Category Archives: Evolution

Evolution, Philosophy

Does Evolution Give Us True Beliefs?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

If our minds developed solely due to the process of Darwinian evolution, then how can we trust that our minds give us true beliefs about the world?  This is a nasty problem for atheistic naturalists, because if they cannot argue convincingly that evolution gave us minds that generate true beliefs, then they cannot argue that atheistic naturalism is true.

Evolution is only concerned with survival, so the evolutionist must somehow convince us that most of our beliefs about the world are true because they help us survive.  But there are many examples we can give where that connection breaks down.

Philosopher Louis Pojman, in his book What Can We Know? ,  relates the research of John Garcia and his rats.  Garcia and his co-workers “performed experiments on rats in which the rats were fed distinctively flavored water or food and then given high doses of radiation, inducing sickness.  After a single exposure to radiation, the rats developed a strong aversion to their aforementioned distinctively flavored water or food.  Even if the radiation is given as long as twelve hours after eating the food or water, the aversion pattern follows.”

In this example, the rats believe the food and water make them sick, but they are wrong.  It seems that this aversion pattern is the result of natural selection to aid in survival.  Evolution has caused the rat to have untrue beliefs in order to survive.  Pojman notes that humans follow this same pattern when we become sick after eating a particular food, and then are often repulsed by that food for the rest of our lives, even though the food had nothing to do with us getting sick.

Pojman also explains that:

False beliefs may positively procure survival.  Inducing beliefs that great spirits are protecting members of the tribe may enable these members to surmount dangerous obstacles that would otherwise destroy them.  Consider two tribes, the Optimists and the Accuratists, who go to war.  They are relevantly similar in every way except that the Optimists believe that if they die in battle (especially sacrificing themselves for their mates), they will be rewarded with an afterlife of unparalleled sensuous bliss, whereas the Accuratists, tailoring the strength of their beliefs to the strength of the available evidence, believe that in all likelihood this life is all they have, that death is the final cessation of consciousness.  The Optimists are more likely to win; the Accuratists more likely to flee or submit to an inferior settlement.

As long as our beliefs enable us to reproduce more successfully, they may have nothing to do with truth.  Pojman quotes Pat Churchland, “Boiled down to essentials, a nervous system enables the organism to succeed in the four F’s: feeding, fleeing, fighting, and reproducing.  The principle chore of nervous systems is to get the body parts where they should be in order that the organism may survive. . . . Truth, whatever that is, definitely takes the hindmost.”

Darwin himself had fears about evolution giving us true beliefs:

With me the horrid doubt always arises whether the convictions of man’s mind, which has developed from the mind of the lower animals, are of any value or at all trustworthy.  Would any one trust in the conviction of a monkey’s mind, if there are any convictions in such a mind?

Perhaps the belief that atheistic naturalism is true is nothing more than a genetic mutation which survives in a small number of advanced primates.  If you’re an atheistic naturalist, you may never know.

Atheism, Evolution, Morality

What Kind of Morality Could Evolution Have Given Us?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Most atheists appeal to the process of Darwinian evolution as the source of our moral instincts, but this idea poses some intriguing questions.  What if humankind had evolved in different circumstances, in different environments?  One could imagine a different set of moral instincts having developed in humans.  What about other animals?  We see different behaviors in them based on their evolutionary history.  Let’s look at some examples.

Philosopher William Lane Craig draws our attention to John Hick.  He “invites us to imagine an ant suddenly endowed with the insights of socio-biology and the freedom to make personal decisions.”  Hick writes:

Suppose him to be called upon to immolate himself for the sake of the ant-hill. He feels the powerful pressure of instinct pushing him towards this self-destruction. But he asks himself why he should voluntarily . . . carry out the suicidal programme to which instinct prompts him? Why should he regard the future existence of a million million other ants as more important to him than his own continued existence? . . . Since all that he is and has or ever can have is his own present existence, surely in so far as he is free from the domination of the blind force of instinct he will opt for life–his own life.

Why should the ant go against his evolutionary instincts?  His instinct for suicide is for the good of the ant-hill and has been placed into him by evolutionary processes.  If humans had likewise evolved with an intense instinct to immolate ourselves, would atheists tell us we ought to immolate ourselves or would they say we ought not?  If we ought not, then why not, given our evolutionary instincts?

Darwin himself recognized this problem.  He said, “If men were reared under precisely the same conditions as hive-bees, there can hardly be a doubt that our unmarried females would, like the worker bees, think it a sacred duty to kill their brothers, and mothers would strive to kill their fertile daughters, and no one would think of interfering.”

