Keith Devens .com

Entry 1314

I'm now reading an excellent article by Phil Johnson, author of, among other things, Darwin on Trial.

"In the July 1992 issue of Scientific American Stephen Jay Gould wrote a scathing review of Phil Johnson's book Darwin on Trial. After unsuccessfully ignoring the book for two years, Gould finally attempted to discredit it with a nasty review, claiming the book was full of errors. Johnson wrote a detailed response--but Scientific American refused to give him any print space. They have also refused requests from other organizations to reprint Gould's review along with Johnson's response."

"So here we print Johnson's reply to Gould's review. You'll just have to go into the library and look up the July 1992 edition of Scientific American to read Gould's review and find out why he and Scientific American are so afraid of Phil Johnson."

Examples of natural selection in action, like Kettlewell's observation of population shifts in the peppered moth, actually illustrate cyclical variation within stable species that exhibit no directional change. The fossil record--characterized by sudden appearance and subsequent stasis--is notoriously reluctant to yield examples of Darwinian macroevolution. The therapsid reptiles and Archaeopteryx are rare exceptions to the general absence of plausible transitional intermediates between major groups, which is why it is important to understand that even these Darwinist trophies are inconclusive as evidence of macroevolution. No wonder that prominent authorities like Stephen Jay Gould and Lynn Margulis have yearned for a new theory on the ground that the evidence contradicts the neo-Darwinist claim that macroevolutionary innovation results from the accumulation of small genetic changes by natural selection.

The point is not whether "evolution" in some vague sense is true. "Evolution" has certainly occurred, but the scientific importance of this statement is slight when evolution is defined vaguely as "change" or modestly as "shifts in gene frequencies." No doubt the pattern of relationships among plants and animals invites and inference that there was some process of development from a common source. But how much do we know about this process of development? Perhaps one day scientists will be able to test some macroevolutionary mechanism, involving changes in the rate genes or whatever, that will explain how a four-footed mammal can become a whale or a bat without going through impossible intermediate steps. The difficulties should be honestly acknowledged, however. What evolutionary theory needs is a reliable creative mechanism, capable of building highly complex structures like vision and breathing systems again and again in diverse lines. Speculation about how an occasional jump might occur won't do the job.

Johnson gets it. He wisely points out the metaphysical nature of the choice to believe in evolution, due more to one's naturalistic presuppositions than persuasion by the evidence:

The review itself merits no further response, but what requires explanation is the hostility. What divides Gould and me has little to do with scientific evidence and everything to do with metaphysics. Gould approaches the question of evolution from a philosophical starting point in scientific naturalism. From that standpoint the blind watchmaker thesis is true in principle by definition. Science may not know all the details yet, but something very much like Darwinian evolution simply has to be responsible for our existence because there is no acceptable alternative. If there are gaps or defects in the existing theory, the appropriate response is to supply additional naturalistic hypotheses. Critics who disparage Darwinism without offering a naturalistic alternative are seen as attacking science itself, probably in order to impose a religious straitjacket upon science and society. One does not reason with such persons; one employs any means at hand to discourage them.

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