Objections to evolution
Encyclopedia
Objections to evolution
have been raised since evolutionary ideas
came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin
published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution by natural selection
initially met opposition from scientists with different theories, but came to be overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community
. The observation of evolutionary processes occurring, as well as the current theory
explaining that evidence, have been uncontroversial among mainstream biologists for nearly a century.
Since then, nearly all criticisms of evolution have come from religious sources, rather than from the scientific community. In his book on Creationism, The Creationists
, historian Ronald Numbers
traces the religious motivations and scientific pretensions, of prominent creationists from George Frederick Wright
through George McCready Price
, Harry Rimmer
, John C. Whitcomb
, Henry M. Morris
and his Institute for Creation Research
(and lesser figures) to Phillip E. Johnson and the Intelligent design movement
. Although many religions have accepted the occurrence of evolution, such as those advocating theistic evolution
, there still exist religious beliefs which reject evolutionary explanations in favor of creationism
, the belief that a deity supernaturally created the world largely in its current form. The resultant U.S.
-centric creation-evolution controversy
has been a focal point of recent conflict between religion and science
.
In contrast to earlier objections to evolution that were either strictly scientific or explicitly religious, recent objections to evolution have frequently blurred the distinction between the two. Such objections have often centered on undermining evolution's scientific basis, with the intent of combating the teaching of evolution as fact and opposing the spread of "atheistic materialism". Modern creationism is characterized by movements such as Creation Science
, neocreationism, and Intelligent Design
which argue that the idea of life being directly "designed" by a god or intelligence is at least as scientific as evolutionary theory, and should therefore be taught in public schools
. Their arguments against evolution have become widespread, and include objections to evolution's evidence, methodology, plausibility, morality, and scientific acceptance. The scientific community, however, does not accept such objections as having any validity, citing detractors' misinterpretations of scientific method, evidence, and basic physical laws.
to molecular evolution
to sociocultural evolution
to stellar
and galactic evolution
. It can even refer to metaphysical evolution, spiritual evolution
, or any of a number of evolutionist
philosophies. When biological evolution is conflated with other evolutionary processes, this can cause errors such as the claim that modern evolutionary theory says anything about abiogenesis
or the Big Bang
.
In colloquial contexts, evolution can refer to any sort of progressive development, and often bears a connotation of gradual improvement: here evolution is understood as a process that results in greater quality or complexity. This common definition, when misapplied to biological evolution, leads to frequent misunderstandings. For example, the idea of devolution ("backwards" evolution) is a result of erroneously assuming that evolution is directional or has a specific goal in mind (cf. orthogenesis
). In reality, the evolution of an organism has no "objective" other than increasing the organism's ability to survive and reproduce in its environment; and its suitability is only defined in relation to this environment. Biologists do not consider any one species, such as humans, to be more highly evolved or advanced than another. Certain sources have been criticized for indicating otherwise due to a tendency to evaluate nonhuman organisms according to anthropocentric standards rather than more objective ones.
Evolution also does not require that organisms become more complex. Although the history of life
shows an apparent trend towards the evolution of complexity
; there is a question if this appearance of increased complexity is real, or if this conclusion comes from neglecting the fact that the majority of life on earth has always consisted of prokaryote
s. In this view, complexity is not a necessary consequence of evolution; rather, it is a consequence of the specific circumstances of evolution on Earth, which frequently made greater complexity advantageous, and thus naturally selected
for. Depending on the situation, organisms' complexity can either increase, decrease, or stay the same, and all three of these trends have been observed in evolution.
Creationist sources frequently define evolution according to a colloquial, rather than scientific, meaning. As a result, many attempts to rebut evolution do not address the findings of evolutionary biology (see straw man argument). This also means that advocates of creationism and evolutionary biologists often simply speak past each other.
Various evolutionary ideas came to prominence around the start of the nineteenth century, in particular the transmutation of species
theory put forward by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
. These were opposed on scientific grounds, most notably by Georges Cuvier
, as well as meeting political and religious objections. These ideas that natural laws
controlled the development of nature and society gained vast popular audiences with George Combe
's The Constitution of Man
of 1828 and the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
of 1844. When Charles Darwin
published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, within fifteen to twenty years he convinced most of the scientific community
that evolution
through common descent
was true, but while most accepted that natural selection
was a valid and empirical
ly testable hypothesis, his view that it was the primary mechanism of evolution was generally rejected.
The earliest objections to Darwinian evolution were both scientific and religious. Darwin's contemporaries eventually came to accept the transmutation of species
based upon fossil
evidence; forming the X Club
to defend it against the church and wealthy amateurs, although the specific evolutionary mechanism which Darwin provided – natural selection – was actively disputed by alternative theories such as Lamarckism
and orthogenesis
. Darwin's gradualistic
account was also opposed by saltationism
and catastrophism
. Lord Kelvin
led scientific opposition to gradualism on the basis of his thermodynamic calculations that the Age of the Earth
was between 24 and 400 million years old, an estimate strongly disputed by geologists. These figures were corrected in 1907 when radioactive dating of rocks showed that the Earth was billions of years old. Kelvin's own views favoured a version of theistic evolution
accelerated by divine guidance. The specific hereditary mechanism Darwin provided, pangenesis
, lacked any supporting evidence. In the early 20th century, pangenesis was replaced by Mendelian inheritance
, leading to the rise of the modern evolutionary synthesis
. The modern synthesis rose to universal acceptance among biologists with the help of new evidence, such as genetics
, which confirmed Darwin's predictions and refuted the competing theories.
Protestantism
, especially in America, broke out in "acrid polemics" and argument about evolution from 1860 to the 1870s – with the turning point possibly marked with the death of Louis Agassiz
in 1873 – and by 1880 a form of "Christian evolution" was becoming the consensus. In Britain while publication of The Descent of Man
by Darwin in 1871 reinvigorated debate from the previous decade, Sir Henry Chadwick
notes a steady acceptance of evolution "among more educated Christians" between 1860 and 1885. This led evolutionary theory to be "both permissible and respectable" by 1876. Frederick Temple
's lectures on Relations between Religion and Science (1884) speaking on how evolution was not "antagonistic" to religion highlighted this trend. Temple's appointment to Archbishop of Canterbury
in 1896 showed the broad acceptance of evolution within the church hierarchy.
For decades Catholicism
avoided official refutation of evolution. However, it would rein in Catholics who proposed that evolution could be reconciled with the Bible, as this conflicted with First Vatican Council
's (1869–70) finding that everything was created out of nothing
by God, and to question that could lead to excommunication
. In 1950, the encyclical Humani Generis of Pope Pius XII
first mentioned evolution directly and officially. It allowed for inquiry into humans coming from pre-existing living matter, but to not question Adam and Eve
or the creation of the soul
. In 1996, Pope John Paul II
stated evolution was "more than a hypothesis" and acknowledged the large body of work accumulated in its support, but reiterated that any attempt to give a material explanation of the human soul was "incompatible with the truth about man."
Muslim
reaction covered the gamut with those believing in literal creation from the Qur'an
while many educated Muslims subscribed to a version of theistic or guided evolution where the Qur'an reinforced rather than contradicted mainstream science. This occurred relatively quickly as medieval Madrasah
's taught ideas of Al-Jahiz
, a Muslim scholar from the 9th century, who proposed concepts similar to natural selection. However, acceptance of evolution remains low in the Muslim world as prominent figures reject evolution's underpinning philosophy of materialism
as unsound to human origins and a denial of Allah
. Further objections by Muslim scholars and writers largely reflect those put forward in the Western world.
Regardless of acceptance from major religious hierarchies, early religious objections to Darwin's theory are still used in opposition to evolution. The ideas that species change over time through natural processes and that different species share common ancestors
seemed to contradict the Genesis account of Creation. Believers in Biblical infallibility
attacked Darwinism as heretical. The natural theology
of the early 19th century was typified by Paley
's watchmaker analogy
, an argument from design
still used by the creationist movement. Natural theology included a range of ideas and arguments from the outset, and when Darwin's theory was published, ideas of theistic evolution were presented in which evolution is accepted as a secondary cause open to scientific investigation, while still holding belief in God as a first cause with a non-specified role in guiding evolution and creating humans. This position has been adopted by denominations of Christianity and Judaism
in line with modernist theology
which views the Bible
and Torah
as allegorical thus removing the conflict between evolution and religion.
However, in the 1920s Christian fundamentalists
in the United States
developed their literalist arguments against Modernist theology into opposition to the teaching of evolution due to fears that ‘‘Darwinism
’’ had led to German militarism and was a threat to religion and morality. This opposition developed into the creation-evolution controversy
involving Christian literalists in the United States objecting to the teaching of evolution in public schools. Although early objections dismissed evolution for contradicting their interpretation of the Bible, this argument was invalidated when the Supreme Court
ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas
that forbidding the teaching of evolution on religious grounds violated the Establishment Clause
.
Since then creationists have developed more nuanced objections to evolution, alleging variously that it is unscientific, infringes on creationists' religious freedoms
or that the acceptance of evolution is a religious stance. Creationists have appealed to democratic principles of fairness, arguing that evolution is controversial, and that science classrooms should therefore "Teach the Controversy
". These objections to evolution culminated in the intelligent design movement
in the early 2000s that unsuccessfully
attempted to present itself as a scientific alternative to evolution.
to debate its findings. Creationists often argue, for example, that evolution is unproven, non-factual, or controversial.
in a scientific context: whereas in colloquial speech a theory is a conjecture or guess, in science a theory
is an explanation whose predictions have been proven true by experiments or other evidence. Evolutionary theory refers to an explanation for the diversity of species and their ancestry which has met extremely high standards of scientific evidence. An example of evolution as theory is the modern synthesis
of Darwinian natural selection
and Mendelian inheritance
. As with any scientific theory, the modern synthesis is constantly debated, tested, and refined by scientists, but there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that it remains the only robust model that accounts for the known facts concerning evolution.
Critics also state that evolution is not a fact
. In science, a fact is a verified empirical observation; in colloquial contexts, however, a fact can simply refer to anything for which there is overwhelming evidence. For example, in common usage theories such as "the Earth revolves around the Sun
" and "objects fall due to gravity" may be referred to as "facts", even though they are purely theoretical. From a scientific standpoint, therefore, evolution may be called a "fact" for the same reason that gravity can: under the scientific definition, evolution is an observable process that occurs whenever a population of organisms genetically changes over time. Under the colloquial definition, the theory of evolution can also be called a fact, referring to this theory's well-established nature. Thus, evolution is widely considered both a theory and a fact
by scientists.
Similar confusion is involved in objections that evolution is "unproven," since no theory in science is known to be absolutely true, only verified by empirical evidence. This distinction is an important one in philosophy of science
, as it relates to the lack of absolute certainty
in all empirical claims, not just evolution. Strict proof
is possible only in formal science
s such as logic and mathematics, not natural science
s (where terms such as "validated" or "corroborated" are more appropriate). Thus, to say that evolution is not proven is trivially true, but no more an indictment of evolution than calling it a "theory". The confusion arises, however, in that the colloquial meaning of proof is simply "compelling evidence", in which case scientists would indeed consider evolution "proven."
: it argues that evolution is controversial or contentious. Unlike past creationist arguments which sought to abolish the teaching of evolution altogether, this argument makes the weaker claim that evolution, being controversial, should be presented alongside other, alternative views, and students should be allowed to evaluate and choose between the options on their own. This appeal to fairness and a balanced approach in which conflicting views are given equal time appeals to American creationists, and was endorsed by U.S. President George W. Bush
.
This objection forms the basis of the "Teach the Controversy
" campaign, an attempt by the Discovery Institute
to promote the teaching of intelligent design
in public schools. This in turn forms a major part of the Institute's "wedge strategy
", an attempt to gradually undermine evolution and ultimately to "reverse the stifling materialist
world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions".
Scientists and U.S. courts have rejected this objection on the grounds that science is not based on appeals to popularity, but on evidence. The scientific consensus
of biologists, not popular opinion or fairness, determines what is considered acceptable science, and it is argued that although evolution is clearly controversial in the public arena, it is entirely uncontroversial among experts in the field.
In response, creationists have disputed the level of scientific support for evolution. The Discovery Institute has gathered over 600 scientists since 2001 to sign "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism
" in order to show that there are a number of scientists who dispute what they refer to as "Darwinian evolution". This statement did not profess outright disbelief in evolution, but expressed skepticism as to the ability of "random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life." Several counter-petitions have been launched in turn, including A Scientific Support for Darwinism
, which gathered over 7,000 signatures in four days, and Project Steve
, a tongue-in-cheek petition that has gathered 1,151 (as of January 18, 2011) evolution-supporting scientists named "Steve".
Creationists have argued for over a century that evolution is "a theory in crisis
" that will soon be overturned, based on objections that it lacks reliable evidence or violates natural laws. These objections have been rejected by most scientists, as have claims that intelligent design, or any other creationist explanation, meets the basic scientific standards that would be required to make them scientific alternatives to evolution. It is also argued that even if evidence against evolution exists, it is a false dilemma
to characterize this as evidence for intelligent design.
A similar objection to evolution is that certain scientific authorities – mainly pre-modern ones – have doubted or rejected evolution. Most commonly, it is argued that Darwin "recanted" on his deathbed, a false anecdote originating from the Lady Hope Story
. These objections are generally rejected as appeals to authority. Even if this myth were true, it would hold no bearing on the merit of the theory itself.
, and therefore should not be taught in science classes, or at least should be taught alongside other views (i.e., creationism). These objections often deal with the very nature of evolutionary theory and the scientific method.
is not. Those that oppose evolution frequently refer to supporters of evolution as "evolutionists
" or "Darwinists
".
The arguments for evolution being a religion generally amount to arguments by analogy
: it is argued that evolution and religion have one or more things in common, and that therefore evolution is a religion. Examples of claims made in such arguments are statements that evolution is based on faith
, that supporters of evolution revere Darwin as a prophet, and that supporters of evolution dogma
tically reject alternative suggestions out-of-hand. These claims have become more popular in recent years as the neocreationist movement has sought to distance itself from religion, thus giving it more reason to make use of a seemingly anti-religious analogy.
In response, supporters of evolution have argued that no scientist's claims, including Darwin's, are treated as sacrosanct, as shown by the aspects of Darwin's theory that have been rejected or revised by scientists over the years, to form first Neo-Darwinism
and later the modern evolutionary synthesis
. The claim that evolution relies on faith, often based on the creationist belief that evolution has never been observed, is likewise rejected on the grounds that evolution has strong supporting evidence, and therefore does not require faith.
In general, the argument that evolution is religious has been rejected on the grounds that religion
is not defined by how dogmatic or zealous its adherents are, but by its spiritual or supernatural beliefs. Evolutionary supporters point out evolution is neither dogmatic nor based on faith, and they accuse creationists of equivocating
between the strict definition of religion and its colloquial usage to refer to anything that is enthusiastically or dogmatically engaged in. U.S. courts have also rejected this objection:
A related claim is that evolution is atheistic; creationists sometimes merge the two claims and describe evolution as an "atheistic religion" (cf. humanism
). This argument against evolution is also frequently generalized into a criticism of all science; it is argued that "science is an atheistic religion", on the grounds that its methodological naturalism
is as unproven, and thus as "faith-based", as the supernatural
and theistic beliefs of creationism.
if there is an observation or a test that could be made that would demonstrate that the statement is false. Statements that are not falsifiable cannot be examined by scientific investigation since they permit no tests that evaluate their accuracy. Creationists such as Henry M. Morris
have claimed that evolution is unfalsifiable. They claim that any observation can be fitted into the evolutionary framework, and that therefore it is impossible to demonstrate that evolution is wrong. As such, they claim that evolution is non-scientific.
However, evolution is considered falsifiable by scientists because it can make predictions that, were they contradicted by the evidence, would falsify evolution. Several kinds of evidence have been proposed that could falsify evolution, such as the fossil record showing no change over time, confirmation that mutations are prevented from accumulating, or observations showing organisms being created supernaturally or spontaneously. Many of Darwin's ideas and assertions of fact have been falsified as evolutionary science has developed and has continued to confirm his central concepts. Despite this, creationism consists largely of unsubstantiated claims that evolution has been falsified. In contrast, creationist explanations involving the direct intervention of the supernatural
in the physical world are not falsifiable, because any result of an experiment or investigation could be the unpredictable action of an omnipotent deity.
In 1976, philosopher Karl Popper
said that "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme". However, Popper later recanted and offered a more nuanced view of its status:
The most direct evidence that evolutionary theory is falsifiable may be the original words of Charles Darwin who, in chapter 6 of On the Origin of Species wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
In response to the unfalsifiability criticism of evolutionary theory, numerous examples of potential ways to falsify evolution have been proposed. J.B.S. Haldane, when asked what hypothetical evidence could disprove evolution, replied "fossil rabbits in the Precambrian era
". Numerous other potential ways to falsify evolution have also been proposed. For example, the fact that humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than the great apes
offered a testable hypothesis involving the fusion or splitting of chromosomes from a common ancestor. The fusion hypothesis was confirmed in 2005 by discovery that human chromosome 2 is homologous with a fusion of two chromosomes that remain separate in other primates. Extra, inactive telomeres and centromeres remain on human chromosome 2 as a result of the fusion. The assertion of common descent could also have been disproven with the invention of DNA analysis. If true, human DNA should be far more similar to chimpanzees and other great apes, than to other mammals. If not, then common descent is falsified. DNA analysis has shown that humans and chimpanzees share a large percentage of their DNA (between 95% to 99.4% depending on the measure). Also, the evolution of chimpanzee
s and humans from a common ancestor predicts a (geologically) recent common ancestor. Numerous transitional fossils have since been found. Hence, human evolution has passed several falsifiable tests.
A related claim is that natural selection
is tautological
. Specifically, it is often argued that the phrase "survival of the fittest
" is a tautology, in that fitness
is defined as ability to survive and reproduce. However, this phrase, first used by Herbert Spencer
in 1864, is rarely used by biologists. Additionally, fitness is more accurately defined as the state of possessing traits that make survival more likely; this definition, unlike simple "survivability", avoids being trivially true.
Similarly, it is argued that evolutionary theory is circular reasoning
, in that evidence is interpreted as supporting evolution, but evolution is required to interpret the evidence. An example of this is the claim that geological strata
are dated through the fossils they hold, but that fossils are in turn dated by the strata they are in. However, in most cases strata are not dated by their fossils, but by their position relative to other strata and by radiometric dating
, and most strata were dated before the theory of evolution was formulated.
In his book, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, philosopher of science Philip Kitcher specifically addresses the "falsifiability" question by taking into account notable philosophical critiques of Popper by Carl Gustav Hempel
and Willard Van Orman Quine
that reject his definition of theory as a set of falsifiable statements. As Kitcher points out, if one took a strictly Popperian view of “theory,” observations of Uranus
when first discovered in 1781 would have “falsified” Newton
’s celestial mechanics
. Rather, people suggested that another planet influenced Uranus’ orbit – and this prediction was indeed eventually confirmed. Kitcher agrees with Popper that “there is surely something right in the idea that a science can succeed only if it can fail.” But he insists that we view scientific theories as consisting of an “elaborate collection of statements,” some of which are not falsifiable, and others – what he calls “auxiliary hypotheses,” which are.
