Good morning E
A while back you asked me about a term I used "atheistic naturalism" Although atheistic materialism would have been perhaps more accurate, I think what I meant to say was that naturalism by definition being materialistic, leads one inevitably to embrace atheism. The two seem to go hand in hand. Here is an article by P. Johnson that points this out. Dawkins who you quoted is not as shy about the atheistic implications of evolution as are most American scientists.
Have a good day
Greg
Evolution as Dogma: The Establishment of Naturalism
Phillip E. Johnson
The orthodox explanation of what is wrong with creationism goes something like this:
Science has accumulated overwhelming evidence for evolution. Although there are controversies among scientists regarding the precise mechanism of evolution, and Darwin's particular theory of natural selection may have to be modified or at least supplemented, there is no doubt whatsoever about the fact of evolution. All of today's living organisms including humans are the product of descent with modification from common ancestors, and ultimately in all likelihood from a single microorganism that itself evolved from nonliving chemicals. The only persons who reject the fact of evolution are biblical fundamentalists, who say that each species was separately created by God about 6,000 years ago, and that all the fossils are the products of Noah's Flood. The fundamentalists claim to be able to make a scientific case for their position, but "scientific creationism" is a contradiction in terms. Creation is inherently a religious doctrine, and there is no scientific evidence for it. This does not mean that science and religion are necessarily incompatible, because science limits itself to facts, hypotheses, and theories and does not intrude into questions of value, such as whether the universe or mankind has a purpose. Reasonable persons need have no fear that scientific knowledge conflicts with religious belief.
Like many other official stories, the preceding description contains just enough truth to mislead persuasively. In fact, there is a great deal more to the creation-evolution controversy than meets the eye, or rather than meets the carefully cultivated media stereotype of "creationists" as Bible- quoting know-nothings who refuse to face up to the scientific evidence. The creationists may be wrong about many things, but they have at least one very important point to argue, a point that has been thoroughly obscured by all the attention paid to Noah's Flood and other side issues. What the science educators propose to teach as "evolution," and label as fact, is based not upon any incontrovertible empirical evidence, but upon a highly controversial philosophical presupposition. The controversy over evolution is therefore not going to go away as people become better educated on the subject. On the contrary, the more people learn about the philosophical content of what scientists are calling the "fact of evolution," the less they are going to like it.
To understand why this is so, we have to define the issue properly, which means that we will have to redefine some terms. Nobody doubts that evolution occurs, in the narrow sense that certain changes happen naturally. The most famous piece of evidence for Darwinism is a study of an English peppered-moth population consisting of both dark- and light-colored moths. When industrial smoke darkened the trees, the percentage of dark moths increased, due to their relative advantage in hiding from predators. When the air pollution was reduced, the trees became lighter and more light moths survived. Both colors were present throughout, and so no new characteristics emerged, but the percentage of dark moths in the population went up and down as changing conditions affected their relative ability to survive and produce offspring.
Examples of this kind allow Darwinists to assert as beyond question that "evolution is a fact," and that natural selection is an important directing force in evolution. If they mean only that evolution of a sort has been known to occur, and that natural selection has observable effects upon the distribution of characteristics in a population, then there really is nothing to dispute. The important claim of "evolution," however, is not that limited changes occur in populations due to differences in survival rates It is that we can extrapolate from the very modest amount of evolution that can actually be observed to a grand theory that explains how moths, trees, and scientific observers came to exist in the first place.
Orthodox science insists that we can make the extrapolation. The "neoDarwinian synthesis" (hereafter Darwinism) begins with the assumption that small random genetic changes (mutations) occasionally have positive survival value. Organisms possessing these favorable variations should have a relative advantage in survival and reproduction, and they will tend to pass their characteristics on to their descendants. By differential survival a favorable characteristic spreads through a population, and the population becomes different from what it was. If sufficient favorable mutations show up when and where they are needed, and if natural selection allows them to accumulate in a population then it is conceivable that by tiny steps over vast amounts of time a bacterial ancestor might produce descendants as complex and varied as trees, moths, and human beings.
