The End of Darwinism

Darwin’s evolutionary materialism, the belief that life arose and evolved by chance has pretty much remained unchanged since it was proposed, and this is despite the fact that the missing link had to be abandoned, vital fossil records have never appeared, and it cannot explain the Cambrian Explosion or the irreducible complexity of a single cell. Now in his book Icons Of Evolution, Jonathan Wells shows "that many of the traditional proofs for Darwinian evolution are at best open to multiple interpretations, and are at worst . . . faked."

Wells, a holder of two Ph.D.s, one from Berkeley and one from Yale, is a ranking member of the Intelligent Design movement, the scientific attempt to find evidence that Universe was planned without asserting either the identity or the intent of the planner. Darwinism is his longstanding interest. With each chapter of the book, Darwinian evolution looks less like science and more like myth or, at the least, a paradigm in need of improvement.

Marxism has been proven a mistake. Freud’s psychoanalysis didn’t work. Now there is an argument that the speed of light is not a constant. Science changes positions all the time but Darwinism doesn’t budge. Anyone questioning it is instantly classified as a nut case, or if a scientist, one who can forget about establishment funding. Why is this? The system normally works well and, and except for Darwinism, science has accommodated much. Maybe it is because the "Darwinian high priesthood" stands to lose too much that they are allowed to get away with it. Then again, maybe they enjoy browbeating Christians (which is foolish, plenty of Christians have accommodated Darwinian beliefs) and they have hung in for a long time.

Thomas Kuhn’s The Structure of Scientific Revolutions introduced the expression paradigm to scientific discussion. He claims to regret using the word, but in any case he helps resolve our problem with his emphasis on the reluctance of scientists to be critical of an existing paradigm. He describes scientists as concentrating on verifying and improving the existing paradigm, until finally enough anomalies and contradictions accumulate that it breaks down to be replaced, hence a paradigm shift. This is nothing new; it is what we have all been taught. What matters is his pointing out that rather than critically examining existing paradigms, which is what they ought to be doing, many scientists seek to justify them. This may explain how Darwinist dogma remains respectable.

If it were true that we are nothing but accidental creatures, mere animals, endowed with neither purpose nor rights, then anything would be OK. There would be no standards, and therefore no way to judge. But it is not true. Man, animal or not, has a soul, consciousness if you like, and cannot live successfully without spirituality. It is what leads us to notions of dignity, purpose and rights. Materialism's official creed, "If it isn't matter, it doesn't matter," is not acceptable, and also explains our murderous past century. Without the restraints of the spiritual world we find people corrupted, behaving in accordance with Acton’s aphorism, "Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely."

Now the superstitious scientist because of his superior knowledge in his own discipline refuses to accept restraints and dogmatically defends Darwin. More than the rest of us, scientists, with their recognized ability to rationalize and redefine, need the guidance of the spiritual world. They need to recognize the materialist conclusions of Darwinian evolution as the superstitions that they are and search for a paradigm that recognizes a place for the spiritual.