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Theistic evolutionist Stephen Barr is a serious and thoughtful man, and on the First Things blog, he has raised some serious and thoughtful objections to an essay I wrote for The Washington Post as well as to reflections on that essay by Joe Carter (also at the First Things blog). Unfortunately, I think Barr’s criticisms confuse matters more than they clarify them. Nevertheless, I’m grateful that he has aired his objections, because some of his misunderstandings are shared by other conservative intellectuals, and they deserve a response. This is the first of three posts responding to Barr.

False Dilemma or Wishful Thinking: Is Darwinian Evolution Undirected or Not?

Barr first claims that Joe Carter and I “are trapped in a false dilemma” because we wrongly think that random processes cannot be directed by God. Barr points out that even random events, properly defined, are part of God’s sovereign plan. Just because something is random from our point of view, doesn’t mean that it is outside of God’s providence. Barr may be surprised to learn that I agree with him. Indeed, most, if not all, of the scholars who believe that nature provides evidence of intelligent design would agree with him. The problem with Barr’s argument is not with his understanding of the proper meaning of random, but with his seeming blindness to the fact that the vast majority of evolutionary biologists do not share his view. Barr’s ultimate disagreement here is not with me or Joe Carter, but with the discipline of evolutionary biology itself.

Once upon a time scientists were supposed to be skeptical. Scientific theories, we were taught, were to be questioned. Yes scientists were to formulate theories, but they were also to search for evidence against theories, even their own. And while such a noble action as searching for problems with one’s own theory might be too much to ask, certainly scientists were never to protect a theory against contradictory evidence or mislead the public. That would be the ultimate scientific sell out. Scientists were to be objective, and to follow the evidence where ever it may lead.
Those days are gone — long gone. Misleading the public, covering up evidence, protecting theories — that is all standard fare today. We have now arrived at the sad state where evidence that is contrary to evolution — any contrary evidence — is not allowed. Consider this recent exchange between Yudhijit Bhattacharjee of Science magazine and evolution crusader Eugenie Scott:

Today’s New York Times features an article by science writer Nicholas Wade highlighting what Wade calls “surprising advances [that] have renewed confidence that a terrestrial explanation for life’s origins will eventually emerge.” Yet the scientists quoted in the article fail to address the fundamental issue that has generated the longstanding impasse in the field: the problem of the origin of biological information. Wade describes the various developments in pre-biotic chemistry that are making some scientists more optimistic about solving the problem of the origin of life. Yet, the central problem facing them is not the synthesis of pre-biotic building blocks or even discovering an environment in which life might have plausibly arisen–difficult as these problems have proven to be. Instead, Read More ›

Yesterday, ENV interviewed molecular biophysicist and Discovery Institute fellow Cornelius Hunter on his new web-book Darwin’s Predictions. Our conversation continued:

ENV: A typical instance of a failed prediction would be that Darwin himself expected the geology and paleontology would confirm that the earth is at least 400 million years old, because that’s how long he thought it must need to evolve its repertoire of species. We now know that while the earth and life are much older than that, the time frame for the development of most animal body plans or phyla in the Cambrian explosion occurred in a geological flash of probably of less than 10 million years. What do you think is the most devastating failed prediction you discuss? How would you crystallize it simply, perhaps as cocktail-party ammunition?

CH: That’s a difficult question, there are so many. Of course today DNA is a popular topic, so the finding of long stretches of identical DNA in distant species is a good one. Evolutionists have worked hard to figure out how this could be, but have not even come up with a good epicycle yet.

Then there is the evolution of contradictory behavior patterns, such as altruism. Evolution has undergone a big makeover in the past fifty years in trying to explain such behaviors. The evolution narrative has become incredibly creative in explaining every behavior imaginable. Loyalty, sacrifice, honor, suspicion, obligation, shame, remorse, moral indignation — the list goes on and on of the incredible powers of evolution.

But I think my favorite is that the minor, adaptive, changes that we do observe in populations is now known to be responsive to environmental pressures. Organisms have complex cellular mechanisms that intelligently and rapidly respond to environmental changes. Again, it is fundamental to the theory of evolution that biological variation be blind, not responsive, to environmental pressures. The only epicycle available to evolutionists is that evolution created phenomenally complex mechanisms so that evolution could occur.

ENV: I can imagine a Darwinist objecting that these predictions are outdated. Theories naturally develop, and as they do they, scientists throw off new predictions — predictions that in Darwinism’s case, the theory can in fact pass. Your response?

As we are ever quick to point out here at ENV, the case for Darwinian evolution has been crumbling in recent years as scientific research points to design in nature. Now a unique, new argument for intelligent design is about to revolutionize the debate over evolution. On June 23, Dr. Stephen Meyer’s long-awaited Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design (HarperOne) will break open the radical and comprehensive new case, revealing the evidence not merely of individual features of biological complexity but rather of a fundamental constituent of the universe: information. Learn more about the book at the new website, SignatureInTheCell.com, and look for continuing updates here at Evolution News & Views.

The testability of scientific ideas by making predictions about reality is a favorite theme with Darwinists and the atheists who love them. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins endorses a new atheist Ten Commandments, whose seventh commandment reads: “Test all things; always check your ideas against the facts, and be read to discard even a cherished belief it if does not conform to them.” Incidentally, that would replace the old seventh commandment, “Thou shalt not commit adultery.”

