Darwin and Creation

How a Lunatic Sees It

Sane people insist on certain knowledge. To them, either science or God explains everything. Or maybe science explains some things and God explains others. They may not know exactly how science or God explains it, but it is essential to know that the explanation, in some sense, is “there.” They know that they have not completed the puzzle, but they hang on to the boxtop in the certainty that one day the puzzle will be finished and it will look just like the picture on the box.

To a madman things look very different. To him life is still a marvelous and amazing mystery. He loves the mystery that sane folks abhor. The science of biology has made amazing progress and has learned many wonderful things, but it seems that the more we learn the less we understand. That is, biologists keep learning more about the intricate, dynamic, and complex ways in which biological systems operate, but they are perpetually mystified about why they operate the way they do.

They are committed to a mechanistic view of biology, but much to their embarrassment, they are constantly being forced into explaining the behavior of organisms, organs and cells in terms of purpose. They cannot couch their explanations in mechanistic terms; they must simply say, in effect, “It is that way because it serves the purpose of the organism.” Beyond that, in a lunatic's eyes, they are simply ignorant. In their own mentally wholesome organs of vision, of course, it is certain that eventually a mechanistic answer will be found. Darwinism gives them the salvation of certainty.

But until and unless they do, (the madman says) even scientific Darwinism is still questionable. Let us suppose that the Darwinists could conclusively show that genetic change is completely random (a large order, but let us suppose it). That is, changes in DNA come about entirely because of accidents in the process of duplicating DNA.

A successful — that is adaptive — mutation is one that is translated by the developing organism into something useful.

But if we do not know how that happens (and we do not) then we cannot say that chance alone is responsible for the variants that arise because those variants are the result of the interactions between the genetic material and the life processes that actually build the organism. We know that life is exceedingly adaptive at every level, both internally and externally. How can we know that those extremely adaptive processes are using the material at hand — DNA and the proteins it produces — in a creative, adaptive way? We cannot.

But the Darwinists simply assume that a mechanistic answer must be the correct one. They like to think that DNA causes an organism to develop as it does, but that is like saying that blueprints cause houses to be built, without considering plumbers, carpenters, electricians and all the other creative workers without which houses cannot be built.

In the case of a developing organism, we know virtually nothing about the workers who built it and how they manage their amazing work. In fact, as far as we can tell, the work gets done without workers anywhere in sight, and we are quite helpless to explain how it happens. We are quite ignorant, and as long as we are we simply cannot say that natural selection alone accounts for the course of evolution. Or so it appears to the madman.

But the sane scientist knows that the answer must be scientific, that is to say, mechanistic. Anything else is unthinkable. A non-mechanistic answer would be supernatural, magical, and mystical — that is, utterly irrational. That possibility is as unbearable to the sane scientist as is the possibility that God does not exist to the sane theist. He will not, cannot, face it. It is literally unthinkable.

It is unthinkable both to the avowed atheist and to the moderate scientists who deny that science is incompatible with religion. The moderates are victims of equivocation. One the one hand they cling to their scientific boxtop, their picture of science as the ultimate answer to everything, and on the other they are equally convinced that science is open, skeptical and unwilling to accept any version of truth until rigorously tested. A science without pre-conceived ideas, without boxtops. They like to picture themselves as fearlessly embracing their ignorance while still clinging to the comfort of certain knowledge.

They blend two logically incompatible visions of science: one which leaves room for religion because it accepts its own ignorance; the other necessarily hostile to faith because it demands that all explanations of the cosmos be mechanistic ones, which is a view absolutely no religion could accept. The metaphysical Darwinists sneer at them with some justification for failing to accept the logical consequences of their own beliefs.