Reconstruction 10.4 (2010)
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Evolution, Popular Culture, and the Nature of Scientific Knowledge / James Clinton
Abstract:
This article presents a view of science that counters the teleological and authoritative way in which it is presented in arenas of popular discourse ranging from public schools, science magazines (such as Wired), community meetings, and popular books written by scientists. Noting the strange conflation of “evolution” (a branch of science) and “science” (as a way of thinking), the essay presents psychoanalytic and scientific arguments that suggest that evolution is equated with science in the public because evolution represents the return of the repressed element that founds any discourse which seeks to remain self contained. In science, this repressed element is metaphysics. As a theory of origins, evolution represents a return of that repressed element, thus accounting for the authoritative and hysterical way in which evolution is discussed in the public sphere.
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I Evolution in the Historical and Popular Imagination
<1> In a 2004 article for Wired magazine entitled “The Crusade Against Evolution,” contributing editor Evan Ratliff produced a fairly clever if typical (one could cite scores of similar articulations) representation of the debate between “Evolution” and “Intelligent Design.” This article is worth citing, however, because it illuminates in fairly concise terms some widespread conceptions about the fundamental topics of my article, evolution, popular culture, and the nature of scientific knowledge. “The Crusade Against Evolution” begins with the requisite witty byline used by popular niche magazines like Wired, but the byline’s irony swings back to unsettle the smugness of individuals like Ratliff, most of his readers, and other proponents of “scientific fact” as opposed to religious dogmatism: “In the beginning there was Darwin. And then there was intelligent design. How the next generation of ‘creation science’ is invading America’s classrooms” (Ratliff).
<2> “In the beginning there was Darwin,” who taught us organisms differentiate and evolve through natural selection and random genetic differences within individual species. Actually he did not prove these things, nor did he teach them to most of us. [1] Indeed, for most of us, we learn these things in junior high or high school from a textbook which tells us that this is how things happen. The important thing to note here is that, for most of us, science in general, but particularly evolution (we will come to this later) arrives in a form that is not scientific. It is taught in an authoritative rather than an investigative matter. The average, or even above average, person, say a reader or contributing editor of Wired (for the purposes of this article we’ll assign it the genre of “middlebrow science magazine”), equates evolution with science and science with fact. You either believe this or you are uneducated or, even worse, a “fundamentalist” invader of America’s secular classrooms. Now, putting aside the question of whether the average “supporter” of evolution (and its purported equivalent, science) could even articulate the basics of Darwin’s theory, much less the many and often divergent accounts that followed over the next 150 years, what is most disturbing about this attitude is that it betrays a surprising lack of awareness of what science is and how it operates in everyday practice; in other words, at least when it comes to evolution, science has been understood by the secular public as some sort of machine that produces undisputable facts rather than a set of various and varying practices which produce ideological bodies of knowledge which are manipulated for various human ends. In other words, most people view science in modernist rather than postmodernist terms. This is not to say that science is not rigorous, or that it does not produce things that we highly value, merely that there is nothing transcendent about its practices or products, contrary to the characterization given by its many supporters in the various popular culture arenas including those of interpersonal communication, schooling, popular media, and most problematically, popular media produced by scientists.
<3> In popular scientific culture, and in contrast to members of the evolution industry, supporters of so-called “intelligent design” (I.D.) theory are characterized as ignorant, ideological, opportunistic and, even worse, postmodern. This characterization follows the seemingly ubiquitous condensation of postmodernism into “relativism,” which from a modernist perspective (the perspective we must view, at least in the industrialized world from which modernity springs, as hegemonic from the standpoint of the popular consciousness) is not only absurd, but morally suspicious. Evolutionists blame intelligent design proponents for being immoral cultural relativists! To cite “The Crusade Against Evolution” (from which we will soon depart as it represents merely an occasion to address more fundamental questions), I.D. supporters create an “appearance of equal sides,” employ “strategy,” invent “rallying cries,” “meticulously premeditate,” and even, somehow, use “scientific rhetoric to bypass scientific scrutiny” [italics mine]. And what do evolutionists do? Well, they seek the truth through objective means. In other words, science/evolution does not employ rhetoric.
<4> It is important to note that Darwin’s most seminal work, On the Origin of Species, is itself a relative latecomer in a long line of theories of evolution, including an epic poem by Darwin’s grandfather Erasmus entitled The Temple of Nature (1803). In many ways, Darwin was the Galileo of evolution. Galileo’s heliocentric theory of the universe rather quickly became hegemonic (as opposed to several heliocentric theories in ancient Greece) because it had real use value, both practically and ideologically for a Europe readying itself for global exploration, trade, and colonization, all of which required accurate knowledge of astronomy to function. Darwin’s theory was quite “functional” too, focusing less on theological questions such as “how did life come into being” than practical ones (how and why do certain traits, rather than others, get selected in a world that seems to offer many variations/mutations on what could otherwise be a very simple theme?); Darwin was part of an episteme (including Nietzsche, Marx, and Freud) that favored materialistic rather than metaphysical explanations of phenomena. Use value, the “effects” of ideas, the functionality of ideology was the terrain on which industrialist modernity would wage its intellectual battles whether thinkers took capitalist, communist, or other perspectives. And yet, Darwin’s theory of evolution was haunted by the specter of its own title, a specter that “moved” the question of origin as a relatively limited if functional inquiry concerning species selection to more metaphysical areas, an effect furthered by Darwin’s rhetoric contrasting natural selection with the work of a “Creator” and statements concerning the “inexplicability” of his observations with respect to “the ordinary view of creation” (582). [2]
<5> As with any science, any field of knowledge, the tendency is to move from certainties to the edges of the field, to the frontier of a field’s capabilities. This tendency not only stems from natural curiosity and institutional norms (one does not publish scientific papers about things that have already been proven or, more “properly” speaking, already falsified), but from larger epistemological agreements about how scientific knowledge progresses. Of course, this movement inevitably leads to interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary events and formations. Thus, evolutionary theory moved from the traditions of amateur scientific inquiry and “scientific tourism” which was Darwin’s heritage to (with the help of Darwin as a transitional and catalyzing figure) the “professional,” university funded disciplines paleontology, zoology, biology, mathematics, information theory, and my field, chemistry (Chemical Engineering). And those fields, traveling from their certainties to their frontiers, inevitably entered the “bewitched terrains” of evolutionary questions of a metaphysical, or, as Derrida might call it, “logocentric” nature. But this is business as usual, the way science inevitably operates; it is the nature of scientific knowledge.
