A Critique of Evolution | Part 1

Science Holds No Justification for Any ‘Truth’ Claims

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. 

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First, let us discuss, in brief, the nature of science. Science begins with the observation of phenomena. Then, one develops a theory that attempts to explain these observations through natural processes. Now, ideally, this theory ought to be 'testable.' It should allow one to make predictions about what one will observe under varying conditions. Then, one varies the conditions necessary to test the hypothesis, and one observes whether the predicted results obtain. If so, we say that the evidence has supported the theory. If not, one must revise the theory to account for the observations that were made, and, ideally, one should be able to test the revised theory against another body of data, and the process continues until the best possible explanation of all the available data is found. That best explanation is then accepted as 'true'—at least provisionally, as it is the best available explanation given the available data, until someone else may come along with a new theory that fits the data even better. 

Science must assume naturalism 

This is what we call the scientific method, and its contributions to the human race as well as its fundamental brilliance as a method of creating knowledge cannot be overstated. That said, it must be acknowledged that the scientific method has certain limitations—which is to say, if certain types of information were true, they would be undiscoverable through the scientific method. Suppose, for example, one were trying to explain why a particular stone floated when all other stones of its kind sank to the bottom of the sea, and that the truth of why this happened was that an invisible Supernatural Being had overruled the laws of physics in this particular case for unknowable reasons. Science could never come to this conclusion, because such a proposition cannot be tested. We would be powerless to create the conditions necessary for the Supernatural Being to intervene again such that we could say 'if this second rock is made to float, our theory that the Supernatural Being made the first rock float has been supported.' Because of this inherent irreplicability of supernatural events, science can never offer a model that appeals to the supernatural, and so if the supernatural were, in fact, responsible for an event, science would never know. 

However, suppose every time we observed a phenomenon we could not immediately explain, we assumed a supernatural cause were responsible. This would be foolishness, undermining our potential for gaining knowledge. Just because we do not know how something works is no reason to assume the cause is unknowable. The more we assume causes are knowable, the more we are driven to investigate them, and the more knowledge we potentially unearth. 

Science concerns itself with utility rather than truth 

Can we be confident that the knowledge we unearth in this manner is 'truth'? Never. And yet, the more data we can explain with our theories and the more accurate the predictions we make using them, the more confident we can be about them. If they are not, at the end of the day, entirely 'true,' they are at least useful insofar as they allow us to make accurate predictions. While the truth is always desirable to know—for the sake of curiosity if nothing else—in many fields, such as medicine, being able to make accurate predictions about what will cure or worsen one's condition is what is most important anyway.  

Newtonian physics assumed that time passed at a constant rate everywhere in the universe, but this assumption was later replaced by Einstein's theory of relativity, which considers time a fourth dimension that can be warped by forces like gravity and velocity. Until Einstein, Newtonian physics produced the best model available for making predictions about how physical forces interact, and so was generally accepted as the scientific 'truth.' That Newton's fundamental assumptions about time are no longer considered to be 'true' hardly detracts from the utility of his model, which made perfectly accurate predictions within certain restrictions; however, if Newton's goal had been to define the true nature of time, rather than to make accurate predictions with a model that made workable assumptions, we would now say that his definition turned out to be false. Which is, at the end of the day, a perfectly normal aspect of the scientific method. Scientists are in the business of building models to explain how things work, and each model generates better predictions than the one it replaces—often by making different assumptions about the underlying nature of things. 

To cite another example, Bohr's model of the atom, in which electrons orbited the nucleus in set paths, much like the orbits of planets about the sun, was replaced by the quantum mechanical model, which replaced the understanding of the electron's set circular path with more nuanced predictions of the probability of an electron's occupying certain spaces as part of an orbit that was no longer thought to be set or circular in nature. Bohr's model was good; the quantum mechanical model is better. We would no longer say that Bohr's model was 'true'; however, it was the best model available at the time of its introduction, so it was considered good science at the time. 

