Why Neither Side is Winning the Creation-Evolution Debate
A review of The Battle of Beginnings
by Del Ratzsch
InterVarsity Press, Downers Grove, Illinois, 1996
by Carl Wieland
This is an important book, despite being significantly flawed. The author is a professional
philosopher of science, and it is precisely this arena that is so important in this
battle. The origins issue is not just a matter of ‘the evidence’. The
nature of your presuppositions — how you see science, and a host of other
factors combine to influence not only how you deal with the evidence, but even what
you see as evidence in the first place.
Some anti-evolutionists in the ‘intelligent design’ camp1 have hailed Ratzsch’s contribution as being
that of an independent umpire, as it were; one who is prepared to adjudicate without
fear or favour, pointing out the flaws on both sides, showing how each side is using
unfair, below-the-belt blows. Certainly that is the picture which Dr Ratzsch seeks
to consistently paint — one which would appeal to everyone’s sense of
fair play. In the left corner — the over-enthusiastic young-Earth creationists,
in the right corner, the extreme, materialist, hard-line atheistic evolutionists.
The framework of the book is consistent with this ‘referee’ picture.
He seeks to outline both Darwinism and current creationist theory. He then devotes
a chapter each to detailing ‘popular misunderstandings’ by both sides
— that is, ways in which creationists misunderstand and/or misrepresent evolution,
and ways in which evolutionists do the same to creationists. So far, so good —
we can all do with some constructive criticism, and at least this is trying to be
fair to all sides.
But after a while the suspicion becomes impossible to resist that all is not as
it is meant to appear. I found myself asking whether this was not just another theistic
evolutionary attempt to have ‘the best of both worlds’, to portray both
sides as extremists, with the cool rational moderates standing in the middle. I
think this may very well be so, although it is much more subtle than most such attempts.
If this is in fact his strategy, Ratzsch would no doubt be aware of the danger of
being too easily written off by allowing himself to be labelled as an apologist
for theistic evolution. He goes to great pains, both at the beginning and end of
his book, to point out that he has come to no conclusion concerning the proper resolution
between evolution and the Genesis account.
Nevertheless, it is difficult to avoid the impression that, overall, he has very
little sympathy for the Genesis creationists, and that the purpose of this book,
clearly aimed at Christians, is not as benign or ‘neutral’as the impression
it seeks to convey.
For instance, Ratzsch’s selection criteria for the creationist side. All his
allegations of wrongheaded tactics concern statements by what are often called the
‘young-Earth creationists’(or by anti-evolutionists whose writings are
used liberally by young-Earth creationists, such as Michael Denton and Phillip Johnson).
There is no hint of any criticism of a ‘progressive creationist’ critique
of evolution, such as put forward by Hugh Ross, for example. Anyone who, like Ross,
actively attacks the young-Earth creationists seems to be immune from methodological
failures of philosophical misunderstandings in their own attacks on evolution (which
is actually hardly the case).
The same weighting is there when addressing the misunderstandings by the evolutionist
side. When critiquing evolutionists for their misrepresentations of creationist
arguments, his chosen villains are always the rabidly materialistic, atheistic,
naturalistic variety. These could be seen as ‘soft targets’, expendable
in the cause of winning the heart of the uncommitted reader by showing apparent
‘even-handedness’. We never hear a whisper of how creationists have
been misrepresented by their progressive creationist or theistic evolutionist opponents.
Especially not his own colleagues at Calvin College, a hotbed of theistic evolutionary
apologetics, from whence have come a number of polemical anti-Genesis-creationist
books and articles.
It also comes across to me as if, in trying to find as many examples of apparent
philosophical ‘misrepresentation’ or ‘misunderstandings’
by creationists as he can, he seems to have been scraping the bottom of the barrel.
From the extensive bibliography, it is clear that he has done an enormous amount
of homework. With such a huge resource of creationist material, you would think
that he could find sufficient representative examples to make his case from the
mainstream publications, materials which were intended to provide sufficient explanatory
context to enable Ratzsch to state, without misrepresentation, where there are such
flaws.
Instead, he feels compelled to list sources ranging from verbal comments to lay
audiences by creationist popularizers, through pamphlets to something as encyclopaedic
and in-depth as Walter ReMine’s The Biotic Message [see
online review]. Curiously, he does not cover anywhere near the same ground
in his evolutionist sources. Not one single lecture statement, no pamphlet quotes
for the evolutionists, just a few major and carefully written works — which
is as it should have been for both sides if the ‘neutrality’ stance
were to have been defensible.