II. Dig Site (Some Fossils)
<6> The statement, “Evolution is a proven fact,” is so frequently stated by those committed to evolution that it needs no documentation. “Evolution is supported by more evidence than any other theory of science,” paleobiologist Colin Sumrall proclaims in a recent (2010) seminar on “Science and Theology.” This statement is patently absurd from any number of levels (what is the universal measurement of “evidence” again?), even as it reminds us of science’s historical basis in law and sovereignty as well as the psychoanalytic maxim that there is often an inverse proportion between confidence in the validity of a belief and the number of reasons one provides to rationalize it. Or, there is the odd commentary from Richard Dawkins in his review of Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution, in defense of a theory that by definition does not provide humanity with a moral blueprint: “It is absolutely safe to say that if you meet somebody who claims not to believe in evolution, that person is ignorant, stupid or insane (or wicked, but I’d rather not consider that).” And yet, he does consider that, in the very next paragraph equating those who would refuse to believe in evolution, which one would presume includes questioning its own articulations, with Islamic fundamentalists issuing fatwas against Salman Rushdie. Dawkins continues, “The truly appalling thing all such people have in common, whether they are incited to murder by ayatollahs or to less violent observances by television evangelists, is that they know, for certain, that their particular brand of revealed truth is absolute and needs no reasoned defense” [italics mine]. We will come back to the question as to whether those who promote an unexamined belief in evolution fall into Dawkins’ appalling category, but for now we may beg the question as to whether holding a belief that is undefended is, in itself, so wicked. This question comes to mind every time I drive from Knoxville to Oak Ridge, TN where I work and see the section of highway maintained by the “Society of Rationalists,” fighting back the urge to join their club and then ask them if they enjoy the company they keep. The problematic ideological consciousness of evolutionary absolutists continues with philosopher Daniel Dennett who proclaims from his Tufts’ hilltop that those who do not believe will one day be “preserved in cultural zoos” where they may be gawked at just like “tourists flock to watch the Native American tribal dances . . . on the verge of extinction” (520).
<7> Given such confidence in their theories and disdain for metaphysical (i.e. wicked, savage, primitive) world views, one might feel compelled to ask, “What is the evidence which supports the idea that change in life has been entirely due to the natural laws you claim as the basis for scientific inquiry?” The answer usually amounts to sound and fury (see section 5) or silence. In the popular science books which have been the main vehicles for evolutionary pedagogy outside the secondary school curriculum, there is very little discussion of the main problem with evolutionary theory, the efficacy of random mutation when it comes to the origin of life and the progression (from a complexity standpoint) from “simple” cells to multicellular organisms including, of course, that narcissistic player who, despite protestations from scientists, always returns for a curtain call—Homo sapiens. There is as yet no scientific data which can begin to approach, much less resolve, that question. We can certainly assess probabilities, but that does not seem to be generally done. No evidence is given where none exists. To rework Ratliff’s metaphor in “The Crusade Against Evolution,” silence is used to bypass what would trouble modernist science. Only those who have attained a certain genius status, such as Nobel Prize winner George Wald, are forgiven for articulating the philosophical embarrassment, which also happens to be the fundamental ban irreparably tying science to metaphysics, that lies at the heart of evolutionary theory. [3]
III. Bone Spur
<8> The idea that the progression of life, evolution, was entirely a natural process has problems from the standpoint of our current understanding of physical laws. The idea that life arose according to known laws is even more problematic by orders of magnitude. And yet, for the most part, professional scientists and their apologists are either unaware of these problems (due to disciplinary limitations) or deliberately minimize them for ideological reasons.
IV. Conclusion or, Psychoanalysis Against Teleology
<9> Admittedly, science, as such, is materialistic in nature. Furthermore, one could argue that its success as a discourse and social practice rests in its attempts to extricate itself from religion/ metaphysics. Trying to understand the physical world, scientists cannot in theory consider the metaphysical--or “outside the physical” to remember what “meta” means in Greek--in their processes. The Derridean equivalent would be, of course, to try to develop a theory of language that does not employ language. [4] In the context of evolution, we may cite without irony (given our attempt to understand relationships between scientific knowledge and popular knowledge) the way Greg Krukonis puts it in his book Evolution for Dummies: “Perhaps God set into motion a series of events that caused exactly the particular sequence of events that resulted in Homo sapiens. Maybe. But no way exists to scientifically measure whether God is or isn’t directing these mutations. So these possibilities are outside the realm of science” (238). With the theory of evolution, which at some point must always be a theory of origins, one realizes that this division between the physical and the metaphysical can only occur in the form of a ban, a taboo that science imposes on itself in order to “function.” Therefore, science, like any other exclusionary discourse, works according to a fundamental repression, and we must always consider how this repressed element “returns.” I would suggest that, in a larger sense, the theory of evolution itself is the return of what science has repressed in order to come into being. There are many examples one might cite in order to support, in psychoanalytic terms, such a conclusion. Most notable among these is the shrill or (its mirror image) dismissive tone of discourse when it comes to insisting that evolution is the equivalent of science, is science, rather than just one of its products. From a pedagogical/authoritative standpoint one should cite the insistence that the status of evolution in public schools is, if not the heart, at least the canary in the coal mine when it comes to whether or not the United States will continue to be a scientific leader in the world. Not only is this nationalistic argument problematic in its own right from the standpoint of authoritarianism, but to assert that belief in evolution (as a theory of origins) has anything to do with the most pressing scientific questions of our day such as global warming, telecommunications, or even genetics, is a claim that strains credulity.
