Statements from evolutionists:
The modern-day Francis Bacon is Professor Karl Popper, German-born philosopher of science now living in England. He has made great contributions to our understanding of science. Nobel Prize winner Peter Medawar calls Popper "incomparably the greatest philosopher of science who has ever lived."15 At a seminar held at Cambridge University to discuss Stephen Gould's ideas on evolution (April 30 - May 2, 1984), Medawar summed up the meeting with the observation that no theory, no matter how well-established, can be considered exempt from Popperian challenge.
Herman Bondi has stated, "There is no more to science than its method, and there is no more to its method than Popper has said."16
Popper strongly supports the idea that a theory in science must be testable and, for the tests to be valid, they must be capable of falsifying the theory if it is not correct. It follows that a true scientific theory, in order to be tested, must be about a process that can be repeated and observed either directly or indirectly. One-time-only historical events may be true, but they are not part of science for there is no way of repeating them, observing them, and subjecting them to testing. Also, for a theory to be testable, it must be possible for those conducting the tests to use it in making predictions about the outcome of the tests. If a theory is not suitable for use by scientists to make specific predictions, it is not a scientific theory. Many scientists agree with Karl Popper on the testability requirement for a scientific theory because, without testing, there can be no unimpassioned selection among available alternatives.
Is Darwinism Testable Science?
According to the generally accepted requirements of a theory in science, could Charles Darwin's theory qualify as a truly scientific theory? Dr. Patterson did not think so. In his book, Evolution, he wrote, "If we accept Popper's distinction between science and non-science, we must ask first whether the theory of evolution by natural selection is scientific or pseudoscientific (metaphysical).... Taking the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred, it says that the history of life is a single process of species-splitting and progression. This process must be unique and unrepeatable, like the history of England. This part of the theory is therefore a historical theory about unique events, and unique events are, by definition, not part of science, for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test."17
Of course, what Dr. Patterson calls "the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred" is the only question under consideration in an evaluation of the validity of the theories on origins. Is it true that all life evolved from a common ancestor or isn't it? He says that the theory that life evolved is "by definition, not part of science." The second part simply postulates a mechanism for evolution if it did occur--mutations and natural selection. No one denies that mutations occur or that natural selection acts as a preservative principle in nature, but since these concepts are not exclusive tenets of evolution theory, they do not help differentiate that theory from its competitor. The only question remaining to be resolved is whether random changes, with the best ones preserved, could create successively higher levels of complexity, resulting in the entire biosphere.
In his interview, Dr. Patterson said that he agreed with the statement that neither evolution nor creation qualified as a scientific theory since such theories could not be tested. He liked a quote from R.L. Wysong's book The Creation/Evolution Controversy that both ideas had to be accepted on faith. A quote of L.T. More's, corroborating Huxley's comments, was:
The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion. . . . The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but is irrational.18
Dr. Patterson said, in referring to this quotation, "I agree." In one of their audiovisual displays in 1980, the British Museum of Natural History included the statement that evolution was not a scientific theory in the sense that it could not be tested and refuted by experiment. This devastating characterization of evolution brought a flurry of criticism from the scientific establishment and the museum quickly removed it from the display. In any other circumstances the media would have raised the objection "censorship," but in this case they looked the other way.
What does Karl Popper say about evolution theory? In his autobiography Unended Quest he writes:
I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme -- a possible framework for testable scientific theories. It suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that.
This is of course the reason why Darwinism has been almost universally accepted. Its theory of adaptation was the first nontheistic one that was convincing; and theism was worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation had been reached.
Now to the degree that Darwinism creates the same impression, it is not so very much better than the theistic view of adaptation: it is therefore important to show that Darwinism is not a scientific theory but metaphysical. But its value for science as a metaphysical research programme is very great, especially if it is admitted that it may be criticized and improved upon.19
Of course, Popper is not saying much for his favored theory of Darwinism because any wild conjecture "may be criticized and improved upon." This is quite an admission for one who ridicules belief in theism.
Beverly Halstead, writing in New Scientist magazine, July 17, 1980, commented on Popper's position:
Despite these subtle distinctions, it is not difficult to envisage the enormous encouragement the Creationists take from assertions from the BM(NH) (British Museum display) that the theory of evolution is not scientific.20
Dr. Halstead told the author that his article drew so much attention to the museum display that it was removed from the museum, and that Popper felt compelled to make a public statement that would quiet the storm without reversing or negating his previous pronouncements about the requirements of a scientific theory. In the August 21, 1980, issue of New Scientist, Popper replied:
Some people think that I have denied scientific character to the historical sciences, such as paleontology, or the history of the evolution of life on Earth; or the history of literature, or of technology, or of science.
