Evolution is NOT Science

Science Defined:

From Webster's New World Dictionary, 1995, p. 526:

"Systematized knowledge derived from observation, study, etc"

From the Oxford Dictionary:

"A branch of study which is concerned either with a connected body of demonstrated truths or with observed facts systematically classified and more or less being brought under general laws, and which includes trustworthy methods for the discovery of new truth within its own domain."

Adherence to Evolution is Based on Philosophical, not Scientific Grounds

As we shall see, there is no observable fact that can be said to prove evolution. All the variation that Darwin observed in various species, which he interpreted as evidence for evolution, could just as easily be considered evidence for special creation. The same is true of earth's geologic history. The belief that the earth is billions of years old is an interpretation of the data based upon the philosophical presupposition known as uniformatarianism. To embrace one worldview over another requires selecting one interpretation of that data over another. Undeniably, this is being done for purely philosophical - not scientific - reasons. Here are some telling statements by evolution's most ardent supporters:

Charles Darwin

"I had no intention to write atheistically, but I own that I cannot see as plainly as others do, and as I should wish to do, evidence of design and beneficence on all sides of us. I cannot persuade myself that a beneficent and omnipotent God would have designedly created the ichneumonidae [a parasite] with the express intention of their feeding within the living bodies of caterpillars, or that a cat should play with mice. Not believing this, I see no necessity in the belief that the eye was expressly designed."

Charles Darwin in a letter to Harvard Professor Asa Gray, May 22, 1860, cited in John Morris, "The Young Earth", Ninth printing, August 2000.

Note the reasoning here. According to Darwin, the world wasn't being run quite the way he felt God should run it therefore the rejection of biblical creation was fully warranted. With the God of the Bible safely out of the picture, there was only one other way to interpret the data: The world must have evolved by purely naturalistic forces. Note that the exclusion of God as a viable explanation for our origins was arrived at not through the scientific means, but purely philosophical reasons.

Thomas Henry Huxley

"…creation in the ordinary sense of the word is perfectly conceivable. I find no difficultly in conceiving that, at some former period, this universe was not in existence, and that it made its appearance in six days (or instantaneously, if that is preferred), in consequence of the volition of of some preexisting Being. Then, as now, the so called a priori arguments against Theism and, given a Deity, against the possibility of creative acts, appeared to me to be devoid of reasonable foundation."

T.H. Huxley, quoted in "Life and Letters of Thomas Huxley", 1903, p. 241

Thomas Huxley was dubbed "Darwin's Bulldog" because of his strong adherence to the evolutionary explanation for human origins. This adherence was clearly not because the scientific evidence demanded it.

Robert Shapiro

"Some future day may yet arrive when all reasonable chemical experiments run to discover a probable origin of life have failed unequivocally. Further, new geologic evidence may yet indicate a sudden appearance of life on earth. Finally, we may have explored the universe and found no trace of life, or processes leading to life, elsewhere. Some scientists might choose to turn to religion for an answer. Others, however, myself included, would attempt to sort out the surviving less probable scientific explanations in the hope of selecting one that was still more likely than the remainder."

Robert Shapiro, "Origins: A Sceptic's Guide to the Creation of Life in the Universe", 1988, p. 130 p. 301

Shapiro's statement hardly requires comment. To him, evolution is a fact regardless of the data. Clearly, his adherence to the evolutionary worldview has no basis in fact. Like Leakey, Shapiro has interpreted the data in accordance with his own philosophical bias.

David Harry Grinspoon, Assistant Professor of Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences at the University Of Colorado

In his book "Venus Revealed"(1997) Grinspoon makes clear his distain for the creation worldview, equating it with Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy. His contention is that the concept of special creation is unscientific, yet his reasons for embracing evolution, like Darwin's and Shapiro's, are purely philosophical. This is evidenced by his adherence to complexity theory, the belief that an as yet undiscovered force is responsible for organizing matter into complex systems and structures including living things:

p. 301: "[Complexity theory is] inherently non-reductionist, focusing instead on emergence. One objection is that complexity science is not predictive - at least not yet, in the way that science has required itself to be. Maybe in some sense it is not even science but natural philosophy, "

p. 304: "Something magical and creative beyond belief happened here as a result of carbon and water. Once it started it never stopped, and it completely remade our world. Carbon in water crawls, and flies, respirates and synthesizes, colonizes, adapts seeks, hides, gives birth, invents, worries, wonders, and sings. If that's not magic, then what is?"

p. 302 "We can poke around the edges of this question with science, but it is also fair game for intuition and faith." "I prefer not to believe that we are the only conduits for consciousness in the entire universe. Not because I have any evidence to the contrary, but because the notion seems absurd to me. It's largely a matter of aesthetic preference."