That is only a rough description of the theory, of course, and there are all sorts of arguments about the details. Some Darwinists, such as Harvard Professor Steven Jay Gould, say that new mechanisms are about to be discovered that will produce a more complicated theory, in which strictly Darwinian selection of individual organisms will play a reduced role. There is also a continuing debate about whether it is necessary to "decouple macroevolution from microevolution." Some experts do not believe that major changes and the appearance of new forms (i.e., macroevolution) can be explained as the products of an accumulation of tiny mutations through natural selection of individual organisms (microevolution). If classical Darwinism isn't the explanation for macroevolution, however, there is only speculation as to what sort of alternative mechanisms might have been responsible. In science, as in other fields, you can't beat something with nothing, and so the Darwinist paradigm remains in place.
For all the controversies over these issues, however, there is a basic philosophical point on which the evolutionary biologists all agree. Some say new mechanisms have to be introduced and others say the old mechanisms are adequate, but nobody with a reputation to lose proposes to invoke a supernatural creator or a mystical "life force" to help out with the difficulties. The theory in question is a theory of naturalistic evolution, which means that it absolutely rules out any miraculous or supernatural intervention at any point. Everything is conclusively presumed to have happened through purely material mechanisms that are in principle accessible to scientific investigation, whether they have yet been discovered or not.
That there is a controversy over how macroevolution could have occurred is largely due to the increasing awareness in scientific circles that the fossil evidence is very difficult to reconcile with the Darwinist scenario. If all living species descended from common ancestors by an accumulation of tiny steps, then there once must have existed a veritable universe of transitional intermediate forms linking the vastly different organisms of today (e.g., moths, trees, and humans) with their hypothetical common ancestors. From Darwin's time to the present, paleontologists have hoped to find the ancestors and transitional intermediates and trace the course of macroevolution. Despite claims of success in some areas, however, the results have been on the whole disappointing. That the fossil record is in important respects hostile to a Darwinist interpretation has long been known to insiders as the "trade secret of paleontology," and the secret is now coming out in the open. New forms of life tend to be fully formed at their first appearance as fossils in the rocks. If these new forms actually evolved in gradual steps from pre-existing forms, as Darwinist science insists, the numerous intermediate forms that once must have existed have not been preserved.
To illustrate the fossil problem, here is what a particularly vigorous advocate of Darwinism, Oxford Zoology Professor (and popular author) Richard Dawkins, says in The Blind Watchmakerabout the "Cambrian explosion," i.e., the apparently sudden appearance of the major animal forms at the beginning of the Cambrian era:
The Cambrian strata of rocks, vintage about 600 million years, are the oldest ones in which we find most of the major invertebrate groups. And we find many of them in an advanced state of evolution, the very first time they appear. It is as though they were just planted there, without any evolutionary history. Needless to say, this appearance of sudden planting has delighted creationists. Evolutionists of all stripes believe, however, that this really does represent a very large gap in the fossil record, a gap that is simply due to the fact that, for some reason, very few fossils have lasted from periods before about 600 million years ago.
The "appearance of sudden planting" in this important instance is not exceptional. There is a general pattern in the fossil record of sudden appearance of new forms followed by "stasis" (i.e., absence of basic evolutionary change). The fossil evidence in Darwin's time was so discouraging to his theory that he ruefully conceded: "Nature may almost be said to have guarded against the frequent discovery of her transitional or linking forms." Leading contemporary paleontologists such as David Raup and Niles Eldredge say that the fossil problem is as serious now as it was then, despite the most determined efforts of scientists to find the missing links. This situation (along with other problems I am passing over) explains why many scientist would dearly love to confirm the existence of natural mechanisms that can produce basically new forms of life from earlier and simpler organisms without going through all the hypothetical intermediate steps that classical Darwinism requires.