<10> Indeed, the theory of evolution represents, more than any other discourse that falls under the name of science, the moment when science returns to the threshold, flitting back and forth like Maxwell’s demon, of empirical and speculative methodologies. As the weakest link in the modernist dream of a unifying scientific methodology which proceeds via empirical observation, falsifiable statements, and repeatable experiments and simultaneously the discourse which most directly challenges the notion of a theistic account of the world, evolution, although a relatively late arrival on the scientific scene, could be argued to be, from a Lacanian point of view, the first science, since a theistic account of the world would be the Other or fundamental symptom which simultaneously guides the production of scientific discourse even as that discourse attempts to extricate itself from theology. Of course, this account of things would posit theology as originary, which is a problematic assertion in its own right. Strict theological accounts of the universe in the Western tradition also, necessarily, stem from an originary materialism, humankind’s impossible and infinitely forestalled confrontation with the Real, which operates as the symptom from whose bleakness humankind fled even as that symptom guided the structuration of human religion. But, this account of both theology and science seems to articulate a fold in which each acts as the symptom of the other, positing both as originary at the same time, as if both arose simultaneously. On the level of the unconscious, this may be true—and it is also worth noting that this mutual interdependence has nothing to say about the validity of either point of view from a transcendental standpoint—but it is also true that, if we resist the teleology posited by Ratcliff in his Wired article (religion, evolution, intelligent design) or perhaps any teleologyposited in Western terms, we could suggest an altogether more radical (and psychologically disturbing) possibility.
<11> Intelligent Design came before either creationism or evolution. It is instead a founding hole or symptom (variously termed by Lacan the sinthome or objet petit a), an eternal incompleteness around which both theology and evolution structure themselves in parallel, though not necessarily symmetrical ways. Intelligent Design, provocatively abbreviated by the acronym I.D., is the fundamental hole around which creationism and evolution attempt to construct their identities or I.D.’s. Since this fundamental symptom is, in psychoanalytic terms, a hole which cannot be filled, the resulting frustration accounts for the way in which both evolution proponents and creationists strongly appeal not to open investigation when they approach popular culture, but authoritative pedagogy. In this sense, Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution is “symptomatically” titled, as the edge of evolution is precisely the hole or abyss represented by I. D. which evolution “looks over” while refusing to look. Even before Intelligent Design was given a name, it existed in the psyche as its fundamental symptom, and as such has functioned as the structuring system in the public psyche, determining the nature, if not the content, of “subsequent” theoretical formulations about the origins of life; take the periods away, and I.D. becomes Freud’s ID, whose primal fears, drives, and desires “erupt” into the individual ego and the social superego in more or less neurotic fashions. In other words, I. D. is the ID of origin theories, since I.D. represents a sort of impossible space: 1) either emotionally—the god who designs malaria as Behe puts it; [5] 2) or conceptually, as a theory that works by negation (of both of creationism and evolution), like deconstruction, whose procedure, we must remember, is to show how the methods of particular systems (be they texts, cultures, or epistemologies) dismantle themselves according to their own rules, even if these rules are not conscious to their “designers”; 3) since I.D. works by negation, it can only ever lead us to an aporia-- an end of the trail in Greek--and as such it is not a “method” that, once it has done its work, necessarily directs us anywhere else. We may go anywhere else after Intelligent Design, but it is not because I.D. gives us a new map. It is our guiding symptom in the construction of multifarious identities, but as such this impossible space represents the aporia of human questions about origin, not a symbolic map at all but the end of the map and the beginning of our explorations.
V. A Methodist Church In Need Of A Protestant
<12> As Martin Luther said at his trial, “Here I stand. I can do no other.” But of course, as he said this, Luther no doubt wondered where he stood, where “here” was, in the surreal world where one stands trial for his beliefs. It must have seemed an impossible, unbelievable place to stand. As history returns in the form of comedy, I wondered the same thing as I stood, and then sat, in the First United Methodist Church of Oak Ridge, TN. What exactly was this place on April 24, 2010?
<13> Strange place indeed, a contradictory, seemingly impossible place, a “symposium” entitled “Evolution and Science: A Church’s View on the Science of Evolution.” [6] In a poetic if unintentional equivocation, the seminar organizers had managed to separate evolution from science and then reunite them in a single title, marrying them, Wallace Stevens-style, with the power of of. The symposium occurred on a Saturday, which both is and is not the Sabbath, presumably so as not to interfere with Sunday’s business as usual.