In probing the question of life's origin, it's interesting to note this scientist's choice of words: "Magical", "creative", "intuition", and "faith." His rejection of creation because of its un-scientific nature seems more that a bit hypocritical.

Steven J. Gould

Gould was one of evolution's most outspoken proponents. From Steven J Gould, "The Verdict on Creationism", New York Times Magazine, July 19, 1987, p. 34:

"Our continuing struggle to understand how evolution happens does not cast our documentation of its occurrence - 'the fact of evolution'- into doubt."

What exactly is Gould saying here? In short, he's saying that he knows evolution is true because it happened. He knows it happened because it's true. This is circular reasoning with a vengeance!

Richard Leakey

Richard Leakey has been described as "the world's most famous living paleoanthropologist", former chairman of the National Museums of Kenya. In his book "Origins Reconsidered" (1992) Leakey makes more than one telling statement:

p. 350 "I am not religious, at least not in the formal sense. As a schoolboy I adopted a kind of personal atheism, which was much ridiculed because my uncle was Archbishop of East Africa at the time. There developed a campaign to "save" me, to which I reacted by being even more adamantly atheistic. I came to be critical of formal religion, particularly of the damage that missionaries were doing to the culture of the people of Kenya."

p. "Because the target of the search is ourselves, the enterprise takes on a dimension absent from other sciences. It is in a sense extrascientific, more philosophical and metaphysical, and it addresses questions that arise from our need to understand the nature of humanity and our place in the world."

Understand that these questions are clearly answered by Jesus himself, as recorded in the New Testament. These answers, however, will be found necessarily in error if we begin the endeavor with an atheistic bias. As we have just seen, for purely philosophical reasons Leakey adopted atheism as his worldview of choice.

p. 51 "Fossil anatomy can be extremely difficult to interpret, especially when its fragmentary, as it so often is. People's expectations, their scientific preconceptions, influence their judgments. All scientists work from some kind of theoretical framework and interpret the evidence in its light. Weak evidence can often be made to fit such a framework, whatever its form. I've seen that happen many times in paleoanthropology."

Leakey is not immune; consider the following statement:

p. 16 "One experiences a powerful sense of awe in holding a hominid fossil, a piece one one's past, a piece of the past of all of Homo Sapiens. It never fails to thrill me, and I know I'm not the only one in this profession to react this way. My colleagues and I don't talk about it much, because it doesn't sound scientific, but it's a very real part of this very special science, the search for the identity of all mankind. Maybe that's what drew me on."

It's important to realize that to call a fossil a "hominid" or an "ancestral link" is purely an interpretation of the data. Leakey is calling certain fossils "hominids" not because the evidence demands it, but simply because he chooses to.

David Pilbeam (Harvard University)

Pilbeam had convinced many of his fellow paleoanthropologists that a fossil known as Ramapithecus was a hominid. This was based on nothing more that a few teeth and jaw fragments. Later, as more abundant fossil evidence came to light, it became clear that Ramapithecus had nothing at all to do with human origins. Pilbeam's explanations of where the paleoanthropological had gone astray are very telling. These citations are made in Marvin Lubenow's "Bones of Contention a Creationist Assessment of Human Fossils", 1992, p. 24:

"Theory shapes the way we think about, even perceive, data…We are unaware of many of our assumptions." ("Rearranging Our Family Tree", Human Nature, June, 1978: 40)

"Conflicting visions of these [evolutionary] ancestors probably says more about our conflicting views of ourselves than about the actual fossil data." (p. 44)

"In the course of rethinking my ideas about human evolution, I have changed somewhat as a scientist. I am aware of the prevalence of implicit assumptions and try harder to dig them out of my own thinking. …Theories have, in the past, clearly reflected our current ideologies instead of the actual data…I am more sober than I once was about what the unwritten past can tell us." (p. 45)

Colin Patterson, Senior Paleontologist, British Museum of Natural History, London, (Evolution and Creationism speech at the American Museum of Natural History, NY, Nov. 5, 1981) stated:

"The question is: Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true? I tried that question on the geology staff at the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence. I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar at the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school.' …The level of knowledge about evolution is incredibly shallow…So I think many people in this room would acknowledge that during the last few years if you had thought about it at all, you've experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge, to evolution as faith. I know that's true of me and I think it's true of a good many of you in here."

Geneticist Richard Lewontin (As quoted by Philip Johnson, "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds", 1997, p. 81):

"It is not the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations, no matter how counter-intuitive, no matter how mystifying to the uninitiated. Moreover, that materialism is absolute, for we cannot allow a divine foot in the door. The eminent Kant scholar Lewis Beck used to say that anyone who could believe in God could believe in anything. To appeal to an omnipotent deity is to allow that at any moment the regularities of nature may be ruptured, that miracles may happen."

Geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky ("American Scientist", Vol. 45, 1957, p. 388):

"This evolutionary happenings are unique, unrepeatable, in irreversible. It is as impossible to turn a land vertebrate into a fish as it is to effect the reverse transformation. The applicability of the of the experimental method to the study of such unique historical processes is severely restricted before all else by the time intervals involved, which far exceed the lifetime of of any human experimenter. And yet it is just this impossibility that is demanded by the anti-evolutionists when they ask for "proofs" of evolution which they magnanimously accept as satisfactory."

Norman Macbeth ("American Biology Teacher", Nov., 1976, p.496):

"Darwinism is not science."

L.C. Birch and P.R. Ehrlich ("Nature", Vol 214, 1967, p. 349):

"[evolution] is outside of empirical science but necessarily false. No one can think of ways in which to test it."

C. Leon Harris,("Perspectives in Biology and Medicine", Winter, 1975, p. 183):

"…the axiomatic nature of the neoDarwinian theory places the debate between evolutionists and creationists in a new perspective. Evolutionists have often challenged creationists to provide experimental proof that species have been fashioned de novo. Creationists have often demanded that evolutionists show how chance mutations can lead to adaptability, or to explain why natural selection has favored some species but not others with special adaptations, or why natural selection allows apparently detrimental organs to persist. We may now recognize that neither challenge is fair. If the neo-Darwinian theory is axiomatic, it is not valid for creationists to demand proof of the axioms, and it is not valid for evolutionists to dismiss special creation as unproved so long as it is stated as an axiom."

British Biologist L. Harrison Matthews (Introduction to "The Origin of Species", C. Darwin, reprinted by J.M. Dent and Sons Ltd., 1971, p. XI):

"The fact that evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory - is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation - both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof."

Zoologist Pierre P. Grasse (Grasse's book, "L'Evolution du Vivant" 1973, was commented upon by Dobzhansky, "Evolution", Vol. 29, 1975, p. 376):

"The book of Pierre P. Grasse is a frontal attack on all kinds of Darwinism. Its purpose is to destroy the myth of evolution, as a simple, understood, and explained phenomenon, and to show that evolution is a mystery about which little is, and perhaps can be, known. Now one can disagree with Grasse but not ignore him. He is the most distinguished of French Zoologists, the editor of the 28 volumes of Traite de Zoologie, author of numerous original investigations, and ex-president of the Academie des Sciences. His knowledge of the living world is encyclopedic."

Note that Grasse ends his book with the sentence, "It is possible that in this domain biology, impotent, yields the floor to metaphysics."

"Evolution became in a sense a scientific religion; almost all scientists have accepted it and many are prepared to bend their observations to fit in with it."—H. Lipson, "A Physicist Looks at Evolution," Physics Bulletin 31 (1980), p. 138

"Evolution is perhaps unique among major scientific theories in that the appeal for its acceptance is not that there is evidence of it, but that any other proposed interpretation of the data is wholly incredible." Charles Singer, "A Short History of Science to the Nineteenth Century", 1941.

"Our theory of evolution has become …one which cannot be refuted by any possible observations. Every conceivable observation can be fitted into it … No one can think of ways in which to test it. Ideas, either without basis or based on a few laboratory experiments carried out in extremely simplified systems, have attained currency far beyond their validity. They have become part of an evolutionary dogma accepted by most of us as part of our training." L. C. Birch and P. Ehrlich, Nature, April 22, 1967.

"I argue that the 'theory of evolution' does not take predictions, so far as ecology is concerned, but is instead a logical formula which can be used only to classify empiricisms [theories] and to show the relationships which such a classification implies … these theories are actually tautologies and, as such, cannot make empirically testable predictions. They are not scientific theories at all. " R. H. Peters, "Tautology to Evolution and Ecology," American Naturalist, (1976) Vol. 110, No. 1, p. 1.

Conclusion:

Evolution is not based on observable, testable, demonstrable, repeatable, scientific facts, but on philosophical presuppositions. This creates an interesting contradiction in for the evolutionist, since he asserts that creation is to be rejected for it's unscientific nature.

Addendum: What about Forensic Science?

The strict definition of the word “science” is “knowledge.” Our expanded definition, it will be remembered, was “systematized knowledge derived from observation” (Webster’s). According to this strict definition, evolution cannot possibly be called science precisely because no one has ever seen anything evolve in the Darwinian sense ^[1]. Evolution must be taken simply as an article of faith. At this juncture a valid question is raised concerning various branches of forensic science. Crime scene investigators, or air crash investigators are called upon, as scientists, to carefully examine the relevant data and reconstruct events that occurred in the unobserved past. Could not these types of endeavours, including other disciples such as historical geology, paleontology and archaeology rightly be called “science?”  I’m willing to grant, with several qualifications, that the term “science” may rightly be expanded to include disciplines dealing with that which is not observed directly.

