Art of Reasoning

Many Christians think that the word means something much like this: “The progression of living things from ‘lower’ to ‘higher’ over time, where ‘lower’ sorts of creatures slowly turn into ‘higher’ sorts of creatures.” They imagine that evolutionists are committed to a “progression of being” whereby creatures slowly “get better” over time. But this perspective of what evolutionist scientists actually think from within the evolutionist paradigm is incorrect for a number of reasons, including:

1) The process of evolution is not “progressive” in anything like the sense most people think. There is no “lower to higher” or “worse to better” progression from a strictly evolutionist perspective.

2) Even though evolutionists do talk loosely as though evolution has a “plan” or “direction,” nothing could be further from the truth, strictly speaking. Dawkins is the great proponent of the “blind watchmaker” perspective that really is the evolutionist perspective of “progress.” Things “appear to be designed for a purpose” (as he readily admits), but in fact there is exactly zero purpose, direction, plan, or  “success” to be talked about. The process of evolution is entirely unguided, directionless, and “blind” in every sense. There is no watchmaker building watches according to a plan.

3) Words like “lower” and “higher” build in human-centric value judgments that strictly have no place in evolutionary theory. A human being with self-consciousness is no “higher” than is any single-celled organism. All that “matters,” the sole “value,” in evolutionary theory is genetic fecundity–the capacity of genetic material to propagate itself over time. A human being is just a more complex mechanism for propagating genetic material than is a bacterium. What bacteria accomplish by vast numbers and in the face of vast attrition, human beings accomplish in a different ecological niche and with far fewer numbers and far less attrition. Both are genetically “successful,” and that’s all there is to evaluate in terms of “value judgments.” Survival just long enough to reproduce is the sole value in evolutionary theory. Thus, bringing our human-centric value judgments to bear only muddies the waters and is in fact a form of “speciesism” (as a pejorative term like “racism”).

4) Strictly speaking, there is exactly zero sense in which “species” change over time. Again, a lot of loose talk among scientists, especially as they “sell” the theory to the lay public, makes the facts obscure. But strictly speaking, there is no sense in which one species “becomes” another species. The idea that species “morph” into other species is what leads to the common creationist indictments like: “But, look, there are still monkeys!” and, “We are constantly finding these supposedly ‘ancient’ and even ‘extinct’ species. So clearly these creatures are not evolving into something else!”

The point I’m making in (4) bears special emphasis.

Remember that I’ve talked about granting scientists their evidence. Well we also need to very carefully understand how they interpret that evidence. Let’s talk about the discovery of the coelacanth in 1938. This was an ancient, presumed-extinct fish that was found off of the coast of South Africa. Since that first specimen, hundreds of others have been caught and observed (in underwater dives) in various locations. This discovery was interpreted very differently among evolutionists and creationists!

Evolutionists: See, this thing does really exist in essentially the identical form our fossil-record interpretations indicated. We even predicted that it was some form of lungfish. So a lot can be known about ancient species by evaluating the fossils. The fact that the species is not actually extinct is exciting because now we can study a true “living fossil,” which will teach us even more about how to interpret fossil evidence.

Creationists: See, this thing proves that species do not change over time. If this thing really is tens of millions of years old, and it appears to be entirely unchanged in all that time, then where is the “evolution” that supposedly takes place? There are still monkeys, and there are still coelacanths! So, where is the evidence of evolution?

Notice that there is no “falsification” of evolutionary theory to discover an “ancient” living-fossil, because evolutionists do not believe that one species actually “becomes” another in the sense that most creationists think they do. In fact, there is a good deal of debate among biologists about exactly how evolution works at the species level, because it is so clear (to them) that in general species do not “become” other species, thereby “supplanting” the “original” species in the grand scheme of life. Whatever the evolutionary process is doing at the species level, in general it is not “progressing” by creating new species and then discarding the “originals” species. In other words, species “patricide” is not in general how evolution ensures the survival of the “child” species. So, there is absolutely no problem at all with the discovery of “ancient” species that were “supposed” to die out long ago to “make room” for the “derivative species” to follow; that is just not how evolution generally works among species.

