The Two Faces of Evolution

2008.03.02   prev     next

I ended my (mostly negative) review of Dembski’s and Wells’s The Design of Life with the claim that Darwinists

In this article I want to clarify exactly what that means.

There should be two, quite different camps of evolutionists. Not necessarily of equal size, but they should be distinct and separate nonetheless.

Camp A should be saying, “Evolution is a theory that competes against theories of intelligent design. Both of these alternatives are scientifically legitimate, and the evidence could have gone either way. But it didn’t — decades of evidence gathered since 1859 have overwhelmingly confirmed evolution, and either refuted all theories of design, or at least rendered them unnecessary.”

Camp B should be saying, “Evolution is the only explanation of life that’s even compatible with the principles of science. Evolution doesn’t compete against theories of design; there is no such thing as a scientific theory that life’s adaptations were designed. Evolution is the only explanation that, scientifically, is even possible. When those Camp A people say the evidence is confirming evolution, they’re deluding themselves. The evidence can tell us how fast evolution happened, or what it created, or when — but the only evidence that indicates that evolution is true is just the fact that life exists and hasn’t always existed. The evidence can’t confirm evolution when there is no scientific alternative against which to confirm it.”

These two camps should be about as strongly opposed to each other as either of them is to anti-evolutionists. Camp A should respond to Camp B by calling them dogmatists, and by insisting that intelligent design is often invoked in scientific explanations; it just didn’t happen to be true in the case of biology. Camp B should rebut with, “How can you say that fossil X confirms evolution, when evolution would still work fine without fossil X?” Etc. In short, these two camps should be using many of the best arguments of the ID camp against each other, and should have been doing so for the past 150 years.

Atmosphere

One of the biggest reasons to think that something is wrong with the evolutionist movement — and to consider that evolution might be false despite overwhelming professional consensus that it is not — is that evolutionists are not divided into the two above-described camps. Evolutionists seem, as a group, to be untroubled to say, when it serves their cause, “Evolution has been massively confirmed by mountains of evidence,” and, again when it serves their purposes, to say, “Evolution is the only scientific explanation of life possible. Ideas of intelligent design are inherently unscientific.”

What this situation indicates is that the consensus that evolution is true is maintained by an atmosphere in which people — even very smart, professional people — are trained to think that any argument for belief in evolution is scientific by definition; i.e. that when it comes to the subject of evolution, science equals promoting the theory and getting people to believe it (or at least to go along with it), by any rhetorical device necessary. The fact that these devices may logically conflict with each other is at most a minor irritant, but probably not even that.

Do you find it hard to believe that ID could be credible when most every intelligent person you know asserts that evolution is true? Ask yourself what those people mean by “evolution is true.” Do they mean that, “Evolution is backed by current evidence, but theories of intelligent design are perfectly scientific, and there’s no telling what future evidence may have to say about the subject,” (i.e. Camp A)? Or do they mean that, “Evolution is the only possible scientific explanation of life; no evidence confirms it,” (i.e. Camp B)?

Or do they simply mean, “It’s scientific to say that evolution is true (regardless of what that means exactly), and if you don’t say evolution is true, you’re unscientific.”

Update 2008.03.22 — For clarity, one instance of “evolution” changed to “biology.”