ADVOCATING PURE SCIENCE
Copyright 2006, Joe Nall
If you have comfortably settled into the idea that we exist as a result of "natural selection" you will not like this essay. It will likely make you uncomfortable. Its intent is to create and stir advocates of pure science, people who are distressed about imagination being presented as if it is proven fact. Perhaps it will even cause some evolutionists to understand that the idea of natural selection, right or wrong, is assumption, not proven scientific fact. People who do not care will probably not read much farther. It is not light reading. The following links form the outline.
Scientific Value of Assumed Cause
Scientifically balanced scales
Scientifically unbalanced scales
The heart of the matter
Purpose and motivation
Pure science - pure education
Textbook qualifier
SCIENTIFIC VALUE OF ASSUMED CAUSE
Two statements of equal scientific value: Natural selection caused an adaptation. Something intelligent caused an adaptation.
Where is the scientific value in the following statement? Natural selection caused an adaptation in the virus so that it became immune to the antibiotic. The scientific value is in the phrase “caused an adaptation in the virus so that it became immune to the antibiotic”. The change was observed and documented to have happened. It must have had a cause. There is no scientific value in the term “natural selection”. In the realm of science “natural selection” is altogether assumed.
Where is the scientific value in following statement? A designed response caused an adaptation in the virus so that it became immune to the antibiotic. The scientific value is in the phrase “caused an adaptation in the virus so that it became immune to the antibiotic”. The change was observed and documented to have happened. There is no scientific value in the phrase “a designed response”. In the realm of science, just as in the case of "natural selection," “a designed response” is altogether assumed.
In other words both of these statements are of identical scientific value. An identical portion of each statement is observable and can therefore be scientifically documented. There was obviously a cause. But the identity of the cause is not scientifically observable. The cause therefore cannot be scientifically documented or verified.
This scientific equality of the assumed cause can be applied through the entirety of the theory of evolution. Throughout the theory where “natural selection” is asserted, simply replace it with “a designed response”. This replacement does not remove any of the scientific value in the theory. Other assumed causes could also be used without diminishing the scientific value of the theory.
SCIENTIFICALLY BALANCED SCALES To top
The scales depicted below and the succeeding explanation illustrate the point. The yellow portion represents the cause of the action. The green portion is the action, “adaptation.”
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The four scales above are all perfectly balanced scientifically, that is, perfectly balanced from the viewpoint of pure science. Science can observe and verify the green portions. They are identical and of equal weight. But pure science cannot verify any of the yellow portions. Pure science cannot identify anything as being the cause. The yellow portion in every case, no matter what is inserted, is scientific conjecture. Depending on who is talking, the yellow portions may or may not be of equal import logically or philosophically. The yellow portions are not balanced in reality. They are obviously contradictory. But all of the yellow portions are scientifically equal because none of them can be proved or disproved scientifically. Therefore all scales are perfectly balanced from the viewpoint of pure science.
It follows that it is unscientific to say in textbooks that “natural selection” caused or that “natural selection” did anything. Natural selection is nothing more than a label applied to the scientifically unknown cause for adaptations. Science simply cannot legitimately claim to identify the cause and then prove the claim. The scales above are scientifically balanced. But the scales weighing the scientific curriculum in schools are not balanced.
SCIENTIFICALLY UNBALANCED SCALES To top
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Intelligent design theorists can therefore hang their hats on these scales until textbooks are corrected. These scales are all that is needed to verify this assertion. No pure scientist will argue with them. It is the impure scientist who argues by asserting what he/she believes or imagines is the cause. This exact scientific dereliction has been repeated so many times that common scientific textbooks/curriculums are not pure. The scientific curriculum scales are not at all balanced.
The intelligent design theory can be claimed to be more scientific than natural selection. The human body has all the attributes of design with its multiple functioning feedback controls systems. It is easy to prove by demonstration that intelligence designs functioning feedback control systems and impossible to demonstrate that natural selection exists or designs, or has designed, anything. Darwinian evolutionists must explain the existence of the functioning feedback control system (one of many) we call vision, if it came into existence without the input of intelligence. A valid question (one of many) which demands an answer is "How did dumb dead light and dumb dead matter become parts of the exceedingly complex and functioning feedback control system called vision, if intelligence was not involved?" Evolutionist do not like the word design but cannot get away from it. They have coined the term "design-like" as an attempt to remove "design".