<14> This church’s view was evidently more catholic than that of the evolutionary absolutist, seeing as how the latter’s fundamental ban would prevent him from entertaining the church’s view(s) in the first place, while the First United Methodist Church (FUMC) included as featured speakers FUMC’s pastor (Stella Roberts), a local high school biology teacher (Beth Adler), a professor of Paleobiology at the University of Tennessee (Colin Sumrall), and a professor of Religion at Emory and Henry College (Fred Kellogg). With this gathering of individuals the church had become everywhere and nowhere--a school of theology, a Research I university, a high school classroom, and yes, a church. It was also a costume party (Adler, seeming to possess as much knowledge about her subject matter as your average overworked public school teacher, deciding to focus on a rhetorical analysis of various perjuries committed by school board members in the Dover trial), a Colin Powell-esque WMD lecture (with Sumrall mustering his years of higher education to peddle the paleontologist’s drug of choice, a graph displaying the generally accepted pathway of transition from dinosaurs to birds), and an exercise in sado-masochism (after Sumrall, with total unawareness of his devotion to nominalism, said that it is your right to believe in evolution or not, just as it is your right to believe that, when you drop your keys and they fall to the floor, “the leader of Zornag uses a ray gun to force the set of keys to the floor, rather than the keys dropping because of gravity,” after this bravura performance, Kellogg and Roberts meekly capitulated, seeming to enjoy their submissive position that “there is nothing inherently incompatible between an evolutionary view of life and a commitment to the Christian scriptures” and that one of the main goals of the seminar was to “give moral and theological support to local biology teachers who may feel intimidated teaching evolution in the classroom”). [7]
<15> In short, it was a space that resembled what would happen if you threw Hieronymous Bosch--with nothing but paint supplies and a Munchian-sized case of horror vacui--into that gaping symptom cum theory known as I.D. With the symposium’s instruction by authority, of course, where professional scientists enter the space of metaphysics (FUMC) with a surprising lack of self awareness, it also resembled a high school biology classroom or, for that matter, Richard Dawkins’ Barnum & Bailey version of these things, The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution (2009).
VI. Evolutionary Dogmas and the Bewitched Terrains, Body Towards a Nonconclusion
<16> For those of you still reading this article, the following section serves as a literary review whose purpose is first, as with all literary reviews, to save readers (in this case readers of an academic journal devoted to cultural studies) the trouble, assuming they find it troublesome, of reading the books cited therein, and second, to save readers the trouble of earning a Ph.D. in chemistry, biochemistry, or chemical engineering (my degree) and then reading these books. Its focus is, as stated, to explore more closely evolutionary dogmas and their bewitched theoretical terrains, in order to arrive at a nonconclusion. The ideological perspective of what follows is thus one that some might characterize as postmodern in that it implicitly prescribes the practice of a nonincremental science, a science that is not teleological in favor of scientific practices which avoid conclusions. Although one can only really speak of the “nature of scientific knowledge” in an historical sense (the nature of scientific knowledge is the sum of discourses that individuals both professional and amateur have produced under/in the name of science), one can make arguments, implicit or explicit, for what knowledge produced in the sciences should be like. The implicit argument below is for an antiauthoritarian science that presents itself as such even at the most basic levels of pedagogy. [8] To teach science in authoritarian ways, as it is primarily taught in secondary schools, not only creates a passive attitude in students, but gives them a false impression of how the most successful (from the standpoint of invention) scientific practices operate. Just as Derrida argues that students have a “right to philosophy,” I believe they have a “right to science” generally and a “right to evolution” specifically, and they have a right to these things not as received statements but as living processes of knowledge. Students have a right to learn about science as a rich set of practices that are not delimited in advance and to participate in these processes of inquiry from the very beginning, a right they are denied under the current, abbreviated, authoritative pedagogies of evolution. In short, students (and the culture at large) have a right to more evolution. This “more” might include some of the perspectives below, and for that matter it might require teaching evolution in more secondary school subjects (such as chemistry, mathematics, philosophy, and history) rather than consigning it to the ghetto of biology. Nevertheless, I leave the actual development of educational policies to those individuals who have the patience (or particular obsession) to take part in those vampiric, soul-depleting rituals known as school board meetings (I go to bed at 8 and wake up at 4 so that I can run computer simulations of nuclear plants for ten hours at a stretch in relative peace, usually more worried about preventing the next Chernobyl than about intellectual hobbies which I greatly enjoy but for which I receive no remuneration).
<17> The neo-Darwinian General Theory of Evolution holds that evolution is biological change, via the mechanism of random mutation of the genomes of organisms. This process is natural, accidental (random); this is the foundation. Two problems already present themselves:
1) From what standpoint do we determine the nature of “the accidental,” which if not properly theorized becomes a blatantly anthropomorphic concept?
2) If the accidental is “natural,” that is, what appears accidental actually has not only causes but effects which lead to evolutionary change/development (as previously noted, in evolutionary theory the claims for the a-directional nature of are always haunted by the narrative of development from molecules to simple cells to multicellular organisms), what are the mechanisms/processes by which random mutation results in evolutionary change?
