Horse Sense: Darwinian Dogma
Over 700 scientists from around the world have signed a statement expressing skepticism about the contemporary theory of Darwinian evolution. The statement, located online at www.dissentfromdarwin.org, reads: “We are skeptical of claims for the ability of random mutation and natural selection to account for the complexity of life. Careful examination of the evidence for Darwinian theory should be encouraged.” The list of signatories includes member scientists from National Academies of Science in many countries, including the United States. Many of the signers are professors or researchers at major universities and prestigious international research institutions such as Oxford and Cambridge Universities, Moscow State University, Chitose Institute of Science and Technology (Japan), Ben-Gurion University in Israel, MIT, The Smithsonian and Princeton; also great Texas institutions like Rice University, University of Texas at Austin, Texas A&M University, Texas Tech University, Baylor University, and Lubbock Christian University.
Dr. Michael Egnor, professor of neurosurgery and pediatrics at State University of New York, Stony Brook says, “We know intuitively that Darwinism can accomplish some things, but not others. The question is what is that boundary? Does the information content in living things exceed that boundary? Darwinists have never faced those questions. They’ve never asked scientifically if random mutation and natural selection can generate the information content in living things.” What is occurring is a broad-based scientific challenge to prevailing scientific theory. It is about time, but it also more or less begs the central question. By way of illustration, Sigmund Freud is the father of psychology. His theories are interesting, helpful and have some merit, but they’ve been modified, supplemented, discredited on particulars. Freud hardly defines the be-all-end-all of the contemporary state of psychology. His theories never comprised the limits of discovery, nor discouraged investigation into new hypotheses or research and analysis into competing theories. Charles Darwin himself never arrogated his theory of evolution to the status of Truth; and Clarence Darrow defended Scopes ostensibly to enlarge school curriculum rather than diminish it, in order to allow evolution to be taught as competing theory to prevailing orthodoxy. It is strange then how modern biology has been stymied from research and inquiry in directions at odds with Darwin; stranger still, how old molds dominate American curricula and the value of free inquiry is sacrificed to new prevailing orthodoxy. Investigation or even looking at things in a un-Darwinian way is almost as dangerous in academe today as studying or reporting on gender patterns.
No matter the result of the latest scientific challenge to Darwin (and I wish it luck), the central question I believe concerns education. Freedom of inquiry ought to be paramount to educational processes at every level. The aim of learning itself is to search for, journey forward and to find the truth, whether partial or whole, or at least man’s best approximation of it. Relating this to what Dr. Egnor refers to as “boundary” above, there are those of us who see God in science everywhere. There is no rational basis to exclude a theory based upon Scripture or philosophy from the frontier of knowledge that borders on the known and unknown. There is no rational basis either to exclude the presentation of more than one system where reason competes. The various assumptions are easily laid out. For curriculum developers and bureaucrats who assert the purpose of education is to prepare kids for the future, with practical skills they need to negotiate their way in a post-industrial, service based economy, please tell me what possible bearing a blind belief in Darwinian theory has, unless it is for some post-modern cultural purpose or political aim. It certainly doesn’t help kids to think, either outside or inside the proverbial box.
Darwinism, creationism and Intelligent Design, etc. all contribute to education and to the educational process. To paraphrase Thomas Jefferson, ‘I have sworn eternal hostility to every form of tyranny that would enslave the minds of men.’ Progressives will more often than not conclude his statement refers to organized religion, and so it may. But it is far more profound and broader in its application than that. His hostility is against those, who would oppose free inquiry and against anyone who would arbitrarily close down avenues for gaining knowledge or explaining phenomena. His hostility is towards the Tyrant, be he scientist, politician or priest. His hostility would (and ours should) extend to those dogmatic Darwinists in charge of schools today, who teach evolution as unquestioned and unquestionable faith—those self-righteous, who play God and ride herd the minds of men every day we continue to let them.
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Wesley Allen Riddle is a retired military officer with degrees and honors from West Point and Oxford. Widely published in the academic and opinion press, he ran for U.S. Congress (TX-District 31) in the 2004 Republican Primary. Email: wes@wesriddle.com.
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