Some readers may wonder why the scientists won't admit that there are mysteries beyond our comprehension, and that one of them may be how those complex animal groups could have evolved directly from pre-existing bacteria and algae without leaving any evidence of the transition. The reason that such an admission is out of the question is that it would open the door to creationism, which in this context means not simply biblical fundamentalism, but any invocation of a creative intelligence or purpose outside the natural order. Scientists committed to philosophical naturalism do not claim to have found the precise answer to every problem, but they characteristically insist that they have the important problems sufficiently well in hand that they can narrow the field of possibilities to a set of naturalistic alternatives. Absent that insistence, they would have to concede that their commitment to naturalism is based upon faith rather than proof Such a concession could be exploited by promoters of rival sources of knowledge, such as philosophy and religion, who would be quick to point out that faith in naturalism is no more "scientific" (i.e. empirically based) than any other kind of faith.
Immediately after the passage above about the Cambrian explosion, Dawkins adds the remark that, whatever their disagreements about the tempo and mechanism of evolution, scientific evolutionists all "despise" the creationists who take delight in pointing out the absence of fossil transitional intermediates. That word "despise" is well chosen. Darwinists do not regard creationist as sincere doubters but as dishonest propagandists, persons who probably only pretend to disbelieve what they must know in their hearts to be the truth of naturalistic evolution. The greater their apparent intelligence and education, the greater their fault in refusing to acknowledge the truth that is staring them in the face. These are "dark times," Dawkins noted last year in the New York Times, because nearly half of the American people, including many who should know better," refuse to believe in evolution. That such people have any rational basis for their skepticism is out of the question, of course, and Dawkins tells us exactly what to think of them: "It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid, or insane (or wicked, but I'd rather not consider that)."
Darwinists disagree with creationists as a matter of definition, of course, but the degree of contempt that they express for creation in principle requires some explanation beyond the fact that certain creationists have used unfair tactics such as quoting scientists out of context. It is not just the particular things that creationists do that infuriate the Darwinists; the creationists' very existence is infuriating. To understand why this is so, we must understand the powerful assumptions that mainstream scientists find it necessary to make, and the enormous frustration they feel when they are asked to take seriously persons who refuse to accept those assumptions.
What Darwinists like Dawkins despise as "creationism" is something much broader than biblical fundamentalism or even Christianity and what they proclaim as "evolution" is something much narrower than what the word means in common usage. All persons who affirm that "God creates" are in an important sense creationists, even if they believe that the Genesis story is a myth and that God created gradually through evolution over billions of years. This follows from the fact that the theory of evolution in question is naturalistic evolution, meaning evolution that involves no intervention or guidance by a creator outside the world of nature.
Naturalistic evolution is consistent with the existence of "God" only if by that term we mean no more than a first cause which retires from further activity after establishing the laws of nature and setting the natural mechanism in motion. Persons who say they believe in evolution, but who have in mind a process guided by an active God who purposely intervenes or controls the process to accomplish some end, are using the same term that the Darwinists use, but they mean something very different by it. For example, here is what Douglas Futuyma, the author of a leading college evolutionary biology textbook, finds to be the most important conflict between the theory of evolution and what he thinks of as the "fundamentalist" perspective:
Perhaps most importantly, if the world and its creatures developed purely by material, physical forces, it could not have been designed and has no purpose or goal. The fundamentalist, in contrast, believes that everything in the world, every species and every characteristic of every species, was designed by an intelligent, purposeful artificer, and that is was made for a purpose. Nowhere does this contrast apply with more force than to the human species. Some shrink from the conclusion that the human species was not designed, has no purpose, and is the product of mere material mechanisms-but this seems to be the message of evolution. (Science on Trial: The Case for Evolution)
It is not only "fundamentalism," of course, but theists of any description who believe that an intelligent artificer made humanity for a purpose, whether through evolution or otherwise. Futuyma's doctrinaire naturalism is not just some superfluous philosophical addition to Darwinism that can be discarded without affecting the real "science" of the matter. If some powerful conscious being exists outside the natural order, it might use its power to intervene in nature to accomplish some purpose, such as the production of beings having consciousness and free will. If the possibility of an "outside" intervention is allowed in nature at any point, however, the whole naturalistic worldview quickly unravels.