According to Kitcher, good scientific theories must have three features – unity, fecundity, and independent testability of auxiliary hypotheses:
Unity
Fecundity
Auxiliary hypotheses that are independently testable
Like other definitions of theories, including Popper’s, Kitcher makes it clear that a good theory includes statements that have (in his terms) “observational consequences.” But, like the observation of irregularities in Uranus’s orbit, falsification is only one possible consequence of an observation. The production of new hypotheses is another possible – and equally important – observational consequence. Kitcher’s account of a good theory is based not only on his understanding of how physical sciences work. He is also taking into account the way the life sciences
work.
From Kitcher’s point of view, Darwinian theory not only meets the three conditions for a good scientific theory; it is without question an extraordinarily successful theory:
A common claim of creationists is that evolution has never been observed. Challenges to such objections often come down to debates over how evolution is defined (see above). Under the conventional biological definition of evolution, it is a simple matter to observe evolution occurring. Evolutionary processes, in the form of populations changing their genetic composition from generation to generation, have been observed in different scientific contexts, including the evolution of fruit flies
, mice
and bacteria
in the laboratory, and of tilapia
in the field. Such studies on experimental evolution
, particularly those using microorganisms, are now providing important insights into how evolution occurs.
In response to such examples, creationists specify that they are objecting only to macroevolution
, not microevolution
: most creationist organizations do not dispute the occurrence of short-term, relatively minor evolutionary changes, such as that observed even in dog breeding
. Rather, they dispute the occurrence of major evolutionary changes over long periods of time, which by definition cannot be directly observed, only inferred from microevolutionary processes and the traces of macroevolutionary ones.
However, as biologists define macroevolution, both microevolution and macroevolution have been observed. Speciation
s, for example, have been directly observed many times, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary. Additionally, the modern evolutionary synthesis
draws no distinction between macroevolution and microevolution, considering the former to simply be the latter on a larger scale. An example of this is ring species
.
Additionally, past macroevolution can be inferred from historical traces. Transitional fossil
s, for example, provide plausible links between several different groups of organisms, such as Archaeopteryx
linking birds and dinosaurs, or the recently-discovered Tiktaalik
linking fish and limbed amphibians. Creationists dispute such examples, from asserting that such fossils are hoaxes or that they belong exclusively to one group or the other, to asserting that there should be far more evidence of obvious transitional species. Darwin himself found the paucity of transitional species to be one of the greatest weaknesses of his theory: "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." Darwin appealed to the limited collections then available, the extreme lengths of time involved, and different rates of change with some living species differing very little from fossils of the Silurian
period. In later editions he added "that the periods during which species have been undergoing modification, though very long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which these same species remained without undergoing any change." The number of clear transitional fossils has increased enormously since Darwin's day, and this problem has been largely resolved with the advent of the theory of punctuated equilibrium
, which predicts a primarily stable fossil record broken up by occasional major speciations.
Creationists counter that even observed speciations and transitional fossils are insufficient evidence for the vast changes summarized by such phrases as "fish to philosophers" or "particles to people". As more and more compelling direct evidence for inter-species and species-to-species evolution has been gathered, creationists have redefined their understanding of what amounts to a "created kind", and have continued to insist that more dramatic demonstrations of evolution be experimentally produced. One version of this objection is "Were you there?", popularized by Ken Ham
. It argues that because no one except God could directly observe events in the distant past, scientific claims are just speculation or "story-telling". DNA sequences of the genome
s of organisms allow an independent test of their predicted relationships, since species which diverged more recently will be more closely related genetically than species which are more distantly related; such phylogenetic trees show a hierarchical organization within the tree of life
, as predicted by common descent.
In fields such as astrophysics
or meteorology
, where direct observation or laboratory experiments are difficult or impossible, the scientific method instead relies on observation and logical inference. In such fields, the test of falsifiability is satisfied when a theory is used to predict the results of new observations. When such observations contradict a theory's predictions, it may be revised or discarded if an alternative better explains the observed facts. For example, Newton's theory of gravitation
was replaced by Einstein's theory of General Relativity
when the latter was observed to more precisely predict the orbit of Mercury
.
Arguments against evolution's reliability are thus often based on analyzing the history of evolutionary thought
or the history of science
in general. Creationists point out that in the past, major scientific revolutions
have overturned theories that were at the time considered near-certain. They thus claim that current evolutionary theory is likely to undergo such a revolution in the future, on the basis that it is a "theory in crisis" for one reason or another.
Critics of evolution commonly appeal to past scientific hoax
es such as the Piltdown Man
forgery
. It is argued that because scientists have been mistaken and deceived in the past about evidence for various aspects of evolution the current evidence for evolution is likely to also be based on fraud and error. Much of the evidence for evolution has been accused of being fraudulent at various times, including Archaeopteryx, peppered moth melanism
, and Darwin's finches
; these claims have been subsequently refuted.
It has also been claimed that certain former pieces of evidence for evolution which are now considered out-of-date and erroneous, such as Ernst Haeckel
's 19th-century comparative drawings of embryos, used to illustrate his Recapitulation theory
("Ontogeny
recapitulates Phylogeny"), were not merely errors but frauds. Jonathan Wells criticizes biology textbook
s by alleging that they continue to reproduce such evidence after it has been debunked. In response, the National Center for Science Education
notes that none of the textbooks reviewed by Wells makes the claimed error, as Haeckel's drawings are shown in a historical context with discussion about why they are wrong, and the accurate modern drawings and photos used in the textbooks are misrepresented by Wells.
, the technique of evaluating a material's age based on the radioactive decay
rates of certain isotope
s, generates inconsistent, and thus unreliable, results. Radiocarbon dating
, based on the Carbon 14 isotope, has been particularly criticized. It is argued that radiometric decay relies on a number of unwarranted assumptions, such as the principle of uniformitarianism
, consistent decay rates, or rocks acting as closed system
s. Such arguments have been dismissed by scientists on the grounds that independent methods have confirmed the reliability of radiometric dating as a whole; additionally, different radiometric dating methods and techniques have independently confirmed each other's results.
Another form of this objection is that fossil
evidence is not reliable. This is based on a much wider range of claims. These include that there are too many "gaps" in the fossil record, that fossil-dating is circular (see evolution is unfalsifiable), or that certain fossils, such as polystrate fossil
s, are seemingly "out of place". Examination by geologists have found polystrate fossils to be consistent with in situ formation. It is argued that certain features of evolution support creationism's catastrophism
(cf. Great Flood), rather than evolution's gradualistic
punctuated equilibrium
, which some assert is an "ad-hoc" theory to explain the fossil gaps.
A common objection to evolution is that it is simply too unlikely for life, in its complexity and apparent "design", to have arisen "by chance". It is argued that the odds of life having arisen without a deliberate intelligence guiding it are so astronomically low that it is unreasonable not to infer an intelligent designer
from the natural world, and specifically from the diversity of life
. A more extreme version of this argument is that evolution cannot create complex structures. The idea that it is simply too implausible for life to have evolved is often encapsulated with a quotation that the "probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane sweeping through a scrap-yard would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747
" (a claim attributed to astrophysicist Fred Hoyle
and known as Hoyle's fallacy
).
This view is thus invariably justified with arguments from analogy
. The basic idea of this argument for a designer is the teleological argument
, an argument for the existence of God
based on the perceived order or purposefulness of the universe. A common way of using this as an objection to evolution is by appealing to the 18th-century philosopher William Paley
's watchmaker analogy
, which argues that certain natural phenomena are analogical to a watch (in that they are ordered, or complex, or purposeful), which means that, like a watch, they must have been designed by a "watchmaker"—an intelligent agent. This argument forms the core of intelligent design
, a neocreationist movement seeking to establish certain variants of the design argument as legitimate science, rather than as philosophy or theology
, and have them be taught alongside evolution.
This objection is fundamentally an argument by lack of imagination
, or argument from incredulity: a certain explanation is seen as being counter-intuitive, and therefore an alternate, more intuitive explanation is appealed to instead. Supporters of evolution generally respond by arguing that evolution is not based on "chance", but on predictable chemical interactions: natural processes, rather than supernatural beings, are the "designer". Although the process involves some random elements, it is the non-random selection of survival-enhancing genes that drives evolution along an ordered trajectory. The fact that the results are ordered and seem "designed" is no more evidence for a supernatural intelligence than the appearance of complex natural phenomena (e.g. snowflakes). It is also argued that there is insufficient evidence to make statements about the plausibility or implausibility of abiogenesis
, that certain structures demonstrate poor design
, and that the implausibility of life evolving exactly as it did is no more evidence for an intelligence than the implausibility of a deck of cards being shuffled and dealt in a certain random order.
It has also been noted that arguments against some form of life arising "by chance" are really objections to nontheistic abiogenesis
, not to evolution. Indeed, arguments against "evolution" are based on the misconception that abiogenesis is a component of, or necessary precursor to, evolution. Similar objections sometimes conflate the Big Bang
with evolution.
Christian apologist and philosopher Alvin Plantinga
, a supporter of intelligent design, has formalized and revised the improbability argument as the evolutionary argument against naturalism
, which asserts that it is irrational to reject a supernatural, intelligent creator because the apparent probability of certain faculties evolving is so low. Specifically, Plantinga claims that evolution cannot account for the rise of reliable reasoning faculties. Plantinga argues that whereas a God would be expected to create beings with reliable reasoning faculties, evolution would be just as likely to lead to unreliable ones, meaning that if evolution is true, it is irrational to trust whatever reasoning one relies on to conclude that it is true. This novel epistemological argument has been criticized similarly to other probabilistic design arguments. It has also been argued that rationality, if conducive to survival, is more likely to be selected for than irrationality, making the natural development of reliable cognitive faculties more likely than unreliable ones.
, can explain the things which evolution cannot. For example, Michael Behe
has argued that current evolutionary theory cannot account for certain complex structures, particularly in microbiology. On this basis, Behe argues that such structures were "purposely arranged by an intelligent agent" (see argument from incredulity).
In addition to complex structures and systems, among the phenomena that critics variously claim evolution cannot explain are consciousness
, free will
, hominid intelligence
, instinct
s, emotion
s, metamorphosis
, photosynthesis
, homosexuality
, music
, language
, religion, morality
, and altruism
(see altruism in animals
). Most of these, such as homosexuality, hominid intelligence, instinct, emotion, photosynthesis, language, and altruism, have been well-explained by evolution, while others remain mysterious, or only have preliminary explanations. However, supporters of evolution contend that no alternative explanation has been able to adequately explain the biological origin of these phenomena either.
Creationists argue against evolution on the grounds that it cannot explain certain non-evolutionary processes, such as abiogenesis
, the Big Bang
, or the meaning of life
. In such instances, evolution is being redefined to refer to the entire history of the universe, and it is argued that if one aspect of the universe is seemingly inexplicable, the entire body of scientific theories must be baseless. At this point, objections leave the arena of evolutionary biology and become general scientific or philosophical disputes.
Modern evolutionary theory posits that all biological systems must have evolved incrementally, through a combination of natural selection
and genetic drift
. Both Darwin and his early detractors recognized the potential problems that could arise for his theory of natural selection if the lineage of organs and other biological features could not be accounted for by merely gradual, step-by-step changes over successive generations; if all the intermediary stages between an initial organ and the organ it will become are not all improvements upon the original, it will be impossible for the later organ to develop by the process of natural selection alone. Anticipating early criticisms that the evolution of the eye
and other complex organs seemed impossible, Darwin noted that:
Similarly, Richard Dawkins
said on the topic of the evolution of the feather
in an interview for the television program The Atheism Tapes
:
Creationist arguments have been made such as "What use is half an eye?" and "What use is half a wing?". Research has confirmed that the natural evolution of the eye
and other intricate organs is entirely feasible. Creationist claims have persisted that such complexity evolving without a designer is inconceivable, however, and this objection to evolution has been refined in recent years as the more sophisticated irreducible complexity
argument of the intelligent design movement
, formulated by biochemist Michael Behe
.
Irreducible complexity is the idea that certain biological systems cannot be broken down into their constituent parts and remain functional, and therefore that they could not have evolved naturally from less complex or complete systems. Whereas past arguments of this nature generally relied on macroscopic organs, Behe's primary examples of irreducible complexity has been cellular and biochemical in nature. He has argued that the components of systems such as the blood clotting cascade, the immune system
, and the bacterial flagellum are so complex and interdependent that they could not have evolved from simpler systems.
In the years since Behe proposed irreducible complexity, new developments and advances in biology, such as an improved understanding of the evolution of flagella
, have already undermined these arguments. The idea that seemingly irreducibly complex systems cannot evolve has been refuted through evolutionary mechanisms, such as exaptation
(the adaptation of organs for entirely new functions) and the use of "scaffolding", which are initially necessary features of a system that later degenerate when they are no longer required. Potential evolutionary pathways have been provided for all of the systems Behe used as examples of irreducible complexity.
cannot generate new information
. Creationists such as William A. Dembski
, Werner Gitt
, and Lee Spetner
have attempted to use information theory
to dispute evolution. Dembski has argued that life demonstrates specified complexity
, and that evolution without an intelligent agent
cannot account for the generation of information that would be required to produce specified complexity. The Christian apologetics site Answers in Genesis
, for example, makes frequent appeals to concepts from information theory in its objections to evolution and affirmations of the Genesis account of Creation; "[I]t should be clear that a rigorous application of the science of information is devastating to materialistic philosophy in the guise of evolution, and strongly supportive of Genesis creation."
These claims have been widely rejected by the scientific community; new information is regularly generated in evolution, whenever a novel mutation or gene duplication
arises. Dramatic examples of entirely new, unique traits arising through mutation have been observed in recent years, such as the evolution of nylon-eating bacteria
, which developed new enzyme
s to efficiently digest a material that never existed before the modern era. In fact, when an organism is considered together with the environment it evolved in, there is no need to account for the creation of information. The information in the genome forms a record of how it was possible to survive in a particular environment. It is not created, but rather gathered from the environment through research—by trial and error
, as mutating organisms either reproduce or fail.
A related argument against evolution is that most mutations are harmful. However, the vast majority of mutations are neutral
, and the minority of mutations which are beneficial or harmful are often situational; a mutation that is harmful in one environment may be helpful in another.
. Though the law applies to all systems, in the case of a closed one it states, "the entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium". In other words, an ideal isolated system's entropy
(a measure of the dispersal of energy in a physical system so that it is not available to do mechanical work) will tend to increase or stay the same, not decrease. Creationists argue that evolution violates this physical law
by requiring a decrease in entropy, or disorder, over time.
This claim is based on a manifestation of the law only applicable to isolated system
s, which do not exchange matter or energy with their surroundings. Organisms, in contrast, are open systems, as they constantly exchange energy and matter with their environment: for example animals eat food and excrete waste, and radiate and absorb heat. Similarly, the Earth absorbs energy from the Sun and emits energy back into space. The Sun-Earth-space system does not violate the second law, because the enormous increase in entropy due to the Sun and Earth radiating into space dwarfs the local decrease in entropy caused by the existence and evolution of self-organizing
life.
Since the second law of thermodynamics has a precise mathematical definition, this argument can be analyzed quantitatively. This was done by physicist
Daniel Styer, who concluded: "Quantitative estimates of the entropy involved in biological evolution demonstrate that there is no conflict between evolution and the second law of thermodynamics."
In a published letter to the editor of The Mathematical Intelligencer titled "How anti-evolutionists abuse mathematics", mathematician
Jason Rosenhouse stated:
or atheism
. These may be considered appeals to consequences
(a form of logical fallacy), as the potential ramifications of belief in evolutionary theory have nothing to do with its objective empirical reality.
Even though biology has long shown that humans are animals, some people feel that humans should be considered separate from, and/or superior to, animals. The mediaeval concept of a great chain of being
set out a static hierarchy in which humans are "above" animals, but below angels and God. As evolutionary thought developed it was feared that evolution implied that there was no real separation between man and brute, and that it undermined human social hierarchy. Assertions of ape ancestry in the 1844 publication Vestiges of Creation
gained much public acceptance but were scornfully attacked by establishment scientists, and though Darwin avoided the subject when announcing his theory in On the Origin of Species in 1859, the issue was quickly raised. Anatomists claimed that humans had unique physical features; however, English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley showed that they were wrong and overcame their opposition to Darwin's ideas. Evolutionary common descent
does not imply that human beings should behave like other animals, but instead shows that animals behave in different ways, and teaches that humans behave like humans.
Traditionalists still object to the idea that diversity in life, including human beings, arose through natural
processes without a need for supernatural intervention, and they argue against evolution on the basis that it contradicts their literal interpretation of creation myths about separate "kinds". However, many religions, such as Catholicism
, have reconciled their beliefs with evolution through theistic evolution
.
are caused by a belief in evolution. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote August 8, 2005, in National Public Radio's forum, "Taking Issue", that "Debates over education, abortion, environmentalism, homosexuality and a host of other issues are really debates about the origin—and thus the meaning—of human life.... Evolutionary theory stands at the base of moral relativism
and the rejection of traditional morality". Creationist Ken Ham
likens evolution to a horde of termites, weakening society's foundation. In Why Won't They Listen?, Ham suggests that "evolutionary termites" are responsible for pornography, homosexual behavior and lawlessness. He also writes, "I'm not saying that evolution is the cause of abortion or school violence. What I'm saying is that the more a culture abandons God's word as the absolute authority, and the more a culture accepts an evolutionary philosophy, then the way people think, and their attitudes, will also change."
Former Texas
Republican
Representative
Tom DeLay
claimed that the Columbine school shootings
were caused by the teaching of evolution. DeLay is quoted as stating that "Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized [sic] out of some primordial soup." Henry M. Morris
, engineering professor and founder of the Creation Research Society
and the Institute of Creation Research, claims that evolution was part of a pagan
religion that emerged after the Tower of Babel
, was part of Plato
's and Aristotle
's philosophies, and was responsible for everything from war to pornography to the breakup of the nuclear family.
Rev. D. James Kennedy of The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and Coral Ridge Ministries claims that Darwin was responsible for Adolf Hitler
's atrocities. In D. James Kennedy's documentary, and the accompanying pamphlet with the same title, Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, Kennedy states that "To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler." In his efforts to expose the "harmful effects that evolution is still having on our nation, our children, and our world", Kennedy also states that, "We have had 150 years of the theory of Darwinian evolution, and what has it brought us? Whether Darwin intended it or not, millions of deaths, the destruction of those deemed inferior, the devaluing of human life, increasing hopelessness." Discovery Institute
fellow Richard Weikart
has made similar claims, as have other creationists. The claim was central to Ben Stein
's film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
promoting intelligent design
creationism. The Anti-Defamation League
describes such claims as outrageous misuse of the Holocaust
and its imagery, and as trivializing "the many complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry. Hitler did not need Darwin or evolution to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people, and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness. Moreover, anti-Semitism existed long before Darwin ever wrote a word."