THE HEART OF THE MATTER
a nail to drive home
Those who demand scientific evidence should appreciate the fact that no one has ever seen, touched, tasted, heard, or smelled a natural selection. No natural selection has ever been isolated, identified, measured , observed or tested. Adaptations, the results of some cause, have been observed. The scientifically unverifiable cause, whatever it is, has been conveniently classified as “natural selection” by evolutionists. The term natural selection speaks of an unproven, imagined cause. Intellectually honest scientists will not debate that statement. Scientists who adapt the term do so because they like it. They simply dismiss other possibilities that are just as feasible scientifically. They claim natural selection has been accepted by most "reputable" scientists. But these scientists cannot prove it to be true. They can only claim it, then brainwash students with the idea.
From a purely scientific perspective, based on the premise that every effect has a cause, the only valid statement in the yellow portion of these scales is “something caused…” Intelligent design theorists have both the right and responsibility to see to it that public science textbooks are corrected to present pure science, not imagined assumption as if it is the actual proven cause. We have two choices, remove the unscientific license to write imagination as fact in textbooks or continue to misinform students.
Purpose and motivation - My purpose in this website is simply the truth, to promote pure science. My motivation is that I want my grandchildren to be taught pure science, science in which imagination is taught as imagination, not as fact. I say scientific knowledge is grand. It is marvelous when it is pure. But when it is laced with imagination presented as fact it becomes a huge liability, a huge danger. Designs do not happen by chance. They are the product of intellectual activity. The depth of absurdity is reached when the deluded claim is made that the human body is the result of accumulated accidents, each accident being a product of random chance. Pure science does not make such a claim. In fact, pure science does not claim one way or the other, not natural selection and not creationism. And that is precisely the point. Scientific textbooks abandon pure science and claim natural selection. To be pure this claim must be identified thoroughly and often to be only an unproven claim.
Let all scientists reject what I am saying here if they choose. They have that right. But they do not have the legitimate right to insert their religion in science textbooks, the religion of evolution worshipping the "god" of natural selection. To assert the theory of evolution is one thing. But to assert natural selection as the cause is something else. That assertion is religion. Here is what evolutionist Michael Ruse says in his book "Darwin and Design" (Harvard University Press, 2003, p216). "Natural selection is an incredibly powerful mechanism, and it does produce good solutions to design problems. Where a best solution exists, selection achieves it over and over again. All things being equal, selection does the same thing time and time again, to achieve the same ends." They cannot prove natural selection exists, but they worship it. Evolution is their religion. Selection is their god. On the following page Ruse says, "Darwinian adaptationism is our framework...and without it we have no science to do." There is Hinduism and Buddhism, many "isms", including Darwinian adaptationism with its god "natural selection." As a nation of people we have laid ourselves down to become doormats to this "ism" allowing it to come in and rule our science curriculum, with no objective proof that it is true, no objective evidence that our existence is not the result of programmed design.
How long will we continue? It could be stopped by simple legislation such as: Since "natural selection" cannot be proven to exist, its use in textbooks must be replaced by the word "something". Who will get it done? It will have to be by legislation. I hope my suspicions about our politicians are wrong.
Pure Science-Pure Education
If we fail to get the fundamentals right we cannot hope to get the details right. Intelligence can mix design and chance. Design and chance are not like oil and water. I wish to apply this truth to the controversy surrounding evolution and to demonstrate the failure of past education to include this truth.
Even if we grant that adaptation occurs in nature, we cannot demonstrate that chance-prompted natural selection causes adaptation. It can just as easily be said that adaptation, which might appear chance-driven, is really in the design. If so, adaptation is a designed response, as a building reconfigures when an elevator call button is pressed. The building is designed to adapt to the call button’s command. Neither chance nor design can be proven by pure science. Proponents of both sides revert to philosophy in their arguments. But philosophical arguments do not prove in pure science. Measurement and demonstration proves.