Occasionally, a scientist discouraged by the consistent failure of theories purporting to explain some problem like the first appearance of life will suggest that perhaps supernatural creation is a tenable hypothesis in this one instance. Sophisticated naturalists instantly recoil with horror, because they know that there is no way to tell God when he has to stop. If God created the first organism, then how do we know he didn't do the same thing to produce all those animal groups that appear so suddenly in the Cambrian rocks? Given the existence of a designer ready and willing to do the work, why should we suppose that random mutations and natural selection are responsible for such marvels of engineering as the eye and the wing?
Because the claims of Darwinism are presented to the public as "science" most people are under the impression that they are supported by direct evidence such as experiments and fossil record studies This impression is seriously misleading. Scientists cannot observe complex biological structures being created by random mutations and selection in a laboratory or elsewhere. The fossil record, as we have seen, is so unhelpful that the important steps in evolution must be assumed to have occurred within its "gaps." Darwinists believe that the mutation-selection mechanism accomplishes wonders of creativity not because the wonders can be demonstrated, but because they cannot think of a more plausible explanation for the existence of wonders that does not involve an unacceptable creator, i.e., a being or force outside the world of nature. According to Gareth Nelson, "evidence, or proof, of origins of the universe, of life, of all the major groups of life, of all the minor groups of life, indeed of all the species-is weak or nonexistent when measured on an absolute scale." Nelson, a senior zoologist at the American Museum of Natural History, wrote that statement in the preface to a recent book by Wendell Bird, the leading attorney for the creationist organizations. Nelson himself is no creationist, but he is sufficiently disgusted with Darwinist dogmatism that he looks benignly upon unorthodox challengers.
Philosophical naturalism is so deeply ingrained in the thinking of many educated people today, including theologians, that they find it difficult even to imagine any other way of looking at things. To such people, Darwinism seems so logically appealing that only a modest amount of confirming evidence is needed to prove the whole system, and so they point to the peppered- moth example as virtually conclusive. Even if they do develop doubts whether such modest forces can account for large-scale change, their naturalism is undisturbed. Since there is nothing outside of nature, and since something must have produced all the kinds of organisms that exist, a satisfactory naturalistic mechanism must be waiting to be discovered.
The same situation looks quite different to people who accept the possibility of a creator outside the natural order. To such people, the peppered-moth observations and similar evidence seem absurdly inadequate to prove that natural selection can make a wing, an eye, or a brain. From their more skeptical perspective, the consistent pattern in the fossil record of sudden appearance followed by stasis tends to prove that there is something wrong with Darwinism, not that there is something wrong with the fossil record. The absence of proof "when measured on an absolute scale" is unimportant to a thoroughgoing naturalist, who feels that science is doing well enough if it has a plausible explanation that maintains the naturalistic worldview. The same absence of proof is highly significant to any person who thinks it possible that there are more things in heaven and earth than are dreamt of in naturalistic philosophy.
Victory in the creation-evolution dispute therefore belongs to the party with the cultural authority to establish the ground rules that govern the discourse. If creation is admitted as a serious possibility, Darwinism cannot win, and if it is excluded a priori Darwinism cannot lose. The point is illustrated by the logic which the Natural Academy of Sciences employed to persuade the Supreme Court that "creation-scientists" should not be given an opportunity to present their case against the theory of evolution in science classes. Creation-Science is not science, said the Academy, because
it fails to display the most basic characteristic of science: reliance upon naturalistic explanations. Instead, proponents of "creation- science" hold that the creation of the universe, the earth, living things, and man was accomplished through supernatural means inaccessible to human understanding.
