by James J. Geary
January 27, 2008
Good morning.
The title of my talk is Evolution versus Intelligent Design. Maybe a better title would have been “Creationists Don’t Give Up.”
I’m sure you understand that I can only touch on a few of the recent highlights of this protracted debate between evolutionists and creationists. It’s been going on for nearly a century and a half. Intelligent design is just the latest effort of the creationists.
UU minister Forrest Church, in a splendid article in the current issue of UU World, writes about the battles in the early decades of the Republic between those who wanted more religion in government and those who were fearful of it. That was well before the Darwinian revolution.
Would you believe the late Jerry Falwell did not believe in evolution? Remarkable.
Well, I’ve believed in evolution for as long as I can remember. I was exposed to it at my mother’s knee, so to speak. To me it is not a theory, it is a fact – the evidence is so overwhelming. And yet there are tens of millions of Americans, many of them intelligent and well-educated, who reject evolution. They believe the incredible variety of life on our planet was created in one fell swoop by an omniscient god – and not just any god, but the Christian God.
Virtually all major biologists accept evolution as a fact, as much as anything can be considered a fact. There seems very little controversy among biologists about that. The late Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionist at Harvard, had an answer to the creationist argument that scientists are not in accord on evolution and that it is therefore only a theory:
“Well, evolution is a theory,” he wrote. ” It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world’s data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don’t go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them.”
He says “fact” doesn’t mean ” ‘absolute certainty’; there ain’t no such animal in an exciting and complex world.” And he adds: “In science ‘fact’ can only mean ‘confirmed to such a degree that it would be perverse to withhold provisional consent.”
What evolutionists argue over are the mechanisms that bring evolution about. Gould, in a fascinating article entitled “Creating the Creators” in Discovery magazine some years ago, discussed his unique and controversial theory about the mechanism. He argued that a straight-line evolution based simply on natural selection would not have produced the higher animals, including us.
“If evolution,” he wrote, “truly worked simply by fashioning exquisitely adopted creatures in an ascending series, humans could never have originated at all. . . In our world of radically and unpredictably changing environments, an evolutionary potential for creative response requires that organisms possess an opposite set of attributes usually devalued in our culture: sloppiness, broad potential, quirkiness, unpredictability, and above all, massive redundancy. The key is flexibility, not admirable precision.”
My mother liked the holdings of Jean-Baptiste Lamarck whose theory of inheritance of acquired characteristics pre-dated Darwin. An example might be: if you study hard and become a excellent scholar, your offspring will acquire some of those characteristics and in turn pass them along to future generations. I understand that this idea is almost universally rejected by biologists today. But there are other theories.
Now, in the mysterious world of micro-biology, they are saying that viruses – viruses — over the millions of years have contributed to evolutionary growth. The viruses do this by causing changes in genes that were fighting invasions of disease-causing viruses. One scientist was quoted in a recent article in the New Yorker magazine: “If Charles Darwin reappeared today, he might be surprised to learn that humans are descended from viruses as well as apes.”
For my part, I give the most weight to Darwin’s concept of “survival of the fittest.” Do you watch the program Nature on public television. It shows a continuing pageant of kill or be killed; eat or be eaten. And those species survive that best adapt to changing environments. Thomas Friedman, the New York Times correspondent, wrote concerning a trip to the Amazon: “What is so striking about the rain forest, when viewed up close, is what an incredibly violent place it is – with trees, plants, and vines all struggling with each other for sunlight, and animals, insects, and birds doing the same for food.”
So, the mechanism of evolution is an on-going study. But, again, the “fact” of evolution is accepted by virtually all biology scholars.
In recent years there arose a group that proposes that life was created by what it terms “intelligent design.” They use the great variety and complexity of life forms to argue their case. They say this very complexity shows that life had to have been the result of intelligent design, that it could not have come about by random changes in the genes. They cleverly mask their creationism belief, or try to, by maintaining they are not pushing a religious agenda but rather a scientific theory. And, they insist, their theory should be taught alongside the theory of evolution in the public schools.
As you may remember, the intelligent design argument was put to the test in a Dover, PA, civil suit, Kitzmiller versus Dover Area School District. The case was argued in Federal District Court in Harrisburg PA in December 2005. The school board had elected to require teachers in ninth grade biology to read a one minute statement to students. It would, in effect, have put intelligent design on the same footing as evolution as an alternate scientific theory. Eleven parents brought suit against the Dover Area School District.
The sitting judge in the case was John E. Jones III. He must have seemed like the answer to creationists’ prayers: He was a Bush-appointed Republican federal judge, and a Lutheran to boot. He was chosen by lot to decide whether the requirement of the school board breached the First Amendment separation of church and state. When Jones delivered his judgment, he proved to be the answer to the Darwinians’ prayers. His opinion was devastating for the school board. It said in part:
“The evidence at trial demonstrates that ID is nothing less than the progeny of creationism….The overwhelming evidence at trial established that ID is a religious view, a mere re-labeling of creationism, and not a scientific theory.”
One would have thought that decision, which was not appealed, would have driven the last nail in the coffin of creationism. It don’t seem likely, somehow. The religious right is hard at work trying to negate the effects of Judge Jones’s decision.
The principal vehicle for this effort is the Discovery Institute based in Seattle, WA. It is widely charged with being the tool of right wing Christians who want creationism taught in America’s public schools. You may recall a debate at Bridgewater College about a year ago between a senior fellow at the Discovery Institute, William Dembski, and Michael Sherman, the founding publisher of Skeptic Magazine. Dembski, a mathematician, is one of the two scholars who are the scientific leaders of the design movement. The other is Michael Behe [Bee or bay], a biochemist, also a senior fellow at Discovery Institute.