At the end of the day, science does not really concern itself with 'truth.' Science concerns itself with utility, with finding the best possible model of how the world works that will generate the most accurate predictions. I had a professor in college—a vision scientist—who taught us that nothing science had maintained one hundred years ago is still considered to be 'true' today, and that, in all likelihood, a hundred years from now we will no longer think anything is true that science maintains today. New and better models are continually being developed and fine-tuned to replace older models, which then become obsolete. To say that we are making progress toward 'truth' is uncertain; what we are doing is making progress toward models that more and more accurately simulate  whatever it is that is true—that is, toward models that better explain the data we have and allow us to make better predictions about the data we can gather under certain conditions. 

Now, as I have said before, I think science is wonderful. It is important to realize, though, that for science to work, one has to start with the premise that everything can be explained through natural causes, because only causes assumed to be natural, stable, and repeatable can be tested. Causes we cannot understand and replicate, we will not be able to model through science. And that is not necessarily a problem. Science does not purport to measure the unmeasurable, or to know the unknowable. It purports only to model the possible natural causes of our observations to the best of its ability. 

So much for our discussion of the nature of science. Let us turn to the question at hand: the theory of evolution (as the mechanism by which complex life arose over time from a single-celled common ancestor, which was in turn generated randomly from nonliving matter). That this theory is good science is undisputed. But is this theory true? As I have said before, science does not concern itself with truth. The theory of evolution is the best naturalistic model of the origin of life that exists at this time. In fact, it is the only  naturalistic model of the origin of life, and as such, it is undisputed in scientific circles. It is therefore scientific 'truth,' a.k.a., the best working model of how life came about currently in existence. Scientists allow that it may one day be replaced by a naturalistic model that works better, but for now, it is all that science has, and, to the best of our current knowledge, all that science can  have. To say that we don't know exactly how or why certain things evolved is not to reject the model and assume supernatural causes must have been at work—it is only to say we do not yet know how or why certain things evolved. For science to work, it must maintain everything can  be explained scientifically (that is, naturalistically), and continue to posit better and better models until we arrive at a model that can no longer be improved. Right now, evolution is  that model that no one can overturn with a better naturalistic model—therefore, as I have said, it is the current scientific 'truth.' 

The ‘questioning evolution is questioning science’ objection to questioning evolution 

Now, as the current best naturalistic model of the origins of life, we can say that evolution has joined the ever-growing, ever-improving body of scientific 'knowledge.' In general, we accept knowledge that we have gained in this manner as 'truth'—at least until some new theorist gives us reason to replace a theory we have accepted as true with a better one. There are some who would argue that to single out evolution, alone of all these theories, and to call into special question the veracity of its claims would be, in a sense, hypocritical. Either, these people would say, science is a reliable method for gaining knowledge, or it is not. Given that evolution is as well-established a model as most any that science has ever produced, we ought to accept it as (provisionally) true in the way we do all the other models that science offers us. To attack the theory of evolution is to disparage the scientific method itself, and of course the only motivation one could have for calling evolution—and evolution alone, of all the theories of science—into question would be that one doesn't want to believe it—perhaps because it challenges a cherished, pre-established worldview. To allow one's biases to dictate which scientific theories one is willing to accept in this way, of course, goes against the spirit of free inquiry. It isn't following where the evidence leads; it is justifying a pre-held view by explaining science away. 

Or is it? We've already admitted that science has certain limitations, that certain types of information, if true, would never be uncovered by science. If there were a Supernatural Being that ever interacted with the world and caused certain events to occur supernaturally, science would never discover this. For science to work, one must assume everything operates in strict accordance with natural, stable laws. In order to be a good scientist, one cannot attribute one's gaps in knowledge to the inexplicable—one must attribute them to imperfections in one's model, in the hope that the model will be improved, and the gaps will one day be resolved. 

But must one assume a complete absence of the supernatural, a priori, in order to be a good rational thinker? Most scientists would answer no. Just as science will never confirm the existence of the supernatural, it can never authoritatively deny it. This is why, most scientists will tell you, religion and science are separate and should be dealt with separately. What you believe about the supernatural is one thing; what natural model you can demonstrate support for is quite another. 