If morality is derived from evolution, and evolution gave our females moral instincts to kill their brothers, would the atheist say that this is behavior is right?

Philosopher Mark Linville notes that “wolves in a pack know their place in the social hierarchy.  A lower ranked male feels compelled to give way to the alpha male.”  If we imagine that there were wolf moral philosophers, would they not draw the inference that justice is inequality, that wolves ought to give way to those higher in the social hierarchy?  After all, this is what evolution gave them.  Would atheists agree with the wolf philosophers?

In the rest of the animal world, we see animals eating their young, we see males aggressively forcing themselves on females sexually, and we see animals violently taking things from each other.  If evolution has caused all of these behaviors, then how would the atheist call any of these behaviors wrong if humans had evolved these same instincts?

Here is the problem in a nutshell.  Atheists must say that evolution has given us moral instincts as they cannot invoke any kind of moral standard that comes from outside the natural world.  But evolution has given the animal kingdom all sorts of instincts that atheists would want to say are wrong.  In order for them to say these instincts are wrong, however, they must invoke a moral standard that transcends evolution, but they don’t believe that a transcendent standard exists.

Either atheists must admit that a moral standard exists outside and above evolution, or they must accept the fact that they cannot rationally call any behavior wrong that evolution has produced.  Which way to go?

Creation, Evolution, Intelligent Design, Top Ten Posts of 2010

Is Intelligent Design Creationism? – #7 Post of 2010

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Many journalists confuse the Intelligent Design (ID) movement with young earth creationism.  Some of this confusion is nothing more than intellectual laziness, but some of it is caused by ID opponents repeating the assertion over and over again as a rhetorical strategy.

Here is an interview excerpt from Thomas Lessl, a professor at the University of Georgia and an expert on rhetoric (see the entire interview here):

One consistent pattern in the scientific mainstream’s response to ID has been to try to identify it with scientific creationism, to paint it with the same brush so to speak.  Such allegations are still frequently made – that ID is merely “creationism dressed up in a cheap tuxedo”.   This is what movement scholars call a strategy of “evasion”, an institutional effort to slow the momentum of a movement by pretending that it doesn’t exist – or in this case by pretending that it is made up of merely radical fundamentalists of no account.  This strategy is still being plied in the mass media, for public audiences that remain largely ignorant about the differences between these two movements.

Let’s look again at what the actual proponents of ID say about this issue.  Answering the question as to whether ID and creationism are the same, the Discovery Institute says:

No. The theory of intelligent design is simply an effort to empirically detect whether the “apparent design” in nature acknowledged by virtually all biologists is genuine design (the product of an intelligent cause) or is simply the product of an undirected process such as natural selection acting on random variations. Creationism typically starts with a religious text and tries to see how the findings of science can be reconciled to it. Intelligent design starts with the empirical evidence of nature and seeks to ascertain what inferences can be drawn from that evidence. Unlike creationism, the scientific theory of intelligent design does not claim that modern biology can identify whether the intelligent cause detected through science is supernatural.

Maybe you still aren’t convinced, though.  Well, let’s also look at what one of the largest young earth creationist organizations in the world says about whether ID is the same as creationism.  Below is an audio podcast from Ken Ham, the president of Answers in Genesis.

There you have it.  Creationists claim that ID is not creationism and ID proponents claim that ID is not creationism.  For anyone that has studied these two different movements, the differences are obvious.  The only reason why the two are confused is due to ignorance or a rhetorical strategy used to confuse the public and marginalize ID without having to confront its ideas.  I think it’s time for the rhetorical strategy to be put to rest – let’s focus on the actual arguments.

Evolution, Human Nature

G. K. Chesterton: Monkeys, Dogs, and Horses Don’t Draw Pictures

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

In the opening pages of G. K. Chesterton’s classic The Everlasting Man , he explores the implications of prehistoric cave paintings discovered by modern-day humans.  What do these paintings tell us about primitive man?  Is he merely an advanced ape (as in the evolutionary account) or is there a real difference in kind between man and the rest of the animal kingdom?  Below is an excerpt:

But I have begun this story in the cave, like the cave of the speculations of Plato, because it is a sort of model of the mistake of merely evolutionary introductions and prefaces.  It is useless to begin by saying that everything was slow and smooth and a mere matter of development and degree.  For in the plain matter like the [cave paintings] there is in fact not a trace of any such development or degree.