It is all too easy to misrepresent something in a brief work or a popular lecture,
as is seen when, for instance, (in the chapter on ‘popular creationist misunderstandings’)
Ratzsch attempts to use something from my own pamphlet-style booklet, Stones and
Bones, to demonstrate his point. The context is as follows. First, he claims
that many creationists do not understand the difference between Lyellian uniformitarianism
and what Ratzsch calls ‘classical’ uniformitarianism, and says that
they get confused with the distinction between these and ‘methodological’
uniformitarianism. Then he says that creationists often unfairly attack uniformitarianism
by merely ‘citing evidence for some particular geologic event being rapid
or catastrophic’, whereas uniformitarianism has always allowed for
isolated catastrophes. At this point, one of his examples is that:
‘Wieland notes that fossils "show signs of rapid burial", shows
a picture of a mother ichthyosaur "trapped in the process of giving birth"
and seems to take the case as thereby closed’.
But what in fact did Wieland’s booklet claim (I actually happen to know the
author rather well)? First, the word ‘uniformitarianism’ is not even
mentioned. Second the entire context is not one of proving or disproving anything,
but rather showing that the demonstrable catastrophic formation of these fossils
is consistent with the Bible. My actual words, referring to evidence
of rapid burial, were ‘Isn’t that the sort of thing you would
expect if the Bible is right about the destruction of the whole earth with
water?’
Anyone reading Stones and Bones and comparing it with Ratzsch’s comments
will see that the idea I was attacking was the common belief that fossils necessarily
speak of long time-spans. I say on page 8 that fossils actually ‘show signs
of rapid burial, not slow and gradual processes as most people believe’.
To highlight still further the misleading nature of the critique, I actually mention
on page 12 that many experts accept catastrophic formation of the Grand Canyon,
for example, without abandoning their belief in millions of years. How much clearer
could it be that I am not claiming that rapid formation ‘closes the case’
per se on modern geological views? Readers may understand why I penned
onto my review copy of the Ratzsch book at this section ‘either exceptionally
slippery or obtuse’.
Before leaving the issue of uniformitarianism, I would take strong issue here with
Ratzsch’s comment that all demonstrations of rapid fossil/strata formation
are ‘beside the point’ when seeking to defend Genesis. His
reason for dismissing such evidence as ‘irrelevant’ is simply
that in classic uniformitarianism, there is room for regional catastrophism,
landslides, etc. I am reminded of a lunchtime talk I gave at a Queensland university.
Having shown examples of rapid burial, one front-row audience member challenged
me by saying, ‘So what does that prove? Of course fossils can form quickly
in a local catastrophe — so what!’. I pointed out that I had
been careful not to claim proof from this alone for global catastrophe.
However, I went on to say, for many people, the very existence of fossils (because
of the common belief that, by definition, they speak of slow processes), was proof
that the Bible’s account of recent creation was wrong. Therefore, I said,
it is very important to demonstrate the wrongness of that belief, to show that those
who accept the Bible by faith are not butting against the evidence, and that there
is much evidence consistent with Noah’s Flood. He then shot back, ‘But
it’s not true that most people believe fossils form slowly - I was taught
that fossils always form quickly’. I asked the audience, who were
from many different faculties, to raise their hands if they had not
been given the impression that fossils were the result of slow and gradual processes
— when my questioner turned around, the only hand raised was his own.
How then can Ratzsch, as a Christian trying to give the impression that he is not
intrinsically prejudiced against Genesis creation, claim that it is ‘beside
the point’to demonstrate that observations long believed to be a
stumbling block to belief in Genesis are actually consistent with it?
Interestingly, in the same breath as all this, Ratzsch comments on a reference by
Wysong to ‘polystrate trees that could not have been buried slowly’and
thus were alleged to cause a problem for the ‘evolutionary-uniformitarian
interpretation’. Ratzsch lumps this into the same basket as the other
examples of rapid burial, but misses (or deliberately overlooks) a crucial difference.
Creationists do not cite polystrate trees as a problem merely because they show
rapid burial. ‘Polystrate’ means ‘many layers’. Let’s
say the bottom part of a fossil tree is encased in geological layer A, the middle
part surrounded by layer B, and the upper part by layer C. Assume that layers A
and C are supposed, by standard evolutionary assignations of age based on index
fossil dating, to be separated by millions of years. The issue is not one of whether
layers A, B or C may each have formed in separate catastrophes (which is of course
logically possible) but the real point is that the top of the tree could not have
remained both unfossilized and intact for millions of years before being buried
(and then preserved) by layer C.
In other words, this is a problem for the whole ‘geological ages’ concept,
whether one is a classical uniformitarianist, or a neo-catastrophist who believes
that every layer was formed in a separate catastrophe. The multiple, though subtle,
misrepresentations on this one page of Battle sit oddly indeed with the
image of the caped crusader of philosophical righteousness.
