A Critique of Evolution | Part 4

The Philosophy Behind Evolution

This series sets out to demonstrate why the fact that evolution is the accepted scientific explanation of the origin of the species does not necessarily entail that evolution was the true origin of the species, nor that we should feel confident in assuming that it was.

In Part I, we argued that science holds no justification for a “truth” claim by any theory, and in Part II we noted that the “evidence” for evolutionary theory is particularly weak. In Part III, we looked at evolutionary theory side-by-side with a theory of intelligent design and concluded that both have obstacles to overcome but either could theoretically be true.

---

The ‘but at least evolution is supported by evidence’ objection to challenging evolution with theories of design

Suppose my opponent were willing to grant me this assumption about the current state of the evidence. Now, there are those who would say that in a stand-off such as this, when we have allowed that two competing theories are both possibly possible and could account for our current data, we must understand the scientific theory to have the advantage.

Our beliefs about what is true, these people would say, ought to be supported by evidence. Therefore, if we are going to think there are supernatural forces at work in the universe, we ought to have evidence to support such a claim. With this much, I agree.

However, these same people would then go on to instruct us that phenomena we are unable to explain can hardly be counted as evidence of the supernatural. Ever. Which raises the obvious question, what would count as evidence of the supernatural? To which the logical answer would have to be: nothing. Nothing can count as evidence of the supernatural, according to this view, because we may one day be able to explain through natural causes anything that appears to be supernatural today, given our current limitations. Which is why we must understand the scientific theory to have the advantage over any supernatural one, in every instance.

This may seem like wisdom, but really, it is nothing but a form of circular reasoning which denies the possibility of the supernatural a priori. It is not a view that science supports; it is instead a view which would itself support science—to the exclusion of all other possible ways of informing our beliefs about the world. Only science, this view would claim, can be trusted; only science can lead to truth. Only scientific 'knowledge' counts as knowledge and should be allowed to inform our world view, because only scientific 'knowledge' is supported by evidence.

But to say that the scientific method is the most useful and reliable way of informing ourselves about the way the world works—a statement with which I would agree—is not to say that the scientific method does, or even that it can, always lead to the truth. In seeking the truth, the rational thinker is not obligated to dismiss the possibility of the supernatural, the possibility that there are some things natural causes never will be able to account for in full, in the way that the scientist must dismiss these possibilities in order to construct and refine potentially useful scientific models. To say, then, that every rational thinker is obligated to accept the theory of evolution as the explanation of the origin of the species because the theory is supported by scientific evidence, is not, in reality, to make a scientific claim about what the evidence supports—given that science is powerless to judge whether the evidence supports evolution over and above a theory of intelligent design—but to make an epistemological claim about how we can know what we think we know, which would read: only through science, and by logical extension, only by assuming there is no such thing as the supernatural.

Now, this is a perfectly valid assumption upon which to build a world view, but it is important to realize it is just an assumption. It is not supported by 'evidence.' It is not supported by 'science.' It is, in fact, not supported by anything, and therefore on equal footing with its opposite: there may be supernatural elements at work in the universe about which it is possible to learn something. When we extend the implications of these claims to look at possible origins of the species, a great many people seem to think the evolutionary theory somehow gains the advantage because of all its scientific 'support,' but this is a fallacy. The evolutionary theory has compelling scientific support only if we look at it through a scientific lens; that is, if we assume natural causes must have been responsible for the formation of life. If we do not make this assumption, though, we can propose two possibilities—natural causes may have been responsible for the formation of life, or supernatural causes may have been responsible. More specifically, we can posit: all life may have evolved gradually from a common ancestor, which in turn was generated randomly from nonliving matter under incidental conditions, or a supernatural force may have designed and brought in to being the different types of creatures independently.

Now, it is true that if we started to make these claims a lot more specific, the scientific evidence might start to support some and challenge others. For example, if one wanted to posit 'a supernatural force may have formed each type of creature independently at the same time,' the progression evident in the fossil record would suggest otherwise. But no scientific evidence discriminates between evolution and intelligent design, as I have described them above, unless one starts making additional assumptions—about the timeframe or particular genes and mutations involved in this or that step of the evolutionary process, for example, or about just how or when a designer would have created certain creatures.

