I just about finished writing this below but it is not as good anymore because of the existence of this new book. I do not think I will need to change my conclusion. I am not trying to be persuasive yet, yet only comparing and contrasting.
A cow jumped over the moon or how the debate over creation and evolution puts everyone to sleep
Is there any resemblance between creationism and evolutionism? Everyone has
heard of the joke of someone being a monkey’s uncle. Is there any truth to that quip or is
it simply a step made beyond our nation’s founding fathers’ desire to escape religious
persecution? Does one side of the issue posses only a distinct concept while the other a
complete one? Is similarity here of any consequence or is it but an unapproachable
standard marred with prejudice, corrupting rather than progressing each others’ proper
domains? A comparison of creation and evolution can show decidedly a discursive
cognition inherent in the controversy no matter the certainty assumed for either “side” in
the contrast.
Douglas J. Futuyma a graduate of Cornell wrote,
“Creation and evolution, between them, exhaust the possible explanations for the origin of living things. Organisms either appeared on the earth fully developed or they did not. If they did not, they must have developed from preexisting species by some process of modification. If they did not appear in a fully developed state, they must indeed have been created by some omnipotent intelligence, for no natural process could possibly form inanimate molecules into an elephant or a redwood tree in one step.”(Futuyma 197)
Futuyma noticed a process of development in living things, in both evolution
and creation. He asserted that evolution develops a redwood tree or an elephant, by a
process of modification, but that the pattern of creation is entirely different. Creation
occurs at once, in one step, as it were. In other words, despite the common object of
organic formation, creation
“was “mature” from its birth. It did not have to grow or develop from simple beginnings. God formed it full-grown in every respect, including even Adam and Eve as mature persons when they were first formed. The whole universe had an “appearance of history” right from the start. It could not have been otherwise for true creation to have taken place. “Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them” (Gen.2:1).”(Morris and Morris 19)
The state of this difference between creationistic and evolutionistic concepts seems to be
no mere joke between generations but instead is a step being made in both cultural and
intellectual history.
Creation seems more complete and evolution more distinct as one applies one’s
rational understanding to this nexus of social discourse. Charles Darwin’s name is most
often associated with that version of evolution Futuyma expressed. Ernst Mayr, often
called the dean of biologists, noted that Darwin might not have changed his mind against
creation and religion because of a simple loss of faith but instead, because of a lack of
empirical support for the one step maturely perfect creature creation in nature. (Mayr,
170). Darwin might have tried to denote thusly: since the world of creatures are not
perfectly designed (have you ever seen a two-headed turtle or a cow with three legs?),
one need not explain the creation of any new species by a fixed essence or separate
creation of God, but rather more simply by a modification of these less than perfect
creatures step by step, connotation by connotation. So without perfection and the mature
creation, evolutionists think subtlety rules where exactness was formerly thought. Species
change subtly and before our eyes not deceptively after the kinds they may say.
When it comes to informing students about this origin of the diversity of life on
Earth however, it is not so easy to maintain such a sharp distinction of objectivity
combined with subjective preference, while it is the teacher’s role to sustain a diversity of
opinions in the classroom. One must make some decisions on what had happened, so that
one can teach, what did happen. Fuytuma again said,
“Andrew Dickson White, in A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom,(46) tells us that the opponents of Copernicus protested to him that, if his theory were true, Venus, like the moon, would show phases in the course of its revolution about the sun. Copernicus answered, “’You are right; I know not what to say; but God is good, and will in time find an answer to this objection.’ The God-given answer came when, in 1611, the rude telescope of Galileo showed the phases of Venus. “ If creationism is science, let it make a single prediction that could show it right or prove it wrong.”(Futuyma 196)
Michael J. Behe’s book, Darwin’s Black Box: The Biochemical Challenge to Evolution ,
attempts to do just this. The contents contained a perceptive observation on the nature of
the current literature,
“During a computer search for books on biochemical evolution, you can come across a number of juicy titles, . the search can be extended, but the results are the same. There has never been a meeting, a book, or a paper on details of the evolution of complex biochemical systems.”(Behe, 178-179).