Dawkins hails evolution’s “strong prediction that if a single fossil turned up in the wrong geological stratrum, the theory would be blown out of the water.” He contrasts this with the Bible’s record of predictions. In another New Atheist tract, God: The Failed Hypothesis, physicist Victor Stenger writes, “We have no risky prediction in the scriptures that has come true.”

So with Darwinian activists, quite a lot hangs on predictions and testability. Intelligent design advocates argue that their idea is empirically testable, and Stephen Meyer lists a variety of applicable tests in his new book Signature in the Cell: DNA and the Evidence for Intelligent Design. The heart of Dawkins’ argument for atheism is a critique of the design hypothesis. If it’s true that ID can be successfully tested by making predictions about empirical reality, what of Darwinian theory? Is it enough to say, as J.B. Haldane quipped, that Darwinism would be falsified if fossil rabbits were discovered in the Cambrian strata?

Molecular biophysicist and Discovery Institute fellow Cornelius Hunter puts Darwin to the test in a new website that is really a free, easily printed book in itself: Darwin’s Predictions. His argument? Darwinian evolution indeed makes predictions — which, however, routinely fail. This requires evolutionary scientists to come up with increasingly baroque additions to and speculations upon their theory to make the data fit with the theory. It all becomes increasingly, suspiciously complicated. For example, Darwinism has a very hard time explaining altruism. Selflessness, especially toward those outside one’s family, is not what you’d expect from the evolutionary scenario. Darwinists strain to come up with explanations, resulting in many serendipitous just-so stories that are less and less tethered to scientific fact.
ENV interviewed Dr. Hunter about Darwinism’s confounded expectations, which Hunter illustrates in areas including DNA coding, molecular processes, the genomes of similar and distant species, mechanisms of biological change, animal and human behavior, and more.

There was a time when most scientists were also deeply religious men. When scientists were not forced to choose between belief in God and the rigorous pursuit of scientific knowledge. But that all ended with Charles Darwin. In his stunning new book, The Darwin Myth, CSC fellow Benjamin Wiker cuts through the politically correct lies and cultural misconceptions to reveal the true Charles Darwin: the man who separated God from science. Now you can go here to get a free chapter and take a preview of Regnery Publishing’s new book, The Darwin Myth.

Is it somehow petty, offensive, exploitative, and beyond the pale to point out how the Holocaust Memorial Museum shooter, who murdered a guard on Wednesday, writes about evolution in his sick manifesto? Should it be considered beneath one’s dignity to quote the man and let his words speak for themselves?

James von Brunn, the suspect in question, is a white supremacist, a bitter anti-Semite, a Holocaust-denier, a wacked out conspiracy theorist, who served more than 6 years in a federal prison for attempted kidnapping. All this is fair game to report. Everyone agrees to that. But the fact that he writes of “Natural Law: the species are improved through in-breeding, natural selection and mutation. Only the strong survive. Cross-breeding Whites with species lower on the evolutionary scale diminishes the White gene-pool” — that’s somehow inappropriate to note in public?

That seems to be the message from the media, which has ignored the fact, and from some readers who have responded to my blog on the subject. I realize the topic is uncomfortable for all sides in the evolution debate. So let’s try to step back and consider this rationally.

It’s historically undeniable that Darwinian thinking forms a thread linking some of the most reprehensible social movements of the past 150 years. I and many other people, including professional historians (which I’m not), have written about this repeatedly and from many different angles. By all means check out my own most recent contributions on the theme of “Darwin’s Tree of Death.”

This is the second part of a review of The Darwin Myth by Benjamin Wiker. Part one is available here.

An element of the Darwin story that may surprise many readers of Benjamin Wiker’s fine new biography The Darwin Myth is the ultimate disconnect between Darwin and many of his colleagues.

Wiker points out that many of Darwin’s avid supporters, who accepted and helped popularize his theory, rejected Darwin’s materialistic reductionism. They argued, indeed, that the evidence did not support Darwin’s materialistic understanding of evolution.

Biologist Asa Gray at Harvard was Darwin’s strongest champion in America. However, as Wiker tells us, “Gray believed that the human mind could not be explained as the material result of natural selection.” He did not see how mind could arise from instinct. Charles Lyell, Darwin’s friend and an eminent scientist in his own right, and Alfred Russel Wallace, the co-discoverer with Darwin of the theory of evolution through natural selection, both believed that the evidence did not show an evolutionary continuum between the mental faculties of apes and man. So-called “savages” (members of tribal and other non-European races) have intellectual capacities that far exceed their survival needs; there is no Darwinian way to account for this.

Darwin would have none of it. Privately, he let these friends and fellow-scientists know his displeasure. In the case of Asa Gray, Wiker writes:

“Folks, this is one of the most exciting games in Super Bowl history! In case you just tuned in, here’s what’s happening: With only 8 seconds to go, the Buffalo Bills are trailing the New York Giants 20-19, but in the past two minutes Bills quarterback Jim Kelley has moved his team to the Giants’ 29-yard line, setting up kicker Scott Norwood for a field goal attempt. If Norwood makes it, the Buffalo Bills will win 22-20.” Watched by tens of thousands in Tampa Stadium and millions more on TV, the Buffalo Bills line up for what will probably be their last play. “OK, there’s the snap, and the kick. The ball is going, going–but it’s drifting wide to the Read More ›