It is impossible to construct a comprehensive theory of evolution without applying imagination and assumptions. Every use of “selection” or “natural selection” by evolutionists assumes it to be true. They claim it is not assumption but they cannot prove it is not assumption. Nor can they prove it is not design. There is not a single incident of natural selection proven tnot to be the product of design. Nor can those who claim it is design prove by pure science it is not natural selection.
Interestingly, evolutionists freely use the word “design”. As one says, “Natural selection is an incredibly powerful mechanism, and it produces good solutions to design problems.”1 This same author, speaking about evolution says, “one can imagine a biochemical sequential process with several stages, on parts of which other processes piggyback”…then…”Moving from the pretend to the actual, today’s Darwinians have many examples of the most complex of processes that have been put in place by selection.”2 He moves from imagination to actual occurrences and assumes that unproven selection did the actual by the imagined process. The imagined process is that selection is solving design problems. He later says, “Evolution has been proven true.”3 Pure science begs to know how it has been proven if is by an imagined process.
There is no design proven to have been developed by natural selection, i.e., without a designer. Nor can one be proven. It is merely claimed to be without a designer. On the other hand, considering the multitude of patents on record and designs that have not been patented, there are countless designs easily proven to be by a designer. In light of the contrast of no design proven to have developed without a designer and multitudes proven to have been developed by a designer, could it be that the “intelligent design” concept is more scientific than “natural selection”?
The suggestion that evolution is not true does not confirm religion, it allows religion. This is thoroughly constitutional. This is an exceedingly important point in the current judicial climate of the United States. Misguided judges seem to think discrediting evolution automatically endorses religion. The Nobel Prize winning biologist Francis Crick (discoverer of the DNA molecule) concluded that evolution alone is not a sufficient explanation for our existence. But he did not embrace religion. He imagined a process called panspermia, roughly described as the seeds of life having been sent to earth by advanced beings from elsewhere in the universe. How many other possibilities can be imagined? The scientific community is listening to signals from outer space seeking possible evidence of life elsewhere in the universe. Clearly religion, or creationism, does not have to be automatically embraced if one rejects evolution. It follows that questioning the veracity of evolution does not “establish” religion. As the constitution requires, it does allow religion.
The claim that chance-driven natural selection causes evolution cannot eradicate the possibility of design. Nor can the claim of design eradicate the possibility of impact by chance. An aircraft autopilot would be another example of design impacted by chance. It‘s designer anticipated chance atmospheric events and designed specific responses to the chance events. The theory of evolution has unscientific license in that it is allowed to be presented as proven when it has not been proven. Evolutionists revolt at such a statement but they cannot prove it untrue. If the intelligent design concept belongs only in philosophy classes, so does evolution.
Pure science does not care whether it all happened by design or by chance. Pure science does demand to have all the evidence. Pure science demands to hear all the logic. Why are there Nobel Prize winning scientists, and many others with PhD's, whose scientific training has driven them away from the theory of evolution? If evolution has been proven, why are they not convinced? Pure science wants to hear their arguments. If evolution has been proven, surely an official confirming statement can be obtained from all universities. It would be interesting to see the results of an attempt to get such confirming statements from just the science departments of all universities. This confirmation will not be attainable because the theory of evolution has not been proven by pure science. Proof is in the mind of the perceiver. Add philosophy to pure science and those who want to prove evolution can prove it to their satisfaction. Add philosophy to pure science and those who want to prove creationism can prove it to their satisfaction. Pure science proves neither.
I am confident the goal of this Board is to teach pure science, to accomplish pure education. I am grateful for the many hours spent seeking to achieve those goals. I am confident you do not need to be prompted to seek those goals. You are already doing it. I am confident you continually seek to find the answer of how to achieve these goals. You have a difficult task in difficult times in a difficult legal environment. My purpose in this paper is an effort to assist you in accomplishing the goals. It is an attempt to present a perspective on the evolution controversy that perhaps you have not heard before.
In your effort to teach pure science, you will not be able to resolve the conflict between design and natural selection. But you can be the pure educators you strive to be by removing evolution’s unscientific license to present its case however it chooses, that is, minus the science-based, logic-based, math-based arguments of dissenting scientists. You did not give evolution this license. You inherited the situation in which it was already in place. But you can bring evolution out from hiding behind the unscientific, philosophical “wall of separation”.