Kent Hovind
of Creation Science Evangelism blames communism, socialism, World War I
, World War II
, racism, the Holocaust, Stalin
's war crimes, the Vietnam War
and Pol Pot
's Cambodian killing fields
on evolution, as well as the increase in crime, unwed mothers, and other social ills. Kent Hovind's son Eric Hovind has now taken over the family business while his father is in prison, and claims that evolution is responsible for tattoos, body piercing, premarital sex, unwed births, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), divorce and child abuse.
Supporters of evolution dismiss such criticisms as counterfactual, and some argue that the opposite seems to be the case. A study published by the author and illustrator Gregory S. Paul
found that religious beliefs, including belief in creationism and disbelief in evolution, are positively correlated with social ills like crime. The Barna Group
surveys find that Christians and non-Christians in the US have similar divorce rates, and the highest divorce rates in the US are among Baptists and Pentecostals, both sects which reject evolution and embrace creationism.
Michael Shermer
argued in Scientific American
in October 2006 that evolution supports concepts like family values, avoiding lies, fidelity, moral codes and the rule of law. He goes on to suggest that evolution gives more support to the notion of an omnipotent creator, rather than a tinkerer with limitations based on a human model, the more common image subscribed to by creationists. Careful analyses of the creationist charges that evolution has led to moral relativism and the Holocaust yields the conclusion that these charges appear to be highly suspect. Such analyses conclude that the origins of the Holocaust are more likely to be found in historical Christian anti-semitism
than in evolution.
Evolution has been used to justify Social Darwinism
, the exploitation of "lesser breeds without the law" by "superior races," particularly in the nineteenth century. Strong, typically European, nations successfully expanded their empires, and as such, these strong nations could be said to have "survived" in the struggle for dominance. With this attitude, Europeans, with the exception of Christian missionaries, seldom adopted the customs and languages of local people under their empires.
, or conducive to atheism. It is commonly claimed that all proponents of evolutionary theory are "materialistic
atheists". On the other hand, Davis Young argues that Creation Science
itself is harmful to Christianity
because its bad science will turn more away than it recruits. Young asks, "Can we seriously expect non-Christians to develop a respect for Christianity if we insist on teaching the brand of science that creationism brings with it?" However, evolution neither requires nor rules out the existence of a supernatural being. Philosopher Robert Pennock
makes the comparison that evolution is no more atheistic than plumbing
. H. Allen Orr
, professor of biology at University of Rochester
, notes that:
In addition, a wide range of religions have reconciled a belief in a supernatural being with evolution. Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education
found that "of Americans in the twelve largest Christian denominations, 89.6% belong to churches that support evolution education". These churches include the United Methodist Church
, National Baptist Convention USA
, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
, Presbyterian Church (USA), National Baptist Convention of America, African Methodist Episcopal Church
, the Roman Catholic Church
, the Episcopal Church
, and others. A poll in 2000 done for People for the American Way
found that 70% of the American public felt that evolution was compatible with a belief in God. Only 48% of the people polled could choose the correct definition of evolution from a list, however.
One poll reported in the journal Nature
showed that among American scientists (across various disciplines), about 40 percent believe in both evolution and an active deity (theistic evolution
). This is similar to the results reported for surveys of the general American public. Also, about 40 percent of the scientists polled believe in a God that answers prayer
s, and believe in immortality
. While about 55% of scientists surveyed were atheists, agnostics, or nonreligious theists, atheism is far from universal among scientists who support evolution, or among the general public that supports evolution. Very similar results were reported from a 1997 Gallup survey of the American public and scientists.
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
have been raised since evolutionary ideas
History of evolutionary thought
Evolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science...
came to prominence in the 19th century. When Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, his theory of evolution by natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
initially met opposition from scientists with different theories, but came to be overwhelmingly accepted by the scientific community
Scientific community
The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method...
. The observation of evolutionary processes occurring, as well as the current theory
Modern evolutionary synthesis
The modern evolutionary synthesis is a union of ideas from several biological specialties which provides a widely accepted account of evolution...
explaining that evidence, have been uncontroversial among mainstream biologists for nearly a century.
Since then, nearly all criticisms of evolution have come from religious sources, rather than from the scientific community. In his book on Creationism, The Creationists
The Creationists
The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design is a history of the origins of anti-evolutionism, first published in 1992 by Ronald Numbers as The Creationists: The Evolution of Scientific Creationism...
, historian Ronald Numbers
Ronald Numbers
Ronald L. Numbers is an American historian of science. He was awarded the 2008 George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society for "a lifetime of exceptional scholarly achievement by a distinguished scholar".- Biography :...
traces the religious motivations and scientific pretensions, of prominent creationists from George Frederick Wright
George Frederick Wright
George Frederick Wright was an American geologist and a professor at Oberlin Theological Seminary, first of New Testament language and literature , and then of "harmony of science and revelation" . He wrote prolifically, publishing works in geology, history, and theology...
through George McCready Price
George McCready Price
George McCready Price was a Canadian creationist. He produced several anti-evolution and creationist works, particularly on the subject of flood geology...
, Harry Rimmer
Harry Rimmer
Harry Rimmer was an American creationist, evangelist and writer of anti-evolution pamphlets. He is most prominent as an early pioneer in the creationist movement in the United States.-Early life:...
, John C. Whitcomb
John C. Whitcomb
John Clement Whitcomb, Jr. is an American Old Testament theologian and young earth creationist. Whitcomb is sometimes credited for establishing the modern young earth creationist/creation science movement by authoring with Henry M...
, Henry M. Morris
Henry M. Morris
Henry Madison Morris was an American young earth creationist and Christian apologist. He was one of the founders of the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research...
and his Institute for Creation Research
Institute for Creation Research
The Institute for Creation Research is a Christian institution in Dallas, Texas that specializes in education, research, and media promotion of Creation Science and Biblical creationism. The ICR adopts the Bible as an inerrant and literal documentary of scientific and historical fact as well as...
(and lesser figures) to Phillip E. Johnson and the Intelligent design movement
Intelligent design movement
The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the idea of "intelligent design," which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are...
. Although many religions have accepted the occurrence of evolution, such as those advocating theistic evolution
Theistic evolution
Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution...
, there still exist religious beliefs which reject evolutionary explanations in favor of creationism
Creationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
, the belief that a deity supernaturally created the world largely in its current form. The resultant U.S.
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
-centric creation-evolution controversy
Creation-evolution controversy
The creation–evolution controversy is a recurring cultural, political, and theological dispute about the origins of the Earth, humanity, life, and the universe....
has been a focal point of recent conflict between religion and science
Relationship between religion and science
The relationship between religion and science has been a focus of the demarcation problem. Somewhat related is the claim that science and religion may pursue knowledge using different methodologies. Whereas the scientific method basically relies on reason and empiricism, religion also seeks to...
.
In contrast to earlier objections to evolution that were either strictly scientific or explicitly religious, recent objections to evolution have frequently blurred the distinction between the two. Such objections have often centered on undermining evolution's scientific basis, with the intent of combating the teaching of evolution as fact and opposing the spread of "atheistic materialism". Modern creationism is characterized by movements such as Creation Science
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
, neocreationism, and Intelligent Design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
which argue that the idea of life being directly "designed" by a god or intelligence is at least as scientific as evolutionary theory, and should therefore be taught in public schools
Creation and evolution in public education
The status of creation and evolution in public education has been the subject of substantial debate in legal, political, and religious circles...
. Their arguments against evolution have become widespread, and include objections to evolution's evidence, methodology, plausibility, morality, and scientific acceptance. The scientific community, however, does not accept such objections as having any validity, citing detractors' misinterpretations of scientific method, evidence, and basic physical laws.
Defining evolution
One of the main sources of confusion and ambiguity in the creation-evolution debate is the definition of evolution itself. In the context of biology, evolution is genetic changes in populations of organisms over successive generations. However, the word has a number of different meanings in different fields, from evolutionary computationEvolutionary computation
In computer science, evolutionary computation is a subfield of artificial intelligence that involves combinatorial optimization problems....
to molecular evolution
Molecular evolution
Molecular evolution is in part a process of evolution at the scale of DNA, RNA, and proteins. Molecular evolution emerged as a scientific field in the 1960s as researchers from molecular biology, evolutionary biology and population genetics sought to understand recent discoveries on the structure...
to sociocultural evolution
Sociocultural evolution
Sociocultural evolution is an umbrella term for theories of cultural evolution and social evolution, describing how cultures and societies have changed over time...
to stellar
Stellar evolution
Stellar evolution is the process by which a star undergoes a sequence of radical changes during its lifetime. Depending on the mass of the star, this lifetime ranges from only a few million years to trillions of years .Stellar evolution is not studied by observing the life of a single...
and galactic evolution
Galaxy formation and evolution
The study of galaxy formation and evolution is concerned with the processes that formed a heterogeneous universe from a homogeneous beginning, the formation of the first galaxies, the way galaxies change over time, and the processes that have generated the variety of structures observed in nearby...
. It can even refer to metaphysical evolution, spiritual evolution
Spiritual evolution
Spiritual evolution is the philosophical, theological, esoteric or spiritual idea that nature and human beings and/or human culture evolve, extending from the established cosmological pattern or ascent, or in accordance with certain pre-established potentials...
, or any of a number of evolutionist
Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the biological concept of evolution, specifically to a widely held 19th century belief that organisms are intrinsically bound to increase in complexity. The belief was extended to include cultural evolution and social evolution...
philosophies. When biological evolution is conflated with other evolutionary processes, this can cause errors such as the claim that modern evolutionary theory says anything about abiogenesis
Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose...
or the Big Bang
Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
.
In colloquial contexts, evolution can refer to any sort of progressive development, and often bears a connotation of gradual improvement: here evolution is understood as a process that results in greater quality or complexity. This common definition, when misapplied to biological evolution, leads to frequent misunderstandings. For example, the idea of devolution ("backwards" evolution) is a result of erroneously assuming that evolution is directional or has a specific goal in mind (cf. orthogenesis
Orthogenesis
Orthogenesis, orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution or autogenesis, is the hypothesis that life has an innate tendency to evolve in a unilinear fashion due to some internal or external "driving force". The hypothesis is based on essentialism and cosmic teleology and proposes an intrinsic...
). In reality, the evolution of an organism has no "objective" other than increasing the organism's ability to survive and reproduce in its environment; and its suitability is only defined in relation to this environment. Biologists do not consider any one species, such as humans, to be more highly evolved or advanced than another. Certain sources have been criticized for indicating otherwise due to a tendency to evaluate nonhuman organisms according to anthropocentric standards rather than more objective ones.
Evolution also does not require that organisms become more complex. Although the history of life
Timeline of evolution
This timeline of evolution of life outlines the major events in the development of life on planet Earth since it first originated until the present day. In biology, evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations...
shows an apparent trend towards the evolution of complexity
Evolution of complexity
The evolution of biological complexity is an important outcome of the process of evolution. Evolution has produced some remarkably complex organisms - although the actual level of complexity is very hard to define or measure accurately in biology, with properties such as gene content, the number of...
; there is a question if this appearance of increased complexity is real, or if this conclusion comes from neglecting the fact that the majority of life on earth has always consisted of prokaryote
Prokaryote
The prokaryotes are a group of organisms that lack a cell nucleus , or any other membrane-bound organelles. The organisms that have a cell nucleus are called eukaryotes. Most prokaryotes are unicellular, but a few such as myxobacteria have multicellular stages in their life cycles...
s. In this view, complexity is not a necessary consequence of evolution; rather, it is a consequence of the specific circumstances of evolution on Earth, which frequently made greater complexity advantageous, and thus naturally selected
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
for. Depending on the situation, organisms' complexity can either increase, decrease, or stay the same, and all three of these trends have been observed in evolution.
Creationist sources frequently define evolution according to a colloquial, rather than scientific, meaning. As a result, many attempts to rebut evolution do not address the findings of evolutionary biology (see straw man argument). This also means that advocates of creationism and evolutionary biologists often simply speak past each other.
History
Transmutation of species
Transmutation of species was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory that described the altering of one species into another, and the term is often used to describe 19th century evolutionary ideas that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection...
theory put forward by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Lamarck
Jean-Baptiste Pierre Antoine de Monet, Chevalier de la Marck , often known simply as Lamarck, was a French naturalist...
. These were opposed on scientific grounds, most notably by Georges Cuvier
Georges Cuvier
Georges Chrétien Léopold Dagobert Cuvier or Jean Léopold Nicolas Frédéric Cuvier , known as Georges Cuvier, was a French naturalist and zoologist...
, as well as meeting political and religious objections. These ideas that natural laws
Physical law
A physical law or scientific law is "a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present." Physical laws are typically conclusions...
controlled the development of nature and society gained vast popular audiences with George Combe
George Combe
George Combe , was a Scottish lawyer and writer on phrenology and education. In later years, he devoted himself to the promotion of phrenology. His major work was The Constitution of Man .-Early life:...
's The Constitution of Man
The Constitution of Man
The Constitution of Man is the classical exposition of phrenology, written by George Combe and published in 1828. It furthered the popularity of phrenology by finding a pathway to a personal philosophy which was in tune with the scientific understanding of the time. The Constitution bridged the...
of 1828 and the anonymous Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is a unique work of speculative natural history published anonymously in England in 1844. It brought together various ideas of stellar evolution with the progressive transmutation of species in an accessible narrative which tied together numerous...
of 1844. When Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin
Charles Robert Darwin FRS was an English naturalist. He established that all species of life have descended over time from common ancestry, and proposed the scientific theory that this branching pattern of evolution resulted from a process that he called natural selection.He published his theory...
published his 1859 book On the Origin of Species, within fifteen to twenty years he convinced most of the scientific community
Scientific community
The scientific community consists of the total body of scientists, its relationships and interactions. It is normally divided into "sub-communities" each working on a particular field within science. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method...
that evolution
Evolution
Evolution is any change across successive generations in the heritable characteristics of biological populations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of biological organisation, including species, individual organisms and molecules such as DNA and proteins.Life on Earth...
through common descent
Common descent
In evolutionary biology, a group of organisms share common descent if they have a common ancestor. There is strong quantitative support for the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor....
was true, but while most accepted that natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
was a valid and empirical
Empirical
The word empirical denotes information gained by means of observation or experimentation. Empirical data are data produced by an experiment or observation....
ly testable hypothesis, his view that it was the primary mechanism of evolution was generally rejected.
The earliest objections to Darwinian evolution were both scientific and religious. Darwin's contemporaries eventually came to accept the transmutation of species
Transmutation of species
Transmutation of species was a term used by Jean Baptiste Lamarck in 1809 for his theory that described the altering of one species into another, and the term is often used to describe 19th century evolutionary ideas that preceded Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection...
based upon fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
evidence; forming the X Club
X Club
The X Club was a dining club of nine men who supported the theories of natural selection and academic liberalism in late 19th-century England. Thomas Henry Huxley was the initiator: he called the first meeting for November 3, 1864...
to defend it against the church and wealthy amateurs, although the specific evolutionary mechanism which Darwin provided – natural selection – was actively disputed by alternative theories such as Lamarckism
Lamarckism
Lamarckism is the idea that an organism can pass on characteristics that it acquired during its lifetime to its offspring . It is named after the French biologist Jean-Baptiste Lamarck , who incorporated the action of soft inheritance into his evolutionary theories...
and orthogenesis
Orthogenesis
Orthogenesis, orthogenetic evolution, progressive evolution or autogenesis, is the hypothesis that life has an innate tendency to evolve in a unilinear fashion due to some internal or external "driving force". The hypothesis is based on essentialism and cosmic teleology and proposes an intrinsic...
. Darwin's gradualistic
Gradualism
Gradualism is the belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages.-Politics and society:In politics, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be brought about in small, discrete increments rather than in abrupt strokes such as...
account was also opposed by saltationism
Saltation (biology)
In biology, ""saltation"" is a sudden change from one generation to the next, that is large, or very large, in comparison with the usual variation of an organism...
and catastrophism
Catastrophism
Catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
. Lord Kelvin
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin
William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin OM, GCVO, PC, PRS, PRSE, was a mathematical physicist and engineer. At the University of Glasgow he did important work in the mathematical analysis of electricity and formulation of the first and second laws of thermodynamics, and did much to unify the emerging...
led scientific opposition to gradualism on the basis of his thermodynamic calculations that the Age of the Earth
Age of the Earth
The age of the Earth is 4.54 billion years This age is based on evidence from radiometric age dating of meteorite material and is consistent with the ages of the oldest-known terrestrial and lunar samples...
was between 24 and 400 million years old, an estimate strongly disputed by geologists. These figures were corrected in 1907 when radioactive dating of rocks showed that the Earth was billions of years old. Kelvin's own views favoured a version of theistic evolution
Theistic evolution
Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution...
accelerated by divine guidance. The specific hereditary mechanism Darwin provided, pangenesis
Pangenesis
Pangenesis was Charles Darwin's hypothetical mechanism for heredity. He presented this 'provisional hypothesis' in his 1868 work The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication and felt that it brought 'together a multitude of facts which are at present left disconnected by any efficient...
, lacked any supporting evidence. In the early 20th century, pangenesis was replaced by Mendelian inheritance
Mendelian inheritance
Mendelian inheritance is a scientific description of how hereditary characteristics are passed from parent organisms to their offspring; it underlies much of genetics...
, leading to the rise of the modern evolutionary synthesis
Modern evolutionary synthesis
The modern evolutionary synthesis is a union of ideas from several biological specialties which provides a widely accepted account of evolution...
. The modern synthesis rose to universal acceptance among biologists with the help of new evidence, such as genetics
Genetics
Genetics , a discipline of biology, is the science of genes, heredity, and variation in living organisms....
, which confirmed Darwin's predictions and refuted the competing theories.
Protestantism
Protestantism
Protestantism is one of the three major groupings within Christianity. It is a movement that began in Germany in the early 16th century as a reaction against medieval Roman Catholic doctrines and practices, especially in regards to salvation, justification, and ecclesiology.The doctrines of the...
, especially in America, broke out in "acrid polemics" and argument about evolution from 1860 to the 1870s – with the turning point possibly marked with the death of Louis Agassiz
Louis Agassiz
Jean Louis Rodolphe Agassiz was a Swiss paleontologist, glaciologist, geologist and a prominent innovator in the study of the Earth's natural history. He grew up in Switzerland and became a professor of natural history at University of Neuchâtel...
in 1873 – and by 1880 a form of "Christian evolution" was becoming the consensus. In Britain while publication of The Descent of Man
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex
The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex is a book on evolutionary theory by English naturalist Charles Darwin, first published in 1871. It was Darwin's second great book on evolutionary theory, following his 1859 work, On The Origin of Species. In The Descent of Man, Darwin applies...
by Darwin in 1871 reinvigorated debate from the previous decade, Sir Henry Chadwick
Henry Chadwick (theologian)
Henry Chadwick KBE was a British academic and Church of England clergyman. A former Dean of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford — and as such also head of Christ Church, Oxford — he also served as Master of Peterhouse, Cambridge, becoming the first person in four centuries to have headed a college at...
notes a steady acceptance of evolution "among more educated Christians" between 1860 and 1885. This led evolutionary theory to be "both permissible and respectable" by 1876. Frederick Temple
Frederick Temple
Frederick Temple was an English academic, teacher, churchman and Archbishop of Canterbury from 1896 until his death.-Early life:...