Besides, the Academy's brief continued, creationists do not perform scientific research to establish the mechanism of supernatural creation, that being by definition impossible. Instead, they seek to discredit the scientific theory of evolution by amassing evidence that is allegedly consistent with the relatively recent, abrupt appearance of the universe, the earth, living things, and man in substantially the same form as they now have.
"Creation-science" is thus manifestly a device designed to dilute the persuasiveness of the theory of evolution. The dualistic mode of analysis and the negative argumentation employed to accomplish this dilution is, moreover, antithetical to the scientific method.
The Academy's brief went on to cite evidence for evolution, but evidence was unnecessary. Creationists are disqualified from making a positive case, because science by definition is based upon naturalism. The rules of science also disqualify any purely negative argumentation designed to dilute the persuasiveness of the theory of evolution. Creationism is thus out of courtand out of the classroom-before any consideration of evidence. Put yourself in the place of a creationist who has been silenced by that logic, and you may feel like a criminal defendant who has just been told that the law does not recognize so absurd a concept as "innocence."
With creationist explanations disqualified at the outset, it follows that the evidence will always support the naturalistic alternative. We can be absolutely certain that the Academy will not say, "The evidence on the whole supports the theory of evolution, although we concede that the apparent abrupt appearance of many fully formed animal groups in the Cambrian rocks is in itself a point in favor of the creationists." There are no scientific points in favor of creation and there never will be any as long as naturalists control the definition of science, because creationist explanations by definition violate the fundamental commitment of science to naturalism. When the fossil record does not provide the evidence that naturalism would like to see, it is the fossil record, and not the naturalistic explanation, that is judged to be inadequate.
When pressed about the unfairness of disqualifying their opponents a priori, naturalists sometimes portray themselves as merely insisting upon a proper definition of "science," and not as making any absolute claims about "truth." By this interpretation, the National Academy of Sciences did not say that it is untrue that "the creation of the universe, the earth, living things and man was accomplished through supernatural means inaccessible to human understanding," but only that this statement is unscientific. Scientific naturalists who take this line sometimes add that they do not necessarily object to the study of creationism in the public schools, provided it occurs in literature and social science classes rather than in science class.
This naturalist version of balanced treatment is not a genuine attempt at a fair accommodation of competing worldviews, but a rhetorical maneuver. It enables naturalists effectively to label their own product as fact and its rival as fantasy, without having to back up the decision with evidence. The dominant culture assumes that science provides knowledge, and so in natural science classes fundamental propositions can be proclaimed as objectively true, regardless of how many dissenters believe them to be false. That is the powerful philosophical meaning of the claim that "evolution is a fact." By contrast, in literature class we read poetry and fiction, and in social science we study the subjective beliefs of various cultures from a naturalistic perspective. If you have difficulty seeing just how loaded this knowledge-belief distinction is, try to imagine the reaction of Darwinists to the suggestion that their theory should be removed from the college biology curriculum and studied instead in a course devoted to nineteenth-century intellectual history.
By skilful manipulation of categories and definitions, the Darwinists have established philosophical naturalism as educational orthodoxy in a nation in which the overwhelming majority of people express some form of theistic belief inconsistent with naturalism. According to a 1982 Gallup poll aimed at measuring nationwide opinion, 44 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that "God created man pretty much in his present form at one time within the last 10,000 years." That would seem to mark those respondents as creationists in a relatively narrow sense. Another 38 percent accepted evolution as a process guided by God. Only 9 percent identified themselves as believers in a naturalistic evolutionary process not guided by God. The philosophy of the 9 percent is now to be taught in the schools as unchallengeable truth.
Cornell University Professor William Provine, a leading historian of Darwinism, concluded from Gallup's figures that the American public simply does not understand what the scientists means by evolution. As Provine summarized the matter, "The destructive implications of evolutionary biology extend far beyond the assumptions of organized religion to a much deeper and more pervasive belief, held by the vast majority of people, that non-mechanistic organizing designs or forces are somehow responsible for the visible order of the physical universe, biological organisms, and human moral order."
To be cont |
