SCIENCE: The Poor Man Of Origins

People are a funny bunch, and scientists and those other researchers who employ scientific methods are no exception to this proposition. Since time immemorial people have been searching for the “truth”, not only because they have been shown so often how little they know about it, but also, knowing it confers a great advantage over one’s circumstances. Science as a system of learning the “truth” has attempted to free man from the doctrine of personal, subjective truth, the idea familiarly stated, “what may be true for you may not be true for me” and so on. It has also attempted to go beyond the idea that truth is merely a consensus, like when everyone agreed that the earth was flat. So science has attempted to construct a thoroughly rational system, this rationality being based on the gathering of evidence, observation, experimentation and the interpretations and conclusions resulting from these. In this way, the truths of science would be universal, free of subjectivity and independent of the observer.

It is the interpretation part however, that poses the greatest problem to science, because any interpretation needs to start with some fundamental assumptions about how to view the evidence. On what basis will the evidence be interpreted? Some of the assumptions and implications of science are that the world is exclusively material; that the real world is limited only to what our senses tell us about it; that all interpretations must rely on naturalistic notions, and that only those who make these assumptions and apply this method can know what is rational, real or realistic.

It follows then, that God and the spiritual, supernatural world do not exist, and that the only credible explanations are naturalistic ones. Now, some scientists would not go that far, and would say that the issue of God’s existence is a hypothesis that science cannot competently deal with. That’s fair enough, but then science becomes in a way a game of “let’s make believe”. The challenge would be to pretend that the world and all its phenomena have exclusively naturalistic explanations with never a necessity of admitting non-naturalistic ones. This explains the compartmentalized thinking of those who are scientists, and yet, still religious. They are just being disciplined players. This is also why we hear creationism denounced for not being science, because it invokes precisely what is against the rules. Science, in explaining how things work, has been remarkably successful in a way that creationism has not. There is allegedly no “how” in creationism, and this has doomed it to its current ignominious status in the scientific establishment. But success has gone to science’s head, and we now see it brazenly venturing onto territory for which it is ill equipped. By limiting itself only to naturalism, it has also limited itself to what it may discover about the truth, insofar as scientists must have the absolute certainty — the faith, really — that no explanations except naturalistic ones are admissible. The theory of evolution as an explanation of origins is the most salient example of this.

The Magical Hypothesis

It is man’s natural curiosity to want to know how things got here and why. But as with everything he does, he employs the tools he has at his disposal to accomplish his goals. It was only natural that he employ the scientific method, the star of his intellectual tools, in the attempt to answer the question about origins. The problem is that the question of origins is of a different nature than what the tool is designed to work on. It is impossible to observe what might have happened in the past; it is impossible to carry out experiments under the conditions stated for evolution; it is ultimately impossible not to invoke a “magical” event. For some proud scientists, it is impossible for them to simply admit that they don’t know.

Darwin’s theory of evolution at first attempted to explain how species might develop from an earlier species, the same way the fox terrier might have developed from the wolf. The theory proposed “random mutations” and “natural selection” — just a more elegant way of saying “survival” — as the agents of change, and that this had happened in a random manner with no conscious intent. The theory evolved to assume that the biological capacity for change by organisms is limitless, confusing fortuitous mutations as an agent for change with a specie’s limited biological potential for variation. This speculation, however, can never be demonstrated under the conditions that the theory requires. This theory of origins had to depart quite quickly from the full employment of the scientific method because of the impossibility of its application, and like so many other origin theories, came to rely on reasoning processes and inventive argumentation. It abounded in hypotheses but was sorely lacking in experimental evidence, and by this ultimately adapted itself to the nature of the problem, which was more historical and philosophical than scientific. In this way, it conformed to what the nature of the question demanded and became a philosophical point of view. From its humble beginnings to explain the origin of species, it has seemingly become a theory explaining the “origin of everything”. It has become the creation myth of our epoch.

But most importantly, the theory speculated on the existence of “random mutations”. As it concerns evolution, only those mutations that do not hinder the survival of, or kill off the host are of interest. The notion of these random mutations has gone largely unquestioned — an example of words creating the illusion of a reality for which none may exist — and has never been clearly defined because everyone thinks they know what that means. It may mean fortuitous accidents, or the absence of a “guiding hand”, or the absence of a conscious will. But what exactly is randomness, and more importantly, what are its causes? The causes of the mutations of genes have been of little interest, and evolutionists simply assume these mutations have occurred as accidents in the transcription of the genetic code. These accidents just happen.... just like that. Might these be the “magical” events that sustain the theory? Explaining the causes of these mutations makes the difference between a rational theory and an irrational one. To say that mutations happen by chance is not much different than saying they happen by magic. Either a cause is attributed to these mutations such that the explanation is a rational one, or no cause is attributed, in which case the explanation becomes as irrational as saying they happen by magic or that God did it.

Random mutations in fact, prove to be a matter of statistical probabilities. It is not random in the sense that chaos is. Randomness might be thought of as a situation denoting human ignorance about complex events, and the attempt to guess probable order where none is apparent, whereas chaos is a situation devoid of even any hidden order. Genes undergo mutations for whatever causes there might be. That they undergo these mutations in their host and are then transmitted unto the next generation and eventually into the general population is a question of statistical probability. If these mutations have the effect of aiding the survival of their hosts, then the statistical probability would be quite high that their hosts will reproduce and pass these genes on to their offspring. These are destined then, to exist and propagate and continue the cycle over again. Evolution looks much less random, in this case, and far more deterministic. It would seem, then, that the existence of living things, and human beings as well, would not be as much an accident as we are given to understand, but were quite determined from the outset. Life and people were inevitable.

The idea that life in all its forms was determined from the outset, however, bears on philosophy. What was the cause of this determination, or are we to accept that it is just so? One is confronted then, with explaining the cause or accepting the “magical” hypothesis. Evolution really proves to be a form of the cosmological argument, and far from allowing one to be “an intellectually satisfied atheist” as some would have it, confronts us once again with the same question: First cause or no cause; God or no God? The truth lies in the nuance between mystery and magic.