's lectures on Relations between Religion and Science (1884) speaking on how evolution was not "antagonistic" to religion highlighted this trend. Temple's appointment to Archbishop of Canterbury
Archbishop of Canterbury
The Archbishop of Canterbury is the senior bishop and principal leader of the Church of England, the symbolic head of the worldwide Anglican Communion, and the diocesan bishop of the Diocese of Canterbury. In his role as head of the Anglican Communion, the archbishop leads the third largest group...
in 1896 showed the broad acceptance of evolution within the church hierarchy.
For decades Catholicism
Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church
Since the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859, the attitude of the Catholic Church on the theory of evolution has slowly been refined. For about 100 years, there was no authoritative pronouncement on the subject. By 1950, Pope Pius XII agreed to the academic freedom to...
avoided official refutation of evolution. However, it would rein in Catholics who proposed that evolution could be reconciled with the Bible, as this conflicted with First Vatican Council
First Vatican Council
The First Vatican Council was convoked by Pope Pius IX on 29 June 1868, after a period of planning and preparation that began on 6 December 1864. This twentieth ecumenical council of the Roman Catholic Church, held three centuries after the Council of Trent, opened on 8 December 1869 and adjourned...
's (1869–70) finding that everything was created out of nothing
Ex nihilo
Ex nihilo is a Latin phrase meaning "out of nothing". It often appears in conjunction with the concept of creation, as in creatio ex nihilo, meaning "creation out of nothing"—chiefly in philosophical or theological contexts, but also occurs in other fields.In theology, the common phrase creatio ex...
by God, and to question that could lead to excommunication
Excommunication
Excommunication is a religious censure used to deprive, suspend or limit membership in a religious community. The word means putting [someone] out of communion. In some religions, excommunication includes spiritual condemnation of the member or group...
. In 1950, the encyclical Humani Generis of Pope Pius XII
Pope Pius XII
The Venerable Pope Pius XII , born Eugenio Maria Giuseppe Giovanni Pacelli , reigned as Pope, head of the Catholic Church and sovereign of Vatican City State, from 2 March 1939 until his death in 1958....
first mentioned evolution directly and officially. It allowed for inquiry into humans coming from pre-existing living matter, but to not question Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve
Adam and Eve were, according to the Genesis creation narratives, the first human couple to inhabit Earth, created by YHWH, the God of the ancient Hebrews...
or the creation of the soul
Soul
A soul in certain spiritual, philosophical, and psychological traditions is the incorporeal essence of a person or living thing or object. Many philosophical and spiritual systems teach that humans have souls, and others teach that all living things and even inanimate objects have souls. The...
. In 1996, Pope John Paul II
Pope John Paul II
Blessed Pope John Paul II , born Karol Józef Wojtyła , reigned as Pope of the Catholic Church and Sovereign of Vatican City from 16 October 1978 until his death on 2 April 2005, at of age. His was the second-longest documented pontificate, which lasted ; only Pope Pius IX ...
stated evolution was "more than a hypothesis" and acknowledged the large body of work accumulated in its support, but reiterated that any attempt to give a material explanation of the human soul was "incompatible with the truth about man."
Muslim
Muslim
A Muslim, also spelled Moslem, is an adherent of Islam, a monotheistic, Abrahamic religion based on the Quran, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God as revealed to prophet Muhammad. "Muslim" is the Arabic term for "submitter" .Muslims believe that God is one and incomparable...
reaction covered the gamut with those believing in literal creation from the Qur'an
Qur'an
The Quran , also transliterated Qur'an, Koran, Alcoran, Qur’ān, Coran, Kuran, and al-Qur’ān, is the central religious text of Islam, which Muslims consider the verbatim word of God . It is regarded widely as the finest piece of literature in the Arabic language...
while many educated Muslims subscribed to a version of theistic or guided evolution where the Qur'an reinforced rather than contradicted mainstream science. This occurred relatively quickly as medieval Madrasah
Madrasah
Madrasah is the Arabic word for any type of educational institution, whether secular or religious...
's taught ideas of Al-Jahiz
Al-Jahiz
Al-Jāḥiẓ was an Arabic prose writer and author of works of literature, Mu'tazili theology, and politico-religious polemics.In biology, Al-Jahiz introduced the concept of food chains and also proposed a scheme of animal evolution that entailed...
, a Muslim scholar from the 9th century, who proposed concepts similar to natural selection. However, acceptance of evolution remains low in the Muslim world as prominent figures reject evolution's underpinning philosophy of materialism
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
as unsound to human origins and a denial of Allah
Allah
Allah is a word for God used in the context of Islam. In Arabic, the word means simply "God". It is used primarily by Muslims and Bahá'ís, and often, albeit not exclusively, used by Arabic-speaking Eastern Catholic Christians, Maltese Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Mizrahi Jews and...
. Further objections by Muslim scholars and writers largely reflect those put forward in the Western world.
Regardless of acceptance from major religious hierarchies, early religious objections to Darwin's theory are still used in opposition to evolution. The ideas that species change over time through natural processes and that different species share common ancestors
Common descent
In evolutionary biology, a group of organisms share common descent if they have a common ancestor. There is strong quantitative support for the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor....
seemed to contradict the Genesis account of Creation. Believers in Biblical infallibility
Biblical infallibility
Biblical infallibility is the belief that what the Bible says regarding matters of faith and Christian practice is wholly useful and true. It is the "belief that the Bible is completely trustworthy as a guide to salvation and the life of faith and will not fail to accomplish its purpose...
attacked Darwinism as heretical. The natural theology
Natural theology
Natural theology is a branch of theology based on reason and ordinary experience. Thus it is distinguished from revealed theology which is based on scripture and religious experiences of various kinds; and also from transcendental theology, theology from a priori reasoning.Marcus Terentius Varro ...
of the early 19th century was typified by Paley
William Paley
William Paley was a British Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology, which made use of the watchmaker analogy .-Life:Paley was Born in Peterborough, England, and was...
's watchmaker analogy
Watchmaker analogy
The watchmaker analogy, or watchmaker argument, is a teleological argument for the existence of God. By way of an analogy, the argument states that design implies a designer...
, an argument from design
Teleological argument
A teleological or design argument is an a posteriori argument for the existence of God based on apparent design and purpose in the universe. The argument is based on an interpretation of teleology wherein purpose and intelligent design appear to exist in nature beyond the scope of any such human...
still used by the creationist movement. Natural theology included a range of ideas and arguments from the outset, and when Darwin's theory was published, ideas of theistic evolution were presented in which evolution is accepted as a secondary cause open to scientific investigation, while still holding belief in God as a first cause with a non-specified role in guiding evolution and creating humans. This position has been adopted by denominations of Christianity and Judaism
Jewish views on evolution
Jewish views on evolution includes a continuum of views about evolution, creationism, and the origin of life. Today, many Jews accept the science of evolutionary theory and do not see it as incompatible with traditional Judaism, thus endorsing theistic evolution.-Classical rabbinic teachings :The...
in line with modernist theology
Liberal Christianity
Liberal Christianity, sometimes called liberal theology, is an umbrella term covering diverse, philosophically and biblically informed religious movements and ideas within Christianity from the late 18th century and onward...
which views the Bible
Bible
The Bible refers to any one of the collections of the primary religious texts of Judaism and Christianity. There is no common version of the Bible, as the individual books , their contents and their order vary among denominations...
and Torah
Torah
Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five books of the bible—Genesis , Exodus , Leviticus , Numbers and Deuteronomy Torah- A scroll containing the first five books of the BibleThe Torah , is name given by Jews to the first five...
as allegorical thus removing the conflict between evolution and religion.
However, in the 1920s Christian fundamentalists
Fundamentalist Christianity
Christian fundamentalism, also known as Fundamentalist Christianity, or Fundamentalism, arose out of British and American Protestantism in the late 19th century and early 20th century among evangelical Christians...
in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
developed their literalist arguments against Modernist theology into opposition to the teaching of evolution due to fears that ‘‘Darwinism
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
’’ had led to German militarism and was a threat to religion and morality. This opposition developed into the creation-evolution controversy
Creation-evolution controversy
The creation–evolution controversy is a recurring cultural, political, and theological dispute about the origins of the Earth, humanity, life, and the universe....
involving Christian literalists in the United States objecting to the teaching of evolution in public schools. Although early objections dismissed evolution for contradicting their interpretation of the Bible, this argument was invalidated when the Supreme Court
Supreme Court of the United States
The Supreme Court of the United States is the highest court in the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all state and federal courts, and original jurisdiction over a small range of cases...
ruled in Epperson v. Arkansas
Epperson v. Arkansas
Epperson v. Arkansas, 393 U.S. 97 , was a United States Supreme Court case that invalidated an Arkansas statute that prohibited the teaching of human evolution in the public schools...
that forbidding the teaching of evolution on religious grounds violated the Establishment Clause
Establishment Clause of the First Amendment
The Establishment Clause is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution, stating, Together with the Free Exercise Clause The Establishment Clause is the first of several pronouncements in the First Amendment to the United States Constitution,...
.
Since then creationists have developed more nuanced objections to evolution, alleging variously that it is unscientific, infringes on creationists' religious freedoms
Freedom of religion
Freedom of religion is a principle that supports the freedom of an individual or community, in public or private, to manifest religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship, and observance; the concept is generally recognized also to include the freedom to change religion or not to follow any...
or that the acceptance of evolution is a religious stance. Creationists have appealed to democratic principles of fairness, arguing that evolution is controversial, and that science classrooms should therefore "Teach the Controversy
Teach the Controversy
Teach the Controversy is the name of a Discovery Institute campaign to promote intelligent design, a variant of traditional creationism, while attempting to discredit evolution in United States public high school science courses...
". These objections to evolution culminated in the intelligent design movement
Intelligent design movement
The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the idea of "intelligent design," which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are...
in the early 2000s that unsuccessfully
Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District
Tammy Kitzmiller, et al. v. Dover Area School District, et al. was the first direct challenge brought in the United States federal courts testing a public school district policy that required the teaching of intelligent design...
attempted to present itself as a scientific alternative to evolution.
Scientific acceptance
Recent objections to evolutionary theory have focused on its scientific validity, or attempting to come up with alternative ideas such as CreationismCreationism
Creationism is the religious beliefthat humanity, life, the Earth, and the universe are the creation of a supernatural being, most often referring to the Abrahamic god. As science developed from the 18th century onwards, various views developed which aimed to reconcile science with the Genesis...
to debate its findings. Creationists often argue, for example, that evolution is unproven, non-factual, or controversial.
Status as a theory
Critics of evolution frequently assert that evolution is "just a theory," with the intent of emphasizing that scientific theories are never absolute, or of characterizing it as a matter of opinion rather than of fact or evidence. This reflects a misunderstanding of the meaning of theoryTheory
The English word theory was derived from a technical term in Ancient Greek philosophy. The word theoria, , meant "a looking at, viewing, beholding", and referring to contemplation or speculation, as opposed to action...
in a scientific context: whereas in colloquial speech a theory is a conjecture or guess, in science a theory
Scientific theory
A scientific theory comprises a collection of concepts, including abstractions of observable phenomena expressed as quantifiable properties, together with rules that express relationships between observations of such concepts...
is an explanation whose predictions have been proven true by experiments or other evidence. Evolutionary theory refers to an explanation for the diversity of species and their ancestry which has met extremely high standards of scientific evidence. An example of evolution as theory is the modern synthesis
Modern evolutionary synthesis
The modern evolutionary synthesis is a union of ideas from several biological specialties which provides a widely accepted account of evolution...
of Darwinian natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
and Mendelian inheritance
Mendelian inheritance
Mendelian inheritance is a scientific description of how hereditary characteristics are passed from parent organisms to their offspring; it underlies much of genetics...
. As with any scientific theory, the modern synthesis is constantly debated, tested, and refined by scientists, but there is an overwhelming consensus in the scientific community that it remains the only robust model that accounts for the known facts concerning evolution.
Critics also state that evolution is not a fact
Fact
A fact is something that has really occurred or is actually the case. The usual test for a statement of fact is verifiability, that is whether it can be shown to correspond to experience. Standard reference works are often used to check facts...
. In science, a fact is a verified empirical observation; in colloquial contexts, however, a fact can simply refer to anything for which there is overwhelming evidence. For example, in common usage theories such as "the Earth revolves around the Sun
Heliocentrism
Heliocentrism, or heliocentricism, is the astronomical model in which the Earth and planets revolve around a stationary Sun at the center of the universe. The word comes from the Greek . Historically, heliocentrism was opposed to geocentrism, which placed the Earth at the center...
" and "objects fall due to gravity" may be referred to as "facts", even though they are purely theoretical. From a scientific standpoint, therefore, evolution may be called a "fact" for the same reason that gravity can: under the scientific definition, evolution is an observable process that occurs whenever a population of organisms genetically changes over time. Under the colloquial definition, the theory of evolution can also be called a fact, referring to this theory's well-established nature. Thus, evolution is widely considered both a theory and a fact
Evolution as theory and fact
"Evolution is both fact and theory" is a statement that appears in numerous publications on biological evolution. The statement is framed to clarify misconceptions about the philosophy of evolution primarily in response to creationist statements that "evolution is only a theory"...
by scientists.
Similar confusion is involved in objections that evolution is "unproven," since no theory in science is known to be absolutely true, only verified by empirical evidence. This distinction is an important one in philosophy of science
Philosophy of science
The philosophy of science is concerned with the assumptions, foundations, methods and implications of science. It is also concerned with the use and merit of science and sometimes overlaps metaphysics and epistemology by exploring whether scientific results are actually a study of truth...
, as it relates to the lack of absolute certainty
Certainty
Certainty can be defined as either:# perfect knowledge that has total security from error, or# the mental state of being without doubtObjectively defined, certainty is total continuity and validity of all foundational inquiry, to the highest degree of precision. Something is certain only if no...
in all empirical claims, not just evolution. Strict proof
Proof theory
Proof theory is a branch of mathematical logic that represents proofs as formal mathematical objects, facilitating their analysis by mathematical techniques. Proofs are typically presented as inductively-defined data structures such as plain lists, boxed lists, or trees, which are constructed...
is possible only in formal science
Formal science
The formal sciences are the branches of knowledge that are concerned with formal systems, such as logic, mathematics, theoretical computer science, information theory, systems theory, decision theory, statistics, and some aspects of linguistics....
s such as logic and mathematics, not natural science
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
s (where terms such as "validated" or "corroborated" are more appropriate). Thus, to say that evolution is not proven is trivially true, but no more an indictment of evolution than calling it a "theory". The confusion arises, however, in that the colloquial meaning of proof is simply "compelling evidence", in which case scientists would indeed consider evolution "proven."
Degree of acceptance
In 1999 a new major objection to evolution appeared in Kansas, and is in a sense self-fulfillingSelf-fulfilling prophecy
A self-fulfilling prophecy is a prediction that directly or indirectly causes itself to become true, by the very terms of the prophecy itself, due to positive feedback between belief and behavior. Although examples of such prophecies can be found in literature as far back as ancient Greece and...
: it argues that evolution is controversial or contentious. Unlike past creationist arguments which sought to abolish the teaching of evolution altogether, this argument makes the weaker claim that evolution, being controversial, should be presented alongside other, alternative views, and students should be allowed to evaluate and choose between the options on their own. This appeal to fairness and a balanced approach in which conflicting views are given equal time appeals to American creationists, and was endorsed by U.S. President George W. Bush
George W. Bush
George Walker Bush is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States, from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, having served from 1995 to 2000....
.
This objection forms the basis of the "Teach the Controversy
Teach the Controversy
Teach the Controversy is the name of a Discovery Institute campaign to promote intelligent design, a variant of traditional creationism, while attempting to discredit evolution in United States public high school science courses...
" campaign, an attempt by the Discovery Institute
Discovery Institute
The Discovery Institute is a non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design...
to promote the teaching of intelligent design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
in public schools. This in turn forms a major part of the Institute's "wedge strategy
Wedge strategy
The wedge strategy is a political and social action plan authored by the Discovery Institute, the hub of the intelligent design movement. The strategy was put forth in a Discovery Institute manifesto known as the Wedge Document, which describes a broad social, political, and academic agenda whose...
", an attempt to gradually undermine evolution and ultimately to "reverse the stifling materialist
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
world view and replace it with a science consonant with Christian and theistic convictions".
Scientists and U.S. courts have rejected this objection on the grounds that science is not based on appeals to popularity, but on evidence. The scientific consensus
Scientific consensus
Scientific consensus is the collective judgment, position, and opinion of the community of scientists in a particular field of study. Consensus implies general agreement, though not necessarily unanimity. Scientific consensus is not by itself a scientific argument, and it is not part of the...
of biologists, not popular opinion or fairness, determines what is considered acceptable science, and it is argued that although evolution is clearly controversial in the public arena, it is entirely uncontroversial among experts in the field.
In response, creationists have disputed the level of scientific support for evolution. The Discovery Institute has gathered over 600 scientists since 2001 to sign "A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism
A Scientific Dissent From Darwinism
A Scientific Dissent from Darwinism is a statement issued in 2001 by the Discovery Institute, a conservative non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington, USA, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design.The statement expresses skepticism about the ability of random...
" in order to show that there are a number of scientists who dispute what they refer to as "Darwinian evolution". This statement did not profess outright disbelief in evolution, but expressed skepticism as to the ability of "random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life." Several counter-petitions have been launched in turn, including A Scientific Support for Darwinism
A Scientific Support for Darwinism
A Scientific Support for Darwinism was a four day, word-of-mouth petition of scientists in support of evolution. Inspired by Project Steve, it was initiated in 2005 by archaeologist R...
, which gathered over 7,000 signatures in four days, and Project Steve
Project Steve
Project Steve is a list of scientists with the given name Steven or a variation thereof who "support evolution"...
, a tongue-in-cheek petition that has gathered 1,151 (as of January 18, 2011) evolution-supporting scientists named "Steve".
Creationists have argued for over a century that evolution is "a theory in crisis
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis
Evolution: A Theory in Crisis is a 1985 book by Michael Denton in which he claims that the scientific theory of evolution by natural selection is a "theory in crisis"...
" that will soon be overturned, based on objections that it lacks reliable evidence or violates natural laws. These objections have been rejected by most scientists, as have claims that intelligent design, or any other creationist explanation, meets the basic scientific standards that would be required to make them scientific alternatives to evolution. It is also argued that even if evidence against evolution exists, it is a false dilemma
False dilemma
A false dilemma is a type of logical fallacy that involves a situation in which only two alternatives are considered, when in fact there are additional options...
to characterize this as evidence for intelligent design.