<18> Indeed, while Darwin was both ingenious and expedient in forestalling the question of the mechanism of evolutionary change in favor of his theory of natural selection, a general theory of evolution must deal with the current findings in chemistry and probability in order to more specifically describe the processes of evolution, to do for evolution what Newton and Einstein did for physics. What are the physics (writ large) of evolution? Since until relatively recently evolutionary theory has been the provenance of biology, paleontology, and geology, these questions still are not developed by most evolutionary apologists. Instead, we have arguments that work by deduction (what God would do, if he existed, is an argument that dies hard), induction (paleontological extrapolation) and homology (biology’s version of poetics). Jerry Coyne piles all these major methods together in one sentence in Why Evolution is True: “the fossil record, biogeography, embryology [the analogy between the stages of a human fetus and other life forms, which was thoroughly refuted long before Coyne published his 2009 text], vestigial structures, sub-optimal design [intelligent design refuted by showing evidence of poor design, which amounts to a debate concerning the I.Q. of a designer who does not exist] [9] and so on--all of that evidence show[s], without a scintilla of a doubt, that organisms have evolved” (222). And, in the “so on” we may include morphological and biological “similarity” (homology) or what Richard Dawkins terms “The Tree of Cousinship” in The Greatest Show on Earth. While the tendency of popular science writers to pile on evidence that is either problematic or even refuted with all the discrimination of a damage seeking lawyer is problematic in its own right, the greatest problem of all in this self proclaimed greatest show on earth is that even if the aforementioned areas of evidence had no “scintilla of doubt,” none of this data even begins to speak to the foundational issue of whether random mutation (of the genomes of organisms) is an efficacious mechanism for producing the changes which have occurred since life began. As the cell was Charles Darwin’s “black box” (Darwin assumed that the cell was able to do whatever was required) as highlighted in the title of Michael Behe’s 1996 publication Darwin’s Black Box, random mutation is the black box of current evolutionary theory. The efficacy of random mutation is not known; it is assumed.
<19> This major perspective, that life and the progression of life is a function of random mutation, is not confirmed by scientific evidence.That does not at all mean, of course, that belief in evolution is not reasonable. It may be very reasonable based on indirect evidence (refuted evidence notwithstanding), and we are assured by evolutionists that the indirect evidence is overwhelming. Nevertheless, the indirect evidence needs to be fairly assessed, particularly since there is such a demand from scientific, academic, and popular culture to believe. If you do not believe in evolution, there is a price to pay, so the data, and the inevitable opprobrium if belief is not embraced, need to be considered.
<20> When Charles Darwin wrote The Origin of Species the evidences available were the fossil record and morphological similarities among organisms. The fossil/geological record (as examined along with the isochron method of radiometric dating) establishes, for most, the age and consequent progression of life. There was change over a long period of time, and the complexity of life increased with time.
<21> The fossil record, however, does not reveal anything about the genomes of the fossils (except, at present, in rare exceptions). The key part of evolution as it is currently understood, specifically why the change in the genomes occurred, or what caused the change, cannot be addressed by the fossil record. The fossil record is silent on how/why the change occurred. That must be guessed, or deduced. Was the change natural (evolution’s answer), due to intervention (intelligent design), or due to a combination of natural and direct intervention (theistic evolution, which is a subset of intelligent design).
<22> The fossil record does not provide the genomes, but even if you had the genome sequences of every life form that ever existed, there would still be two questions, the first of which could be answered quite easily: “How many nucleotides in the genomes changed between organisms, between parent and progeny?” The second question would be more difficult to answer: “Is random mutation an effective mechanism for making the needed number of changes, and if it is deemed not an effective mechanism, what could have caused the change?” At present these questions are completely unanswerable from the fossil record, since fossils are nearly all mineral, not carbonaceous. There are no direct physical (scientific) data from the fossil record to support a conclusion on the cause of the change, whether accomplished by random mutation of the genomes (evolution) or by deliberate, specific manipulation (intelligent design) or by a combination of the two or other mechanisms. The conclusion, that is persuasion, must presently be made on a philosophical basis, not on the basis of scientific data from the fossil record. As previously noted, the other evidences listed above as supporting evolution, specifically, biogeography, embryology, vestigial structures, sub-optimal design, and homology also do not speak to why specific changes occurred/occur in the genomes.
<23> Another aspect of the fossil record which gives pause to those who question evolution is the seeming abrupt appearance of different types of organisms (at the level of kingdom, phyla, class, order, and family though not as much at the genus and species level). Darwin’s comment on the nature of the fossil record available at that time was, “Geology assuredly does not reveal any such fine graduated organic chain; and this, perhaps, is the most obvious and gravest objection which can be urged against my theory. The explanation lies, as I believe, in the extreme imperfection of the geological record” (230). One hundred years later, George Gaylord Simpson admitted that no significant progress had been made: “Gaps among known species are sporadic and often small. Gaps among known orders, classes,and phyla are systematic and almost always large” (360). Twenty years after that, things had gotten even worse:
In 1972 [Steven] Gould and Niles Eldridge--a paleontologist at the American Museum of Natural History--collaborated on a paper intended to resolve a professional embarrassment for paleontologists: their inability to find fossils of transitional forms between the species, the so-called “missing links.” Darwin, and most of those who followed him, believed that the work of evolution was slow, gradual, and continuous and that a complete lineage of ancestors, shading imperceptibly one into the next, could in theory be reconstructed for all living animals. In practice, Darwin conceded, the fossil record was much too spotty to demonstrate those gradual changes, though he was confident that they would eventually turn up.; But a century of digging since then has only made their absence more glaring. [10]
Though it caused him distress, Stephen Gould’s resulting theory of “punctuated equilibrium” emphasized the abrupt, discrete nature of the fossil record rather than slow progression Darwin expected to eventually be confirmed, although it was still a theory of evolution. To the skeptical, punctuated equilibrium seemed a theory whose primary virtue was that it based the evidence for evolution on its very lack of evidence, enacting the paleontological equivalent of that old psychoanalytic trick, “If you deny what I assert it must be true, since denial is nothing but a sign of resistance.”