So, what is “evolution,” strictly speaking? It is this: Random genetic mutation occasionally introduces “new and additional information” into the genome of a creature. That information may be passed along to subsequent generations and thereby “accumulate” with other such new information until morphological (form and function) changes result. If that morphology passes the “death filter” that is “natural selection,” then it is “selected” to be further passed along, and more and more information-accumulation can take place, resulting in more and more morphological change. Ultimately the morphological differences become significant enough that either a new ecological niche can be exploited (thus distancing the emerging species from its “parent” in niche) or the same ecological niche as the “parent’s” can be “better” (or at least just as well) exploited. Ultimately a “speciation event” takes place (more on that in a separate article!), and a thorough “break” with the “parent” species takes place. Rinse and repeat for eons, and you get the vast array of species that have existed through history into this present time. This is the fine-grained, neo-Darwinistic meaning of “descent with modification.”

Evolutionists are in general pleased to see the word “evolution” become so pervasively used in society, even though they know that the word is being used entirely incorrectly. People intuitively think in terms of “progress” and “planning” because human beings plan and make progress toward goals. So virtually all of our common-currency uses of “evolution” have these notions packed in. Evolutionists “let” us have these confusions because the confusions make evolutionary theory “feel” more plausible.

However, the sword cuts on the backstroke, because these very confusions then also make people see problems with evolutionary theory where there are none (as denoted above). The actual problems with evolutionary theory are more subtle, and the average lay thinker does not tumble to those. So, people that want to believe evolutionary theory see “confirmations” of it everywhere (where they shouldn’t), and people that don’t want to believe it are often fighting against it on entirely the wrong battlefield, seeing “falsifications” where there are not. Both camps are confused by the common-currency usage of the term.

Here is an example:

Consider the Ford Escape. The 2002 model was just bigger than a Rav and smaller than the Explorer. Over time the Escape “evolved” into something about as big as the former Explorer, while the Explorer “evolved” into something smaller than it was. Suddenly, in 2012, the Escape underwent a complete redesign and became much, much smaller. The V6 engine was supplanted by a turbocharged 4-cylinder engine. Meanwhile, the Explored got even smaller by “evolving” into something about the same size (and engine) as had been in the Escape, and a brand new model, the Edge, is (apparently) taking the “ecological niche” once occupied by the Explorer. All of these changes are often cast in “evolutionary” terms (even by advertising campaigns), and the talk of “niches” refers to something like ecological competition for the “limited resources” of the buying public.

Do you want a larger SUV than the Rav? Well, that niche used to be occupied by the Escape and the Jeep Liberty. Now the Rav and Escape compete for the same resources in that niche of much smaller SUVs that are really “crossovers.” The Edge now occupies the niche once populated by the Explorer, and the Explorer has moved down into the former Escape niche. There is talk of the Explorer going away entirely, which would be an “extinction.” Eventually, the “fossil record” of the Explorer might well be found only in junkyards. Or, perhaps like the coelacanth, some “live” creature will still be found here and there.

See? The loose use of “evolution” has all the earmarks: talk of ecological niches, limited resources, competition for resources, and so on.

But none of it is “evolution” in the slightest sense! All of these morphological changes have been by design and with clearly-planned intentionality. Not one aspect of true “evolution” is evidenced here. Yet, such are the confusions introduced by the widespread, common-currency, see-it-everywhere usages of the term “evolution.”

True neo-Darwinian evolution is defined by two elements: random mutation of the genome and natural selection. Both elements play out on a “world stage” that has no plan, no goal, no intention, and no concern about any particular outcome. The entire process is naturalistic, materialistic, and deterministic. Nothing “supernatural” or empirically undetectable is at work here.