Chapter 1: Science and Evolution
At the beginning of this century and millennium, many of the world's leading scientists are now atheists or agnostics. Does that prove now the theory of evolution? Is the theory of evolution, of neo-Darwinism, as now commonly taught throughout the world, true? Is it scientific? In the scientific journals a heated debate about this has now just begun. What do some of the world's leading scientist and atheists say now about this?
Edward J. Larson is at the Department of History, University of Georgia, in Athens, Georgia. E. J. Larson and Larry Witham, a science writer, state in the journal, Scientific American, September 1999 page 79 under the heading "Scientists and Religion in America":
"An early pioneer who sought to answer that question was Bryn Mawr College psychologist James H. Leuba. In 1914 and again in 1933 Leuba surveyed American biological and physical scientists on their views regarding what he described as 'the two central beliefs of the Christian religion': a God influenced by worship, and an afterlife. ... One number rings down through more than eight decades: 40 percent. Four in 10 of Leuba's scientists believed in God as defined in his survey. The same is true today. Somewhat more, about 50 percent, held to an afterlife in Leuba's day, but now that figure is also 40 percent.
"The 1998 NAS (= National Academy of Sciences) members provide a more immaculate sample of the elite than Leuba's starred entries did. Congress created the National Academy of Sciences in 1863, and after naming its first members Congress empowered them and their successors to choose all later members. Its current membership of 1,800 remains the closest thing to peerage in American science. And their responses validate Leuba's prediction of the beliefs of topflight scientists generations from his time. Disbelief among NAS members responding to our survey exceeded 90 percent. The increase may simply reflect that they are more elite than Leuba's 'greater' scientists... NAS biologists are the most skeptical, with 95 percent of our respondents evincing atheism and agnosticism. Mathematicians in the NAS are more accepting: one in every six of them expressed belief in a personal God." (1999:79, 80).
"Unveiling this pyramid would strike many learned people as much ado about the obvious. 'Today the higher the educational attainment, or the higher the scores earned on intelligence or achievement tests, the less likely are individuals to be Christians,' noted intellectual historical Paul K. Conkin. He could say the same of higher income, too.
"Some risk lies in sorting aside the 'lesser' scientists to crown the 'greater' ones, but the distinction does have its value. Of course, theists can scratch their heads and ask, Were not Copernicus, Kepler and Newton also great? Were not each of them profoundly and personally religious? Why are there not more theistic Newton types in the upper echelons today? Are the deepest contemporary scientific minds drawn to atheism, or, to paraphrase Darwin, does the environment of an elite science society select for the trait of disbelief?
"Legendary evolutionary biologist Ernst Mayr, an NAS member since 1954, made a study of disbelief among his Harvard University colleagues in the academy. 'It turned out we were all atheists,' he recalls. 'I found that there were two sources.' One Mayr typified as 'Oh, I became an atheist very early. I just couldn't believe all that supernatural stuff.' But others told him, 'I just couldn't believe that there could be a God with all this evil in the world.' Mayr adds, 'Most atheists combine the two. This combination makes it impossible to believe in God.' (1999:80, 81).
"I asked some people at the NAS why they don't have a section on evolution,' says William B. Provine, an evolutionist and science historian at Cornell University. 'Too controversial.' Yet, to its credit, in 1998 the NAS issued a report proudly promoting the teaching of evolution in public school. 'Whether God exists or not is a question, about which science is neutral,' the report cautiously begins, before launching its broadside of scientific arguments against religious objections to teaching evolution. But the irony is remarkable: a group of specialists who are nearly all nonbelievers - and who believe that science compels such a conclusion - told that public that 'science is neutral' on the God question.
"Religion was an unavoidable subject at the news conference at which the report was released. Eminent panelists reiterated that most religions have no conflict with evolution and that many scientists are religious. 'There are many outstanding members of this academy who are very religious people, people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists,' offered NAS president Bruce Alberts."
"The NAS showed similar concern for public opinion in a 1981 policy statement it adopted as a rearguard action after two states mandated equal time for 'creation science' in public school biology classes. 'Religion and science are separate and mutually exclusive realms of human thought whose presentation in the same context leads to misunderstanding of both scientific theory and religious belief,' it said.
