Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism PDF
Preview Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New Creationism
Page iii Tower of Babel The Evidence against the New Creationism Robert T. Pennock A Bradford Book The MIT Press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England Page iv Second printing, 1999 ©1999 Massachusetts Institute of Technology All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form by any electronic or mechanical means (including photocopying, recording, or information storage and retrieval) without permission in writing from the publisher. This book was set in Sabon by Crane Composition and was printed and bound in the United States of America. Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data Pennock, Robert T. Tower of Babel : the evidence against the new creationism / Robert T. Pennock. p. cm. "A Bradford book." Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 026216180X (hc. : alk. paper) 1. Evolution (Biology). 2. Evolution (Biology)—Religious aspects— Christianity. 3. Creationism. 4. Religion and science. 5. Historical linguistics. 6. Science—Philosophy. I. Title. QH366.2 .P428 1999 576.8—dc21 9827286 CIP Page v Contents Preface: Creationism's Tower ix Acknowledgments xix 1 1 Creation and Evolution of a Controversy Speciation in Progress? 1 A Brief History of Creationism 2 Factions within the Tower 7 New Fields of Battle 31 The Nature of the Controversy 37 2 43 The Evidence for Evolution Bonobos and Biologists 43 A Guided Tour of the Museum of Creation 46 Proofs and Evidences 49 Darwin's Own Evolution 59 Some PostDarwinian Developments 72 How Could Beings Evolve "By Chance"? 90 "Is Man an Ape or an Angel?" 109 3 117 The Tower of Babel Origins 117 Creationist Linguistics 120 The Evolution of Languages and Species 125 "Evolution Is Never Observed" 147 "Where Are the Missing Links?" 151 "Science Cannot Explain X" 158 "Evolution Is Just a Theory" 172 Is It All Simply a Matter of Faith? 177 Page vi 4 181 Of Naturalism and Negativity Duels and Dualists 181 Johnson against the "Dogma of Naturalism" 185 Methodological Naturalism and Evidence 194 Methodological Naturalism versus Theistic Science 201 Revolutions and Revolutionaries 206 5 215 Chariots of the Gods God's Charioteers in the Stadium of Science 215 YoungEarth CreationScience 216 IntelligentDesign Theory 226 Extraterrestrial Intelligent Design 233 Redesigning the Argument from Design 242 A Day at the Chariot Races 272 6 277 Deus ex Machina Time for a Paradigm Shift? 277 A Brief History of Supernatural Explanation 279 Scientific Explanation Lost and Found 284 Supernatural Explanations 289 The Prospects for a Supernatural "Theistic Science" 294 "Super Natural" Explanations 301 God in the Machine? 308 7 309 Burning Science at the Stake The Devil's Chaplain? 309 Creationism's Crisis of Meaning 311 The "Evil Fruits" of Evolution 313 Johnson on the Modernist Naturalist Worldview 316 Is Evolution to Blame for the Loss of Values? 324 Calming the Creationist's Fears 328 Can We Seek Meaning Together? 337 Committing Darwinism to the Flames 340 8 343 Babel in the Schools Creationism in the Science Classroom 343 Educational and Political Values 345 Religious Values 349 Science's Epistemic Values 352 Page vii Values in Harmony or in Conflict? 356 A Final Look at Creationism's Tower of Babel 373 Notes 379 References 399 Index 413 Page ix Preface: Creationism's Tower Creationists are building a tower to heaven, and they are raising the banner of antievolution upon its ramparts. They see themselves as participants in a holy war against forces that would undermine the foundations of true Christianity, and they see "evolutionism" as the godless philosophy that unites the enemy. A poster given out by the Institute for Creation Research (ICR) depicts a cartoon of creationists (all wearing clerics' collars) firing cannons from a tower at evolutionists (depicted in pirates' costumes), who are firing their cannons in return while gleefully sending aloft balloons upon which are written "Atheism," ''Abortion," "Homosexuality," and other supposed elements of the philosophy of evolutionism. The poster illustrates one danger of the creationist movement: the way in which it mixes issues in religion, philosophy and science and presents them in a manner that is biased, simplistic, and polarizing. The foundation of the Creationist Tower is the Book of Genesis. Though not always strictly Fundamentalist, creationists typically hold a literal reading of the Bible. They believe that there is only one correct interpretation of scripture—their own—and only one true stairway leading up the Tower to God. In public debates creationists often reject any explicit discussion of religion, insisting that they present only an alternative scientific position; but in their own literature, they make it clear that they are engaged in a religious battle for the hearts and minds of those who have fallen away from God and who would lead their children away from the true path to salvation. Secular humanists and a few atheistic scientists are the most easily identified among the enemy because they wear their nonChristian colors openly. But creationists also believe that the tower to heaven is put at risk by people Page x who may think of themselves as Christian but who have compromised the integrity of their faith by accepting the scientific, evolutionary history of life, in opposition to the record of creation revealed in Genesis. The question of "origins," as creationists term the issue, lies at the very center of their theology. I will examine the complexities of this view in some detail, but for the moment I can put their position simply: If we were not specially created in just the manner that a "plain reading" of the Bible says but rather have been produced by evolutionary processes, then Scripture loses its authority as revealed truth and with it crumbles the ground of religion, morality, and the possibility of salvation after death through Jesus Christ. On their view, the teachings of Christianity and the theory of evolution are strictly incompatible. What this means is that those who accept evolution are either deceived or are not "true" Christians. The creationism controversy is not just about the status of Darwinian evolution—it is about a clash of religious and philosophical worldviews. If creationism were simply an incorrect view about biology, then the problem would be of concern mostly to scientists, philosophers of science, and those who want their children to receive a good education. But