The Evolution Controversy: A Survey of Competing Theories by Thomas B. Fowler and Daniel
Kuebler (Ada, MI: Baker Academic, 2007)
STEPHEN M. BARR is Professor of Physics at the University of Delaware and author of Modern Physics and Ancient Faith (2003).
The last twenty years have seen an intensifying
of the evolution wars in
the United States. The passion in these
confl icts comes mainly from two groups,
fundamentalist Christians and scientifi c
atheists, who feed off each other even as
they abominate each other. Although
poles apart in their worldviews, they agree
on one fundamental premise, namely that
biological evolution is incompatible with
Biblical religion. Polls show that the fundamentalists
have much popular support:
45 percent of Americans believe that God
created plants and animals within the last
10,000 years in approximately their present
form (a view called creationism).
The scientifi c atheists are much fewer in
number but are energetic propagandists.
Caught in the middle are the rest of the
American people, most of whom see no
contradiction between God and evolution.
It is often overlooked that a large number
of American scientists are traditional religious
believers. (A recent survey showed
that nearly half believe in a personal God
who answers prayers). The great majority
of these religious scientists regard evolution
as a well-established fact and look
upon the public battles over it as pointless
and embarrassing.
One casualty of these battles is religious
belief itself. The very fact that religious
believers are still attacking evolution after
so many decades lends credibility to the
atheists’ claim that religion and science
are irreconcilable. Science, too, is harmed.
With so many people convinced that the
scientifi c establishment is mistaken, or even
lying, about an issue of fundamental importance,
and with militant atheists claiming
to speak for science and using science as
a weapon against faith, public trust in the
scientifi c community and its institutions is
diminished. This is of no small concern to
a profession that lives largely off the public
purse. Equally worrisome are attempts
by creationists and others to re-draw the
boundaries of science in order to justify the
teaching of “alternatives” to “mainstream
science” in schools. If that were done,
there would be no principled grounds for
objecting to the teaching of “alternative
medicine,” astrology, and many other ideas
that have a large popular following or to
the teaching of popular “alternatives” in
other fi elds, such as “Afrocentric history.”
A scholarly discipline that is no longer
trusted to police its own boundaries is like
a body without an immune system. A third
and more subtle threat to the health of the
scientifi c enterprise is intellectual rigidity.
In closing ranks against creationist pseudoscience,
as it has been forced to do, the
scientifi c community has grown increasingly
intolerant toward even those who
raise reasonable questions about evolution.
As creationists have for propaganda
purposes exploited the normal debates
within biology, the unresolved puzzles of
theory, and the inevitable anomalies in
data, some biologists have become afraid
to admit any shortcomings or uncertainty
in their theoretical framework.
Many religious leaders and theologians
have attempted to defuse the confl ict by
pointing out that orthodox Christian faith
is no bar to accepting the established facts
of biological science. In 1996, Pope John
Paul II made an important statement on
the subject to the Pontifi cal Academy of
Sciences, and in 2004, the Roman Catholic
Church’s International Theological
Commission issued an impressive study of
the theological issues, entitled Communion
and Stewardship. Religious scientists have
also begun to speak up. In 1999, Kenneth
R. Miller, a biology professor at Brown
University and co-author of a standard
biology textbook, came out with Finding
Darwin’s God. In 2006, The Language
of God appeared, written by Francis S.
Collins, a world-renowned geneticist and
head of the Human Genome Project. Both
books argue for the compatibility of standard
neo-Darwinian evolution and traditional
Christian faith. Miller is a Catholic
and Collins an evangelical Christian.
Even many scientists who are not religious
have tried to smooth things over,
because they recognize that the confl ict
is fraught with dangers for science. One
notes, for example, the following statement
from the National Academy of
Sciences, “[It is false] to think that the
theory of evolution represents an irreconcilable
confl ict between religion and
science. A great many religious believers
accept evolution on scientifi c grounds
without relinquishing their belief in religious
principles.” The same point has
been emphasized by several well-known
scientists who are atheists, including the
late Stephen J. Gould. Unfortunately, these
efforts have not brought peace.
When the Intelligent Design (or “ID”)
movement came along in the late 1990s,
it looked like an attempt to fi nd a middle
ground. The movement did not deny that
the earth is billions of years old or that
the present species of plants and animals
evolved from a common ancestor (the
idea called “common descent”). They
merely argued that natural mechanisms,
including natural selection, are inadequate
to explain evolution, a position that is not
in itself unreasonable or a threat to science.
Far from acting as a moderating force,
however, the ID movement quickly ended
up exacerbating the confl ict. This is due to
three strategic decisions they made from
the very outset. First, they did not clearly
dissociate themselves from creationism,
which they could have done by frankly
admitting that the evidence for common
descent is compelling. Instead, in some
of their writings, such as those of Phillip
E. Johnson, evidence is called into question.
It seems that the ID movement did
not wish to alienate creationists, whom
they appeared to regard as allies against
the common enemy of “Darwinism.” An
obvious advantage to them in this informal
alliance is that their potential audience
and infl uence is enormously expanded.