Monkeys did not begin pictures and men finish them; Pithecanthropus did not draw a reindeer badly and Homo Sapiens draw it well.  The higher animals did not draw better and better portraits; the dog did not paint better in his best period than in his early bad manner as a jackal; the wild horse was not an Impressionist and the race horse a Post-Impressionist.

All we can say of this notion of reproducing things in shadow or representative shape is that it exists nowhere in nature except in man; and that we cannot even talk about it without treating man as something separate from nature.  In other words every sane sort of history must begin with man as man, a thing standing absolute and alone.

Chesterton published this book in 1925 in order to counter the influence of men like H. G. Wells who were increasingly characterizing man as merely different in degree from the rest of the animal kingdom.  This battle is still raging today, 85 years later.

Evolution, Intelligent Design

Is Junk DNA Evidence for Darwinian Evolution?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

One of the most common arguments you will hear that Darwinian evolution must be true is the “Junk DNA” argument.  It goes like this:

There are significant stretches of the human genome that appear not to code for any biological function.  This is what you would expect if millions of years of random genetic mutations occurred in the genome.  This junk DNA is simply left over from evolutionary history and is serving no purpose any more.

The argument makes sense, but there is only one small problem.  Every year that goes by scientists are discovering more and more functions for this junk DNA.  It turns out that it’s not junk after all.  If the junk DNA is coding for biological function, then this particular evidence for Darwinian evolution falls by the wayside.  Not only that, but this becomes positive evidence for the Intelligent Design community, as they have been predicting this very finding.

Take a look at this video where ID scientists discuss Francis Collins’ use of the “Junk DNA” argument in his book The Language of God.

Evolution, Science and God

Science as a Religion?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

I just finished reading a book called Evolution by Donald Prothero, a paleontologist.  The book’s main purpose is to chronicle the fossil evidence for the evolution of animal life.  Prothero, as an expert in this field, seems to do a reasonable job of this throughout the book, although every tenth sentence seems to be a dress down of creationist, religious fundamentalism (back to that point at the end).  Still, he is extremely knowledgeable about fossil evidence, no doubt.

One thing that bothered me about the end of the book, however, is Prothero’s wholehearted and devoted worship of science.  I can almost imagine him bowing at an altar, it’s so overdone.  Read on to see why.

At the very beginning of his volume, he gave me hope that he understood the limits of science when he explained, “Science helps us understand the natural world and the way it works, but it does not deal with the supernatural, and it does not make statements of what ought to be, as do morals and ethics. . . . When science tries to proscribe morals or ethics, it falters.”  Sounds good.

But then we fast-forward to the conclusion, literally the last 2 pages, where he quotes three of his favorite science prophets.  First we hear from the Prophet Michael Shermer, who testifies, “Darwin matters because evolution matters.  Evolution matters because science matters.  Science matters because it is the preeminent story of our age, an epic saga about who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.”  Science, it seems, is an epic saga.

Next Prothero quotes from the Gospel of the Prophet Carl Sagan: “The universe is all that is, or ever was, or ever will be.  Our contemplations of the cosmos stir us.  There’s a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation as if a distant memory of falling from a great height.  We know we are approaching the grandest of mysteries.”  Tingling in the spine?

And finally, a reading from the Book of Darwin, speaking on his theory of evolution.  “There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one.”  Evolution is full of grandeur.

After having heard from the Holy Trinity, I almost expected Prothero to burst into a hymn of science thanksgiving.  What place does all of this have in a book about fossils?  When all is said and done, Prothero is not just trying to teach about fossils; no, he is all about recruiting us to his religion, the religion of science.  After all, religions tell us who we are, where we came from, and where we are going.  This, according to Prophet Shermer, is what science does for us.

For Prothero, it seems that science is the answer to every question worth asking.  After 358 pages of berating religious fundamentalists, it turns out he is one, too.

Evolution, Intelligent Design, Science and God

What is Historical Science and Who Cares?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

A recurring misunderstanding I have seen in the intelligent design (ID) debate is the ignorance that many on the anti-ID side have of historical science.  So, what is historical science and how is it different from the sciences which study currently operating phenomena?

Philosopher of science Stephen Meyer lists four criteria of historical sciences that differentiate them from non-historical sciences in his book Signature in the Cell .  Take particular notice of the fact that these same four criteria apply to portions of evolutionary science as well as ID.

A Distinctive Historical Objective

Meyer explains that historical sciences ask certain kinds of questions like, “What happened?” or “What caused this event or that natural feature to arise?”  Non-historical sciences tend to ask questions like, “How does nature normally operate or function?” or “What causes this general phenomenon to occur?”  According to Meyer, “Those who postulate the past activity of an intelligent designer do so as an answer, or a partial answer, to distinctively historical questions.”