A similar objection to evolution is that certain scientific authorities – mainly pre-modern ones – have doubted or rejected evolution. Most commonly, it is argued that Darwin "recanted" on his deathbed, a false anecdote originating from the Lady Hope Story
Elizabeth Hope
Elizabeth Reid, Lady Hope, née Cotton was a British evangelist who claimed in 1915 to have visited the British naturalist Charles Darwin shortly before his death in 1882, during which interview Hope claimed Darwin had had second thoughts about publicizing the theory of evolution.- Biography...
. These objections are generally rejected as appeals to authority. Even if this myth were true, it would hold no bearing on the merit of the theory itself.
Scientific status
A common neo-creationist objection to evolution is that evolution does not adhere to normal scientific standards—that it is not genuinely scientific. It is argued that evolutionary biology does not follow the scientific methodScientific method
Scientific method refers to a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry must be based on gathering empirical and measurable evidence subject to specific principles of...
, and therefore should not be taught in science classes, or at least should be taught alongside other views (i.e., creationism). These objections often deal with the very nature of evolutionary theory and the scientific method.
Religious nature
Creationists commonly argue against evolution on the grounds that "evolution is a religion; it is not a science". The purpose of this criticism is to undermine the higher ground biologists claim in debating creationists, and to reframe the debate from being between science (evolution) and religion (creationism) to being between two equally religious beliefs – or even to argue that evolution is religious while intelligent designIntelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
is not. Those that oppose evolution frequently refer to supporters of evolution as "evolutionists
Evolutionism
Evolutionism refers to the biological concept of evolution, specifically to a widely held 19th century belief that organisms are intrinsically bound to increase in complexity. The belief was extended to include cultural evolution and social evolution...
" or "Darwinists
Darwinism
Darwinism is a set of movements and concepts related to ideas of transmutation of species or of evolution, including some ideas with no connection to the work of Charles Darwin....
".
The arguments for evolution being a religion generally amount to arguments by analogy
Analogy
Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another particular subject , and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process...
: it is argued that evolution and religion have one or more things in common, and that therefore evolution is a religion. Examples of claims made in such arguments are statements that evolution is based on faith
Faith
Faith is confidence or trust in a person or thing, or a belief that is not based on proof. In religion, faith is a belief in a transcendent reality, a religious teacher, a set of teachings or a Supreme Being. Generally speaking, it is offered as a means by which the truth of the proposition,...
, that supporters of evolution revere Darwin as a prophet, and that supporters of evolution dogma
Dogma
Dogma is the established belief or doctrine held by a religion, or a particular group or organization. It is authoritative and not to be disputed, doubted, or diverged from, by the practitioners or believers...
tically reject alternative suggestions out-of-hand. These claims have become more popular in recent years as the neocreationist movement has sought to distance itself from religion, thus giving it more reason to make use of a seemingly anti-religious analogy.
In response, supporters of evolution have argued that no scientist's claims, including Darwin's, are treated as sacrosanct, as shown by the aspects of Darwin's theory that have been rejected or revised by scientists over the years, to form first Neo-Darwinism
Neo-Darwinism
Neo-Darwinism is the 'modern synthesis' of Darwinian evolution through natural selection with Mendelian genetics, the latter being a set of primary tenets specifying that evolution involves the transmission of characteristics from parent to child through the mechanism of genetic transfer, rather...
and later the modern evolutionary synthesis
Modern evolutionary synthesis
The modern evolutionary synthesis is a union of ideas from several biological specialties which provides a widely accepted account of evolution...
. The claim that evolution relies on faith, often based on the creationist belief that evolution has never been observed, is likewise rejected on the grounds that evolution has strong supporting evidence, and therefore does not require faith.
In general, the argument that evolution is religious has been rejected on the grounds that religion
Religion
Religion is a collection of cultural systems, belief systems, and worldviews that establishes symbols that relate humanity to spirituality and, sometimes, to moral values. Many religions have narratives, symbols, traditions and sacred histories that are intended to give meaning to life or to...
is not defined by how dogmatic or zealous its adherents are, but by its spiritual or supernatural beliefs. Evolutionary supporters point out evolution is neither dogmatic nor based on faith, and they accuse creationists of equivocating
Equivocation
Equivocation is classified as both a formal and informal logical fallacy. It is the misleading use of a term with more than one meaning or sense...
between the strict definition of religion and its colloquial usage to refer to anything that is enthusiastically or dogmatically engaged in. U.S. courts have also rejected this objection:
Assuming for the purposes of argument, however, that evolution is a religion or religious tenet, the remedy is to stop the teaching of evolution, not establish another religion in opposition to it. Yet it is clearly established in the case law, and perhaps also in common sense, that evolution is not a religion and that teaching evolution does not violate the Establishment Clause.
A related claim is that evolution is atheistic; creationists sometimes merge the two claims and describe evolution as an "atheistic religion" (cf. humanism
Humanism
Humanism is an approach in study, philosophy, world view or practice that focuses on human values and concerns. In philosophy and social science, humanism is a perspective which affirms some notion of human nature, and is contrasted with anti-humanism....
). This argument against evolution is also frequently generalized into a criticism of all science; it is argued that "science is an atheistic religion", on the grounds that its methodological naturalism
Naturalism (philosophy)
Naturalism commonly refers to the philosophical viewpoint that the natural universe and its natural laws and forces operate in the universe, and that nothing exists beyond the natural universe or, if it does, it does not affect the natural universe that we know...
is as unproven, and thus as "faith-based", as the supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
and theistic beliefs of creationism.
Unfalsifiability
A statement is considered falsifiableFalsifiability
Falsifiability or refutability of an assertion, hypothesis or theory is the logical possibility that it can be contradicted by an observation or the outcome of a physical experiment...
if there is an observation or a test that could be made that would demonstrate that the statement is false. Statements that are not falsifiable cannot be examined by scientific investigation since they permit no tests that evaluate their accuracy. Creationists such as Henry M. Morris
Henry M. Morris
Henry Madison Morris was an American young earth creationist and Christian apologist. He was one of the founders of the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research...
have claimed that evolution is unfalsifiable. They claim that any observation can be fitted into the evolutionary framework, and that therefore it is impossible to demonstrate that evolution is wrong. As such, they claim that evolution is non-scientific.
However, evolution is considered falsifiable by scientists because it can make predictions that, were they contradicted by the evidence, would falsify evolution. Several kinds of evidence have been proposed that could falsify evolution, such as the fossil record showing no change over time, confirmation that mutations are prevented from accumulating, or observations showing organisms being created supernaturally or spontaneously. Many of Darwin's ideas and assertions of fact have been falsified as evolutionary science has developed and has continued to confirm his central concepts. Despite this, creationism consists largely of unsubstantiated claims that evolution has been falsified. In contrast, creationist explanations involving the direct intervention of the supernatural
Supernatural
The supernatural or is that which is not subject to the laws of nature, or more figuratively, that which is said to exist above and beyond nature...
in the physical world are not falsifiable, because any result of an experiment or investigation could be the unpredictable action of an omnipotent deity.
In 1976, philosopher Karl Popper
Karl Popper
Sir Karl Raimund Popper, CH FRS FBA was an Austro-British philosopher and a professor at the London School of Economics...
said that "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory but a metaphysical research programme". However, Popper later recanted and offered a more nuanced view of its status:
However, Darwin's own most important contribution to the theory of evolution, his theory of natural selection, is difficult to test. There are some tests, even some experimental tests; and in some cases, such as the famous phenomenon known as 'industrial melanismMelanismMelanism is an undue development of dark-colored pigment in the skin or its appendages, and the opposite of albinism. It is also the medical term for black jaundice.The word is deduced from the , meaning black pigment....
', we can observe natural selection happening under our very eyes, as it were. Nevertheless, really severe tests of the theory of natural selection are hard to come by, much more so than tests of otherwise comparable theories in physics or chemistry.
The most direct evidence that evolutionary theory is falsifiable may be the original words of Charles Darwin who, in chapter 6 of On the Origin of Species wrote: "If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed, which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive, slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down."
In response to the unfalsifiability criticism of evolutionary theory, numerous examples of potential ways to falsify evolution have been proposed. J.B.S. Haldane, when asked what hypothetical evidence could disprove evolution, replied "fossil rabbits in the Precambrian era
Precambrian rabbit
At one time, "Precambrian rabbits" or "fossil rabbits in the Precambrian" rock samples became popular imagery in debates about the validity of the theory of evolution and the scientific field of evolutionary biology. The images are reported to have been among responses given by the biologist, J.B.S...
". Numerous other potential ways to falsify evolution have also been proposed. For example, the fact that humans have one fewer pair of chromosomes than the great apes
Great Apes
Great Apes may refer to*Great apes, species in the biological family Hominidae, including humans, chimpanzees, gorillas, and orangutans*Great Apes , a 1997 novel by Will Self...
offered a testable hypothesis involving the fusion or splitting of chromosomes from a common ancestor. The fusion hypothesis was confirmed in 2005 by discovery that human chromosome 2 is homologous with a fusion of two chromosomes that remain separate in other primates. Extra, inactive telomeres and centromeres remain on human chromosome 2 as a result of the fusion. The assertion of common descent could also have been disproven with the invention of DNA analysis. If true, human DNA should be far more similar to chimpanzees and other great apes, than to other mammals. If not, then common descent is falsified. DNA analysis has shown that humans and chimpanzees share a large percentage of their DNA (between 95% to 99.4% depending on the measure). Also, the evolution of chimpanzee
Chimpanzee
Chimpanzee, sometimes colloquially chimp, is the common name for the two extant species of ape in the genus Pan. The Congo River forms the boundary between the native habitat of the two species:...
s and humans from a common ancestor predicts a (geologically) recent common ancestor. Numerous transitional fossils have since been found. Hence, human evolution has passed several falsifiable tests.
A related claim is that natural selection
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
is tautological
Tautology (logic)
In logic, a tautology is a formula which is true in every possible interpretation. Philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein first applied the term to redundancies of propositional logic in 1921; it had been used earlier to refer to rhetorical tautologies, and continues to be used in that alternate sense...
. Specifically, it is often argued that the phrase "survival of the fittest
Survival of the fittest
"Survival of the fittest" is a phrase originating in evolutionary theory, as an alternative description of Natural selection. The phrase is today commonly used in contexts that are incompatible with the original meaning as intended by its first two proponents: British polymath philosopher Herbert...
" is a tautology, in that fitness
Fitness (biology)
Fitness is a central idea in evolutionary theory. It can be defined either with respect to a genotype or to a phenotype in a given environment...
is defined as ability to survive and reproduce. However, this phrase, first used by Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer
Herbert Spencer was an English philosopher, biologist, sociologist, and prominent classical liberal political theorist of the Victorian era....
in 1864, is rarely used by biologists. Additionally, fitness is more accurately defined as the state of possessing traits that make survival more likely; this definition, unlike simple "survivability", avoids being trivially true.
Similarly, it is argued that evolutionary theory is circular reasoning
Circular reasoning
Circular reasoning, or in other words, paradoxical thinking, is a type of formal logical fallacy in which the proposition to be proved is assumed implicitly or explicitly in one of the premises. For example:"Only an untrustworthy person would run for office...
, in that evidence is interpreted as supporting evolution, but evolution is required to interpret the evidence. An example of this is the claim that geological strata
Stratum
In geology and related fields, a stratum is a layer of sedimentary rock or soil with internally consistent characteristics that distinguish it from other layers...
are dated through the fossils they hold, but that fossils are in turn dated by the strata they are in. However, in most cases strata are not dated by their fossils, but by their position relative to other strata and by radiometric dating
Radiometric dating
Radiometric dating is a technique used to date materials such as rocks, usually based on a comparison between the observed abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates...
, and most strata were dated before the theory of evolution was formulated.
In his book, Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism, philosopher of science Philip Kitcher specifically addresses the "falsifiability" question by taking into account notable philosophical critiques of Popper by Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav Hempel
Carl Gustav "Peter" Hempel was a philosopher of science and a major figure in 20th-century logical empiricism...
and Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine
Willard Van Orman Quine was an American philosopher and logician in the analytic tradition...
that reject his definition of theory as a set of falsifiable statements. As Kitcher points out, if one took a strictly Popperian view of “theory,” observations of Uranus
Uranus
Uranus is the seventh planet from the Sun. It has the third-largest planetary radius and fourth-largest planetary mass in the Solar System. It is named after the ancient Greek deity of the sky Uranus , the father of Cronus and grandfather of Zeus...
when first discovered in 1781 would have “falsified” Newton
Isaac Newton
Sir Isaac Newton PRS was an English physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural philosopher, alchemist, and theologian, who has been "considered by many to be the greatest and most influential scientist who ever lived."...
’s celestial mechanics
Celestial mechanics
Celestial mechanics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the motions of celestial objects. The field applies principles of physics, historically classical mechanics, to astronomical objects such as stars and planets to produce ephemeris data. Orbital mechanics is a subfield which focuses on...
. Rather, people suggested that another planet influenced Uranus’ orbit – and this prediction was indeed eventually confirmed. Kitcher agrees with Popper that “there is surely something right in the idea that a science can succeed only if it can fail.” But he insists that we view scientific theories as consisting of an “elaborate collection of statements,” some of which are not falsifiable, and others – what he calls “auxiliary hypotheses,” which are.
According to Kitcher, good scientific theories must have three features – unity, fecundity, and independent testability of auxiliary hypotheses:
Unity
- “A science should be unified .... Good theories consist of just one problem-solving strategy, or a small family of problem-solving strategies, that can be applied to a wide range of problems” (1982: 47).
Fecundity
A great scientific theory, like Newton’s, opens up new areas of research... Because a theory presents a new way of looking at the world, it can lead us to ask new questions, and so to embark on new and fruitful lines of inquiry... Typically, a flourishing science is incomplete. At any time, it raises more questions than it can currently answer. But incompleteness is no vice. On the contrary, incompleteness is the mother of fecundity... A good theory should be productive; it should raise new questions and presume that those questions can be answered without giving up its problem-solving strategies (1982: 47–48).
Auxiliary hypotheses that are independently testable
- “An auxiliary hypothesis ought to be testable independently of the particular problem it is introduced to solve, independently of the theory it is designed to save” (1982: 46) (e.g. the evidence for the existence of NeptuneNeptuneNeptune is the eighth and farthest planet from the Sun in the Solar System. Named for the Roman god of the sea, it is the fourth-largest planet by diameter and the third largest by mass. Neptune is 17 times the mass of Earth and is slightly more massive than its near-twin Uranus, which is 15 times...
is independent of the anomalies in Uranus’s orbit).
Like other definitions of theories, including Popper’s, Kitcher makes it clear that a good theory includes statements that have (in his terms) “observational consequences.” But, like the observation of irregularities in Uranus’s orbit, falsification is only one possible consequence of an observation. The production of new hypotheses is another possible – and equally important – observational consequence. Kitcher’s account of a good theory is based not only on his understanding of how physical sciences work. He is also taking into account the way the life sciences
Life sciences
The life sciences comprise the fields of science that involve the scientific study of living organisms, like plants, animals, and human beings. While biology remains the centerpiece of the life sciences, technological advances in molecular biology and biotechnology have led to a burgeoning of...
work.
From Kitcher’s point of view, Darwinian theory not only meets the three conditions for a good scientific theory; it is without question an extraordinarily successful theory:
The heart of Darwinian evolutionary theory is a family of problem-solving strategies, related by their common employment of a particular style of historical narrative. A Darwinian history is a piece of reasoning of the following general form. The first step consists in a description of an ancestral population of organisms. The reasoning proceeds by tracing the modification of the population through subsequent generations, showing how characteristics were selected, inherited, and became prevalent. Reasoning like this can be used to answer a host of biological questions.
The same kind of story can be told again and again to answer all sorts of questions about all sorts of living things. Evolutionary theory is unified because so many diverse questions ... can be addressed by advancing Darwinian histories. Moreover, these narratives constantly make claims that are subject to independent check.
Darwin not only provided a scheme for unifying the diversity of life. He also gave a structure to our ignorance. After Darwin, it was important to resolve general issues about the presuppositions of Darwinian histories. The way in which biology should proceed had been made admirably plain, and it was clear that biologists had to tackle questions for which they had, as yet, no answers.
Evidence
Objections to the evidence that evolution occurs tend to be more concrete and specific, often involving direct analysis of evolutionary biology's methods and claims.Lack of observation
Drosophila melanogaster
Drosophila melanogaster is a species of Diptera, or the order of flies, in the family Drosophilidae. The species is known generally as the common fruit fly or vinegar fly. Starting from Charles W...
, mice
MICE
-Fiction:*Mice , alien species in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*The Mice -Acronyms:* "Meetings, Incentives, Conferencing, Exhibitions", facilities terminology for events...
and bacteria
Bacteria
Bacteria are a large domain of prokaryotic microorganisms. Typically a few micrometres in length, bacteria have a wide range of shapes, ranging from spheres to rods and spirals...
in the laboratory, and of tilapia
Tilapia
Tilapia , is the common name for nearly a hundred species of cichlid fish from the tilapiine cichlid tribe. Tilapia inhabit a variety of fresh water habitats, including shallow streams, ponds, rivers and lakes. Historically, they have been of major importance in artisan fishing in Africa and the...
in the field. Such studies on experimental evolution
Experimental evolution
In evolutionary and experimental biology, the field of experimental evolution is concerned with testing hypotheses and theories of evolution by use of controlled experiments. Evolution may be observed in the laboratory as populations adapt to new environmental conditions and/or change by such...
, particularly those using microorganisms, are now providing important insights into how evolution occurs.
In response to such examples, creationists specify that they are objecting only to macroevolution
Macroevolution
Macroevolution is evolution on a scale of separated gene pools. Macroevolutionary studies focus on change that occurs at or above the level of species, in contrast with microevolution, which refers to smaller evolutionary changes within a species or population.The process of speciation may fall...
, not microevolution
Microevolution
Microevolution is the changes in allele frequencies that occur over time within a population. This change is due to four different processes: mutation, selection , gene flow, and genetic drift....
: most creationist organizations do not dispute the occurrence of short-term, relatively minor evolutionary changes, such as that observed even in dog breeding
Dog breeding
Dog breeding is the practice of mating selected specimens with the intent to maintain or produce specific qualities and characteristics.Dogs reproduce without human interference, so their offsprings' characteristics are determined by natural selection. Domestic dogs may be intentionally bred by...
. Rather, they dispute the occurrence of major evolutionary changes over long periods of time, which by definition cannot be directly observed, only inferred from microevolutionary processes and the traces of macroevolutionary ones.