However, if we do not reject the possibility of the supernatural a priori, there remains a possibility that there are some observations we may make that are not brought about by natural causes—that is, there may be some supernatural occurrences. And yet, if we are doing proper science, we will attempt to explain them through natural causes anyway. Whatever model we develop in this scenario, though, no matter how plausible of an explanation it seems to offer or how well we think we are using it to account for the data, would be factually untrue. 

This much is undisputed. 

What seems to be in dispute, however, is whether we should ask ourselves if the theory of evolution could be just such a model—a model attempting to explain events through natural causes that were really brought about supernaturally. To reiterate, critics ask, why should we single out evolution, alone of all scientific theories, and ask whether it is really 'true'? If evolution must be called into question, everything must be called into question! Evolution is science at its best; therefore, the entire scientific method must be called into question if one wants to question evolution. Science produces knowledge about the world, and it has produced the theory of evolution to explain the origin of life. Therefore, evolution is as true as everything else we know through science. Questioning it, at best, is to question whether we can know anything at all, and at worst, is to demonstrate one's own religious bias. 

But hold on a moment. Is this entirely fair? Is evolution really so like other theories that we ought to accept it as we accept them? And when we say that we accept other theories, do we really mean we consider them to be true, that is, indisputable fact, in the same way anti-creationists would scoff at those narrow-minded religious fools who refuse to acknowledge that science has proven  the fact of evolution, the truth  of the statement that all life as we know it evolved gradually from non-living material? 

All science is meant to be questioned 

Well, no, actually. I think if we consider for a moment, we will see that we do not "believe" that other scientific theories are "true" with the dogmatism that anti-creationists are likely to display in attacking those who would profess skepticism about the evolutionary theory as an explanation of the origin of life. Yes, we think  that within an atom, electrons surround the nucleus in orbitals described by the quantum mechanical model. We think this because the quantum mechanical model makes the most accurate predictions about the way that atoms interact, but at the end of the day, no one has anything invested  in the idea that the quantum mechanical model is the truth. It is instead, our best approximation of the truth, and if someone should pioneer a theory that outperformed the quantum mechanical model, we would change all our textbooks accordingly. 

And think back with me for a moment, if you will, to Newtonian physics. There are many who would argue that Newton wasn't actually wrong  in any way that really matters. He had a brilliant theory that made excellent predictions about the ways in which physical objects interact. His model, in fact, was perfect within certain restrictions, and all Einstein's theory did was extend the model to apply over wider parameters. There are still some anomalies, in fact, such as black holes, about which Einstein's theory fails to make accurate predictions, so how wrong, really, was Newton? Not very. For almost all practicable purposes that could be carried out anywhere on planet Earth, his model was perfect. 

This is what advocates of embracing all current scientific theories would argue concerning Einstein's correction to Newton. What this argument neglects, however, is that no one, past or present, was hugely invested in the abstract concept of whether Newton's theory was true. What was impressive about the theory was its utility. It accurately predicted a wide range of physical phenomena. This is what we mean when we say Newton wasn't really wrong. However, the fact remains that Newton's basic assumptions about the nature of time turned out to be untrue. We now assume them to have been factually incorrect, as Einstein was later able to demonstrate this by introducing a competing theory of the nature of time that outperformed Newton's model. 

Science, in general, does not purport to be ‘truth’ 

The important thing to take away from this story is that, in general, scientific theories do not offer us information that has proven to be true. They are instead models  that allow us to make predictions. The better the predictions, the stronger the model, and the more confident we feel that we are at least approaching the truth. Perhaps the quantum-mechanical calculations of electrons' orbitals aren't quite right after all, but the quantum-mechanical model is probably closer to describing the true atom than Bohr's understanding of electrons' orbiting the nucleus in set, circular paths, which was in turn closer to the truth than the model placing electrons on the outer surface of the nucleus that preceded it. But in some cases, the progression of models does not just involve minor corrections to an electron's position or path around the nucleus—sometimes it involves redefining the very nature of time. And so, while we can say our theories do a better and better job of modeling the causes of phenomena, we cannot say that every step in the progression of models necessarily brings us much closer to understanding the truth  of the nature of the universe. 

We will look at the evidence for the evolutionary theory in the next part.

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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.