is based on personal experience when - in the case of both my mother and sister entering a deep coma before their physical bodies came to a halt - I felt them pass through me and communicate pleasure with their new existence. When my husband passed away, the expression was visual, a change in color at seventy feet of water.

Thank you so much for your reply!

If it was just the timeline, I would be right with you, however, the sequencing is way off as well. For instance, take a look at the evolution of flowering plants.

The sequencing is not off if the description of Day 3 applies to the spiritual realm, the Garden of Eden and Adamic man - which is more thoroughly explained in Genesis 2 (emphasis mine):

These [are] the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the LORD God made the earth and the heavens, And every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the LORD God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and [there was] not a man to till the ground. - Genesis 2:4-5

If the brain is just a radio reporting interactions with matter, why is the mind affected by damage to the brain?

Hi, js1138! I think the model of "radio receiver" may not be strictly suitable to what we're discussing here, because the brain is not just reporting interactions with matter, but also events taking place in the mind. As to your question, "why is the mind affected by damage to the brain?" -- do we know, in fact, that it is so affected?

Case in point: My late Aunt Ann developed ALS late in life, and the disease eventually affected her ability to speak. She became physically unable to articulate her thoughts -- and it was always obvious how frustrating this experience was for her: Her mind clearly was just as active as ever, but she had lost the physical capacity to communicate vocally because the disease manifestly had affected certain processing areas in the brain related to speech. But Ann could still write her thoughts out if she wanted to. But she found this frustrating: I often got the sense that ultimately she began to feel she was a "prisoner" in her own body because "her brain" could no longer facilitate verbal communication.

Don't know whether this anecdote helps anything. Thanks for writing, js.

Whoever said life had been explained?

Are you of the mind that, if scientists cannot explain life, then life cannot be explained at all? Possibly that may be a baseless assumption.

However, scientists are working on the problem -- though oddly enough it's the physicists and information theorists, not the biologists, who are doing it. I gather the reason the biologists eschew the subject is because the neo-Darwinist model does not provide a method by which the problem might be engaged. And thus the "dead-enders" apparently are content to assume that life is an epiphenomenon of matter, and just have done with it, just leave it at that. Personally, I find this evident lack of curiosity rather scandalous.

Thank you oh so very much for all these excellent posts! I'm very glad the psychosomatic illness suggestion was helpful.

However, scientists are working on the problem [what is life?] -- though oddly enough it's the physicists and information theorists, not the biologists, who are doing it. I gather the reason the biologists eschew the subject is because the neo-Darwinist model does not provide a method by which the problem might be engaged. And thus the "dead-enders" apparently are content to assume that life is an epiphenomenon of matter, and just have done with it, just leave it at that. Personally, I find this evident lack of curiosity rather scandalous.

H.H. Pattee also notes this disturbing lack of curiosity among biologists. And, of course, I very strongly agree with your analysis!

This evidence supports Gerald Edelman's contention that memories are 're-constructed' each time we remember them and do not exist as separate entities stored in a mythical filing cabinet.

RE js1138's statement: If memories have to be reconstructed everytime we think of them, I would think that this would make thinking an enormously inefficient process. Yet in general, Nature is "parsimonious" -- inefficiency is not rewarded and is often penalized.

I'd also like to point out that the way an experiment is designed -- especially regarding its basic assumptions which may not be explicitly clarified -- can have an effect on the conclusions that can be reached by means of that particular experiment. FWIW

Plus I visit the old "filing cabinet" all the time, whenever I need a piece of information useful to solving a problem I'm working on. I literally can execute a "file search" and get a timely response with the memories I need in order to reason and analyze current problems. Based on such experiences, I strongly doubt that the "filing cabinet model" is "mythical."

I agree, A-G, though I cannot say I know what kinds of experiences a disembodied soul can have. Moreoever, I also agree that the soul is immortal and eternal, and thus cannot be reduced to bodily existence, which is time-contingent. But this is not a "scientific concept," so I didn't mention it. What's the point? Our interlocuotrs here think the soul is but a "ghost," signifying "a fictional being." And they will not be contradicted on this point!

snip----Our body also has a human operator, who directs it, and that human is somehow separate from his machinery, although he clearly can't live on earth, in this dimension, unless his machinery operates properly.

Good anology. And it speaks to the flawed reasoning of Peter Singer & his abortionist cohorts whose argument in defense of infanticide is that the baby lacks 'personhood," a fuzzy way of getting around having to say 'spirit".

They don't seem to realize how their "lack of personhood" reasoning points to the very thing they ardently deny the existence of.......a spiritual realm. For where else would the "personhood" be if not already in the body?

I believe that professional experimentalists are very well aware that bias can affect the outcome of an experiment. In studying to be an experimentalist (there are courses geared precisely to that topic), these scientists not only learn how to screen out relevant external physical influeuces (temperature, humidity, radiation ... whatever), but they are trained to avoid the effect of personal bias. They have centuries of cumulative experience to learn from. If it creeps in, as sometimes happens, it's almost certain to be spotted by peer reviews, or by other labs that attempt to reproduce the results. However, some forms of bias are so deeply ingrained that it can take a long time to root them out (for example, the aether). Anyway, experimentalists aren't ignorant of the issue. Indeed, they're probably more aware of it than most folks.

Thank you so much for your engaging reply!

However, some forms of bias are so deeply ingrained that it can take a long time to root them out (for example, the aether). Anyway, experimentalists aren't ignorant of the issue. Indeed, they're probably more aware of it than most folks.

This is why I believe the ability to falsify a theory is extremely important!

Sir Karl Popper "Science as Falsification"

I found that those of my friends who were admirers of Marx, Freud, and Adler, were impressed by a number of points common to these theories, and especially by their apparent explanatory power. These theories appear to be able to explain practically everything that happened within the fields to which they referred. The study of any of them seemed to have the effect of an intellectual conversion or revelation, open your eyes to a new truth hidden from those not yet initiated. Once your eyes were thus opened you saw confirmed instances everywhere: the world was full of verifications of the theory. Whatever happened always confirmed it. Thus its truth appeared manifest; and unbelievers were clearly people who did not want to see the manifest truth; who refuse to see it, either because it was against their class interest, or because of their repressions which were still "un-analyzed" and crying aloud for treatment.

The most characteristic element in this situation seemed to me the incessant stream of confirmations, of observations which "verified" the theories in question; and this point was constantly emphasize by their adherents. A Marxist could not open a newspaper without finding on every page confirming evidence for his interpretation of history; not only in the news, but also in its presentation — which revealed the class bias of the paper — and especially of course what the paper did not say. The Freudian analysts emphasized that their theories were constantly verified by their "clinical observations." …

These considerations led me in the winter of 1919-20 to conclusions which I may now reformulate as follows...

One can sum up all this by saying that the criterion of the scientific status of a theory is its falsifiability, or refutability, or testability.

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