However, as biologists define macroevolution, both microevolution and macroevolution have been observed. Speciation
Speciation
Speciation is the evolutionary process by which new biological species arise. The biologist Orator F. Cook seems to have been the first to coin the term 'speciation' for the splitting of lineages or 'cladogenesis,' as opposed to 'anagenesis' or 'phyletic evolution' occurring within lineages...
s, for example, have been directly observed many times, despite popular misconceptions to the contrary. Additionally, the modern evolutionary synthesis
Modern evolutionary synthesis
The modern evolutionary synthesis is a union of ideas from several biological specialties which provides a widely accepted account of evolution...
draws no distinction between macroevolution and microevolution, considering the former to simply be the latter on a larger scale. An example of this is ring species
Ring species
In biology, a ring species is a connected series of neighboring populations, each of which can interbreed with closely sited related populations, but for which there exist at least two "end" populations in the series, which are too distantly related to interbreed, though there is a potential gene...
.
Additionally, past macroevolution can be inferred from historical traces. Transitional fossil
Transitional fossil
A transitional fossil is any fossilized remains of a lifeform that exhibits characteristics of two distinct taxonomic groups. A transitional fossil is the fossil of an organism near the branching point where major individual lineages diverge...
s, for example, provide plausible links between several different groups of organisms, such as Archaeopteryx
Archaeopteryx
Archaeopteryx , sometimes referred to by its German name Urvogel , is a genus of theropod dinosaur that is closely related to birds. The name derives from the Ancient Greek meaning "ancient", and , meaning "feather" or "wing"...
linking birds and dinosaurs, or the recently-discovered Tiktaalik
Tiktaalik
Tiktaalik is a genus of extinct sarcopterygian from the late Devonian period, with many features akin to those of tetrapods . It is an example from several lines of ancient sarcopterygian "fish" developing adaptations to the oxygen-poor shallow-water habitats of its time, which led to the...
linking fish and limbed amphibians. Creationists dispute such examples, from asserting that such fossils are hoaxes or that they belong exclusively to one group or the other, to asserting that there should be far more evidence of obvious transitional species. Darwin himself found the paucity of transitional species to be one of the greatest weaknesses of his theory: "Why then is not every geological formation and every stratum full of such intermediate links? Geology assuredly does not reveal any such finely graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record." Darwin appealed to the limited collections then available, the extreme lengths of time involved, and different rates of change with some living species differing very little from fossils of the Silurian
Silurian
The Silurian is a geologic period and system that extends from the end of the Ordovician Period, about 443.7 ± 1.5 Mya , to the beginning of the Devonian Period, about 416.0 ± 2.8 Mya . As with other geologic periods, the rock beds that define the period's start and end are well identified, but the...
period. In later editions he added "that the periods during which species have been undergoing modification, though very long as measured by years, have probably been short in comparison with the periods during which these same species remained without undergoing any change." The number of clear transitional fossils has increased enormously since Darwin's day, and this problem has been largely resolved with the advent of the theory of punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis...
, which predicts a primarily stable fossil record broken up by occasional major speciations.
Creationists counter that even observed speciations and transitional fossils are insufficient evidence for the vast changes summarized by such phrases as "fish to philosophers" or "particles to people". As more and more compelling direct evidence for inter-species and species-to-species evolution has been gathered, creationists have redefined their understanding of what amounts to a "created kind", and have continued to insist that more dramatic demonstrations of evolution be experimentally produced. One version of this objection is "Were you there?", popularized by Ken Ham
Ken Ham
Kenneth Alfred Ham is the Australian President/CEO of Answers in Genesis USA. He is a vocal advocate for a young Earth and a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, and his cross-country speaking tours and many books make him one of the better known young-Earth...
. It argues that because no one except God could directly observe events in the distant past, scientific claims are just speculation or "story-telling". DNA sequences of the genome
Genome
In modern molecular biology and genetics, the genome is the entirety of an organism's hereditary information. It is encoded either in DNA or, for many types of virus, in RNA. The genome includes both the genes and the non-coding sequences of the DNA/RNA....
s of organisms allow an independent test of their predicted relationships, since species which diverged more recently will be more closely related genetically than species which are more distantly related; such phylogenetic trees show a hierarchical organization within the tree of life
Tree of life (science)
Charles Darwin proposed that phylogeny, the evolutionary relatedness among species through time, was expressible as a metaphor he termed the Tree of Life...
, as predicted by common descent.
In fields such as astrophysics
Astrophysics
Astrophysics is the branch of astronomy that deals with the physics of the universe, including the physical properties of celestial objects, as well as their interactions and behavior...
or meteorology
Meteorology
Meteorology is the interdisciplinary scientific study of the atmosphere. Studies in the field stretch back millennia, though significant progress in meteorology did not occur until the 18th century. The 19th century saw breakthroughs occur after observing networks developed across several countries...
, where direct observation or laboratory experiments are difficult or impossible, the scientific method instead relies on observation and logical inference. In such fields, the test of falsifiability is satisfied when a theory is used to predict the results of new observations. When such observations contradict a theory's predictions, it may be revised or discarded if an alternative better explains the observed facts. For example, Newton's theory of gravitation
Newton's law of universal gravitation
Newton's law of universal gravitation states that every point mass in the universe attracts every other point mass with a force that is directly proportional to the product of their masses and inversely proportional to the square of the distance between them...
was replaced by Einstein's theory of General Relativity
General relativity
General relativity or the general theory of relativity is the geometric theory of gravitation published by Albert Einstein in 1916. It is the current description of gravitation in modern physics...
when the latter was observed to more precisely predict the orbit of Mercury
Mercury (planet)
Mercury is the innermost and smallest planet in the Solar System, orbiting the Sun once every 87.969 Earth days. The orbit of Mercury has the highest eccentricity of all the Solar System planets, and it has the smallest axial tilt. It completes three rotations about its axis for every two orbits...
.
Instability of evidence
A related objection is that evolution is based on unreliable evidence. This objection goes further than the less substantial "evolution isn't proven" arguments, claiming that evolution isn't even well-evidenced. Typically, this is either based on the argument that evolution's evidence is full of frauds and hoaxes, that current evidence for evolution is likely to be overturned as some past evidence has been, or that certain types of evidence are inconsistent and dubious.Arguments against evolution's reliability are thus often based on analyzing the history of evolutionary thought
History of evolutionary thought
Evolutionary thought, the conception that species change over time, has roots in antiquity, in the ideas of the ancient Greeks, Romans, and Chinese as well as in medieval Islamic science...
or the history of science
History of science
The history of science is the study of the historical development of human understandings of the natural world and the domains of the social sciences....
in general. Creationists point out that in the past, major scientific revolutions
Paradigm shift
A Paradigm shift is, according to Thomas Kuhn in his influential book The Structure of Scientific Revolutions , a change in the basic assumptions, or paradigms, within the ruling theory of science...
have overturned theories that were at the time considered near-certain. They thus claim that current evolutionary theory is likely to undergo such a revolution in the future, on the basis that it is a "theory in crisis" for one reason or another.
Hoax
A hoax is a deliberately fabricated falsehood made to masquerade as truth. It is distinguishable from errors in observation or judgment, or rumors, urban legends, pseudosciences or April Fools' Day events that are passed along in good faith by believers or as jokes.-Definition:The British...
es such as the Piltdown Man
Piltdown Man
The Piltdown Man was a hoax in which bone fragments were presented as the fossilised remains of a previously unknown early human. These fragments consisted of parts of a skull and jawbone, said to have been collected in 1912 from a gravel pit at Piltdown, East Sussex, England...
forgery
Archaeological forgery
Archaeological forgery is the manufacture of supposedly ancient items that are sold to the antiquities market and may even end up in the collections of museums. It is related to art forgery....
. It is argued that because scientists have been mistaken and deceived in the past about evidence for various aspects of evolution the current evidence for evolution is likely to also be based on fraud and error. Much of the evidence for evolution has been accused of being fraudulent at various times, including Archaeopteryx, peppered moth melanism
Peppered moth evolution
The evolution of the peppered moth over the last two hundred years has been studied in detail. Originally, the vast majority of peppered moths had light colouration, which effectively camouflaged them against the light-coloured trees and lichens which they rested upon...
, and Darwin's finches
Darwin's finches
Darwin's finches are a group of 14 or 15 species of passerine birds. It is still not clear which bird family they belong to, but they are not related to the true finches. They were first collected by Charles Darwin on the Galápagos Islands during the second voyage of the Beagle...
; these claims have been subsequently refuted.
It has also been claimed that certain former pieces of evidence for evolution which are now considered out-of-date and erroneous, such as Ernst Haeckel
Ernst Haeckel
The "European War" became known as "The Great War", and it was not until 1920, in the book "The First World War 1914-1918" by Charles à Court Repington, that the term "First World War" was used as the official name for the conflict.-Research:...
's 19th-century comparative drawings of embryos, used to illustrate his Recapitulation theory
Recapitulation theory
The theory of recapitulation, also called the biogenetic law or embryological parallelism—and often expressed as "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"—is a disproven hypothesis that in developing from embryo to adult, animals go through stages resembling or representing successive stages...
("Ontogeny
Ontogeny
Ontogeny is the origin and the development of an organism – for example: from the fertilized egg to mature form. It covers in essence, the study of an organism's lifespan...
recapitulates Phylogeny"), were not merely errors but frauds. Jonathan Wells criticizes biology textbook
Textbook
A textbook or coursebook is a manual of instruction in any branch of study. Textbooks are produced according to the demands of educational institutions...
s by alleging that they continue to reproduce such evidence after it has been debunked. In response, the National Center for Science Education
National Center for Science Education
The National Center for Science Education is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, California affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It is the United States' leading anti-creationist organization, and defends the teaching of evolutionary biology and opposes...
notes that none of the textbooks reviewed by Wells makes the claimed error, as Haeckel's drawings are shown in a historical context with discussion about why they are wrong, and the accurate modern drawings and photos used in the textbooks are misrepresented by Wells.
Unreliable or inconsistent evidence
Creationists claim that evolution relies on certain types of evidence that do not give reliable information about the past. It is argued, for example, that radiometric datingRadiometric dating
Radiometric dating is a technique used to date materials such as rocks, usually based on a comparison between the observed abundance of a naturally occurring radioactive isotope and its decay products, using known decay rates...
, the technique of evaluating a material's age based on the radioactive decay
Radioactive decay
Radioactive decay is the process by which an atomic nucleus of an unstable atom loses energy by emitting ionizing particles . The emission is spontaneous, in that the atom decays without any physical interaction with another particle from outside the atom...
rates of certain isotope
Isotope
Isotopes are variants of atoms of a particular chemical element, which have differing numbers of neutrons. Atoms of a particular element by definition must contain the same number of protons but may have a distinct number of neutrons which differs from atom to atom, without changing the designation...
s, generates inconsistent, and thus unreliable, results. Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating
Radiocarbon dating is a radiometric dating method that uses the naturally occurring radioisotope carbon-14 to estimate the age of carbon-bearing materials up to about 58,000 to 62,000 years. Raw, i.e. uncalibrated, radiocarbon ages are usually reported in radiocarbon years "Before Present" ,...
, based on the Carbon 14 isotope, has been particularly criticized. It is argued that radiometric decay relies on a number of unwarranted assumptions, such as the principle of uniformitarianism
Uniformitarianism (science)
In the philosophy of naturalism, the uniformitarianism assumption is that the same natural laws and processes that operate in the universe now, have always operated in the universe in the past and apply everywhere in the universe. It has included the gradualistic concept that "the present is the...
, consistent decay rates, or rocks acting as closed system
Closed system
-In physics:In thermodynamics, a closed system can exchange energy , but not matter, with its surroundings.In contrast, an isolated system cannot exchange any of heat, work, or matter with the surroundings, while an open system can exchange all of heat, work and matter.For a simple system, with...
s. Such arguments have been dismissed by scientists on the grounds that independent methods have confirmed the reliability of radiometric dating as a whole; additionally, different radiometric dating methods and techniques have independently confirmed each other's results.
Another form of this objection is that fossil
Fossil
Fossils are the preserved remains or traces of animals , plants, and other organisms from the remote past...
evidence is not reliable. This is based on a much wider range of claims. These include that there are too many "gaps" in the fossil record, that fossil-dating is circular (see evolution is unfalsifiable), or that certain fossils, such as polystrate fossil
Polystrate fossil
A Polystrate fossil is a fossil of a single organism that extends through more than one geological stratum. Entire "fossil forests" of such upright fossil tree trunks and stumps have been found worldwide, i.e. in the Eastern United States, Eastern Canada, England, France, Germany, and Australia,...
s, are seemingly "out of place". Examination by geologists have found polystrate fossils to be consistent with in situ formation. It is argued that certain features of evolution support creationism's catastrophism
Catastrophism
Catastrophism is the theory that the Earth has been affected in the past by sudden, short-lived, violent events, possibly worldwide in scope. The dominant paradigm of modern geology is uniformitarianism , in which slow incremental changes, such as erosion, create the Earth's appearance...
(cf. Great Flood), rather than evolution's gradualistic
Gradualism
Gradualism is the belief in or the policy of advancing toward a goal by gradual, often slow stages.-Politics and society:In politics, the concept of gradualism is used to describe the belief that change ought to be brought about in small, discrete increments rather than in abrupt strokes such as...
punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium
Punctuated equilibrium is a theory in evolutionary biology which proposes that most species will exhibit little net evolutionary change for most of their geological history, remaining in an extended state called stasis...
, which some assert is an "ad-hoc" theory to explain the fossil gaps.
Plausibility
Some of the oldest and most common objections to evolution dispute whether evolution can truly account for all the apparent complexity and order in the natural world. It is argued that evolution is too unlikely or otherwise lacking to account for various aspects of life, and therefore that an intelligence, God, must at the very least be appealed to for those specific features.Improbability
Intelligent designer
An intelligent designer, also referred to as an intelligent agent, is the hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life...
from the natural world, and specifically from the diversity of life
Biodiversity
Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...
. A more extreme version of this argument is that evolution cannot create complex structures. The idea that it is simply too implausible for life to have evolved is often encapsulated with a quotation that the "probability of life originating on earth is no greater than the chance that a hurricane sweeping through a scrap-yard would have the luck to assemble a Boeing 747
Boeing 747
The Boeing 747 is a wide-body commercial airliner and cargo transport, often referred to by its original nickname, Jumbo Jet, or Queen of the Skies. It is among the world's most recognizable aircraft, and was the first wide-body ever produced...
" (a claim attributed to astrophysicist Fred Hoyle
Fred Hoyle
Sir Fred Hoyle FRS was an English astronomer and mathematician noted primarily for his contribution to the theory of stellar nucleosynthesis and his often controversial stance on other cosmological and scientific matters—in particular his rejection of the "Big Bang" theory, a term originally...
and known as Hoyle's fallacy
Hoyle's fallacy
Hoyle's Fallacy, sometimes called the junkyard tornado, is a term for Fred Hoyle's flawed statistical analysis applied to evolutionary origins, in which he compares the probability of cellular life evolving to the chance of a tornado "sweeping through a junkyard" and assembling a functional aeroplane...
).
This view is thus invariably justified with arguments from analogy
Analogy
Analogy is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject to another particular subject , and a linguistic expression corresponding to such a process...
. The basic idea of this argument for a designer is the teleological argument
Teleological argument
A teleological or design argument is an a posteriori argument for the existence of God based on apparent design and purpose in the universe. The argument is based on an interpretation of teleology wherein purpose and intelligent design appear to exist in nature beyond the scope of any such human...
, an argument for the existence of God
Existence of God
Arguments for and against the existence of God have been proposed by philosophers, theologians, scientists, and others. In philosophical terms, arguments for and against the existence of God involve primarily the sub-disciplines of epistemology and ontology , but also of the theory of value, since...
based on the perceived order or purposefulness of the universe. A common way of using this as an objection to evolution is by appealing to the 18th-century philosopher William Paley
William Paley
William Paley was a British Christian apologist, philosopher, and utilitarian. He is best known for his exposition of the teleological argument for the existence of God in his work Natural Theology, which made use of the watchmaker analogy .-Life:Paley was Born in Peterborough, England, and was...
's watchmaker analogy
Watchmaker analogy
The watchmaker analogy, or watchmaker argument, is a teleological argument for the existence of God. By way of an analogy, the argument states that design implies a designer...
, which argues that certain natural phenomena are analogical to a watch (in that they are ordered, or complex, or purposeful), which means that, like a watch, they must have been designed by a "watchmaker"—an intelligent agent. This argument forms the core of intelligent design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
, a neocreationist movement seeking to establish certain variants of the design argument as legitimate science, rather than as philosophy or theology
Theology
Theology is the systematic and rational study of religion and its influences and of the nature of religious truths, or the learned profession acquired by completing specialized training in religious studies, usually at a university or school of divinity or seminary.-Definition:Augustine of Hippo...
, and have them be taught alongside evolution.
This objection is fundamentally an argument by lack of imagination
Argument from ignorance
Argument from ignorance, also known as argumentum ad ignorantiam or "appeal to ignorance" , is a fallacy in informal logic. It asserts that a proposition is true because it has not yet been proven false, it is "generally accepted"...
, or argument from incredulity: a certain explanation is seen as being counter-intuitive, and therefore an alternate, more intuitive explanation is appealed to instead. Supporters of evolution generally respond by arguing that evolution is not based on "chance", but on predictable chemical interactions: natural processes, rather than supernatural beings, are the "designer". Although the process involves some random elements, it is the non-random selection of survival-enhancing genes that drives evolution along an ordered trajectory. The fact that the results are ordered and seem "designed" is no more evidence for a supernatural intelligence than the appearance of complex natural phenomena (e.g. snowflakes). It is also argued that there is insufficient evidence to make statements about the plausibility or implausibility of abiogenesis
Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose...
, that certain structures demonstrate poor design
Argument from poor design
The dysteleological argument or argument from poor design is an argument against the existence of God, specifically against the existence of a creator God...
, and that the implausibility of life evolving exactly as it did is no more evidence for an intelligence than the implausibility of a deck of cards being shuffled and dealt in a certain random order.
It has also been noted that arguments against some form of life arising "by chance" are really objections to nontheistic abiogenesis
Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose...
, not to evolution. Indeed, arguments against "evolution" are based on the misconception that abiogenesis is a component of, or necessary precursor to, evolution. Similar objections sometimes conflate the Big Bang
Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
with evolution.
Christian apologist and philosopher Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Plantinga
Alvin Carl Plantinga is an American analytic philosopher and the emeritus John A. O'Brien Professor of Philosophy at the University of Notre Dame. He is known for his work in philosophy of religion, epistemology, metaphysics, and Christian apologetics...
, a supporter of intelligent design, has formalized and revised the improbability argument as the evolutionary argument against naturalism
Evolutionary argument against naturalism
The evolutionary argument against naturalism is a philosophical argument regarding a perceived tension between biological evolutionary theory and philosophical naturalism — the belief that there are no supernatural entities or processes...