British zoologist Richard Dawkins calls the NAS statement 'a cowardly cop-out. I think it's an attempt to woo the sophisticated theological lobby and to get them into our camp and put the creationists into another camp. It's good politics. But it's intellectual disreputable.' Antievolutionists such as Phillip E. Johnson, a Berkeley law professor and frequent speaker for the Campus Crusade for Christ, thrive on such clarity and find Dawkins the perfect foil. 'My colleagues and I want to separate the real science from the materialistic philosophy,' Johnson countered on a PBS Firing Line debate.
"Dawkins is well known for his uncompromising views and has likened belief in God to belief in fairies. He considers it intellectual dishonest to live with contradictions such as doing science during the week and attending church on Sunday."
"At the 1998 Science and the Spiritual Quest conference in Berkeley, funded by the Templeton Foundation, more than 20 scientists, including a physics Nobel laureate, testified that science either led them to God or was not an obstacle to faith. The conference encouraged scientists to engage in public discussion of God.
"Late in his distinguished career, astronomer Allan Sandage stumbled on the question theists in science love to ask their agnostic colleagues: 'Why is there something rather than nothing?' 'I never found the answer in science,' he confided to the Berkeley assembly. ... The same could be said of noted Princeton geologist and NAS member John Supe, who also 'got religious' after getting scientific fame, in his case arriving at faith through a search for meaning." E. J. Larson and L. Witham (1999:82)
Edward J. Larson and Larry Witham state in the scientific journal Nature, July 1998 p. 313, under the title "Leading scientists still reject God": "The question of religious belief among US scientists has been debated since early in the century. Our latest survey finds that, among the top natural scientists, disbelief is greater than ever - almost total.
"Our chosen group of 'greater' scientists were members of the National Academy of Sciences (NAS). Our survey found near universal rejection of the transcendent by NAS natural scientists. Disbelief in God and immortality among NAS biological scientists was 65.2% and 69.0%, respectively, and among NAS physical scientists it was 79.0% and 76.3%. Most of the rest were agnostics on both issues, with few believers. We found the highest percentage of belief among NAS mathematicians (14.3 in God, 15% in immortality). Biological scientists had the lowest rate of belief (5.5% in God, 7.1% in immortality), with physicists and astronomers slightly higher (7.5% in God, 7.5% in immortality).
"As we compiled our findings, the NAS issued a booklet encouraging the teaching of evolution in public schools, an ongoing source of friction between the scientific community and some conservative Christians in the United States. The booklet assures readers, 'Whether God exists or not is a question about which science is neutral'. NAS president Bruce Alberts said: 'There are many outstanding members of this academy who are very religious people, people who believe in evolution, many of them biologists.' Our survey suggests otherwise." (1998:313)
Result: What do atheists and agnostics try to tell here the uninformed reader? What do they try to make him believe? - This: Belief in evolution - in neo-Darwinism - is science, is truth. Belief in creation is ignorance, is a lie. The smarter you are, the more you must believe in evolution. If you do not believe in evolution, you must be stupid. Thus, belief in God, in creation means, that you believe in a lie. In other words: Every serious scientist on earth now believes in evolution. He is an atheist, or at least an agnostic.
Sometimes one hears the idea: Every serious scientist on earth believes now in evolution. - Is that true? Does that mean that also all of the scientists in the world's foremost museums of natural history believe that life on earth has evolved by itself in the primordial chemical soup from inorganic matter?
On 26 February 1971, on page 735, Volume 289, the renowned scientific journal Nature published an interesting article, entitled, "Darwin's Death in South Kensington". What was it about? It has to do with the famous British Museum of Natural History in London (South Kensington), with what certain scientists there had written, what they really believe. I shall quote now briefly from this article and from correspondents, who then commented on it:
Nature: "There is also the following passage: Biologists try to reconstruct the course of evolution from the characteristics of living animals and plants and from fossils, which give a time scale to the story. If the theory of evolution is true ... If the words are to be taken seriously, the rot at the museum has gone further than (British scientist) Haldstead ever thought. Can it be that the managers of the museum, which is the nearest to a citadel of Darwinism, have lost their nerve, not to mention their good sense? Or is it that somebody has calculated that the museum will increase its annual intake of visitors by enticing in scoffing creationists?
