Jonathan Wells, blogger, biologist, and author of Icons of Evolution, is beginning a series of posts responding to critics of his work.
When my book Icons of Evolution was published in 2000, critics greeted it with rave reviews. I have been truly amazed at the outpouring of warmth from some of my fellow scientists, who have been trying to outdo each other in the superlatives they bestow on my work.
In my case, however, “rave review” doesn’t mean extravagant praise, but wild and furious denunciation; the outpouring of warmth has been a firestorm of vilification; and if the superlatives become any more spiteful I may have to enter the witness protection program.
It seems that I am guilty of the one unforgivable sin in modern biology: I am openly critical of Darwinian evolution. In Icons I pointed out that the best-known “evidences” for Darwin’s theory have been exaggerated, distorted or even faked. I argued that a theory that systematically distorts the evidence is not good empirical science–perhaps not even science at all. In fact, Darwinism has all the trappings of a secular religion. Its priests forgive a multitude of sins in their postulants–manipulating data, overstating results, presenting assumptions as though they were conclusions–but never the sin of disbelief.
And on a somewhat related front, we missed this article at NRO from a few days ago by Tom Bethell, responding to George Will. His summary:
George Will has made one accurate criticism of the idea he so dislikes: “The problem with intelligent design is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis.” This is true; but he should have added that Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is not falsifiable either. Darwin’s claim to fame was his discovery of a mechanism of evolution; he accepted “survival of the fittest” as a good summary of his natural-selection theory. But which ones are the fittest? The ones that survive. There is no criterion of fitness that is independent of survival. Whatever happens, it is the “fittest” that survive — by definition. This, just like intelligent design, is not a testable hypothesis. As the eminent philosopher of science Karl Popper said, after discussing this problem that natural selection cannot escape: “There is hardly any possibility of testing a theory as feeble as this.” Popper was the first to propose falsification as the line of demarcation between theories that are scientific and those that are not; both intelligent design and natural selection fall by this standard.
The underlying problem, rarely discussed, is that the conclusions of evolutionism are based not on science, but on a philosophy: the philosophy of materialism, or naturalism. Living creatures, including human beings, are here on Earth, and we got here somehow. If atoms and molecules in motion are all that exist, then their random interactions must account for everything that exists, including us. That is the true underpinning of Darwinism. What needs to be examined in detail is not so much the religion behind intelligent design as the philosophy behind evolution.
Richard John Neuhaus adds:
I would only add that the philosophical dogmatists of neo-Darwinism are an aberration, although a very vocal aberration. The crucial distinction between science and philosophy is very helpfully examined by Christoph Cardinal Schönborn in “The Designs of Science” in the January issue of FIRST THINGS, which subscribers should be receiving in the next two weeks.
Jason, over at the Evolution Blog, takes Bethell to task for this article. So does Chris Mooney. And Pennington. A commenters over at the Theology Website thinks the article does a disservice to itself.
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