<24> We have had 28 more years, and there are additional discoveries, as in the case of Tiktaalik, a specimen of which I viewed at Harvard. With each such discovery the skeptics are invariably asked to capitulate. The skeptics think that it would be more appropriate to see about a hundred more intermediates between fish and tetrapods before capitulation to the full blown General Theory of Evolution could reasonably be considered, and it is a little confusing when tetrapods are found in Poland which predate Tiktaalik by 10 million years. So, we are then told, Tiktaalik is actually a “surviving relic” of the transitional form rather than an actual, clear, timely transitional form. I guess we might forgive the skeptics on this one, since Tiktaalik was originally presented as the right transitional form in the right geologic strata (that is, intermediate in time as well as morphology). The point is that in all cases of the new discoveries, such as in the supposed whale series, there seems to be a lot of missing necessary intermediates as well as real question about the actual relations between the finds. And, again, there is no way to clearly establish the actual mechanism of change even if it could be clearly shown that there was a parent-progeny relationship.
<25> An evolutionist might claim in exasperation, “So, there is nothing (no amount of evidence) which could convince you to believe (in evolution).” Yes, there is, but as I have noted it has not been produced. A demonstration of the efficacy of random mutation would help, but I have only seen one popular publication deal with that issue, with respect to available data, specifically, Michael Behe’s The Edge of Evolution.
<26> Another common misrepresentation of evolution, in the popular sphere, comes from a misconception about microbiology. Many lay apologists for evolution cite the bacterial resistance developed to antibiotics as evidence of how the evolutionary process works. Do bacteria “evolve” resistance to antibiotics? Not exactly. Whatever changes occurred were there before the antibiotic was imposed on the bacterial population. A change occurred, but the question still remains as to why the changes occurred. Of course, mutations occur in the genomes of organisms which will be passed to progeny, if the progeny is viable and also naturally selected. The issue is not whether there are random changes, nor is the issue that natural selection applies. The issue is whether the mechanism of random mutation can produce the variety of life we see which was naturally selected from among the available pool of randomly produced organisms. This issue seems to be either not recognized or deliberately obscured by apologists for evolution by their promotion of natural selection as the real driving force of evolution rather than random mutation.
<27> Biological similarity among organisms is truly impressive and a very good basis for relation exists, as for example in the apparently broken apparatus which would allow, if not “broken,” primates to produce vitamin C (maybe a designer wanted us to enjoy oranges). The dissimilarities are also impressive, and, again (and again and again), whether random mutation is an adequate mechanism to bridge the gaps has still not been generally addressed. It could now be addressed to a significant extent, at least with respect to present changes, and the results could be applied probabilistically to changes in the past. It can be addressed because of our recently acquired ability to sequence the genomes of living organisms. This is microbiology at its finest. This is the topic of Michael Behe’s 2007 publication The Edge of Evolution. As Behe notes in the book, evolution is very effective, for accomplishing some things, specifically, breaking things (think “cancer”).
<28> The data presented in The Edge strongly suggest that random mutation as currently understood is not an adequate mechanism to fuel evolution. It is not known or not knowable whether the change observed in the fossil record was due to natural phenomena, but the data presented in The Edge clearly suggests that it was not a function of random mutation. The data referenced in The Edge comes from the massive amount of information available on Malaria, Behe’s specialty, from the data available on the 40,000 generations of e-Coli produced at Michigan University, and from studies on HIV; the basic conclusion is that if an evolutionary step requires a change of only one nucleotide in the DNA, random mutation can accomplish that task. From data on the malarial organism and its resistance to Chloroquine it can be estimated that if two specific simultaneous nucleotide changes are required in the genome of the organism, that is much more difficult and can require upwards of 1020 organisms if random mutation is the mechanism of change (there have been only approximately 1012 "individuals in the primate group leading to Homo Sapiens since the presumed precursor of the entire primate group which immediately suggests a massive problem with the efficacy of random mutation as the driver of evolution).
<29> Two essentially simultaneous accidental changes in the nucleotides of organisms is possible, as noted above, with a sufficiently large population of organisms. If a particular evolutionary step required more than two simultaneous changes, that is most likely beyond what random mutation can accomplish. When considering probably most transitions, such as a scale to a feather, a larger number of nucleotide changes are undoubtedly required. If a step required four nucleotides to be simultaneously changed, the probability, based on the discussion in the previous paragraph, would require 1040 organisms, which is the approximate number of single cell organisms which have ever existed since life began on this planet, 3.8 million years ago. Even if such a change might be accomplished once, or twice, or three times, but not hundreds and thousands and millions of times. And even this would require a population of living cells which are massively more complex than the change being considered. Where did the cells come from?
<30> In attempting to address complexity and multiple changes, the favored evolutionary approach is Richard Dawkins’ approach in Climbing Mount Improbable, that is, the slow gradual step by step accumulation of specific nucleotide changes. The changes don’t have to be simultaneous we are told; they can accumulate. However, the discrete nature of the fossil record does not unquestionably support that picture, as noted earlier. “Random” changes unquestionably do occur, but such a change is temporary, if the organism survives at all. If many changes in the genome are required, an earlier change may have already been lost before a later one occurs. In this case, Bayesian probability, the probability of event B given event A, does not apply because you are not given event A--for very long. Also, the probability of event B is only affected if the probability is affected by event A, which in this case, it isn’t. The probability of B is the same as the probability of B given A or still 10-10 and the probability of four events, simultaneous or in time is still 10-40, or, for all biological purposes, impossible. The relevant changes (random errors in nucleotide placement) in the DNA have to be pretty near simultaneous, particularly if several specific changes are required to actually effect a change, and with the frequency of errors being on the order of 10-10, per nucleotide, it doesn’t take many required changes to defy possibility according to the models presented by evolutionists themselves.