"This passage nicely illustrates what has gone wrong at the museum. The new exhibition policy, the museum's chief interaction with the outside world, is being developed in degree of isolation from the museum's staff of distinguished biologists, most of whom would rather lose their right hands than begin a sentence with the phrase 'If the theory of evolution is true...' Nobody disputes that, in the public presentation of science, it is proper whenever appropriate to say that disputed matters are in doubt. But is the theory of evolution still open to question among serious biologists? And, if not, what purpose except general confusion can be served by these weasel words?
"What it can do well, as in the past century, is to tell the absorbing tale of natural history. It should bend its mind to that, not to worrying about cladism. It should beware of selling out on Darwinism. And it should say, from time to time, what it is about. Hitheron, the museum has been too secretive."
On 12 March 1981 page 82, Volume 290, Nature then published a reply from the British Museum (Natural History) in London. This article was signed by 22 scientists of the British Museum: from the Departments of Botany, Entomology, Paleontology, Public Services and Zoology. They wrote to Nature:
"SIR - As working biologists at the British Museum (Natural History) we were astonished to read your editorial 'Darwin's death in South Kensington' (Nature 26 February, pp. 735). How is it that a journal such as yours that is devoted to science and its practice can advocate that theory be presented as fact? This is the stuff of prejudice, not science, and as scientists our basic concern is to keep an open mind on the unknowable. Sure it should not be otherwise?
"You suggest that most of us would rather lose our right hands than begin a sentence with the phrase 'if the theory of evolution is true...' Are we to take it that evolution is a fact, proven to the limits of scientific rigour? If that is the inference then we must disagree most strongly. We have no absolute proof of the theory of evolution. What we do have is overwhelming circumstantial evidence in favour of it and as yet no better alternative. But the theory of evolution would be abandoned tomorrow if a better theory appeared. Charles Darwin died nearly a century ago and is honoured at South Kensington as a great man of science. It does neither him nor science any service to misrepresent that status of his work."
On 4 June 1981 page 373, Volume 291, Nature then published an article by Barry Cox: "'The survival of the Fittest is an empty phrase; it is a play on words. For this reason, many critics feel that not only is the idea of evolution unscientific, but the idea of natural selection also. There's no point in asking whether or not we should believe in the idea of natural selection, because it is the inevitable logic consequence of a set of premises.' 'The idea of evolution by natural selection is a matter of logic, not science, and it follows that the concept of evolution by natural selection is not, strictly speaking, scientific.' 'If we accept that evolution has taken place, though, obviously we must keep an open mind on it...' 'We can't prove that the idea is true, only that it has not yet been proved false.' 'It may one day be replaced by a better theory, but until then...' These are all quotations from the film loop in which the present status of the theory of evolution is explained to a layman by a scientist. If this is the voice of our friends and supporters, then Creation protect us from our enemies. Though a biologist cannot deny that God created man, few would doubt that, if He did so, the mechanism that Darwin discerned was the one that He would use."
Professor Phillip Johnson was a law clerk for Chief Justice Earl Warren of the United States Supreme Court. He has taught law for over twenty years at the University of California at Berkeley. He states in his book Darwin on Trial:
"I am not a scientist but an academic lawyer by profession, with a specialty in analyzing the logic of arguments and identifying the assumptions that lie behind those arguments. This background is more appropriate than one might think, because what people believe about evolution and Darwinism depends very heavily on the kind of logic they employ and the kind of assumptions they make. ... Practicing scientists are of necessity highly specialized, and a scientist outside his field of expertise is just another layman."
"If we say that naturalistic evolution is science, and supernatural creation is religion, the effect is not very different from saying that the former is true and the latter is fantasy. When the doctrines of science are taught as a fact, then whatever those doctrines exclude cannot be true. By the use of labels, objections to naturalist evolution can be dismissed without a fair hearing." (1991:7).