A Distinctive Form of Inference

Meyer describes the kinds of inferences that historical sciences usually make.  “Unlike many non-historical disciplines, which typically infer generalizations or laws from particular facts (induction), historical sciences employ abductive logic to infer a past event from a present fact or clue.”  The paleontologist Stephen Gould once said that the historical scientist infers “history from its results.”  ID, in particular, infers a “past unobservable cause (in this case, an instance of creative mental action or agency) from present facts or clues in the natural world, such as the specified information in DNA, the irreducible complexity of of certain biological systems, and the fine tuning of the laws and constants of physics.”

A Distinctive Type of Explanations

“Historical sciences usually offer causal explanations of particular events, not lawlike descriptions or theories describing how certain kinds of phenomena – such as condensation or nuclear fission – generally occur.”  With respect to ID, “Theories of design invoke the act or acts of an agent  and conceptualize those acts as causal events, albeit ones involving mental rather than purely physical entities.”  Further, “Advocates of design postulate past causal events . . . to explain the origin of present evidence or clues, just as proponents of chemical evolutionary theories do.”

Use of the Method of Multiple Competing Hypotheses

“Historical scientists do not mainly test hypotheses by assessing the accuracy of the predictions they make under controlled laboratory conditions.  Using the method of multiple competing hypotheses, historical scientists test hypotheses by comparing their explanatory power against that of their competitors.” In other words, historical scientists posit several explanations of the cause of an event in the past, and they then evaluate which of the several explanations best explains all the available evidence.  In the case of ID, the explanation of an intelligent mind best explains the presence of complex specified information in biological structures.

Any science which tries to explain singular or rarely occurring events of the past is a historical science.  Sciences which are trying to explain currently recurring or repeating phenomena are non-historical.  A failure to understand this distinction is a failure to grasp how science works.  Without historical science, any attempts at explaining the history of the evolution of life could not be done, which is why I find it so ironic that evolutionists attack ID on the grounds that it is historical.  They are sawing off the very limb that supports them.

Evolution, Intelligent Design

California Science Center Settles Lawsuit with Pro-Intelligent Design Group

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

You may recall that in January of this year, we posted about the California Science Center, a public institution, reneging on the screening of a pro-intelligent design (ID) movie.  The Discovery Institute, a pro-ID organization, filed a lawsuit when the Science Center refused to turn over all documents related to the cancellation of the screening.

On June 14, the Discovery Institute reported that the Science Center has settled the case, agreeing to pay all attorneys’ fees, and releasing all of the documents that should have been released in the first place.

All I can say is that the California taxpayers should be furious at the leadership of the Science Center for wasting their money over something so silly.  If they had just gone ahead with the screening, all of this could have been avoided, but the pro-Darwin side is so angry with anyone who disagrees with the Darwinian story that all kinds of pressure was placed on the Science Center to shut down the screening.

As I asked before, what are they afraid of?  Let everyone make their case and stop censoring those who disagree with you.

Atheism, Evolution, Existence of God, Intelligent Design, Miracles, Skeptics

Can Science Test for the Supernatural?

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Christians believe that a supernatural being can be reasoned to by working backward from effect to cause.  We observe ourselves and we observe the world around us (those are the effects) and we reason that a supernatural cause is the best explanation for the things we observe.  This is how almost all arguments for God’s existence work.

Science can shed additional light on what we observe in the world around us, so in that sense science can be employed in arguments for God’s existence.  For example, science seems to have shown that the universe had a beginning and that the physical laws and constants that govern the universe are fine tuned for advanced life.  Both of these scientific finds are often used in arguments for God’s existence.

Those who hold a naturalistic worldview (the natural world is all that exists) seem to be divided on this subject.  Some naturalists deny that science can ever be used to test the existence of God and others affirm that science can test for the supernatural and that those tests have all turned out negative.  Still others, like evolutionary scientist Donald Prothero, appear to hold both views at the same time.  Consider the quotes below from Prothero’s book Evolution.

Prothero first suggests that scientists “cannot consider supernatural events in their hypotheses.”  Why? Because “once you introduce the supernatural to a scientific hypothesis, there is no way to falsify or test it.”  He adds that scientists are not allowed to consider God or miracles (i.e., the supernatural) because they are “completely untestable and outside the realm of science.”  All right, it seems that Prothero is firmly in the camp of those who say that science cannot say anything about the supernatural.