<31> What microbiology has clearly demonstrated, rather than actually confirming evolution, is the staggering complexity of life as we know it. In contrast, random mutation is a slow and clumsy mechanism, particularly due to the elaborate checking mechanisms of each of our 100 trillion cells. If random mutation were not slow and clumsy, bacteria, which can mutate much faster than we can due to their relative speed of reproduction, would have killed us already. What microbiology has also shown is the essentially incomprehensible complexity of the “simple” cell. Michael Denton in Evolution: A Theory in Crisis, states,“We now know not only of the existence of a break between the living and non-living world, but also that it represents the most dramatic and fundamental of all of the discontinuities of nature. Between a living cell and the most highly ordered non-biological system, such as a crystal or a snow flake, there is a chasm as vast and absolute as it is possible to conceive” (249-250). The assessment of the cell is left to the reader. What will be noted here is some of the difficulty with respect to showing that life had a natural origin that occurred according to known natural laws, that chemical “evolution,” according to the currently known laws of chemistry, could have produced life.
<32> The I.D. proponent will examine the simple cell (one of the all-time greatest oxymorons) and will suggest that the laws of chemical equilibrium and probability preclude the origin of life by those means. The evolutionist who bothers to examine these things will generally agree except will add, “We will find new laws.” The need for new laws is the topic of Stuart Kauffman’s book, At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Complexity and Self-Organization. The subtitle is revealing; the laws that we are aware of now, to put it mildly, fail to explain the origin of life.
<33> In a cell the DNA (genome) contains the templates for making proteins and contains instruction (information) about when to make various proteins, how much to make, where the protein is needed, how to transport the proteins to the needed location, and if the protein is involved in a structure as in one of the thousands of molecular machines in the cell. The DNA must monitor the construction, the performance of the structure after construction, assess the need for repair, perform the repair, replacing proteins as needed and to the extent needed:
Each cell of an organism has thousands of interacting computers reading and processing digital information, using digital programs and digital codes to communicate and translate information . . . . [For] functional communication (including controls) to occur both sender and receiver of each communication step must know the communication protocol and how to handle the message. In each cell there are multiple OS’s (operating systems), multiple programming languages, encoding/decoding hardware and software, specialized communication systems, error detection and correction mechanisms, specialized input/output channels to accomplish the tasks of life. The author can attest that these processes are not trivial in the evaluation of evolutionary theory since many were fundamental to his second Ph.D. thesis . . . . Laws of chemistry and physics which follow exact statistical, thermodynamic, and spatial laws, are totally inadequate for generating complex functional information or those systems that process that information using proscriptive algorithmic information. Unfortunately, most people investigating the origins of life are unfamiliar with the immensity of the problems, and believe that time, chance, and natural selection can accomplish almost anything. (Johnson 53-4).
While many in the scientific community like to think there are simpler initial cells or pre-cells, a certain minimum of complexity is required before the functions of life are possible. It is also appropriate to note here that recent science suggests that what was recently considered “junk DNA” available for evolutionary salvage actually is part of the information system described by Donald Johnson. It isn’t junk; it’s computer hardware.
<34> As Stuart Kauffman puts it, “Of all the problems [with respect to a theory of evolutionary autopoeisis] . . . the one I find most insurmountable is the one I find the most rarely talked about: all living things seem to have a minimal complexity below which it is impossible to go. The simplest free living cells are called pleuromona, a highly simplified kind of bacterium, replete with cell membrane, genes, RNA, protein-synthesizing machinery, proteins – the full complement of standard gear. The number of genes in pleuromona is variously estimated at a few hundred to about a thousand, compared to the estimated 3,000 in Escherichia coli, a bacterium in our intestines” (42). In relation to proposed simpler scenarios about the origin of life, he states, “Evolution is filled with these just-so stories, plausible scenarios for which no evidence can be found, stories we love to tell but on which we should place no intellectual reliance” (43). As for Kauffman’s confidence that we will find new laws of self-organization and complexity, I think I can say the same thing about that.
<35> The two massively insurmountable natural laws which seem, to me, to prevent a natural origin of life are chemical equilibrium (the foundation of chemistry) and then, only if chemical equilibrium could be overcome, the laws of probability. When amino acids combine (to make proteins) the energy which activates the amino acids for combination to be possible is also completely effective in breaking the longer chains.In experiments simulating hot ocean vents stable chains of only three amino acids were obtained. Three combined amino acids are the “equilibrium” point, and this cannot be varied, very much (you might find two, or even four, but you will not find ten or more). This limitation is termed “chemical equilibrium,” that is, a reaction can proceed only to the point of equilibrium, the final stable configuration in the given physical situation. The average length of proteins in the cell is 500 amino acids, not three. An analogy is what must be done to weld two or more pieces of metal together. The metal edges have to be melted, the heat removed, the edges of the metal placed together away from the heat, and held in place until the metal cools and solidifies. The analogy is to attempt to combine the pieces of metal by putting them into a furnace which would simply melt all the metal and it would remain molten as long as it was in the presence of the heat. Likewise, if the activating energy is heat, radiation, or any other natural source it is difficult to make longer chains because of the continued presence of the activating energy. That forms one of the bases of chemical equilibrium; in a given environment only a limited number of amino acids or nucleotides can stay together. The cell uses a chemical reaction, in the machinery of the cell, changing adenosine triphosphate (ATP) to adenosine diphosphate (ADP) to accomplish activation; that is, to supply the needed amount of energy, and no more than is needed, and then there is no more energy to break the chain apart. "In experiments simulating hot ocean vents stable
chains of only three amino acids were obtained (Huber and Waechtershauser 670; Ei-ichi Imai, et al. 831)."