, which asserts that it is irrational to reject a supernatural, intelligent creator because the apparent probability of certain faculties evolving is so low. Specifically, Plantinga claims that evolution cannot account for the rise of reliable reasoning faculties. Plantinga argues that whereas a God would be expected to create beings with reliable reasoning faculties, evolution would be just as likely to lead to unreliable ones, meaning that if evolution is true, it is irrational to trust whatever reasoning one relies on to conclude that it is true. This novel epistemological argument has been criticized similarly to other probabilistic design arguments. It has also been argued that rationality, if conducive to survival, is more likely to be selected for than irrationality, making the natural development of reliable cognitive faculties more likely than unreliable ones.
Unexplained aspects of the natural world
It is frequently argued that a great weakness of evolutionary theory is that it does not, or cannot, explain a certain aspect of the natural world. Although there is broad agreement that certain aspects of life remain unexplained, creationists argue that evolution should be abandoned altogether because of the phenomena it does not explain. It is argued that an alternative explanation, such as intelligent designIntelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
, can explain the things which evolution cannot. For example, Michael Behe
Michael Behe
Michael J. Behe is an American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate. He currently serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture...
has argued that current evolutionary theory cannot account for certain complex structures, particularly in microbiology. On this basis, Behe argues that such structures were "purposely arranged by an intelligent agent" (see argument from incredulity).
In addition to complex structures and systems, among the phenomena that critics variously claim evolution cannot explain are consciousness
Consciousness
Consciousness is a term that refers to the relationship between the mind and the world with which it interacts. It has been defined as: subjectivity, awareness, the ability to experience or to feel, wakefulness, having a sense of selfhood, and the executive control system of the mind...
, free will
Free will
"To make my own decisions whether I am successful or not due to uncontrollable forces" -Troy MorrisonA pragmatic definition of free willFree will is the ability of agents to make choices free from certain kinds of constraints. The existence of free will and its exact nature and definition have long...
, hominid intelligence
Hominid intelligence
The evolution of human intelligence refers to a set of theories that attempt to explain how human intelligence has evolved. These theories are closely tied to the evolution of the human brain and to the emergence of human language....
, instinct
Instinct
Instinct or innate behavior is the inherent inclination of a living organism toward a particular behavior.The simplest example of an instinctive behavior is a fixed action pattern, in which a very short to medium length sequence of actions, without variation, are carried out in response to a...
s, emotion
Emotion
Emotion is a complex psychophysiological experience of an individual's state of mind as interacting with biochemical and environmental influences. In humans, emotion fundamentally involves "physiological arousal, expressive behaviors, and conscious experience." Emotion is associated with mood,...
s, metamorphosis
Metamorphosis
Metamorphosis is a biological process by which an animal physically develops after birth or hatching, involving a conspicuous and relatively abrupt change in the animal's body structure through cell growth and differentiation...
, photosynthesis
Photosynthesis
Photosynthesis is a chemical process that converts carbon dioxide into organic compounds, especially sugars, using the energy from sunlight. Photosynthesis occurs in plants, algae, and many species of bacteria, but not in archaea. Photosynthetic organisms are called photoautotrophs, since they can...
, homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
, music
Music
Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
, language
Language
Language may refer either to the specifically human capacity for acquiring and using complex systems of communication, or to a specific instance of such a system of complex communication...
, religion, morality
Morality
Morality is the differentiation among intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good and bad . A moral code is a system of morality and a moral is any one practice or teaching within a moral code...
, and altruism
Altruism
Altruism is a concern for the welfare of others. It is a traditional virtue in many cultures, and a core aspect of various religious traditions, though the concept of 'others' toward whom concern should be directed can vary among cultures and religions. Altruism is the opposite of...
(see altruism in animals
Altruism in animals
Altruism is a well-documented animal behaviour, which appears most obviously in kin relationships but may also be evident amongst wider social groups, in which an animal sacrifices its own well-being for the benefit of another animal.- Overview :...
). Most of these, such as homosexuality, hominid intelligence, instinct, emotion, photosynthesis, language, and altruism, have been well-explained by evolution, while others remain mysterious, or only have preliminary explanations. However, supporters of evolution contend that no alternative explanation has been able to adequately explain the biological origin of these phenomena either.
Creationists argue against evolution on the grounds that it cannot explain certain non-evolutionary processes, such as abiogenesis
Abiogenesis
Abiogenesis or biopoesis is the study of how biological life arises from inorganic matter through natural processes, and the method by which life on Earth arose...
, the Big Bang
Big Bang
The Big Bang theory is the prevailing cosmological model that explains the early development of the Universe. According to the Big Bang theory, the Universe was once in an extremely hot and dense state which expanded rapidly. This rapid expansion caused the young Universe to cool and resulted in...
, or the meaning of life
Meaning of life
The meaning of life constitutes a philosophical question concerning the purpose and significance of life or existence in general. This concept can be expressed through a variety of related questions, such as "Why are we here?", "What is life all about?", and "What is the meaning of it all?" It has...
. In such instances, evolution is being redefined to refer to the entire history of the universe, and it is argued that if one aspect of the universe is seemingly inexplicable, the entire body of scientific theories must be baseless. At this point, objections leave the arena of evolutionary biology and become general scientific or philosophical disputes.
Impossibility
This class of objections is more radical than the above, claiming that a major aspect of evolution is not merely unscientific or implausible, but rather impossible, because it contradicts some other law of nature or is constrained in such a way that it cannot produce the biological diversity of the world.Creation of complex structures
Natural selection
Natural selection is the nonrandom process by which biologic traits become either more or less common in a population as a function of differential reproduction of their bearers. It is a key mechanism of evolution....
and genetic drift
Genetic drift
Genetic drift or allelic drift is the change in the frequency of a gene variant in a population due to random sampling.The alleles in the offspring are a sample of those in the parents, and chance has a role in determining whether a given individual survives and reproduces...
. Both Darwin and his early detractors recognized the potential problems that could arise for his theory of natural selection if the lineage of organs and other biological features could not be accounted for by merely gradual, step-by-step changes over successive generations; if all the intermediary stages between an initial organ and the organ it will become are not all improvements upon the original, it will be impossible for the later organ to develop by the process of natural selection alone. Anticipating early criticisms that the evolution of the eye
Evolution of the eye
The evolution of the eye has been a subject of significant study, as a distinctive example of a homologous organ present in a wide variety of taxa. Certain components of the eye, such as the visual pigments, appear to have a common ancestry – that is, they evolved once, before the animals radiated...
and other complex organs seemed impossible, Darwin noted that:
[R]eason tells me, that if numerous gradations from a perfect and complex eye to one very imperfect and simple, each grade being useful to its possessor, can be shown to exist; if further, the eye does vary ever so slightly, and the variations be inherited, which is certainly the case; and if any variation or modification in the organ be ever useful to an animal under changing conditions of life, then the difficulty of believing that a perfect and complex eye could be formed by natural selection, though insuperable by our imagination, can hardly be considered real.
Similarly, Richard Dawkins
Richard Dawkins
Clinton Richard Dawkins, FRS, FRSL , known as Richard Dawkins, is a British ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author...
said on the topic of the evolution of the feather
Feather
Feathers are one of the epidermal growths that form the distinctive outer covering, or plumage, on birds and some non-avian theropod dinosaurs. They are considered the most complex integumentary structures found in vertebrates, and indeed a premier example of a complex evolutionary novelty. They...
in an interview for the television program The Atheism Tapes
The Atheism Tapes
The Atheism Tapes is a 2004 BBC television documentary series presented by Jonathan Miller. The material that makes up the series was originally filmed in 2003 for another, more general series, Atheism: A Rough History of Disbelief, but was too lengthy for inclusion...
:
There's got to be a series of advantages all the way in the feather. If you can't think of one, then that's your problem not natural selection's problem... It's perfectly possible feathers began as fluffy extensions of reptilian scales to act as insulators... The earliest feathers might have been a different approach to hairiness among reptiles keeping warm.
Creationist arguments have been made such as "What use is half an eye?" and "What use is half a wing?". Research has confirmed that the natural evolution of the eye
Evolution of the eye
The evolution of the eye has been a subject of significant study, as a distinctive example of a homologous organ present in a wide variety of taxa. Certain components of the eye, such as the visual pigments, appear to have a common ancestry – that is, they evolved once, before the animals radiated...
and other intricate organs is entirely feasible. Creationist claims have persisted that such complexity evolving without a designer is inconceivable, however, and this objection to evolution has been refined in recent years as the more sophisticated irreducible complexity
Irreducible complexity
Irreducible complexity is an argument by proponents of intelligent design that certain biological systems are too complex to have evolved from simpler, or "less complete" predecessors, through natural selection acting upon a series of advantageous naturally occurring, chance mutations...
argument of the intelligent design movement
Intelligent design movement
The intelligent design movement is a neo-creationist religious campaign for broad social, academic and political change to promote and support the idea of "intelligent design," which asserts that "certain features of the universe and of living things are...
, formulated by biochemist Michael Behe
Michael Behe
Michael J. Behe is an American biochemist, author, and intelligent design advocate. He currently serves as professor of biochemistry at Lehigh University in Pennsylvania and as a senior fellow of the Discovery Institute's Center for Science and Culture...
.
Irreducible complexity is the idea that certain biological systems cannot be broken down into their constituent parts and remain functional, and therefore that they could not have evolved naturally from less complex or complete systems. Whereas past arguments of this nature generally relied on macroscopic organs, Behe's primary examples of irreducible complexity has been cellular and biochemical in nature. He has argued that the components of systems such as the blood clotting cascade, the immune system
Immune system
An immune system is a system of biological structures and processes within an organism that protects against disease by identifying and killing pathogens and tumor cells. It detects a wide variety of agents, from viruses to parasitic worms, and needs to distinguish them from the organism's own...
, and the bacterial flagellum are so complex and interdependent that they could not have evolved from simpler systems.
In the years since Behe proposed irreducible complexity, new developments and advances in biology, such as an improved understanding of the evolution of flagella
Evolution of flagella
The evolution of flagella is of great interest to biologists because the three known varieties of flagella each represent a sophisticated cellular structure that requires the interaction of many different systems....
, have already undermined these arguments. The idea that seemingly irreducibly complex systems cannot evolve has been refuted through evolutionary mechanisms, such as exaptation
Exaptation
Exaptation, cooption, and preadaptation are related terms referring to shifts in the function of a trait during evolution. For example, a trait can evolve because it served one particular function, but subsequently it may come to serve another. Exaptations are common in both anatomy and behaviour...
(the adaptation of organs for entirely new functions) and the use of "scaffolding", which are initially necessary features of a system that later degenerate when they are no longer required. Potential evolutionary pathways have been provided for all of the systems Behe used as examples of irreducible complexity.
Creation of information
Another new, and increasingly common, objection of creationists to evolution is that evolutionary mechanisms such as mutationMutation
In molecular biology and genetics, mutations are changes in a genomic sequence: the DNA sequence of a cell's genome or the DNA or RNA sequence of a virus. They can be defined as sudden and spontaneous changes in the cell. Mutations are caused by radiation, viruses, transposons and mutagenic...
cannot generate new information
Physical information
In physics, physical information refers generally to the information that is contained in a physical system. Its usage in quantum mechanics In physics, physical information refers generally to the information that is contained in a physical system. Its usage in quantum mechanics In physics,...
. Creationists such as William A. Dembski
William A. Dembski
William Albert "Bill" Dembski is an American proponent of intelligent design, well known for promoting the concept of specified complexity...
, Werner Gitt
Werner Gitt
Werner Gitt is a German engineer and young earth creationist.-Biography:Gitt was an engineer professor at the Physikalisch-Technische Bundesanstalt . By the 1990s he was assuming a leadership role in the German creationist movement, through the publication of several influential creationist books...
, and Lee Spetner
Lee Spetner
Lee M. Spetner is an American physicist and author, known best for his critique of the modern evolutionary synthesis. In spite of his opposition to neo-Darwinism, Spetner accepts a form of non-random evolution outlined in his 1996 book "Not By Chance! Shattering the Modern Theory of...
have attempted to use information theory
Information theory
Information theory is a branch of applied mathematics and electrical engineering involving the quantification of information. Information theory was developed by Claude E. Shannon to find fundamental limits on signal processing operations such as compressing data and on reliably storing and...
to dispute evolution. Dembski has argued that life demonstrates specified complexity
Specified complexity
Specified complexity is an argument proposed by William Dembski and used by him and others to promote intelligent design. According to Dembski, the concept is intended to formalize a property that singles out patterns that are both specified and complex...
, and that evolution without an intelligent agent
Intelligent designer
An intelligent designer, also referred to as an intelligent agent, is the hypothetical willed and self-aware entity that the intelligent design movement argues had some role in the origin and/or development of life...
cannot account for the generation of information that would be required to produce specified complexity. The Christian apologetics site Answers in Genesis
Answers in Genesis
Answers in Genesis is a non-profit Christian apologetics ministry with a particular focus on supporting Young Earth creationism and a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis. The organization has offices in the United Kingdom and the United States...
, for example, makes frequent appeals to concepts from information theory in its objections to evolution and affirmations of the Genesis account of Creation; "[I]t should be clear that a rigorous application of the science of information is devastating to materialistic philosophy in the guise of evolution, and strongly supportive of Genesis creation."
These claims have been widely rejected by the scientific community; new information is regularly generated in evolution, whenever a novel mutation or gene duplication
Gene duplication
Gene duplication is any duplication of a region of DNA that contains a gene; it may occur as an error in homologous recombination, a retrotransposition event, or duplication of an entire chromosome.The second copy of the gene is often free from selective pressure — that is, mutations of it have no...
arises. Dramatic examples of entirely new, unique traits arising through mutation have been observed in recent years, such as the evolution of nylon-eating bacteria
Nylon-eating bacteria
Nylon-eating bacteria are a strain of Flavobacterium that is capable of digesting certain byproducts of nylon 6 manufacture. This strain of Flavobacterium, Sp...
, which developed new enzyme
Enzyme
Enzymes are proteins that catalyze chemical reactions. In enzymatic reactions, the molecules at the beginning of the process, called substrates, are converted into different molecules, called products. Almost all chemical reactions in a biological cell need enzymes in order to occur at rates...
s to efficiently digest a material that never existed before the modern era. In fact, when an organism is considered together with the environment it evolved in, there is no need to account for the creation of information. The information in the genome forms a record of how it was possible to survive in a particular environment. It is not created, but rather gathered from the environment through research—by trial and error
Trial and error
Trial and error, or trial by error, is a general method of problem solving, fixing things, or for obtaining knowledge."Learning doesn't happen from failure itself but rather from analyzing the failure, making a change, and then trying again."...
, as mutating organisms either reproduce or fail.
A related argument against evolution is that most mutations are harmful. However, the vast majority of mutations are neutral
Neutral mutation
In genetics, a neutral mutation is a mutation that has no effect on fitness. In other words, it is neutral with respect to natural selection.For example, some mutations in a DNA triplet or codon do not change which amino acid is introduced: this is known as a synonymous substitution. Unless the...
, and the minority of mutations which are beneficial or harmful are often situational; a mutation that is harmful in one environment may be helpful in another.
Violation of the second law of thermodynamics
Another objection is that evolution violates the second law of thermodynamicsSecond law of thermodynamics
The second law of thermodynamics is an expression of the tendency that over time, differences in temperature, pressure, and chemical potential equilibrate in an isolated physical system. From the state of thermodynamic equilibrium, the law deduced the principle of the increase of entropy and...
. Though the law applies to all systems, in the case of a closed one it states, "the entropy of an isolated system not in equilibrium will tend to increase over time, approaching a maximum value at equilibrium". In other words, an ideal isolated system's entropy
Entropy
Entropy is a thermodynamic property that can be used to determine the energy available for useful work in a thermodynamic process, such as in energy conversion devices, engines, or machines. Such devices can only be driven by convertible energy, and have a theoretical maximum efficiency when...
(a measure of the dispersal of energy in a physical system so that it is not available to do mechanical work) will tend to increase or stay the same, not decrease. Creationists argue that evolution violates this physical law
Physical law
A physical law or scientific law is "a theoretical principle deduced from particular facts, applicable to a defined group or class of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that a particular phenomenon always occurs if certain conditions be present." Physical laws are typically conclusions...
by requiring a decrease in entropy, or disorder, over time.
This claim is based on a manifestation of the law only applicable to isolated system
Isolated system
In the natural sciences an isolated system, as contrasted with an open system, is a physical system without any external exchange. If it has any surroundings, it does not interact with them. It obeys in particular the first of the conservation laws: its total energy - mass stays constant...
s, which do not exchange matter or energy with their surroundings. Organisms, in contrast, are open systems, as they constantly exchange energy and matter with their environment: for example animals eat food and excrete waste, and radiate and absorb heat. Similarly, the Earth absorbs energy from the Sun and emits energy back into space. The Sun-Earth-space system does not violate the second law, because the enormous increase in entropy due to the Sun and Earth radiating into space dwarfs the local decrease in entropy caused by the existence and evolution of self-organizing
Self-organization
Self-organization is the process where a structure or pattern appears in a system without a central authority or external element imposing it through planning...
life.
Since the second law of thermodynamics has a precise mathematical definition, this argument can be analyzed quantitatively. This was done by physicist
Physicist
A physicist is a scientist who studies or practices physics. Physicists study a wide range of physical phenomena in many branches of physics spanning all length scales: from sub-atomic particles of which all ordinary matter is made to the behavior of the material Universe as a whole...
Daniel Styer, who concluded: "Quantitative estimates of the entropy involved in biological evolution demonstrate that there is no conflict between evolution and the second law of thermodynamics."
In a published letter to the editor of The Mathematical Intelligencer titled "How anti-evolutionists abuse mathematics", mathematician
Mathematician
A mathematician is a person whose primary area of study is the field of mathematics. Mathematicians are concerned with quantity, structure, space, and change....
Jason Rosenhouse stated:
The fact is that natural forces routinely lead to decreases in entropy. Water freezes into ice and fertilised eggs turn into babies. Plants use sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into sugar and oxygen, but [we do] not invoke divine intervention to explain the process [...] thermodynamics offers nothing to dampen our confidence in Darwinism.
Moral implications
Other common objections to evolution allege that evolution leads to objectionable results, including bad beliefs, behaviors, and events. It is argued that the teaching of evolution degrades values, undermines morals, and fosters irreligionIrreligion
Irreligion is defined as an absence of religion or an indifference towards religion. Sometimes it may also be defined more narrowly as hostility towards religion. When characterized as hostility to religion, it includes antitheism, anticlericalism and antireligion. When characterized as...
or atheism
Atheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
. These may be considered appeals to consequences
Appeal to consequences
Appeal to consequences, also known as argumentum ad consequentiam , is an argument that concludes a premise to be either true or false based on whether the premise leads to desirable or undesirable consequences...
(a form of logical fallacy), as the potential ramifications of belief in evolutionary theory have nothing to do with its objective empirical reality.