Actually, speaking of Wysong, I was puzzled by Ratzsch’s repeated citing of
this author, whom he regards as a leading creationist. Yet none of us in the Answers
in Genesis ministries group (collectively perhaps the largest creation
ministry in the world) have, to my knowledge, ever met Wysong or communicated with
him. Nor do I know anything of his apart from a single poorly typeset book, purporting
to give both sides of the argument. Ratzsch himself notes in the small print that
Wysong claims not to be a creationist, but that does not prevent him from putting
Wysong forward as a leading example of the genre!
This further reinforces the impression that Ratzsch, while trying to appear as an
honest broker between sparring camps, is really keen to marginalize the creationist
case within Christendom, yet win ‘brownie points’ from Christians by
attacking the common enemy, the hard-line atheist evolutionist. With the net result
that the ‘good guy’, by default, will be the poor, misunderstood theistic
evolutionist, who, according to the heading (and content) of one of Ratzsch’s
chapters, is ‘catching it from both sides’ from these two sparring camps
as they blunder on with all their philosophical foul play.
Having made my scepticism about the author’s own philosophical biases and
motives fairly clear, let me hasten to add that there is value and fairness in a
significant amount of what he says. And creationists can always benefit from any
work which updates their understanding of the latest in the philosophy of science.
Ratzsch, not at all unreasonably, critiques people on both sides for using outdated
concepts of what science is (whether Baconian inductivism, logical positivism, Popperian
falsificationism, or whatever) to demolish their opposition. The reality is that
the more people have tried to define the ‘scientific method’ and ‘science’,
the more elusive the task appears to be. The waters are by now so muddy, however,
that the argument almost threatens to bounce back on Ratzsch, in that without a
clear definition of what science is, how can we confidently say that anyone’s
chosen definition is clearly ruled out of court?
The sorts of things which Ratzsch takes issue with are when creationists major on
the fact that the past cannot be observed. For instance, when Ken Ham, in public
talks made deliberately understandable for the layman, paraphrases the Lord’s
classic question in Job 38:4 as ‘Were you there?’ Ratzsch regards
this as illegitimate, because it can be shown that the historical sciences can in
fact ‘do science’ — of sorts. For example, palaeontologists can
test hypotheses concerning the fossil record, etc. without actually having been
there to observe the fossils being laid down.
However, it should be obvious that all such hypothesising is only as good as the
assumptions underpinning the framework within which the theorising takes place.
Surely Ratzsch is not suggesting that it is inappropriate for Ham to point out that
conclusions reached in this way cannot be regarded in the same category as the conclusions
of ‘operation science’ with its real-time observations on objects and
events existing and occurring in the present?
Stones and Bones2 is again
taken to task, for example, for claiming that turning a reptile into a bird today
would not prove, in a truly scientific sense, that the same happened millions of
years ago. Also, for stating that events allegedly happening millions of years ago
could never be stated to be scientific fact in the same sense as things which were
directly and repeatedly observable. In the hair-splitting world of philosophical
academia, Ratzsch may have a valid point to make concerning the difficulty of putting
a clear demarcation point between the historical and the ‘operational’
sciences. But the reality is that in a brief layman’s publication, it is unreasonable
to expect all the subtleties to be covered.
Should one therefore withdraw from making any comment about the nature of scientific
method in relation to the past in such brief lay publications? Doubtless Ratzsch
would say ‘yes’, but this would mean leaving people continuing to experience
barriers to Christian faith because they see science as having ‘proved’
evolution in the same way as it has proved that the Moon can be reached with rockets,
which is simply not true. Simplistic, misleading impressions need to be met with
simplified statements, so long as these statements are not themselves intrinsically
misleading in the context. I would stand by the overall thrust of the statements
made, namely that there is a profound difference between what I have called ‘real
science’ involving checking, measurement and repetition of events in real-time,
and the conclusions of ‘historical’ sciences such as palaeontology,
no matter whether done by creationist or evolutionist.
Going through the list of ‘popular creationist misunderstandings’, there
were many concerning which I agreed with Ratzsch — except that it seemed potentially
very misleading to lump these in as if they were held by mainstream leaders of creationist
thought, which mostly was not the case. I will give here just a few of those where
I think he misrepresents the position.
(1)Resistance to evolutionary change. Since Darwinian theory does
not insist on any change necessarily occurring at any particular point of time,
Ratzsch regards it as illegitimate for Duane Gish, for example, to state that creatures
allegedly staying the same for hundreds of millions of years is ‘notoriously
contradictory to what is expected on the basis of evolutionary theory’.