This is a mistake, and I here wish to affirm that these and other historical sciences have in my opinion scientific character: their hypotheses can in many cases be tested.
It appears as if some people would think that the historical sciences are untestable because they describe unique events. However, the description of unique events can very often be tested by deriving from them testable predictions or retrodictions.21
These are reasonable statements. No one ever said that nothing in paleontology, the history of life on earth, literature, technology, or science, could be studied through empirical testing. Nor has anyone claimed that it was not possible to make testable predictions or retrodictions from postulated unique historical events.
For example, from the hypothesis that all life evolved from a common ancestor through an unbroken chain, it is possible to predict that paleontology would uncover evidence in the fossil record of a gradual progression from single cell to man. Likewise, from the hypothesis that life abruptly appeared on earth in complete functional form, it can be predicted that, without exception, the fossil record should show the first appearance of new organs and structures completely formed, and there should be no transitional forms connecting the major different types of organisms such as protozoa and metazoa, invertebrates and vertebrates, fishes and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles, etc. These predictions can be tested scientifically -- and they have been, repeatedly. Interestingly, Gillespie indirectly admitted this when he wrote, "There were ways in which Darwin's theory could clearly have been falsified. He named some of them. The absence of transitional fossils, however, was not one of them."22 In other words, since Gillespie is a believer in Darwinism, he doesn't think it would be right to test the theory against the only direct scientific evidence, the fossil record, for he knows that evolution would flunk the test.
Professor Popper was careful not to contradict his previous clearly written statements that said, "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme." Metaphysics is not science but rather something more closely associated with religion. His calling the activity "research" does not make it scientific for it is possible to research anything, even the most bizarre superstitions. With his generalization that "very often" testable predictions could be derived from unique events, he did not specifically say that evolution was a scientific theory.
Investigators can test some sub-theory predictions of a general theory, but this does not automatically establish the general theory as a completely testable concept. This can be readily understood by considering the general historical theory that first life came to earth in a rocket ship. The sub-theory that a living organism could crawl out of a rocket ship can be tested, but this does not test whether or not a rocket ship actually brought life from outer space. Similarly, the evolution sub-theory that populations change slightly can be tested, but this does not prove that the general theory of common-ancestry evolution is true.
Many other prominent scientists who are evolutionists admit that evolution theory is not really science. For instance, in the introduction to the 1971 edition of Darwin's Origin of Species, Dr. L. Harrison Matthews made the amazingly frank admission that evolution was faith, not science:
The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory -- is it then a science or faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation -- both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.23
Dr. Matthews probably did not actually mean to infer that there was actually such a thing as a "proved theory" since he must have known that no theory in science is ever really proved in the technical sense. Theories are only falsified through testing, or they pass the test without exception until people become tired of testing them. What he must have meant was that evolution had not once passed the test of comparing its predictions with the fossil record.
As mentioned previously, Dr. Eldredge was emphatic in his contention that evolution theory was nothing but a body of axioms. He repeated, "We have a body of axioms -- the Creationist has and the evolutionist has -- for which I can't think of a crucial test." The author pointed out that it was nice to talk with someone who did not try to throw in a third -- theistic evolution -- which says that every time a change in the DNA code is needed, God steps in. A third time Dr. Eldredge reiterated the point that neither evolution nor creation could be falsified through testing: "Nonetheless, I can't think of any experiments which I might set up that would reject one theory in favor of the other." This is an extremely significant statement from a prominent scientist who has been leading the national anti-creationist organization, which is waging a battle to maintain the exclusive teaching of only one of these axioms in public schools -- evolution. He explained why he personally had adopted the set of "assumptions" that says there is a "natural process which is creative." He thought that if he adopted this set of assumptions he could then make predictions that would allow him to investigate the history of life. Instead of investigating the fossil record to determine which set of assumptions more closely fitted the facts, he made a prior assumption that he had the answer to begin with. He noticed certain sets of resemblances in living organisms and said that the master question was to explain them. He said, "There are two explanations of course. God had a plan, or as you get away further from a common ancestor you get more modification, so you get a nested set. It seems to me you must accept one or the other axiomatically."