Therefore, any claim that the evidence supports evolution or design better than the other cannot be called a scientific claim and cannot be said to be supported by 'evidence.' All such claims are philosophical and depend on assumptions. As I have said before, I do not think philosophy is necessarily impotent in the quest for truth, but I would dispute the adoption of those premises necessary for the anti-creationist to form a coherent argument about why evolution is much more likely to have been responsible for the formation of life than intelligent design. I dispute, for example, the contention that an intelligent designer would under no circumstances have allowed violence, pain, mutation, or waste in creation. I likewise dispute the contention that an intelligent designer would not have used the same type of organ that had an obvious use in one type of creature—such as the appendix—in the design of another type of creature that didn't need it as much or use it for the same sort of thing.

Now, would an intelligent design theorist have predicted that there would be such a thing as vestigial organs, or that there would be as much violence and chaos in creation as there is before we discovered these things? No, probably not. But then again, would evolutionary theorists unfamiliar with the fossil record have predicted that there would be so many transitional forms missing from it? Again, probably not. Neither predictive failure spells death for the theory behind it, though; all they show is that the theories must be revised. At least one set of preconceptions—about how a designer would have designed things or what kind of evidence the evolutionary process should have left behind—must have been in error. The measured, rational response—in my opinion—is not to call either of these theories impossible on the strength of these failures alone, but to revise them both and see how well the best forms of each stack up against one another in light of all the evidence they must account for.

Admittedly, this is no small task. The average rational thinker may feel himself ill-equipped for searching for truth in this way and that it is best to leave the weighing of such considerations to the experts. But science is not about searching for truth—only for useful natural models—and scientists are not experts as to what the truth is. To begin with, scientists are not engaged in refining the best supernatural model available as to the origins of life, though they can and do refine the evolutionary model all the time. Thus, they cannot tell us whether the evidence aligns with the best supernatural model available better than it does with the evolutionary theory. This is the work of philosophers, and philosophers disagree, and so it seems to me that each rational thinker invested in learning the truth about the nature of things has no choice but to consider the evidence for himself.

The ‘there is no way to search for truth if we abandon science’ objection to challenging evolution with theories of design

But how, exactly, is the rational thinker supposed to weigh the 'evidence,' if not through a scientific lens? My opponent might rightly wonder this, and might, in fact, go on to contest that there is no way to weigh 'evidence' if one wants to allow the possibility of the supernatural. And I would be willing to concede that if one wanted to consider the question of the origin of life in isolation, there would indeed be very little to go on, nothing in fact but the question: is life too complex to have evolved? And no one, really, is or even could be adequately equipped to answer this question with authority—not the most broadly educated scientist, let alone the average rational thinker—not until the day that science can fully explain and demonstrate how it could have happened, assuming that life did evolve. If life did not evolve, however, I expect that day will never come, and no one will ever be able to answer the question of whether life could have evolved with anything like scientific authority.

Should that preclude us from having opinions in the meantime? Hardly. Ought all such current opinions conform to the accepted scientific explanation available in our day? I see no logical reason to assert that they should, other than the reality that it is somewhat laborious to sort out all the statements made by professionals that become suspect when one doubts the evolutionary theory that now undergirds so much of academic thought. Certainly, it would be much easier to accept everything scientists tell us, comfortable in the knowledge that everything science asserts is at least supported by some kind of reliable evidence, unlike the claims advanced by religious leaders and the theologians and philosophers who support them.

But not even the staunchest advocate of the scientific method can plausibly deny that science, in general, is fallible. And I would furthermore argue that we have sufficient reason to suspect, as rational thinkers, that the evolutionary theory, in particular, might be mistaken—if we allow that it is possible supernatural elements may ever have been at work in the universe. In fact, the only justification we would have for assuming that evolution must be true would be the assumption that it is impossible either that supernatural elements could ever have been at work in the universe or that we could ever hope to learn anything about them. If we, as rational thinkers, refuse to make this limiting assumption, more theories than evolution only propose themselves as plausible explanations of the origin of life, and the scientific evidence to date does not support evolution over and above these others.