"The National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America represents the nation's most prestigious scientists. 'Creation-science' is not science, said the Academy in its argument, to the Supreme Court, because it fails to display most basic characteristics of science: reliance upon naturalistic explanations. Instead, proponents of 'creation-science' hold that the creation of the universe, the earth, living things, and man was accomplished through supernatural means inaccessible to human understanding.
"Because creationists cannot perform scientific research to establish the reality of supernatural creation - that being by definition impossible - the Academy described their efforts as aimed primarily at discrediting evolutionary theory. ... What first drew my attention to the question was the way the rules of argument seemed to be structured to make it impossible to question whether what we are being told about evolution is really true. For example, the Academy's rules against negative argument automatically eliminates the possibility that science has not discovered how complex organisms could have developed. However wrong the current answer may be, it stands until a better answer arrives." Johnson, P. (1991:9).
"The point of Darwin's theory, however, was to establish that purposeless natural processes can substitute for intelligent design. ... The famous philosopher of science Karl Popper at one time wrote that Darwinism is not really a scientific theory because natural selection is an all-purpose explanation which can account for anything and which therefore explains nothing. ... The National Academy of Sciences told the Supreme Court that the most basic characteristic of science is 'reliance upon naturalistic explanation,' as opposed to 'supernatural means inaccessible to human understanding.' ... Any persons who say that the theory itself is inadequately supported can be vanquished by the question 'Darwin's Bulldog' T. H. Huxley used to ask the doubters in Darwin's time: What is your alternative?" (1991:17, 21, 28).
"If laboratory science cannot establish a mechanism, and if fossil studies cannot find the common ancestors and transitional links, then Darwinism fails as an empirical theory. ... If evolutionary biology is to be a science rather than a branch of philosophy, its theorists have to be willing to ask the scientific question: How can Darwin's hypothesis of descent with modification be confirmed or falsified? ... Before going to the evidence I have to impose an important condition which is sure to make Darwinists very uncomfortable. It is that the evidence must be evaluated independently of any assumption about the truth of the theory being tested." (1991:66, 71, 73).
"The psychological atmosphere that surrounds the viewing of hominid fossils is uncannily reminiscent of the veneration of relicts at a medieval shrine. That is just how Roger Lewin described the scene at the 1984 Ancestors exhibition at the American Museum of Natural History, an unprecedented showing of original fossils relating to human evolution from all over the world. ... A sociologist observing this ritual of the anthropologist tribe remarked, 'Sounds like ancestor worship to me.'" (1991:80, 81).
"Darwinian theory insists that natural selection is a creative force of immense power, which preserves the slightest favorable variations and spreads them throughout a breeding population so that further favorable micromutations can accumulate and produce new characteristics of formidable complexity, such as wings and eyes. We have already seen that the hypothesis of creative natural selection lacks experimental support, and that it is disconfirmed by the fossil record." Johnson, P. (1991:93).
"Naturalism is not something about which Darwinists can afford to be tentative, because their science is based upon it. As we have seen, the positive evidence that Darwinian evolution either can produce or has produced important biological innovations is nonexistent. Darwinists know that the mutation-selection mechanism can produce wings, eyes, and brains not because the mechanism can be observed to do anything of the kind, but because their guiding philosophy assures them that no other power is available to do the job. The absence from the cosmos of any Creator is therefore the essential starting point of Darwinism."
"The conflict arises because creation by Darwinist evolution is hardly more observable than supernatural creation by God. Natural selection exists, to be sure, but no one has evidence that it can accomplish anything remotely resembling the creative acts that Darwinists attribute to it. The fossil record on the whole testifies that whatever 'evolution' might have been, it was not the process of gradual change in continuous lineages that Darwinism implies. As an explanation for modifications for how complex organisms came into existence in the first place, it is pure philosophy.
"The more important priority is to maintain the naturalistic worldview and with it the prestige of 'science' as the source of all important knowledge. Without Darwinism, scientific naturalism would have no creation story. A retreat on the matter of this importance would be catastrophic for the Darwinist establishment... To prevent such a catastrophe, defenders of naturalism must enforce rules of procedure that precludes opposing points of view. With that accomplished, the next critical step is to treat 'science' as equivalent to truth and non-science as equivalent to fantasy. The conclusion of science can then be misleadingly betrayed as refuting arguments that were in fact disqualified from consideration at the outset. As long as scientific naturalism makes the rules, critics who demand positive evidence for Darwinism need not be taken seriously. They do not understand 'how science works.'