Behe’s explanation for this curious circumstance was revealed early on in the book. He said,
“One branch of science was not invited to the meetings, and for good reason: it did not yet exist. The beginnings of modern biochemistry came only after neo-Darwinism had been officially launched. Thus, just as biology had to be reinterpreted after the complexity of microscopic life was discovered, neo-Darwininsm must be reconsidered in light of advances in biochemistry. The scientific disciplines that were part of the evolutionary synthesis are all nonmolecular. Yet for the Darwinian theory of evolution to be true, it has to account for the molecular structure of life. It is the purpose of this book to show that it does not.” (Behe, 24).
Daniel Dennet had this to say about Behe’s idea in general,
“Such an argument . will take us through somewhat more empirical detail instead of relying so bluntly and directly on what is deemed inconceivable. The actual features of the observed designs may be analyzed, for instance, to secure the grounds for our appreciation of the wisdom of the Designer, and our conviction that mere chance could not be responsible for these marvels.”(Dennet, 29)
Behe ostensibly says in substance,
”The conclusion of intelligent design flows naturally from the data itself - not from scared books or sectarian beliefs. Inferring the biochemical systems were designed by an intelligent agent is a humdrum process that requires no new principles of logic or science. It comes simply from the hard work that biochemistry has done over the past forty years, combined with consideration of the way in which we reach conclusions from design every day. Nonetheless, saying that biochemical systems were designed will certainly strike many people as strange, so let me try to make it sound less strange.”
The rest of this book tries to show the Fuytuma’s of the world, that there are areas that
biological science will never be able to predict, obtusely predicting, no prediction.
A critic of Michael Behe said,
“So what does Behe have to say . - Behe hopes to show the impotence of Darwinism by pointing out purportedly profound explanatory gaps. Trying to do this is nothing new . Behe takes his list of unexplained facts from biochemistry. He says, correctly, that for the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection to be true, it has to be able to account for the functional molecular structure of life, and he finds no such explanations in the literature for the systems he cites. Behe is also correct that the systems he mentions are incredibly complex, though whether they are more or less complex than the physical structure of the eye is hard to say. But we have already seen that complexity by itself is not necessarily a problem for Darwinism. What is new here? Behe claims that his molecular systems exhibit one property that the Darwinian mechanisms cannot explain, namely, that they are what he defines as irreducibly complex: “By irreducibly complex I mean a single system composed of several well-matched, interacting parts that contribute to the basic function, wherein the removal of any one parts causes the system to effectively stop functioning.92”(Pennock, 264-265)
But contrarily this is what Eldredge an evolutionist had to say about that,
“What do creationists have to refute the very idea of evolution?... they have reverted to notions of “irreducible complexity” and “intelligent design” - ideas presented as new but actually part of the creationist war chest before Darwin ever published the Origin. The fact that organisms frequently display intricate anatomies and behaviors to perform certain functions - such as flying - has inspired the claim that there must be some Intelligent Designer behind it all, that a natural process like natural selection would be inadequate to construct such exquisite complexity.
We can, however, ask whether patterns of history in systems that we know are intelligently designed - like cars, computers, or musical instruments - resemble those of biological history. I have actually done some work along these lines - and the answer, predictably and unsurprisingly, is that the evolutionary trees of my trilobites (the fossils I study) do not resemble the trees generated by the same program for my favorite man-made objects - the musical instruments known as cornets. The reason in a nutshell is obvious: the information in biological systems is transferred almost entirely “vertically” from parent to offspring via the DNA in sperm and egg; in man-made systems, like cornets, the information is spread as much “horizontally” (as when people copy other people’s ideas) as it is vertically from old master to pupil . I think the hypothesis of intelligent design, in this sense, is indeed falsifiable - and I think we have falsified it already.”(Scott,pxii)
Growth and development of creatures through biochemistry is clearly an area that both
creation and evolution have in common. Understanding this discipline within science by
the same standard, whether new or not results not a better delimitation of science itself
but rather a widening of any bias that might have already been present. It was not long
after Behe attempted to predict what evolution could not predict and thus not say simply
that God did it that Eldredge responded that this was “already” Falsified within science,
not by falsifying the systems the creationist positively put or puts forward but rather
by something else,different yet again. This time it was the “genealogy of the cornet”.
Behe has testified in Federal Court this past last week and it does not seem the situation
has changed, as the focus had moved onto Behe’s use of “theory” rather than where a
particular chemical functionality stops or starts.(web address).
The court case is about teaching “intelligent design” in high school in
Pennsylvania and yet there is no discussion about what scientific reasoning there
is to chemically complex structures already existent nor is there any science to
show that irreducibly complex structures being so-postulated to have been intelligently
designed are in general not of the form science has not already seen. There is no clear
distinction of creation and evolution at this point. One is simply not as good as the other.