it is clearly more than this, and Christians whose beliefs do not turn them against science should also be concerned. The Catholic Church and many mainline Protestant denominations have issued explicit statements that evolution and Christianity are not incompatible, but according to creationists such accommodation to evolution is seriously misguided at best and heretical at worst. They have specific views about what is required for one to be a Christian, and most people who think of themselves as Christian simply do not qualify. One reason that creationism is gaining adherents despite its fringe theology is that creationists have positioned themselves as part of the socalled Religious Right and so typically promote a conservative political agenda, especially on social issues. However, political terms like "liberal" and "conservative" do not adequately differentiate the camps because although creationists certainly would reject liberal Christianity, they also would reject the theological views of many politically conservative Christians. Some creationists now try to portray themselves as advocating only a tolerant ecumenical notion of "mere creation," echoing C. S. Lewis's notion of ''mere Christianity"—but scratch this surface and one finds a strict orthodoxy. Page xi One problem with religious orthodoxy, however, is that it has an inherent drive to refine its boundaries to distinguish itself more clearly from the heterodox, and this process inevitably leads to schisms. Creationists try to portray the creationism controversy as a battle between dogmatic antiChristian scientists and fairminded believers, but if we look carefully we see that the lines are far more complex. Obscured by the noisy confrontation with scientists in the public fields, a quieter, private battle is being waged within the ramparts of the Creationist Tower. Creationists disagree vehemently among themselves about the theological details of what counts as a proper interpretation of Scripture, and since biblical interpretation drives their physical picture of the universe, we find a fascinating array of conflicting views. Chapter 1 takes a look inside the Tower and describes some of these internal struggles, showing how they are transforming creationism. One of the most common creationist argumentative strategies against evolution is to quote statements scientists make when they are criticizing one or another element of evolutionary theory, and then to suggest that we should reject evolution as a whole because scientists themselves find fault with it. Would not turnabout be fair play here? In the battle over the teaching of creationism in school science classes, creationists unite against their common foe—but what about the great confusion within the Tower? I will call attention to this confusion but I do not mean thereby to follow the creationists' own fallacious strategy and urge that we should reject creationism simply because creationists find fault with the details of each other's views. After all, we philosophers are no less known for our disagreements. Rather, I want to suggest that if we listen carefully to their internal quarrels, we will notice how greatly these differ from debates about evolution within science. The point is to look at what each side—creationists and scientists—offers in the way of arguments and evidence for its particular point of view and against its rivals. Viewed in this way, creationism functions as a rather nice case study for an examination of some basic issues in philosophy of science, such as questions about the nature of scientific theories, scientific explanation, and especially scientific evidence. Developing this case study by examining creationist attacks upon evolutionary theory and other sciences is one of the principal tasks of this book. Chapter 2 provides an introduction to the elements of evolutionary theory and Page xii reviews some of the evidence upon which the theory is based, beginning with Darwin's own studies that led him to reject his earlier creationist views. It also begins to consider some of the major arguments that creationists give against evolution—that it supposedly violates the second law of thermodynamics, and that chance processes could not produce the world's complex and useful biological structures. Creationists have a quiver of such arrows that they let fly to try to poke holes in evolutionary theory. I will address several of the most wellknown of these, showing why the scientific account is not in any danger of losing out to the familiar creationist view that God created the world, its animals, and the first human beings in a week some six thousand years ago, but many others have been answered previously by other philosophers and scientists and do not warrant a second look, so in chapter 3 I take a new tack. Rather than discussing the evolution of organisms I talk about the evolution of languages. Linguistic evolution has strong theoretical parallels with biological evolution both in content and in the sort of evidence scientists use to draw conclusions about it; but it is also pointedly relevant to creationism, in that Genesis tells us that languages did not evolve but were specially created by God in the great confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel. To my knowledge, no one has drawn out this important parallel before. Looking at the creationist view in this context will give a better sense of how much of science creationists are willing to reject to maintain their preferred conclusions—biological evolution is only the beginning of the scientific findings they oppose—and, I hope, will make it easier to recognize the weaknesses of their arguments. The Creationist Tower of Babel will be a recurring image throughout the book. Of course, academics are often accused of residing in a tower of their own, an ivory tower out of which they do not deign to descend into the real world. I do not accept this view of academia, but it is true that theoretical discussions of the philosophy of science can seem rather remote from the ordinary concerns of those outside of the academy. As we will see, however, philosophy of science has played and continues to play a significant role in the creationism controversy. It is also true that most academics, especially in the sciences, have ignored creationist activism because they feel it is a waste of time, and because it has had negligible impact on their work. Until just a few years ago, I probably would have expressed a similar sentiment.
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