But in the very next paragraph in his book, he completely reverses course.  Prothero explains, “In fact, there have been many scientific tests of supernatural and paranormal explanations of things, including parapsychology, ESP, divination, prophecy, and astrology.  All of these non-scientific ideas have been falsified when subjected to the scrutiny of scientific investigation. . . . Every time the supernatural has been investigated by scientific methods, it has failed the test.”

Huh??  Is your head spinning like mine?  Prothero first claims that science cannot test the supernatural and then he says that science has tested the supernatural.  Which is it?  It can’t be both.

I am not pointing this out to poke fun at Prothero, but because I see some skeptics making this mistake over and over again.  They want to desperately cling to the claim that science can say nothing about the existence of God (so that they can remove science as a tool in the Christian’s evidential toolbox), but they also desperately want to tell people how science has shown that God doesn’t exist (they retain science as a tool for skeptics to nullify the supernatural).  Unfortunately, holding both of these positions at the same time is flatly contradictory.  The skeptic must choose one or the other. Either science can test for the supernatural or it cannot.

I have seen this same mistake made in the intelligent design/evolution debate.  Evolutionists will claim that Michael Behe’s idea of irreducible complexity is non-scientific or scientifically untestable, but these same evolutionists will then produce scientific research they claim scientifically disproves irreducible complexity!  If it’s not scientifically testable, then how are they producing research which scientifically disproves it?

If you’re a Christian talking to a scientific skeptic, watch out for this skeptical two-step.  If you’re a scientific skeptic or naturalist, make up your mind which it is, because you are really confusing me.

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Evolution, Intelligent Design, Truth

When Should We Doubt Expert Consensus? Part 2

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Post Author: Bill Pratt

Continuing from part 1, below are 5 more reasons you should doubt a scientific consensus, taken from Jay Richards’ article on the topic.

8. When the subject matter seems, by its nature, to resist consensus. An an engineer, this point has always bothered me about both evolution and climate change.  Richards explains:

It makes sense that chemists over time may come to unanimous conclusions about the results of some chemical reaction, since they can replicate the results over and over in their own labs. They can see the connection between the conditions and its effects. It’s easily testable. But many of the things under consideration in climate science are not like that. The evidence is scattered and hard to keep track of; it’s often indirect, embedded in history and requiring all sorts of assumptions. You can’t rerun past climate to test it, as you can with chemistry experiments. And the headline-grabbing conclusions of climate scientists are based on complex computer models that climate scientists themselves concede do not accurately model the underlying reality, and receive their input, not from the data, but from the scientists interpreting the data. This isn’t the sort of scientific endeavor on which a wide, well-established consensus is easily rendered. In fact, if there really were a consensus on all the various claims surrounding climate science, that would be really suspicious. A fortiori, the claim of consensus is a bit suspicious as well.

9. When “scientists say” or “science says” is a common locution. Which scientists?  The ones that agree with the theory?  Since when does science speak for itself without human beings interpreting?

10. When it is being used to justify dramatic political or economic policies. Always be suspicious when politicians and ideological activists are wielding the sword of science to further a particular agenda.  As Richards notes, that is happening in spades in the global warming debate.

11. When the “consensus” is maintained by an army of water-carrying journalists who defend it with uncritical and partisan zeal, and seem intent on helping certain scientists with their messaging rather than reporting on the field as objectively as possible. In the last few years, I can recall weeks where our local newspaper was running story after story about global warming, and none of them critical of it.  When the supposedly unbiased media line up and promote one viewpoint with little dissent, be suspicious.

12. When we keep being told that there’s a scientific consensus. Richards captures the essence of this point:

A scientific consensus should be based on scientific evidence. But a consensus is not itself the evidence. And with really well-established scientific theories, you never hear about consensus. No one talks about the consensus that the planets orbit the sun, that the hydrogen molecule is lighter than the oxygen molecule, that salt is sodium chloride, that light travels about 186,000 miles per second in a vacuum, that bacteria sometimes cause illness, or that blood carries oxygen to our organs. The very fact that we hear so much about a consensus on catastrophic, human-induced climate change is perhaps enough by itself to justify suspicion.

Some food for thought.  I think Richards has done a wonderful job putting into words some of the intuitions we have about science and its reported results.  In fact, most of his 12 points apply to other non-scientific fields where we’re told there is a consensus.  There is nothing wrong with consensus, inherently, but we just need to be vigilant and do our homework before concurring with an alleged “consensus.”