"Because to scientific naturalists the notion that there could be a reality outside of science is literally unthinkable. ... To cite an example from my own personal experience, it is pointless to try to engage a scientific naturalist in a discussion about whether the neo-Darwinist theory of evolution is true. The reply is likely to be that neo-Darwinism is the best scientific explanation we have, and that means it is our closest approximation to the truth. ... To question whether naturalistic evolution itself is 'true,' on the other hand, is to talk nonsense. Naturalistic evolution is the only conceivable explanation for life, and so the fact that life exists proves it to be true.
"It is easy to see why scientific naturalism is an attractive philosophy for scientists. It gives science a virtual monopoly on the production of knowledge, and it assures scientists that no important questions are in principle beyond scientific investigation. The important question, however, is whether this philosophical viewpoint is merely an understandable professional prejudice or whether it is the objectively valid way of understanding the world. That is the real issue behind the push to make naturalistic evolution a fundamental tenant of societies to which everyone must be converted." Johnson, P. (1991:115-122).
"If scientific naturalism is to occupy a dominant cultural position, it must do more than provide information about the physical universe. It must draw out the spiritual and ethical implications of its creation story. In short, evolution must become a religion. ... Evolution is, in short, the God we must worship. ... Darwinist evolution is an imaginative story about who we are and where we came from, which is to say a creation myth. As such it is an obvious starting point for speculation about how we ought to live and what we ought to value. A creationist appropriately starts with God's creation and God's will for man. A scientific naturalist just as appropriately starts with evolution and with man as a product of evolution. ... At least the greatest scientific discovery of all is made, and modern humans learn that they are products of a blind natural process that has no goal and cares nothing for them.
"Citizens must learn to look to science as the only reliable source of knowledge, and the only power capable of bettering (or even preserving) the human condition. That implies, as we shall see, a program of indoctrination in the name of public education." Johnson, P. (1991:122, 131, 132).
"To Darwinists, fully naturalistic evolution is a fact to be learned, not an opinion to be questioned. A student may silently disbelieve, but neither students nor teachers may discuss the grounds for disbelief in class, where other students might be infected. ... Scientific facts and theories are subject to continual testing, whereas philosophical and religious beliefs 'are based, at least in part, on faith, and are not subject to scientific test and refutation.'" (1991:141).
A curriculum guide called Scientific Framework, tells textbook publishers what approach to take if they want their books to be acceptable in the huge California market. - What does it say?
Prof. Phillip Johnson: "The Framework's most constructive recommendation is that teachers and textbook writers should avoid terminology that implies that scientific judgements are a matter of subjective preference or vote-counting. Students should never be told that 'many scientists' think this or that. Science is not decided by vote, but by evidence. Nor should students be told that 'scientists believe.' Science is not a matter of belief; rather, it is a matter of evidence that can be subjected to tests of observation and objective reasoning... Show students that nothing in science is decided just because someone important says it is so (authority) or because that is the way it has always been done (tradition).
"The Framework immediately contradicts that message, however, by defining 'evolution' only vaguely as 'change through time.' A vaguely defined concept cannot be tested by observation and objective reasoning. The Framework then urges us to believe in this vague concept because so many scientists do: 'It is an accepted scientific explanation and therefore no more controversial in scientific circles than the theories of gravitation and electron flow.' An appeal to authority is unavoidable, because Darwinist educators cannot afford to reveal that their theory rests squarely on what the Policy Statement calls philosophical beliefs that are not subject to scientific test and refutation.
"Darwinist scientists believe that the cosmos is a closed system of material causes and effects, and they believe that science must be able to provide a naturalistic explanation for the wonders of biology that appear to have been designed for a purpose. Without assuming these beliefs they could not deduce that common ancestors once existed for all the major groups of the biological world, or an intelligent designer." Johnson, P. (19912:141-144).