This paper is not a call to eliminate evolution from the classroom nor is it a call to claim creationism in the classroom. It is a renewed call to pure science, to pure education. I have sought to speak from the viewpoint of pure science which does not care about the philosophical conflict surrounding evolution and religion. My two year-old granddaughter deserves pure education, to be taught pure science when she enters the public school system. I am compelled to seek it for her. I am sure you want to provide it for her by correcting whatever shortcomings you find in the curriculum.
Please consider seriously the following method of accomplishing it. It is clearly within the bounds of the constitution’s first amendment. Have evolutionary scientists present some representative quantity of their best arguments for evolution. Have dissenting scientists present their religion-free, science-based, logic-based, math-based countering arguments. This could be done as a supplemental booklet added to the science curriculum. Require this material to be taught co-requisite with evolution texts and test the students on it.
Isn’t it true that to accomplish pure education you will have to effectively do this in some manner. This action may encounter judges who need to be educated. But that possibility cannot be allowed to deter your pure education decisions.
Sources
- Ruse, Michael, 2003. Darwin and Design. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, p216.
- Ibid., p320
- Ibid., p333
Has the Darwinian theory of evolution by natural selection been proven? Two plus two equals four. That has been proven. No one disagrees with it. But there are many scientists who do not believe the Darwinian theory of evolution, which describes a theoretical process by which life developed in small increments over long periods of time by “natural selection” changes. If this theory is ever accepted as two plus two equals four is accepted, then perhaps it will be appropriate to claim it has been proven. In the meantime, is it accurate to claim it has been proven?
What is a student to conclude? Just a century ago most physicists thought the universe was static, or existed in a steady state, without a beginning. Even Albert Einstein, the Nobel Prize winner who formulated the theory of relativity, the man whom TIME magazine selected as the man of the twentieth century, was wrong about that. He later recognized that the universe is expanding, a fact that prompted the Big Bang theory, which includes a beginning of the universe. So majority acceptance proves nothing. Still, you, the student, are compelled to arrive at a conclusion.
Some imagine that suggesting the Darwinian theory of evolution is not true automatically teaches religion. This is not true however. Asserting that the theory of evolution is not true raises the question: If life did not develop by evolution, how did it come to be? But the assertion does not offer an answer. Francis Crick, the Nobel Prize winner who first broke the DNA code, did not embrace a creationist view. He did however conclude that life on earth could not have happened by chance and adopted a theory know as panspermia. In general, this theory claims the beginning of life on earth, as we know it, came from seeds of life in space. One can imagine other possibilities.
There are huge questions regarding life that science cannot answer. Scientists offer theories but cannot scientifically demonstrate answers. One example: How and why did matter arrange itself so that we have vision? If there was no intelligence and awareness involved, what caused it? If there was just dumb dead matter and dumb dead light, what brought vision into being? What prompted it? How did the usefulness of light for vision become a part of what we call life?
Another example: Why is the human body different from a slab of concrete? Both are made of the same subatomic particles. According to modern physics, in terms of matter, both are nearly 100% empty space. Why is there life and intelligence in the human body but not in the concrete slab? They are both made of exactly the same dumb dead stuff, just arranged in different configurations in the same kind of empty space. But they are different. Is it simply a matter of arrangement of atoms, or is something else involved?
One more: If evolution is a slow, by chance process, how did a certain specific propulsion system of bacteria occur? Some forty parts had to show up working together as a system. Take out one part and the system doesn’t work. All the other parts become useless. Without direction how did these parts come into being, and arrange themselves into a working system? How did it happen without a plan leading to the goal?
Einstein apparently accepted some form of the theory of evolution. But it seems he did not believe it happened by chance. In fact, regarding the harmony of natural law he said it “reveals an intelligence of such superiority that, compared with it, all the systematic thinking and acting of human beings is an utterly insignificant reflection.” 1
One person might say, “We came into being by chance.” Another would say, “No, we were designed.” Still another would say, “No, we are just the result of natural laws.” Neither statement has been objectively proven scientifically. A specific example involves the fact that antibiotic resistant bacteria show up after prolonged exposure to antibiotics. A proponent of evolution says this is an example of evolution, a new species of bacteria developed because of natural selective pressures. A proponent of design would say it is not chance driven evolution but an adjustment that was already in the design of the bacteria. The antibiotic initiated the change like pressing an elevator call button initiates change in a building. Neither position has been proven scientifically.