So there could be no possibility of his statement being misinterpreted, he emphasized over and over that either evolution or creation had to be accepted as an axiom for neither one could be tested scientifically. In a November 1986 debate with the author on NBC television in New York City, Dr. Eldredge still maintained that both theories must be accepted axiomatically, and that creation could properly be taught in public schools but not in science classes.
Arthur Koestler wrote about the unscientific nature of Darwinism and said that the education system was not properly informing people about this:
In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection -- quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology.24
In a symposium at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, prominent English evolutionist Dr. C.H. Waddington made some very pointed criticism of neo-Darwinism as being a vacuous tautology. In commenting on a paper by Murray Eden entitled, "Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory," Dr. Waddington said:
I am a believer that some of the basic statements of neo-Darwinism are vacuous.... So the theory of neo-Darwinism is a theory of the evolution of the changing of the population in respect to leaving offspring and not in respect to anything else. Nothing else is mentioned in the mathematical theory of neo-Darwinism. It is smuggled in and everybody has in the back of his mind that the animals that leave the largest number of offspring are going to be those best adapted also for eating peculiar vegetation, or something of this sort; but this is not explicit in the theory. All that is explicit in the theory is that they will leave more offspring.
There, you do come to what is, in effect, a vacuous statement: Natural selection is that some things leave more offspring than others; and you ask, which leave more offspring than others; and it is those that leave more offspring; and there is nothing more to it than that.
The whole real guts of evolution -- which is, how do you come to have horses and tigers, and things -- is outside the mathematical theory.25
This is from a free online book of interviews with evolutionists, and it’s devastating.
The whole book is accessible from this link:
Darwin's Enigma - Chap# 1
The modern-day Francis Bacon is Professor Karl Popper, German-born philosopher of science now living in England. He has made great contributions to our understanding of science. Nobel Prize winner Peter Medawar calls Popper "incomparably the greatest philosopher of science who has ever lived."15 At a seminar held at Cambridge University to discuss Stephen Gould's ideas on evolution (April 30 - May 2, 1984), Medawar summed up the meeting with the observation that no theory, no matter how well-established, can be considered exempt from Popperian challenge.
Herman Bondi has stated, "There is no more to science than its method, and there is no more to its method than Popper has said."16
Popper strongly supports the idea that a theory in science must be testable and, for the tests to be valid, they must be capable of falsifying the theory if it is not correct. It follows that a true scientific theory, in order to be tested, must be about a process that can be repeated and observed either directly or indirectly. One-time-only historical events may be true, but they are not part of science for there is no way of repeating them, observing them, and subjecting them to testing. Also, for a theory to be testable, it must be possible for those conducting the tests to use it in making predictions about the outcome of the tests. If a theory is not suitable for use by scientists to make specific predictions, it is not a scientific theory. Many scientists agree with Karl Popper on the testability requirement for a scientific theory because, without testing, there can be no unimpassioned selection among available alternatives.
Is Darwinism Testable Science?
According to the generally accepted requirements of a theory in science, could Charles Darwin's theory qualify as a truly scientific theory? Dr. Patterson did not think so. In his book, Evolution, he wrote, "If we accept Popper's distinction between science and non-science, we must ask first whether the theory of evolution by natural selection is scientific or pseudoscientific (metaphysical).... Taking the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred, it says that the history of life is a single process of species-splitting and progression. This process must be unique and unrepeatable, like the history of England. This part of the theory is therefore a historical theory about unique events, and unique events are, by definition, not part of science, for they are unrepeatable and so not subject to test."17
Of course, what Dr. Patterson calls "the first part of the theory, that evolution has occurred" is the only question under consideration in an evaluation of the validity of the theories on origins. Is it true that all life evolved from a common ancestor or isn't it? He says that the theory that life evolved is "by definition, not part of science." The second part simply postulates a mechanism for evolution if it did occur--mutations and natural selection. No one denies that mutations occur or that natural selection acts as a preservative principle in nature, but since these concepts are not exclusive tenets of evolution theory, they do not help differentiate that theory from its competitor. The only question remaining to be resolved is whether random changes, with the best ones preserved, could create successively higher levels of complexity, resulting in the entire biosphere.