Humans as animals
Great chain of being
The great chain of being , is a Christian concept detailing a strict, religious hierarchical structure of all matter and life, believed to have been decreed by the Christian God.-Divisions:...
set out a static hierarchy in which humans are "above" animals, but below angels and God. As evolutionary thought developed it was feared that evolution implied that there was no real separation between man and brute, and that it undermined human social hierarchy. Assertions of ape ancestry in the 1844 publication Vestiges of Creation
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation
Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation is a unique work of speculative natural history published anonymously in England in 1844. It brought together various ideas of stellar evolution with the progressive transmutation of species in an accessible narrative which tied together numerous...
gained much public acceptance but were scornfully attacked by establishment scientists, and though Darwin avoided the subject when announcing his theory in On the Origin of Species in 1859, the issue was quickly raised. Anatomists claimed that humans had unique physical features; however, English biologist Thomas Henry Huxley showed that they were wrong and overcame their opposition to Darwin's ideas. Evolutionary common descent
Common descent
In evolutionary biology, a group of organisms share common descent if they have a common ancestor. There is strong quantitative support for the theory that all living organisms on Earth are descended from a common ancestor....
does not imply that human beings should behave like other animals, but instead shows that animals behave in different ways, and teaches that humans behave like humans.
Traditionalists still object to the idea that diversity in life, including human beings, arose through natural
Natural science
The natural sciences are branches of science that seek to elucidate the rules that govern the natural world by using empirical and scientific methods...
processes without a need for supernatural intervention, and they argue against evolution on the basis that it contradicts their literal interpretation of creation myths about separate "kinds". However, many religions, such as Catholicism
Evolution and the Roman Catholic Church
Since the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species in 1859, the attitude of the Catholic Church on the theory of evolution has slowly been refined. For about 100 years, there was no authoritative pronouncement on the subject. By 1950, Pope Pius XII agreed to the academic freedom to...
, have reconciled their beliefs with evolution through theistic evolution
Theistic evolution
Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution...
.
Social effects
Some Creationists claim that perceived social ills like crime, teen pregnancies, homosexuality, abortion, immorality, wars and genocideGenocide
Genocide is defined as "the deliberate and systematic destruction, in whole or in part, of an ethnic, racial, religious, or national group", though what constitutes enough of a "part" to qualify as genocide has been subject to much debate by legal scholars...
are caused by a belief in evolution. R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
R. Albert Mohler, Jr.
Mohler's approach to Muslims is driven by his belief in the relevance of the Christian Gospel to all people.-Media appearances:Mohler appeared on MSNBC's Donahue on August 20, 2002. The subject was Christian evangelization of Jews...
, President of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary in Louisville, Kentucky, wrote August 8, 2005, in National Public Radio's forum, "Taking Issue", that "Debates over education, abortion, environmentalism, homosexuality and a host of other issues are really debates about the origin—and thus the meaning—of human life.... Evolutionary theory stands at the base of moral relativism
Moral relativism
Moral relativism may be any of several descriptive, meta-ethical, or normative positions. Each of them is concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different people and cultures:...
and the rejection of traditional morality". Creationist Ken Ham
Ken Ham
Kenneth Alfred Ham is the Australian President/CEO of Answers in Genesis USA. He is a vocal advocate for a young Earth and a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis, and his cross-country speaking tours and many books make him one of the better known young-Earth...
likens evolution to a horde of termites, weakening society's foundation. In Why Won't They Listen?, Ham suggests that "evolutionary termites" are responsible for pornography, homosexual behavior and lawlessness. He also writes, "I'm not saying that evolution is the cause of abortion or school violence. What I'm saying is that the more a culture abandons God's word as the absolute authority, and the more a culture accepts an evolutionary philosophy, then the way people think, and their attitudes, will also change."
Former Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
Republican
Republican Party (United States)
The Republican Party is one of the two major contemporary political parties in the United States, along with the Democratic Party. Founded by anti-slavery expansion activists in 1854, it is often called the GOP . The party's platform generally reflects American conservatism in the U.S...
Representative
United States House of Representatives
The United States House of Representatives is one of the two Houses of the United States Congress, the bicameral legislature which also includes the Senate.The composition and powers of the House are established in Article One of the Constitution...
Tom DeLay
Tom DeLay
Thomas Dale "Tom" DeLay is a former member of the United States House of Representatives, representing Texas's 22nd congressional district from 1984 until 2006. He was Republican Party House Majority Leader from 2003 to 2005, when he resigned because of criminal money laundering charges in...
claimed that the Columbine school shootings
Columbine High School massacre
The Columbine High School massacre occurred on Tuesday, April 20, 1999, at Columbine High School in Columbine, an unincorporated area of Jefferson County, Colorado, United States, near Denver and Littleton. Two senior students, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, embarked on a massacre, killing 12...
were caused by the teaching of evolution. DeLay is quoted as stating that "Our school systems teach the children that they are nothing but glorified apes who are evolutionized [sic] out of some primordial soup." Henry M. Morris
Henry M. Morris
Henry Madison Morris was an American young earth creationist and Christian apologist. He was one of the founders of the Creation Research Society and the Institute for Creation Research...
, engineering professor and founder of the Creation Research Society
Creation Research Society
The Creation Research Society is a Christian research group that engages in creation science. The organization has produced various publications, including a journal and a creation-based biology textbook...
and the Institute of Creation Research, claims that evolution was part of a pagan
Paganism
Paganism is a blanket term, typically used to refer to non-Abrahamic, indigenous polytheistic religious traditions....
religion that emerged after the Tower of Babel
Tower of Babel
The Tower of Babel , according to the Book of Genesis, was an enormous tower built in the plain of Shinar .According to the biblical account, a united humanity of the generations following the Great Flood, speaking a single language and migrating from the east, came to the land of Shinar, where...
, was part of Plato
Plato
Plato , was a Classical Greek philosopher, mathematician, student of Socrates, writer of philosophical dialogues, and founder of the Academy in Athens, the first institution of higher learning in the Western world. Along with his mentor, Socrates, and his student, Aristotle, Plato helped to lay the...
's and Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
's philosophies, and was responsible for everything from war to pornography to the breakup of the nuclear family.
Rev. D. James Kennedy of The Center for Reclaiming America for Christ and Coral Ridge Ministries claims that Darwin was responsible for Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
's atrocities. In D. James Kennedy's documentary, and the accompanying pamphlet with the same title, Darwin’s Deadly Legacy, Kennedy states that "To put it simply, no Darwin, no Hitler." In his efforts to expose the "harmful effects that evolution is still having on our nation, our children, and our world", Kennedy also states that, "We have had 150 years of the theory of Darwinian evolution, and what has it brought us? Whether Darwin intended it or not, millions of deaths, the destruction of those deemed inferior, the devaluing of human life, increasing hopelessness." Discovery Institute
Discovery Institute
The Discovery Institute is a non-profit public policy think tank based in Seattle, Washington, best known for its advocacy of intelligent design...
fellow Richard Weikart
Richard Weikart
Richard Weikart is a professor of history at California State University, Stanislaus, and is a senior fellow for the Center for Science and Culture of the Discovery Institute. In 1997 he joined the editorial board of the Access Research Network's Origins & Design Journal...
has made similar claims, as have other creationists. The claim was central to Ben Stein
Ben Stein
Benjamin Jeremy "Ben" Stein is an American actor, writer, lawyer, and commentator on political and economic issues. He attained early success as a speechwriter for American presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford...
's film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed
Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed is a 2008 documentary film, directed by Nathan Frankowski and hosted by Ben Stein. The film contends that the mainstream science establishment suppresses academics who believe they see evidence of intelligent design in nature and who criticize evidence supporting...
promoting intelligent design
Intelligent design
Intelligent design is the proposition that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection." It is a form of creationism and a contemporary adaptation of the traditional teleological argument for...
creationism. The Anti-Defamation League
Anti-Defamation League
The Anti-Defamation League is an international non-governmental organization based in the United States. Describing itself as "the nation's premier civil rights/human relations agency", the ADL states that it "fights anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry, defends democratic ideals and protects...
describes such claims as outrageous misuse of the Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
and its imagery, and as trivializing "the many complex factors that led to the mass extermination of European Jewry. Hitler did not need Darwin or evolution to devise his heinous plan to exterminate the Jewish people, and Darwin and evolutionary theory cannot explain Hitler’s genocidal madness. Moreover, anti-Semitism existed long before Darwin ever wrote a word."
Kent Hovind
Kent Hovind
Kent E. Hovind is an American young earth creationist. Hovind speaks on creation science and aims to convince listeners to reject theories of evolution, geophysics, and cosmology in favor of the Genesis creation narrative as found in the Bible...
of Creation Science Evangelism blames communism, socialism, World War I
World War I
World War I , which was predominantly called the World War or the Great War from its occurrence until 1939, and the First World War or World War I thereafter, was a major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918...
, World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, racism, the Holocaust, Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
's war crimes, the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
and Pol Pot
Pol Pot
Saloth Sar , better known as Pol Pot, , was a Cambodian Maoist revolutionary who led the Khmer Rouge from 1963 until his death in 1998. From 1976 to 1979, he served as the Prime Minister of Democratic Kampuchea....
's Cambodian killing fields
The Killing Fields
The Killing Fields are a number of sites in Cambodia where large numbers of people were killed and buried by the Khmer Rouge regime, during its rule of the country from 1975 to 1979, immediately after the end of the Cambodian Civil War ....
on evolution, as well as the increase in crime, unwed mothers, and other social ills. Kent Hovind's son Eric Hovind has now taken over the family business while his father is in prison, and claims that evolution is responsible for tattoos, body piercing, premarital sex, unwed births, sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), divorce and child abuse.
Supporters of evolution dismiss such criticisms as counterfactual, and some argue that the opposite seems to be the case. A study published by the author and illustrator Gregory S. Paul
Gregory S. Paul
Gregory Scott Paul is a freelance researcher, author and illustrator who works in paleontology, and more recently has examined sociology and theology. He is best known for his work and research on theropod dinosaurs and his detailed illustrations, both live and skeletal...
found that religious beliefs, including belief in creationism and disbelief in evolution, are positively correlated with social ills like crime. The Barna Group
George Barna
George Barna is the founder of The Barna Group, a market research firm specializing in studying the religious beliefs and behavior of Americans, and the intersection of faith and culture...
surveys find that Christians and non-Christians in the US have similar divorce rates, and the highest divorce rates in the US are among Baptists and Pentecostals, both sects which reject evolution and embrace creationism.
Michael Shermer
Michael Shermer
Michael Brant Shermer is an American science writer, historian of science, founder of The Skeptics Society, and Editor in Chief of its magazine Skeptic, which is largely devoted to investigating pseudoscientific and supernatural claims. The Skeptics Society currently has over 55,000 members...
argued in Scientific American
Scientific American
Scientific American is a popular science magazine. It is notable for its long history of presenting science monthly to an educated but not necessarily scientific public, through its careful attention to the clarity of its text as well as the quality of its specially commissioned color graphics...
in October 2006 that evolution supports concepts like family values, avoiding lies, fidelity, moral codes and the rule of law. He goes on to suggest that evolution gives more support to the notion of an omnipotent creator, rather than a tinkerer with limitations based on a human model, the more common image subscribed to by creationists. Careful analyses of the creationist charges that evolution has led to moral relativism and the Holocaust yields the conclusion that these charges appear to be highly suspect. Such analyses conclude that the origins of the Holocaust are more likely to be found in historical Christian anti-semitism
Anti-Semitism
Antisemitism is suspicion of, hatred toward, or discrimination against Jews for reasons connected to their Jewish heritage. According to a 2005 U.S...
than in evolution.
Evolution has been used to justify Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism
Social Darwinism is a term commonly used for theories of society that emerged in England and the United States in the 1870s, seeking to apply the principles of Darwinian evolution to sociology and politics...
, the exploitation of "lesser breeds without the law" by "superior races," particularly in the nineteenth century. Strong, typically European, nations successfully expanded their empires, and as such, these strong nations could be said to have "survived" in the struggle for dominance. With this attitude, Europeans, with the exception of Christian missionaries, seldom adopted the customs and languages of local people under their empires.
Atheism
Another charge leveled at evolutionary theory by creationists is that belief in evolution is either tantamount to atheismAtheism
Atheism is, in a broad sense, the rejection of belief in the existence of deities. In a narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there are no deities...
, or conducive to atheism. It is commonly claimed that all proponents of evolutionary theory are "materialistic
Materialism
In philosophy, the theory of materialism holds that the only thing that exists is matter; that all things are composed of material and all phenomena are the result of material interactions. In other words, matter is the only substance...
atheists". On the other hand, Davis Young argues that Creation Science
Creation science
Creation Science or scientific creationism is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the history of the Earth, cosmology...
itself is harmful to Christianity
Christianity
Christianity is a monotheistic religion based on the life and teachings of Jesus as presented in canonical gospels and other New Testament writings...
because its bad science will turn more away than it recruits. Young asks, "Can we seriously expect non-Christians to develop a respect for Christianity if we insist on teaching the brand of science that creationism brings with it?" However, evolution neither requires nor rules out the existence of a supernatural being. Philosopher Robert Pennock
Robert T. Pennock
Robert T. Pennock is a philosopher working on the Avida digital organism project at Michigan State University where he has been full professor since 2000. Pennock was a witness in the Kitzmiller v...
makes the comparison that evolution is no more atheistic than plumbing
Plumbing
Plumbing is the system of pipes and drains installed in a building for the distribution of potable drinking water and the removal of waterborne wastes, and the skilled trade of working with pipes, tubing and plumbing fixtures in such systems. A plumber is someone who installs or repairs piping...
. H. Allen Orr
H. Allen Orr
H. Allen Orr is University Professor and Shirley Cox Kearns Professor of Biology at the University of Rochester.- Education and career :He earned his Bachelor’s degree in Biology and Philosophy from the College of William and Mary and his Ph.D. in Biology from the University of Chicago. At...
, professor of biology at University of Rochester
University of Rochester
The University of Rochester is a private, nonsectarian, research university in Rochester, New York, United States. The university grants undergraduate and graduate degrees, including doctoral and professional degrees. The university has six schools and various interdisciplinary programs.The...
, notes that:
In addition, a wide range of religions have reconciled a belief in a supernatural being with evolution. Molleen Matsumura of the National Center for Science Education
National Center for Science Education
The National Center for Science Education is a non-profit organization based in Oakland, California affiliated with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. It is the United States' leading anti-creationist organization, and defends the teaching of evolutionary biology and opposes...
found that "of Americans in the twelve largest Christian denominations, 89.6% belong to churches that support evolution education". These churches include the United Methodist Church
United Methodist Church
The United Methodist Church is a Methodist Christian denomination which is both mainline Protestant and evangelical. Founded in 1968 by the union of The Methodist Church and the Evangelical United Brethren Church, the UMC traces its roots back to the revival movement of John and Charles Wesley...
, National Baptist Convention USA
National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc.
The National Baptist Convention, USA, Inc. is the largest predominantly African-American Christian denomination in the United States and is the world's second largest Baptist denomination...
, Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
Evangelical Lutheran Church in America
The Evangelical Lutheran Church in America is a mainline Protestant denomination headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. The ELCA officially came into existence on January 1, 1988, by the merging of three churches. As of December 31, 2009, it had 4,543,037 baptized members, with 2,527,941 of them...
, Presbyterian Church (USA), National Baptist Convention of America, African Methodist Episcopal Church
African Methodist Episcopal Church
The African Methodist Episcopal Church, usually called the A.M.E. Church, is a predominantly African American Methodist denomination based in the United States. It was founded by the Rev. Richard Allen in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, in 1816 from several black Methodist congregations in the...
, the Roman Catholic Church
Roman Catholic Church
The Catholic Church, also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the world's largest Christian church, with over a billion members. Led by the Pope, it defines its mission as spreading the gospel of Jesus Christ, administering the sacraments and exercising charity...
, the Episcopal Church
Episcopal Church (United States)
The Episcopal Church is a mainline Anglican Christian church found mainly in the United States , but also in Honduras, Taiwan, Colombia, Ecuador, Haiti, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, the British Virgin Islands and parts of Europe...
, and others. A poll in 2000 done for People for the American Way
People For the American Way
People For the American Way is a progressive advocacy group in the United States. Under U.S. tax code, People For the American Way is organized as a tax-exempt 501 non-profit organization.-Purpose:...
found that 70% of the American public felt that evolution was compatible with a belief in God. Only 48% of the people polled could choose the correct definition of evolution from a list, however.
One poll reported in the journal Nature
Nature (journal)
Nature, first published on 4 November 1869, is ranked the world's most cited interdisciplinary scientific journal by the Science Edition of the 2010 Journal Citation Reports...
showed that among American scientists (across various disciplines), about 40 percent believe in both evolution and an active deity (theistic evolution
Theistic evolution
Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution...
). This is similar to the results reported for surveys of the general American public. Also, about 40 percent of the scientists polled believe in a God that answers prayer
Prayer
Prayer is a form of religious practice that seeks to activate a volitional rapport to a deity through deliberate practice. Prayer may be either individual or communal and take place in public or in private. It may involve the use of words or song. When language is used, prayer may take the form of...
s, and believe in immortality
Immortality
Immortality is the ability to live forever. It is unknown whether human physical immortality is an achievable condition. Biological forms have inherent limitations which may or may not be able to be overcome through medical interventions or engineering...
. While about 55% of scientists surveyed were atheists, agnostics, or nonreligious theists, atheism is far from universal among scientists who support evolution, or among the general public that supports evolution. Very similar results were reported from a 1997 Gallup survey of the American public and scientists.
| Group | |Belief in Young Earth Creationism Young Earth creationism Young Earth creationism is the religious belief that Heavens, Earth, and all life on Earth were created by direct acts of the Abrahamic God during a relatively short period, sometime between 5,700 and 10,000 years ago... | Belief in God-guided evolution Theistic evolution Theistic evolution or evolutionary creation is a concept that asserts that classical religious teachings about God are compatible with the modern scientific understanding about biological evolution... | Belief in evolution without God God God is the English name given to a singular being in theistic and deistic religions who is either the sole deity in monotheism, or a single deity in polytheism.... guiding the process |
|
|---|---|---|---|---|
| American public | 44% | 39% | 10% | |
| American scientists | 5% | 40% | 55% | |
| Includes persons with professional degrees in fields unrelated to evolution, such as computer science, chemical engineering, physics, psychology, business administration, etc. | ||||
See also
- Faith and rationalityFaith and rationalityFaith and rationality are two modes of belief that exist in varying degrees of conflict or compatibility. Rationality is belief based on reason or evidence. Faith is belief in inspiration, revelation, or authority...
Further reading
- Philip Kitcher 1982 Abusing Science: The Case Against Creationism. Cambridge: The MIT Press
- Jonathan SarfatiJonathan SarfatiJonathan D. Sarfati is a former New Zealand national chess champion and creationist author with a PhD in chemistry. Sarfati works for Creation Ministries International , formerly part of Answers in Genesis , a non-profit Christian Apologetics ministry specialising in Young-Earth creationism...
, Ph.D; 2003 Refuting Evolution 2. Master Books ISBN 0-89051-387-2