The drawback is that they have come to
be seen, even by some people initially
disposed to be sympathetic to them, as a
stalking horse for creationism. Second, the
“ID theorists,” as they style themselves,
did not merely argue that there were
reasonable grounds to doubt the suffi –
ciency of natural explanations; they sometimes
argued that it was already provable
that natural explanations will never be able
account for certain biological facts. This is
a highly provocative claim, since the scientifi
c community sees as its business the
search for such explanations. And third,
the ID movement announced as one of its
goals a redefi nition of science to include
types of explanation that most people see
as religious or quasi-religious. As this kind
of redefi nition has always been one of the
main practical threats to science posed by
the creationists, the backlash against the
ID movement from the scientifi c community
was predictably harsh.
At the same time as all this has been
going on, some scientists have begun to
argue for the importance of various non-
Darwinian—but completely naturalistic—
mechanisms of evolution. There is quite
a grab-bag of such proposals, including
“complexity theory” and a set of ideas that
have come to be called “evo-devo” (short
for “evolution-development”). The result
is that there are now several evolution
controversies going on at the same time
instead of just the one we were all familiar
with.
Thomas B. Fowler and Daniel Kuebler’s
The Evolution Controversy is an attempt
to sort all this out for the general reader.
It succeeds in this goal admirably. The
authors begin by presenting the history of
evolutionary thought from the forerunners
of Darwin up to the present time, as
well as the history of opposition to evolution.
They note that much of the confusion
surrounding the subject comes from
the fact that the word evolution is used by
different people to mean different things.
Fowler and Kuebler therefore distinguish
three “tiers” in the theory of evolution:
The fi rst tier is historical evolution, which
is the idea that living things have undergone
a process of development lasting
hundreds of millions of years, the stages of
which can be read in the fossil record. The
second tier is common descent. The third tier
is what they call strong Darwinian evolution,
by which they mean the idea that natural
selection is by itself suffi cient to account for
the facts of evolution. They then proceed
to classify the main contending positions
into four “schools.”
First is the Neo-Darwinian School.
Neo-Darwinism is the standard term among
scientists for the synthesis, achieved in
the mid-twentieth century, of Darwin’s
theory of evolution with modern genetics.
The mutations that Darwin saw as fueling
evolutionary change are now understood
to be genetic mutations. Second is the
Meta-Darwinian School. This actually
comprises two groups: those who think
that neo-Darwinism is basically correct,
but accept that some non-Darwinian
mechanisms may also be signifi cant, and
those who think that non-Darwinian
mechanisms play the central and even
dominant role in evolution.
Third is the Intelligent Design School.
Like the Meta-Darwinians, they accept
(or, at least, do not explicitly reject) the
fi rst two tiers of evolution. Finally there
is the Creationist School. This school is far
more radical than the others, for it rejects
all three tiers of evolution. (There are some
Creationists who accept that the universe
is billions of years old, but most Creationists
are of the so-called “Young earth”
type and believe that the universe is only a
few thousand years old.)
Fowler and Kuebler succeed very well
in explaining, without oversimplifi cation,
but in a way that will be understood
by ordinary readers, the positions of
each school, the principle arguments and
counter-arguments, and the most important
scientifi c evidence. Even fairly knowledgeable
readers will come away having
learned a great deal. For example, it came
as a surprise to me that many creationists
not only believe that new species can
evolve but believe that such evolution can
happen far faster than Darwinian evolu
tion would allow. (They have to suppose
this in order to explain how the relatively
few types of animals that would have fi t
on Noah’s Ark could have led to the vast
number of life forms we see today.)
Fowler and Kuebler’s purpose is not
merely to explain the evolution controversies;
it is to help ordinary people to “decide
for themselves” where the scientifi c truth
lies. This is a somewhat peculiar aim, as
they themselves appear to recognize. We
do not expect ordinary people to decide
for themselves where the scientifi c truth
lies with regard to disputed questions in
subatomic physics or other highly technical
fi elds. Common sense tells us that
such matters are for trained specialists to
debate and judge. What we face in the area
of evolution, however, is precisely a crisis
of trust. When 45 percent of the general
public think that biologists, astrophysicists,
cosmologists, and geologists, are all off by
a factor of a million (!) in their calculations
of the age of the universe, the age of
the earth, and the duration of life on earth,
we are no longer in a situation where the
authority of experts can be invoked. Fowler
and Kuebler therefore feel that there is no
other way to proceed than to present the
scientifi c evidence as clearly as possible and
trust in ordinary people’s good sense.
There is reason to suspect that the authors
are secretly hoping that open-minded
creationists who read their book will come
to the realization that creationism is scientifi
cally untenable. Fowler and Kuebler
cannot say this, however, because any
appearance that they are not impartial
would undermine their credibility with the
very people they are most trying to reach.