Ratzsch says that this is only true if Lamarck was right, and living things had
within them an inherent drive to improve. If one assumes that an organism is successfully
adapted, that the environment is stable, and that ‘no significant selected
mutations occur’ — why should an organism not stay the same?
However, the argument is flawed. First, an environment is defined not only by such
things as climate, but also by the other species in it capable of interacting with
the species in question. The very notion of climate, geography, chemical surroundings,
etc. remaining stable for hundreds of millions of years beggars the imagination
already, let alone the fact that in all this time, many other species in that same
ocean, for example, are supposed to have been evolving dramatically — hence
by this criterion alone, the environment could not have been stable.
Secondly, even creationists would find it hard to imagine a creature staying much
the same, even given a perfectly stable environment, if there were hundreds of millions
of years available. This is because of the fact that this would allow for a huge
number of generations for the accumulation of inherited copying mistakes (which,
in sexually reproducing creatures, are only eliminated by selection if harmful in
the heterozygous condition, by the way). We would expect devolution, but not staying
the same — and that has nothing to do with any innate Lamarckian drive. The
fact that not just one or two freak cases, but many, many such instances exist of
fossils spanning hundreds of millions of alleged evolutionary years, is far more
consistent with the young-Earth Genesis creation position than with evolutionary
notions of long time-spans.
(2)Living fossils. Ratzsch also seems to miss a major point, in
his next paragraph, about living fossils like the coelacanth. If it were only the
fact that this fish survived unchanged, then why deal with it separately to point
(1), unless it is just to have one more ‘shot’at creationists? The point
he fails to cover is that this creature’s fossils are not found in intervening
rocks, which is why it was declared ‘extinct’. It is thus not just a
living fossil, but a special example of this genre, of much greater interest to
the creationist than just another ‘living fossil’ — something
unchanged from its ‘fossil representatives’. Furthermore, the other
special feature about this creature was that such lobe-finned fish were believed
to be our direct ancestors — until the internal anatomy of the living specimen
showed that this was not feasible. The special fins of these fossil fish were believed
to be used for walking on the sea floor in a pre-adaptation for use on land —
until observations of the living fish showed that this was untrue.
(3)Natural selection as creative. Ratzsch indicates that it is
unfair to use the limits observed in artificial selection experiments as evidence
against evolution, because Darwinism does not depend only on selection, but on the
arising of new variation (for example, via mutation). Therefore, he says, evolutionary
theory would also predict limits to variation — in the absence of any such
favourable mutations. But is this latter phrase not begging the question? The bottom
line is that evolution theory predicts no ultimate limit to variation.
If no limits were observed, let us say because the required uphill mutations arose
in due course during such breeding experiments, this would be seen as a powerful,
positive result for the theory. Yet the presence of limits, we are told, may not
be seen as a negative result for the theory.
Ratzsch says that the objection creationists use is that ‘if evolution were
true . it should be possible to cross those boundaries, producing change indefinitely.’
Whereas in fact, the way my colleagues and I have used this argument is not to say
that evolution is thereby falsified, but that it highlights the fact that natural
selection alone is not creative, and that the onus is thereby on the evolutionist
to do more than show us examples of adaptation by natural selection in order to
‘demonstrate evolution’. Evolutionists have spent decades misleading
the public about so-called ‘examples of evolution happening’, when in
fact such adaptation by natural selection is not only limited, but is part of an
overall downhill change in information. To state that there are observations of
‘evolution happening’, evolutionists need to be able to show us something
other than information-losing processes. Rather they should show examples of information-adding
mutations to enable the crossing of the theoretical — and experimentally verified
— boundaries of selection. These have not yet been demonstrated.
Thus, the reader of the Ratzsch book gets the impression that the limits to variation
are irrelevant to the creation/evolution argument, when in fact nothing could be
further from the case. Comments can be technically correct, but still mislead in
the big picture. This also causes me to query why the above misrepresentations by
evolutionists, claiming evolution is 'happening before our eyes', are not cited
by this 'neutral referee'. But then, to do so would be to indict theistic evolutionists
as well as atheistic, something Ratzsch does not seem to want to do.
You don’t have to be a creationist to be ‘hit’ by this referee
— all you have to do is to attack evolution as such, while not being in the
‘harmonising the Bible with evolution’ brigade. Thus (then) agnostic,
Michael Denton, comes in for criticism for certain examples of circular reasoning
given in his book Evolution: A Theory in Crisis.