Even if my opponent were willing to grant me this claim—that we have no obvious, scientifically supported, or logically indisputable reason to assume the idea, that supernatural forces, rather than evolution, were responsible for the formation of life, to be impossible or even unlikely—there remains the question: how do I propose we inform our opinions about how life happened, if not by trusting science—which is another way of saying, by assuming supernatural elements had nothing to do with it, not because we can be certain such assumptions are true, but for the practical reason that science can offer no support for supernatural accounts? If we cannot weigh the evidence for the competing accounts of evolution and design through scientific inquiry, how exactly are we supposed to weigh it? Am I really proposing that we all look at the evidence available to us and then just independently reflect on whether or not we think the evidence suggests life is too complex to have evolved and then answer the question for ourselves based merely on the strength of our own unsupported intuitions?

Well, yes and no. Yes, in the sense that I think, and I hope that this argument has shown, that this is all we have to go on—all that we can do—if we're really interested in figuring out the truth behind the origins of life and not just the most useful scientific model. No, in the sense that I realize that interviewing ourselves as to what we consider the most likely answer to this isolated question, in our own subjective opinion, is not going to provide us with an answer we can be all that confident in. This is why I would not propose weighing the alternative explanations of the origins of life against one another in isolation. Rather, I would advocate weighing whole competing world views against each other, in view of all the evidence we have available in our entire life experience. Thus, I would not recommend weighing "design" against "evolution" only, but rather complete philosophies like "Christianity" against "materialistic determinism."

The ‘flying spaghetti monster’ objection to challenging the assumption of naturalism

Ah, but how to select the philosophies that we will consider?—my opponent might jump in to demand. Why should Christianity make the cut? In fact, if we're going to be weighing any philosophies against the naturalism assumed by the scientific method, shouldn't we have to consider all the philosophies we can make up arbitrarily in addition to pre-existing ones, if we really wanted to be fair? Such as the religion of the flying spaghetti monster?

Now, I have nothing against considering the plausibility of the best possible version of every imaginable philosophy, but this is not what I'm recommending. I propose, if we allow it is possible that supernatural elements have been at work in the universe and that humans could learn something about them, we can just as easily allow that some people, over the course of history, may already have learned something about the nature of the supernatural. We might further narrow the field of possibility by combing through world philosophies and religions and picking out the ones out of which we feel we have the best chance of garnering a plausible theory that can rival the explanatory power of naturalism in accounting for the world we live in. Granted, every time we narrow the field we open ourselves wider to the possibility of missing the truth. But this is hardly an argument for sticking to naturalism, which would narrow the field even further than any algorithm we design for throwing out particular supernatural theories from among those we should seriously consider. True, it would be much simpler to stick to naturalism. We wouldn't have to worry about whether we were setting our criteria for supernatural theories we would consider too broadly or too narrowly to give us our best possible chance of finding the truth. We would never be troubled about whether we should doubt the current theories of science, because we would never have to consider the evidence available against any other theoretical accounts of it.

But no one ever promised that searching for truth would be easy.

At any rate, however we go about narrowing the field of possibility, whenever the evidence seems to challenge one view or another of those we have left, it seems to me most logical to revise all views to account for it. Only when all this work is done and the best versions of each theory have been laid out can we look at them and hope to assess objectively whether one accounts for the world we live in better than the others. Granted, this will still ultimately be a matter of opinion, but it can be an opinion based on a holistic, objective assessment of all the data available—insofar as objectivity is possible to man. And after we have done all this work, and only then, I think, can we have something like confidence in our answer to the question of the origin of life. Because as it stands, whether the strength or weakness of the theory of evolution alone seems to strike a point for naturalism or theism seems, to me, entirely a matter of opinion.

Conclusion

Doing such philosophical work of the type I have described, though, would go well beyond the scope of this series. Here, I am not trying to prove or defend Christianity or any other religion against all other world views. I am only trying to say, here, that there is no obvious, compelling reason, whether scientific or philosophical, to think that evolution, and not supernatural causes, was responsible for the formation of life as we know it. The fact that evolution is science does not make it truth, and believers in the theory will have to look somewhere other than science if they hope to argue that evolution is better supported by the evidence than is a theory of design.

---

Beth Peterson attended Johns Hopkins University as a National Merit Scholar and a Bloomberg Scholar and graduated with a B.A. in Psychology and a minor in Acting. She has been writing fantasy fiction since her middle school years and looks forward to making her first book deal.