As scientists debate whether or not an odd Cambrian fossil should be classified into a new phylum or not,[1] the BBC's Mr. Harold Evans tries to take a swipe at President Bush over his comments in support of teaching the evolution controversy.[2] Unfortunately for both his readers and for the progress of rational debate and scientific progress, Mr. Evans cares far more about rhetoric than reality. He takes Mr. Charles Darwin's Origin of the Species not as a theoretical work, but as absolute proof that there is no Creator. His statement goes further than even most of Mr. Richard Dawkins':
Yet, as Charles Darwin demonstrated in his book Origin of Species in 1859, we weren't designed by any hidden hand in a single brilliant moment, but have all evolved from lower orders - ape to man - over hundreds of millions of years.
Yet Mr. Darwin did not show that we have all evolved, merely that we could have, based on the available knowledge at the time. Whether the claim was supportable then is a matter of history, and an irrelevancy. The reality of the Intelligent Design movement is that Mr. Darwin's theory is, from a purely scientific standpoint, insupportable now.
The clincher for Mr. Evans seems to be that scientists do not want "priests in lab worker's clothing." They should look to their own history, Mendel's work on genetics is still part of every biology textbook, and still forms the foundation of our modern understanding of heredity. The human genome project, and all of genetic engineering, owe themselves to the work of a member of the clergy, and a Catholic at that. Mr. Evans shows his bias, if the above does not make it amply clear, when he stated that President Bush's statement is seen as an "putting faith and science on equal footing." The clear meaning here is that they are not, and a statement from the President was necessary to make them appear so. And yet, on what basis do we exclude theology from the realm of fact? Scientific evidence? No, we do so on the basis of philosophy, of the pre-scientific ideas of the world that men, even scientists, bring to the table with them when they go to study what is.
Mr. Darwin's work does not prove that animals did evolve. It simply outlined how they could have. Further, if a scientists were to demonstrate that animals are now evolving, it would still not disprove the existence of a Creator. Science, defined to be the study of material interactions, cannot disprove, cannot even address, the existence of an immaterial being. So defined, it cannot prove one exists, it cannot prove one does not exist. Science then, as Mr. Evans understands it, says nothing about the existence of a Creator. What then excludes the possibility? Mr. Evans has the unfounded and unquestioned opinion that the material reality is all that exists. If he is granted this, then evolution follows as the only rational explanation of life. IF, on the other hand, we allow for the existence of a non-material being, then and only then does it become a question of whether or not the immaterial beings can influence the material world. Then and only then can we direct our reason, our intellect, at the important question of if such beings do in fact exist. But the strict materialist does not allow for their existence, so the assumption of their non-existence is, for the materialist, tautological. It is for this reason that the materialist cannot accept Intelligent Design as the product of rational minds logically proceeding.
[1] BBC News. "Strange fossil defies grouping" BBC
News world edition (online). 2005-08-17
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4156544.stm
[2]
Evans, Harold. "A question of creation" BBC News world edition (online).
2005-08-15 http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/4152374.stm