In his interview, Dr. Patterson said that he agreed with the statement that neither evolution nor creation qualified as a scientific theory since such theories could not be tested. He liked a quote from R.L. Wysong's book The Creation/Evolution Controversy that both ideas had to be accepted on faith. A quote of L.T. More's, corroborating Huxley's comments, was:
The more one studies paleontology, the more certain one becomes that evolution is based on faith alone; exactly the same sort of faith which is necessary to have when one encounters the great mysteries of religion. . . . The only alternative is the doctrine of special creation, which may be true, but is irrational.18
Dr. Patterson said, in referring to this quotation, "I agree." In one of their audiovisual displays in 1980, the British Museum of Natural History included the statement that evolution was not a scientific theory in the sense that it could not be tested and refuted by experiment. This devastating characterization of evolution brought a flurry of criticism from the scientific establishment and the museum quickly removed it from the display. In any other circumstances the media would have raised the objection "censorship," but in this case they looked the other way.
What does Karl Popper say about evolution theory? In his autobiography Unended Quest he writes:
I have come to the conclusion that Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme -- a possible framework for testable scientific theories. It suggests the existence of a mechanism of adaptation and it allows us even to study in detail the mechanism at work. And it is the only theory so far which does all that.
This is of course the reason why Darwinism has been almost universally accepted. Its theory of adaptation was the first nontheistic one that was convincing; and theism was worse than an open admission of failure, for it created the impression that an ultimate explanation had been reached.
Now to the degree that Darwinism creates the same impression, it is not so very much better than the theistic view of adaptation: it is therefore important to show that Darwinism is not a scientific theory but metaphysical. But its value for science as a metaphysical research programme is very great, especially if it is admitted that it may be criticized and improved upon.19
Of course, Popper is not saying much for his favored theory of Darwinism because any wild conjecture "may be criticized and improved upon." This is quite an admission for one who ridicules belief in theism.
Beverly Halstead, writing in New Scientist magazine, July 17, 1980, commented on Popper's position:
Despite these subtle distinctions, it is not difficult to envisage the enormous encouragement the Creationists take from assertions from the BM(NH) (British Museum display) that the theory of evolution is not scientific.20
Dr. Halstead told the author that his article drew so much attention to the museum display that it was removed from the museum, and that Popper felt compelled to make a public statement that would quiet the storm without reversing or negating his previous pronouncements about the requirements of a scientific theory. In the August 21, 1980, issue of New Scientist, Popper replied:
Some people think that I have denied scientific character to the historical sciences, such as paleontology, or the history of the evolution of life on Earth; or the history of literature, or of technology, or of science.
This is a mistake, and I here wish to affirm that these and other historical sciences have in my opinion scientific character: their hypotheses can in many cases be tested.
It appears as if some people would think that the historical sciences are untestable because they describe unique events. However, the description of unique events can very often be tested by deriving from them testable predictions or retrodictions.21
These are reasonable statements. No one ever said that nothing in paleontology, the history of life on earth, literature, technology, or science, could be studied through empirical testing. Nor has anyone claimed that it was not possible to make testable predictions or retrodictions from postulated unique historical events.
For example, from the hypothesis that all life evolved from a common ancestor through an unbroken chain, it is possible to predict that paleontology would uncover evidence in the fossil record of a gradual progression from single cell to man. Likewise, from the hypothesis that life abruptly appeared on earth in complete functional form, it can be predicted that, without exception, the fossil record should show the first appearance of new organs and structures completely formed, and there should be no transitional forms connecting the major different types of organisms such as protozoa and metazoa, invertebrates and vertebrates, fishes and amphibians, amphibians and reptiles, etc. These predictions can be tested scientifically -- and they have been, repeatedly. Interestingly, Gillespie indirectly admitted this when he wrote, "There were ways in which Darwin's theory could clearly have been falsified. He named some of them. The absence of transitional fossils, however, was not one of them."22 In other words, since Gillespie is a believer in Darwinism, he doesn't think it would be right to test the theory against the only direct scientific evidence, the fossil record, for he knows that evolution would flunk the test.
Professor Popper was careful not to contradict his previous clearly written statements that said, "Darwinism is not a testable scientific theory, but a metaphysical research programme." Metaphysics is not science but rather something more closely associated with religion. His calling the activity "research" does not make it scientific for it is possible to research anything, even the most bizarre superstitions. With his generalization that "very often" testable predictions could be derived from unique events, he did not specifically say that evolution was a scientific theory.