Michael Ruse, a professor of philosophy at Florida State University who has written numerous books on the subject says “The Darwinian revolution is over and Darwin won” 2 and “Evolution has been proven true, and is widely accepted as such.” 3 He arrived at these statements by first stating, “One can imagine a biochemical process with several stages, on parts of which other processes piggyback, as it were.” 4 Then he proceeds to offer his arguments as to why the imagined process is true. It is in order to ask how the process is proven if we have to “imagine” it.
The intelligence of humanity can only observe information regarding our existence and draw conclusions. In this gathering process there is a factor quite significant to many analysts. It is easy to confirm that intelligence designs, but there is no confirmation that chance designs now, nor that chance has ever designed.
There are millions of patents on record at the U. S. Patent Office. Each one of these designs is the product of intelligent activity. Each one came into being because intelligence put it into being, an irrefutable fact. There is not a single design anywhere confirmed to have been done by chance, not even one, also an irrefutable fact. It cannot be verified that chance ever designed anything. The mere fact that a species exists, or that it existed in a certain time and a certain place, or in a certain order, is not evidence that it happened by chance. One might also argue it is not evidence indicating design.
Of all the designs known to humanity, the human body is the most sophisticated. Ruse would call it “design-like” instead of design. No engineer, nor all of them combined, has designed anything that even comes close to the complexity of the human body. The person who believes the human body happened by chance has to also believe that chance, the roll of dice, is more capable and more talented than all engineers and scientists combined. With abundant confirmation that intelligence designs, and no confirmation that chance designs, you are compelled to decide which is the more viable statement: “The human body happened by chance,” or “The human body was designed.”
Competent mathematicians have computed statistical probabilities indicating evolution by chance cannot be true. To get a feel for some of the calculations, suppose a tennis ball represents the calculated probability that evolution by chance is true. A ball representing the probability that it is not true would be larger than the universe. According to the big bang theory of the earth’s age, it is not even close to being old enough to accommodate all the chance requirements for the theory of evolution to be true. Evolutionists who believe that chance is the cause dispute the basis of these calculations.
Gerald L. Schroeder, a nuclear physicist with a doctoral degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, concedes, “It’s true that probability never says never,” then continues, “but all of physics, which means all of nature, is based on the understanding that the very, very, very unlikely never happens. Without this understanding, there is no foundation for any assumptions of physics or cosmology” 5 He states, “The statistical improbability of pure chance yielding even the simplest forms of life has made a mockery of the theory that random choice alone gave us the biosphere that we see.” 6
Schroeder describes a vast collection of fossils found by Charles D Walcott, director of the Smithsonian Institute in the early 1900’s. they were found at the Burgess Pass in the Canadian Rockies. “Representatives of every animal phylum, the basic anatomies of all animals alive today, were present among those half-billion-year-old specimens. These fossils revealed an extraordinary fact. Eyes and gills, jointed limbs and intestines, sponges and worms and insects and fish, all had appeared simultaneously…According to these fossils…the dogma of classical Darwinian evolution that the simple had evolved into the more complex, that invertebrates had evolved into vertebrates over one hundred to two hundred million years, was fantasy, not fact.” 7
References
- Albert Einstein, Ideas and Opinions—The World as I See It (New York: Bonanza Books, 1931), p. 40, as quoted in Fred Hereen, Show Me God (Day Star Publications, 1998), p. 201.
- Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design (Harvard, 2003), p. 330.
- Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design (Harvard, 2003), p. 333.
- Michael Ruse, Darwin and Design (Harvard, 2003), p. 320.
- Gerald L. Shroeder, The Science of God (Broadway, 1997), p. 26.
- Gerald L. Shroeder, The Science of God (Broadway, 1997), p. 93.
- Gerald L. Shroeder, The Science of God (Broadway, 1997), pp. 36-37