Darwinists Contradict Darwin
Strangely enough, intelligent design proponents can take great comfort from the words of none other than . . . Charles Darwin!
So noted Chuck Colson in a Breakpoint radio commentary addressing a recent Ohio Board of Education debate. In it, Lawrence Krauss from Case Western University, an evolutionist, along with a colleague squared off against two advocates of intelligent design.
At issue was whether the theory of intelligent design, which proposes that some form of intelligence, as opposed to random events, played a role in the development of life on Earth, should be allowed inside Ohio classrooms.
At one point in the session, Dr. Krauss dismissed his opponents, and intelligent design researchers generally, in so many words: “They’re not a part of science, what they’re really attacking here is not Darwinism but science.”
Dr. Krauss’s only problem is that proponents of intelligent design are very much a part of science, and their arguments are nothing if not scientific. For people like Jonathan Wells—Ph.D. in Molecular and Cell Biology from Berkeley and one of Dr. Krauss’s opponents—science is far from being an object of scorn; rather, it is one of their most potent tools of argument.
Which is to say that intelligent design supporters faced yet again the same boilerplate rejection they have faced continuously—because you oppose evolution, you are unfit to oppose evolution.
In all this Mr. Colson picked up on an irony far too tantalizing to ignore. He cited a passage from Origin of Species written by the great patron of evolution himself:
“For I am well aware that scarcely a single point is discussed in this volume on which facts cannot be adduced, often apparently leading to conclusions directly opposite to those at which I have arrived. A fair result can be obtained only by fully stating and balancing the acts and arguments on both sides of each question.” (emphasis added)
Intelligent design scientists can but wistfully hope Darwin’s message gets through. However they may object to his scientific theory, they would unreservedly applaud Darwin’s scientific philosophy.
Here described is a dream world where theories are subject to debate, while the principles guiding that debate—allowing scientists a free and fair forum for airing differing opinions—are, frankly, undebatable.
When it comes to evolution, some scientists have frustratingly seen these ideas turned on their heads. The theory has become sacrosanct orthodoxy, not subject to any critical review, while the principles of inquiry have been attacked to remove from dissenters any basis for argument.
In the end, science is not science without vigorous debate. An unproved proposition that has been alchemized into de facto truth is nothing more than a dogma.
When it is then uncritically foisted onto the public—a public split nearly in half on the issue—it is in danger of degrading into propaganda.
Intelligent design scientists deserve a fair hearing, even if, as Dr. Krauss claimed, scientists were lined up 10,000 to 1 against it (an estimation conceivably driven more by enthusiasm than knowledge).
If Origin of Species is really such a mighty explanation of our beginnings, its supporters should handily be able to withstand the feeble volley of arguments from whatever solitary rebel dares oppose the collective wisdom of 10,000 convinced evolutionists.
Dr. Wells’s point in the debate was simple. He stated, as paraphrased in the New York Times, “teachers should be entitled to plumb [evolutionary theory] as a matter of intellectual fairness.” Who knows. Even Darwin might have stood up to applaud that one.
Stephen J. Ahn, Jonathan Edwards ’96
© 2002 The Yale Standard Committee
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Sources: Charles Colson, “What Would Darwin Say?: The Ohio Intelligent Design Controversy,” BreakPoint with Charles Colson, Commentary #020314 – 03/14/2002: see www.breakpoint.org; Francis X. Clines, “Ohio Board Hears Debate on an Alternative to Darwinism,” New York Times, March 12, 2002 (Late edition, final, section A, page 16, column 1).