The standard of judging one on the basis or bias of the other seems to be making
progress more difficult and certainly causing the novice student trying to sort out the
differences more confused and frustrated. It still seems that creationists are using religion
and evolutionists are eliminating the teaching of creation despite the chance that the
creationists might be able to add an intuitive cognition to the rational understanding of
evolution. Evolutionists only say, we evolutionists have already thought through it and
yet there is no specific rebuttal. Both sides seem to be becoming more and more
prejudicial and are judging rather than understanding the other sides’ mentality.
It seems possible to suggest as if parentally, that evolutionists leave their
judgment in dubio, while the creationists leave it similarly in suspenso, if indeed the
debate has ended up currently to have fallen prey to what Kant recited in a different
context as, a situation of retraction. Kant had said,
“The suspension of one’s judgment on priniciple requires a practiced faculty which is only found in advanced years. On the whole, it is a difficult thing to reserve our assent, partly because our understanding is so eager to extend itself by judgments, and to enrich itself with cognitions, partly because our inclination is always directed more to some things than to others. But the man who has often had to reverse his assent, and has thereby become prudent and cautious, will not so quickly grant it, fearing lest he should afterwards be obliged to retract his judgment. This retraction is always mortifying, and leads a man to mistrust all other cognitions.”(Kant, 65)
When one’s judgement is left in dubio it does not always suit the end and interest in the
thing but when the same is left in suspenso one always has an interest in the thing (Kant,
op.cit.). This is an appropriate admonition as death is as much a part of the comparision
as life is its’difference. Neither side is willing to retract the standards both sides use
sustain each sides’ unique biases. Creationist would do well by the world if they had
more of an interest in evolution and evlutionists could possibly gain if they doubted
where they are so self righteous. Without such a parental punishment prejudice remands
rather an uglier head. Evolutionists maintain in Kant’s wording,
“Prejudices from Self-love or Logical Egoism, by which a
man holds that the agreement of his own judgment with that of others may be dispensed with as a criterion of truth. These are opposed to the prejudices of authority, as they [show] themselves in a certain predilection for an external thing which is the product of our own understanding, ex.gr. our own system.”(Kant,71)
This is clear from the way that Eldredge responded to Behe. To outsiders it could easily
appear that creationists have simply converted our national heritage into a distrust of the
scientific establishmentCreationists have conversely sustained,
“The Prejudice of Authority of the Majority - . When a man of learning, after he has pretty well gone through the circle of the sciences, finds that all his labors have not procured due satisfaction, then at last he acquires a distrust of learning, especially in those speculations in which the concepts can not be made sensible, and the foundations of which are unsettled, as, . Since, however, he believes that the key to certainty on some subjects is surely to be found somewhere, he seeks it now in common sense, having so long sought it in vain on the way of scientific inquiry.”p69
Since each side has its own kind of prejudice as well as its own deafness to the other side such, no intuition can presently resolve the debatable differences.
In it’s place is a “discursive” cognition emerging consequentially, going all over the map, but not landing one foot on the moon nor dotting an i and crossing a t, refusing and confusing, than correcting and sharing, in, each’s proper domains. No one is going to believe a miracle a second time, so there is no need for creationists to insist on general revelation as something new to man, but likewise evolutionists could learn from Huxley’s attempt to shirk responsibility“Life is too short to occupy oneself with the slaying of the slain more than once -1861 “( Futyuma 197) since the only ticket into the discussion seems to be a willingness to talk until the cows come home or man is permanently settled on Mars.
Works Cited
Behe, Michael J.Darwin’s Black Box, New York: The Free Press 1996.
Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, New York: Simon & Schuster 1995.
Futuyma, Douglas J. Science on Trial, New York: Pantheon Books 1983.
Kant, Immanuel Introduction to Logic, New York: Philosophical Library 1963.
Morris, Henry M. and John D. Morris The Modern Creation Trilogy Volume III Society and Creation, Green Forest, Arkansas: Master Books 1997.
Mayr, Ernst Toward a New Philosophy of Biology, Cambridge, Massachusetts:The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press 1988.
Pennock, Robert T. Tower of Babel Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press 1999.
Scott, Eugenie C. Evolution vs Creationism, Westport, Connecticut:Greenwood Press 2004.
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