Virtual Evolution
Peter J. Leithart on Media & the Nature of Science
If there were conclusive, undeniable proof for Darwinism, one would have expected Public Television’s week-long special, Evolution, to allude to it. It didn’t. Instead, the program contented itself with providing often-fascinating evidence of comparatively minor variations, and let computer graphics fill in the gaps left by the evidence. Scientists were shown explaining how they could manipulate genes to create fruit flies with legs coming out of their heads, how they could combine the genetic material of insects and mice, and how natural selection enables viruses to combat the drugs designed to kill them. Meanwhile, the graphics showed fish sprouting legs and turning into salamanders, small rodents morphing into giraffes and tigers, ape-men wandering the plains.
As presented by the program, the argument for evolution turns largely on an equivocation on the word species. When the word is defined technically as a group of living things that share certain characteristics, especially an inability to interbreed with members of other groups, it is true that new species do develop. Plants have been crossed to produce offspring that cannot be crossed with their parents.
But that is a far cry from providing evidence of the sort that Darwinism needs to succeed. As a theory about the origin and development of all species, it must not only provide evidence of the development of “new species” in the narrow technical sense, but of the development of new families and genuses. Not a scrap of evidence for change of this magnitude was presented on the program.
A Yawning Hole
Given this yawning hole in the argument, something other than evidence must account for the widespread confidence about Darwinism among scientists. Darwin speculated that the accumulation of small changes over a long period of time might produce the major changes required for the present diversity of species, though neither he nor his successors could produce any evidence that it did. The problem is not the speculation per se; every great theory, scientific or otherwise, includes some element of speculation.
Once one recognizes that Darwinism rests on a speculation, and that that speculation has not been demonstrated by science, it becomes clear that the speculation that God created living things in groups that develop and evolve within fairly strict limits is no more speculative than Darwinism. Why then is the Darwinian speculation so widely held to be preferable to creationist speculation? Even if life did evolve over unimaginable eons, why would scientists prefer a naturalistic account of this evolution to theistic evolution? Why, in short, do scientists prefer Darwin to Moses?
One of the main reasons has to do with the operating definition of science. In a web discussion of the program sponsored by Idaho Public Television, for which I served as co-moderator, I asked the other moderator, an evolutionary biologist from Idaho State University, to explain what qualifies as science. She answered by citing Judge William Overton’s well-known definition from a 1981 Arkansas education case (helpfully reminding me that Overton’s decision was the “law of the land,” as if dissent might be not only unscientific but also illegal).
Overton listed five characteristics of scientific study: “(1) It is guided by natural law; (2) It has to be explanatory by reference to natural law; (3) It is testable against the empirical world; (4) Its conclusions are tentative—that is, not necessarily the final word; and (5) It is falsifiable.” As Phillip Johnson has pointed out, the possibility of science accepting the Creation is ruled out by definition, because God’s actions are not explainable by reference to natural law.
“Law of the land” though it is, Overton’s formulation—which is the common definition among scientists—is ultimately incoherent. He did not provide any clues about what he meant by the “nature” behind the natural law, and that ambiguity is fatal. “Nature” may mean all reality or it may mean one aspect of reality, which may or may not interact with a supernatural aspect. But in none of these cases can the definition be sustained.
Suppose that “nature” means “all reality.” Nature is all that is, was, and ever shall be, world without end. It follows that everything is in principle subject to scientific investigation, every theory about reality is testable and falsifiable, every phenomenon is potentially explainable in terms of natural law, even if science has not yet explained it. But this begs the obvious question: Is such a definition of science scientific? What is the argument for the assumption that every natural phenomenon is explainable in terms of natural law? Is there a scientific (i.e., empirically testable and falsifiable) argument for that claim?
Peter J. Leithart is an ordained minister in the Presbyterian Church in America and the president of Trinity House Institute for Biblical, Liturgical & Cultural Studies in Birmingham, Alabama. His many books include Defending Constantine (InterVarsity), Between Babel and Beast (Cascade), and, most recently, Gratitude: An Intellectual History (Baylor University Press). His weblog can be found at www.leithart.com. He is a contributing editor of Touchstone.
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