In consequence, they bend over backwards
to emphasize their “neutrality” and
to treat all four “schools” as scientifi cally
respectable. This leads them very often
to soften their language to an unjustifi ed,
and indeed absurd, degree when discussing
creationism. They speak of the “considerable”
problems with fi tting the history of
the universe and the earth into 10,000
years. (The correct word is “insurmountable.”)
They say that “there is no guarantee”
that creationist research will lead
to viable explanations that can withstand
rigorous scrutiny. (The correct statement
is that there is an iron-clad guarantee that
it will not produce such explanations, and
that, in fact, creationism is already unable
to withstand even the mildest scrutiny.)
They say that “a very good case” exists for
common descent, when they must know
full well that the evidence they presented
for it earlier in their book is utterly conclusive.
They say, “if they [the creationists]
can succeed in demonstrating a young age
[of the earth and universe], of the order of
10,000 years or so . . .” That is like saying,
“If they can succeed in showing that the
moon is made of green cheese . . .” They
several times explicitly deny that young
earth creationism should be treated as
a “crackpot theory,” when in fact that is
exactly what it is.
It is understandable that the authors
want to be tactful, but there is a fi ne line
between tact and lack of candor, and they
clearly cross it. Some people might say that
their attitude is right, since science should
maintain an open mind about all possibilities.
But that is nonsense; science can reach
fi rm and reliable conclusions and has on
countless questions. The authors know this,
and admit that some theories do belong in
the crackpot category. Instead of patronizing
the creationists by pretending to take
their theories seriously as science (which is
not at all the same thing as taking creationists
seriously as people), Fowler and Kuebler
might have explained what it is that distinguishes
crackpot theories from serious ones.
However, the epistemology of science that
they develop in the early part of their book
is inadequate to the task.
The misconception many people have
about science is that experiments and
observations provide one directly with
statements about the world that can be
lined up alongside the statements of theory
in order to verify or falsify the latter. What
they actually provide is facts—such as fragments
of bone in a riverbed, readings on a
dial, or tracks in a particle detector—whose
signifi cance cannot be grasped without
the application of a large body of existing
theory. In other words, every conclusion
of science rests upon a large number of
assumptions. Each of those assumptions
can be questioned, and so it might seem
that the uncertainty of scientifi c conclusions
would actually increase as one
probed the reasoning upon which they are
based. The reason that this epistemological
unraveling doesn’t occur is that while each
conclusion rests upon many assumptions,
each assumption also provides the basis
for many conclusions. In other words, one
does not have a fragile chain of logic which
snaps if any link is broken, but a highly
connected network of interlocking and
mutually supporting facts and inferences.
Every part of that network is held in place
by many links to other known facts, both
near and remote.
How then is it ever possible to revise
any conclusion of science, let alone have a
“scientifi c revolution” that revises many of
them? The answer is that it is not as easy
as some people imagine. In the early days
of a branch of science, when few facts are
known and their connections are not well
understood, wholesale revisions of theory
are not uncommon. But as a branch of
science matures, it becomes more diffi cult
to formulate a viable theory that departs in
some fundamental way from the existing
theory. Such radical revisions can still
occur, but they are rare, and they generally
require that the new theory give the same
answers as the old one except in extreme
and quite unusual conditions. For example,
while Einstein’s theory of gravity involved
major conceptual revisions, it gives the
same answers as Newton’s theory to an
extremely high accuracy, unless gravitational
fi elds are enormously strong or the
gravitating bodies are moving near the
speed of light. Even fi nding a place where
the existing theory can be modifi ed in a
minor way is not so simple. That is why
coming up with a sensible new theory
requires a great deal of technical knowledge
and skill: the theorist must be able to
spot the elements in the existing structure
that are not really supporting much weight
and which can be modifi ed or removed
without bringing the whole building
crashing down.
The same applies outside the natural
sciences—for example in history. It is
one thing to question some detail in the
received account of, say, Julius Caesar’s life.
It is quite another to propose a radical new
account of history according to which the
Roman Empire never existed. We simply
know too many things, and the things
we know are simply too interconnected
for a revision of that sort to be possible. It
is a revision of that sort that creationism
proposes, and that is why it is a crackpot
idea.
G.K. Chesterton, in Orthodoxy,
describes the futility of trying to debate on
his own terms the ideas of a “maniac,” by
which he meant someone who is trapped
in a tiny circle of logic. It is not that the
maniac’s logic is fl awed, but that his world
is too small. His system is self-consistent,
but it leaves almost everything out. It is not
enough to provide him with a few more
facts and arguments to consider, he must
be made to see the big picture and how
much bigger it is than he supposed.
I do not wish to leave a wrong impression.
This is in many ways an excellent
book. Indeed, I know of no book that is
better for someone wanting to understand
the scientifi c aspects of the “Evolution
Controversy.” It explains very well a great
deal of material, including the strongest
pieces of evidence against creationism. If
it tries too hard to be kind to creationism,
that is perhaps an excusable fault. Doubtless,
Fowler and Kuebler are trying not to
“crush the bruised reed.” I hope that in
future editions they choose to be more
frank. But even as it is, this is a book of
considerable merits.