Denton says that Darwin noted that the fossil record did not support his theory,
so appealed to its imperfection to explain the gaps. However, says Denton, the only
evidence he could provide for its imperfection was the absence of the very intermediates
which his theory sought to explain, which he not surprisingly labels as a ‘largely
circular argument’. Ratzsch defends Darwin as being within his ‘rational
rights’to shore up his theory in this way, and that this is not at all illegitimate.
We may grant Ratzsch’s defence as it stands, but it is also within Denton’s
‘rational rights’ to point out the element of circularity in an attempt
to shore up Denton’s own proposition concerning the absence of real evidence
for evolution.3
Denton was not simplistically claiming that therefore, voila, evolution
was wrong. However, he appropriately and successfully gets across an important fact.
Namely, that the evidence was not there in the fossils, and that Darwin’s
theory-saving exercise (regardless of whether rational or not), introduced a circularity
which Ratzsch does not deny, and which is mostly missed in the ‘big picture’.
The evidence for this is that most people have the mistaken impression that fossils
provide powerful and independent (non-circular) support for Darwin’s theory.
Ratzsch slams creationists for inaccurate statements about how the geological column
was constructed, and for attacking the validity of its actuality as a sequence,
yet is curiously silent about the fact that mainstream creationist geologists (and
popularizers like Ken Ham) have, for many years, been accurately representing the
true position concerning these things.
There is much more room that could be taken up crying ‘foul’ at many
of this ‘umpire’s’ decisions. However, I think the point is already
clear. There are also other errors and misrepresentations. For example, on page
212, he references Ken Ham’s and Paul Taylor’s book The Genesis Solution
as claiming that ‘animals were vegetarian until after the flood’.
Therefore, Ratzsch is implying that the authors claim there was no meat-eating by
animals between Creation and the Flood. Is this in fact a true representation of
their position? On pages 36 and 57 of The Genesis Solution, there are references
to meat-eating only being permitted after the Flood, but it refers to man,
not to animals. On page 60 we read that ‘the first land animals and birds
were plant-eaters. They did not become meat-eaters until sometime after the Flood
or the Fall' (emphasis added). It is perfectly clear that
Ham and Taylor allow for meat-eating in a proportion of the creatures occurring
between Creation and the Flood (post-Fall, of course). Ratzsch is therefore either
incredibly careless or culpably misleading.
Towards the end of the book, the author appeals somewhat patronisingly to the two
sides to talk to each other. In fact, the creationists I know have never been unwilling
to talk calmly and rationally with evolutionists of whatever persuasion. I myself
have often fantasised how dearly I would love to have several hours of calm intellectual
engagement (trapped in an elevator?) with this or that leading evolutionist.
Readers who wish to get good insights into the philosophy of science can learn much
from this book, but would learn more (without the subtle propaganda against the
Genesis creationists) from J.P. Moreland’s classic Christianity and the Nature
of Science.
Ratzsch’s closing comments riveted my attention:
‘in this entire area we see through a glass darkly, and . it is almost impossible
to see well enough to remove a mote from someone else’s eye.’
How ironic that these words should appear at the end of a book devoted to mote-removing
from almost everyone else’s eyes — except they be theistic evolutionists
and their ilk.
References
- See, for example, the review by Stephen Meyer and Paul Nelson titled
‘Getting rid of the unfair rules’ in Origins & Design,
Spring 1996, pp. 32-34. ‘Intelligent design theorists’ are generally
not predisposed to defending a literal Biblical creation; almost all accept (and
certainly none actively oppose) the billions of years claimed for the Universe,
for instance. Even though some (for example, Michael Behe) accept the whole common
descent hypothesis, they differ from the standard theistic evolutionist in that
they do not see this happening by the unassisted processes prevalent in nature.
Most would probably lean towards some type of ‘progressive creation’.
They do, however, form an important front of opposition to evolutionary naturalism,
and in one sense, a significant set of allies for Genesis creationists, if their
work is kept in the appropriate perspective by these. Return to text
- Naturally, I will be more motivated to track down the details of
attacks on my work (and that of my immediate colleagues) than for every single critique
by Ratzsch of creationists, but whenever I have done that, it has not inspired confidence
in the ‘honest broker’ façade. Return to text
- Circular arguments (tautologies) are generally weak, because they
provide no independent evidence for the proposition. For example, ‘The sky
is blue. Why? Because blue is the colour of the sky.’ This is blatantly circular,
because the second part assumes the very point it is trying to explain. But circular
arguments are formally valid. The fact that circular reasoning is involved doesn’t
change the fact that the sky really is blue. For more information on logic, validity,
etc. see Sarfati, J.D. Loving God with all your mind:
Logic and Creation. CEN Tech. J. 12(2):142-151.
Return to text
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