To begin with, we have to remember that science refers to knowledge. Now a person can believe things that are either true or not true. But a person can only know something that is true. It is impossible to know something that is not true. Science therefore by definition is concerned with truth. Secondly, and corollary to the first point, one engaging in scientific enterprise must be prepared to follow the evidence wherever it leads. This is of course easier said than done. Often the evidence leads in a direction contrary to long held and cherished ideas. A true scientist is always prepared to jettison such ideas in favour of tangible evidence^[2].  Thirdly, scientists must operate with the reasonable assumption that similar causes will produce similar effects.

Scientists who conduct their investigations in such a manner have our respect. Though the majority of their theories may turn out to be incorrect, we respect their honest search for truth and rejoice with them on those occasions when their theories are vindicated.  On the other hand, what are we to think of, say, a crime scene investigator who wanted to blame a specific person with a murder, no matter what the evidence suggested? What would we think of an investigator who regarded a clear knife-wound as a gunshot? Or a burn victim as someone who died by drowning? I think we can agree that whatever else he may be doing at the crime scene, it could hardly be considered “science.”

I’m convinced that many scientists holding to the evolution story, despite the sophisticated lingo, are really doing the same thing as our unscrupulous crime scene investigator. Just as the investigator “knew” that X was the murderer, and forced the evidence to conform to this fact, many scientists today just “know” that evolution occurred. In other words, commitment to the evolution story was decided upon prior to an examination of the evidence^[3]. It was not derived from it. Facts that ostensibly conflict with the evolution story are dealt with in various ways. Either an elaborate “just so” story is concocted to account for it^[4], or the facts themselves are simply ignored or denied^[5]. Again, a crime scene investigator guilty of such anti-intellectual duplicity could hardly expect to keep his job for very long! But evolution is a different story. It’s not a real scientific theory at all but a carefully guarded state religion and scientists are encouraged to do whatever it takes^[6] to keep their god alive in the minds of an unquestioning general public.

Notes and References:

1. Many evolutionists argue that evolution has been observed in things like bacteria becoming antibiotic resistant, or viruses mutating. Others may point to various examples of speciation. These kinds of changes do no damage to the biblical creation position whatever. Creationists believe in change over time. Our position however is that these kinds of micro changes cannot possibly be extrapolated over millions of years to accomplish evolution in the Darwinian sense. In other words, though we must admit that living things are changing, the kinds of changes we see taking place are not sufficient to change one kind of animal into a fundamentally different kind.

2. One would think that those willing to follow the evidence wherever it leads would receive some sort of respect from the intellectually elite. Sadly, where evolution is concerned, this is not the case. Ben Stein’s eye-opening 2008 documentary film “Expelled” does a great job exposing the discrimination on the part of mainstream science towards anyone who even dares to question the evolution story.

3. “It is not the methods and institutions of science somehow compel us to accept a material explanation of the phenomenal world, but, on the contrary, that we are forced by our a priori adherence to material causes to create an apparatus of investigation and a set of concepts that produce material explanations…” Geneticist Richard Lewontin (As quoted by Philip Johnson, "Defeating Darwinism by Opening Minds", 1997, p. 81)

4. Examples abound. The fossilized Laetolie footprints for instance, are unmistakably human. Because they were supposedly made nearly 3 million years ago the evolution story cannot permit them to be classified as human. Their solution? The australopithecines, ape-like creatures from which we supposedly evolved are now regarded as having human feet! Note that the actual fossil evidence for the australopithecine foot is very scanty; certainly not enough to know the creature had human feet. Furthermore, what they do have resembles an ape’s foot, not a human’s. See: Scientific American, August, 2005, p. 19

5. Over 900 pages documenting discoveries that conflict with the evolution story are found in Michael A. Cremo and and Richard L. Thompson, “Forbidden Archaeology”, Torchlight Publishing; 2nd edition (January 1998).  Their work has been largely ignored or ridiculed.

6. In May 2005 I heard Dr. Jack Cuozzo lecture on Neanderthal people. Commenting on the 1911 discovery of the Neanderthal fossil specimen known as Quina V, Cuozzo stated,

“I was in the laboratory of the Musee de L’Homme in Paris, France in 1979 when a human paleontologist cut off the chin of the lower jaw of La Quina V, a female Neanderthal. When this skull came out of the ground in 1911, it had a chin. Apes have no chins, so he tried to make it look more ape-like.”

Cuozzo, and orthodontist by trade, also explained how many of the so-called human “missing links” are being put together horribly wrong. For instance, the Neanderthal known as La Moustier I was reconstructed to look more ape-like by setting his jaw 30mm out of the socket. A better interpretation of the Neanderthal fossils may be found in Cuozzo’s book “Buried Alive”, Master Books, 1998.