Investigators can test some sub-theory predictions of a general theory, but this does not automatically establish the general theory as a completely testable concept. This can be readily understood by considering the general historical theory that first life came to earth in a rocket ship. The sub-theory that a living organism could crawl out of a rocket ship can be tested, but this does not test whether or not a rocket ship actually brought life from outer space. Similarly, the evolution sub-theory that populations change slightly can be tested, but this does not prove that the general theory of common-ancestry evolution is true.
Many other prominent scientists who are evolutionists admit that evolution theory is not really science. For instance, in the introduction to the 1971 edition of Darwin's Origin of Species, Dr. L. Harrison Matthews made the amazingly frank admission that evolution was faith, not science:
The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology is thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory -- is it then a science or faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation -- both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.23
Dr. Matthews probably did not actually mean to infer that there was actually such a thing as a "proved theory" since he must have known that no theory in science is ever really proved in the technical sense. Theories are only falsified through testing, or they pass the test without exception until people become tired of testing them. What he must have meant was that evolution had not once passed the test of comparing its predictions with the fossil record.
As mentioned previously, Dr. Eldredge was emphatic in his contention that evolution theory was nothing but a body of axioms. He repeated, "We have a body of axioms -- the Creationist has and the evolutionist has -- for which I can't think of a crucial test." The author pointed out that it was nice to talk with someone who did not try to throw in a third -- theistic evolution -- which says that every time a change in the DNA code is needed, God steps in. A third time Dr. Eldredge reiterated the point that neither evolution nor creation could be falsified through testing: "Nonetheless, I can't think of any experiments which I might set up that would reject one theory in favor of the other." This is an extremely significant statement from a prominent scientist who has been leading the national anti-creationist organization, which is waging a battle to maintain the exclusive teaching of only one of these axioms in public schools -- evolution. He explained why he personally had adopted the set of "assumptions" that says there is a "natural process which is creative." He thought that if he adopted this set of assumptions he could then make predictions that would allow him to investigate the history of life. Instead of investigating the fossil record to determine which set of assumptions more closely fitted the facts, he made a prior assumption that he had the answer to begin with. He noticed certain sets of resemblances in living organisms and said that the master question was to explain them. He said, "There are two explanations of course. God had a plan, or as you get away further from a common ancestor you get more modification, so you get a nested set. It seems to me you must accept one or the other axiomatically."
So there could be no possibility of his statement being misinterpreted, he emphasized over and over that either evolution or creation had to be accepted as an axiom for neither one could be tested scientifically. In a November 1986 debate with the author on NBC television in New York City, Dr. Eldredge still maintained that both theories must be accepted axiomatically, and that creation could properly be taught in public schools but not in science classes.
Arthur Koestler wrote about the unscientific nature of Darwinism and said that the education system was not properly informing people about this:
In the meantime, the educated public continues to believe that Darwin has provided all the relevant answers by the magic formula of random mutations plus natural selection -- quite unaware of the fact that random mutations turned out to be irrelevant and natural selection a tautology.24
In a symposium at the Wistar Institute in Philadelphia, prominent English evolutionist Dr. C.H. Waddington made some very pointed criticism of neo-Darwinism as being a vacuous tautology. In commenting on a paper by Murray Eden entitled, "Inadequacies of Neo-Darwinian Evolution as a Scientific Theory," Dr. Waddington said:
I am a believer that some of the basic statements of neo-Darwinism are vacuous.... So the theory of neo-Darwinism is a theory of the evolution of the changing of the population in respect to leaving offspring and not in respect to anything else. Nothing else is mentioned in the mathematical theory of neo-Darwinism. It is smuggled in and everybody has in the back of his mind that the animals that leave the largest number of offspring are going to be those best adapted also for eating peculiar vegetation, or something of this sort; but this is not explicit in the theory. All that is explicit in the theory is that they will leave more offspring.
There, you do come to what is, in effect, a vacuous statement: Natural selection is that some things leave more offspring than others; and you ask, which leave more offspring than others; and it is those that leave more offspring; and there is nothing more to it than that.
The whole real guts of evolution -- which is, how do you come to have horses and tigers, and things -- is outside the mathematical theory.25
This is from a free online book of interviews with evolutionists, and it’s devastating.
The whole book is accessible from this link:
Darwin's Enigma - Chap# 1
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