As for the institutes’s claim that it is not fostering religion but rather a scientific theory, Americans United for Separation of Church and State says otherwise. Americans United claims it represents 60,000 members and 4,000 churches and religious groups. It says: “Though the institute describes itself as a think tank ‘specializing in national and international affairs,’ the group’s real purpose is to undercut church-state separation and turn public schools into religious indoctrination centers.”
Judge Jones, in the “Dover Trial,” came to a similar conclusion in his ruling. He wrote that the institute’s Wedge Document was “a program of Christian apologetics to promote ID. A careful review of the Wedge Document’s goals and language throughout the document reveals cultural and religious goals, as opposed to scientific ones.”
The Wedge Document is an interesting paper. It states in part: “The Discovery Institute’s Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture seeks nothing less than the overthrow of materialism and its cultural legacies.” It goes on to say”
“The social consequences of materialism have been devastating. As symptoms, those consequences are certainly worth treating. However, we are convinced that in order to defeat materialism, we must cut it off at its source. That source is scientific materialism. This is precisely our strategy. If we view the predominant materialistic science as a giant tree, our strategy is intended to function as a ‘wedge’ that, while relatively small, can split the trunk when applied to its weakest points. The very beginning of this strategy , the ‘thin edge of the wedge,’ was Phillip Johnson’s critique of Darwinism begun in 1991 in Darwinism on Trial.”
And it adds: “Design theory promises to reverse the stifling dominance of the materialist world view, and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions.”
You know, that doesn’t frighten me very much.
Phillip Johnson, the author of the controversial book, Darwinism on Trial, is considered the founding father of the intelligent design movement. He is no off-beat weirdo. His resume is impressive. Johnson went to Harvard from his junior year in high school. At the University of Chicago Law School he graduated first in his class. He is professor emeritus at the University of California at Berkeley’s law school, where he gained international renown as a teacher of criminal law and legal theory.
The founder of Discovery Institute is Bruce K. Chapman. A Harvard graduate, he held several important positions under the Reagan Administration. From 1988 to 1990 he was a fellow of the Hudson Institute, a conservative think tank. In 1990, Chapman left Hudson and founded Discovery Institute. Although the institute focuses on a broad range of issues, it is best known as the hub of the intelligent design movement.
Scientists in recent years have been fighting back with an aggressive campaign against the religious right. One of the foremost among the scientists was the late Richard Dawkins of the University of Oxford, an evolutionary biologist and popular science writer. He was an outspoken anti-religionist, atheist, secular humanist, and skeptic.
The creationists, for their part, delight in finding a noted scientist who is articulate in defending his faith and his belief in God. One of the leading such figures is Francis Collins, MD, PH.D., truly a distinguished scientist. He is noted for landmark discoveries of disease genes and his visionary leadership of the Human Genome Project. In that groundbreaking project he headed the multinational team of 2400 scientists that co-mapped the 3-billion bio-chemical letters of our DNA. I am indebted to Charlotte for providing me with a clipping from the Staunton paper that praised Collins as a native son. He graduated from Staunton high school and from the University of Virginia. He received his masters and doctoral degrees from Yale., and then his MD from the University of North Carolina. Last November, President Bush awarded him the Medal of Freedom. Collins is a born-again Christian.
About a year and a half ago TIME magazine published a debate between Dawkins and Collins that it had arranged. There’s not time to report the debate in depth, but here are a couple of excerpts.
Dawkins had given his explanation of evolution.
Collins: I don’t see that Professor Dawkins’ basic account of evolution is incompatible with God’s having designed it.
TIME : When would this have occurred?
Collins : By being outside of nature, God is also outside of space and time. Hence at the moment of the creation of the universe, God could also have activated evolution, with full knowledge of how it would turn out, perhaps even including our having this conversation. The idea that he could both see the future and also give us spirit and free will to carry out our own desires becomes entirely acceptable.
Dawkins : I think that’s a tremendous cop-out. If God wanted to create life and create humans, it would be slightly odd that he should choose the extraordinary roundabout way of waiting for 10 billion years before life got started and then waiting for another 4 billion years until you got human beings capable of worshiping and sinning and all the other things religious people are interested in.
TIME: Dr. Collins, the Resurrection is an essential argument of Christian faith, but doesn’t it, along with the virgin birth and lesser miracles, fatally undermine the scientific method, which depends on the constancy of natural laws?
Collins: (Get this!) If you’re willing to answer yes to a God outside of nature, then there is nothing inconsistent with God on rare occasions to invade the natural world in a way that appears miraculous. If God made the natural laws, why could he not violate them when it was a particularly significant moment for him to do so. And if you accept the idea that Christ was also divine, which I do, then hisResurrection is not in itself a great logical leap.
Dawkins: If ever there was a slamming of the door in the face of constructive investigation, it is the word miracle. Once you buy into the position of faith, then suddenly you find yourself losing all of your natural skepticism and your scientific – really scientific – credibility. I’m sorry to be so blunt.
Collins: I would challenge the statement that my scientific instincts are any less rigorous than yours. – –
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So here we are, nearly a century and a half after Darwin came public with his theory, and tens of millions of Americans don’t buy it. I think most Unitarians do believe that humankind evolved over billions of years. But I have a question to ponder:
Isn’t it strange that we, homo sapiens, at the glorious current apex of intelligence, find the time and the inclination to murder millions of our fellow beings?
Maybe it would have been better if there had been intelligent design by a loving and compassionate god. But most of us don’t believe that is the way it was. Nevertheless, the final truth is elusive.
As for me, I believe that humankind will continue to march toward the truth – though I have grave doubts that we will ever get there, because I believe the truth is infinite.