<36> The problem of probability, assuming that chemical equilibrium could be overcome (which as far as we know cannot be overcome except in the machinery of the cell) would be the vast number of different molecules which could be made. Even though we use only 20 different amino acids, there are actually hundreds which could form if amino acids were indeed being formed. However, just using the 20 amino acids we would need, if we could make a chain of 500 amino acids, we could make 20500 (10650) different kinds. Proteins are very specific. How could we possibly select the very few proteins we needed out of such an inconceivable mass of unneeded proteins? We could not, with any consistency. As chemical equilibrium is a killer with respect to current scientific explanations of life’s origins, so is probability.
<37> Donald Johnson’s comment about persons seemingly being unfamiliar with the problems involved with a natural origin of life seems to apply even to the eminent Stephen Hawking and his 2010 publication, The Grand Design. He states that there could be 10500 different universes, a vast number of which could have the precise physical constants which would make life possible. Life being able to survive has nothing whatsoever with its initial formation, and the improbabilities, again completely ignoring the insurmountable problem of chemical equilibrium, of getting specific chains of amino acids to produce proteins or specific chains of nucleotides to make RNA or DNA simply eclipse (the reciprocal of) 10500. Also, we need to solve, if we want to maintain the credibility of a natural origin of life here, the problems here on Earth, not out there in space somewhere or in another universe. In a universe with the right properties, life can survive, but that does not explain how life can arrive.
<38> How do we get the proteins and RNA and DNA? In a 1992 Discover article, Stanley Miller (who was the first person to produce amino acids in the laboratory) stated, “The first step, making the monomers (amino acids), that’s easy. We understand it pretty well. But then you have to make the first self-replicating polymers (proteins) [. . .] Nobody knows how it’s done.” With respect to nucleotides, which form DNA and RNA, Robert M. Hazen states,
2. Many of the presumed protometabolic molecules are synthesized with relative ease in experiments that mimic prebiotic environments, à la Miller–Urey. RNA nucleotides, by contrast, have never been synthesized from scratch, in spite of decades of focused effort.
3. Even if a prebiotic synthetic pathway to nucleotides could be found, a plausible mechanism to link those individual nucleotides end-to-end into an RNA strand has not been demonstrated. So it’s not obvious how catalytic RNA sequences would have formed spontaneously in any prebiotic environment. (219)
These comments are staggering, particularly in a book written by an author who absolutely believes that life has an origin in natural laws. After having read the book, I do not know why he believes because not a single effort he discussed encourages that persuasion. Presently the scenario of a natural origin of life appears utterly intractable. The problem is not what we don’t know (the possible discovery of new laws); the problem is what we do know, specifically, again, chemical equilibrium and the next seemingly impossible barrier, mathematical improbability.
VII. Second Conclusion on the Destruction of Science
<39> As previously noted, the suggestion that belief or disbelief in evolution is the determining factor in whether or not American culture will be a scientific or theocratic one, that to question evolution is to commit an act of terror against science, can only make sense inasmuch as evolution represents the return of what science has repressed (metaphysics) in order to found itself as a discourse. Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is a brilliant work, and Darwin himself is to be revered, inasmuch as his work was fundamental in helping to found disciplines that consider nature in terms of change on the cellular and genomic levels. This shift from a view of “static” creation and “biology as taxonomy” was necessary for the very existence of contemporary genetic research. A rational approach would recognize the theory of evolution and especially the theory of the origin of life for what they are, vestigial products in a techno scientific world where we become less and less concerned with what biologists (and other scientists) believe about the past than with what they can do in the future. Of course, since psychological bans do not lend themselves to rational inquiry, most likely I.D. will continue to do its work as creationism and evolution studies become a part of “the history of science” that continues to haunt the future in more or less ideological forms.
<40> Young Earth Creationists (YEC) are such because of a particular interpretation of their Holy Writ. Proponents of I.D. are generally such because, to them, scientific observations indicate a complexity of the universe (extreme precision of important physical constants) and particularly an extreme complexity of the biology of life which seems to defy known natural laws. I.D. as a social practice is based on scientific observation; it is not based on Holy Writ as is YEC. An I.D. proponent may conclude that the designer is the God of the Bible for reasons other than the reasons (scientific observations) for concluding I.D. I.D. is not YEC. Though I.D. is not inherently religious, there are metaphysical implications (the possibility of an intelligent designer), just as there are metaphysical implications with evolution (there is no god or a god was not involved in the formation of our universe). The term “Creationism” has popularly come to mean Young Earth Creationism and equating I.D. with Creationism (understood to be Young Earth Creationism) is either a misunderstanding or sophistry. The average I.D. proponent is prone to believe, generally, with respect to biology, that, if there was not general fiat creation (at geologic intervals) of new organisms, then the genomes of organisms were directly manipulated (as opposed to being efficaciously changed by random mutation) to produce what, for whatever reason, the designer wished and that this direct manipulation produced a biological situation greater than what the accepted natural mechanism of random mutation could have produced (no one has a problem with subsequent “natural selection”).
<41> This brings us again to the only legitimate question concerning evolution and I.D., specifically, “Can random mutation of the (nucleotide sequences in the) genome (with subsequent natural selection) produce the variety of life seen now and in the fossil record?” That is, “What is the efficacy of random mutation?”How can we tell? To review, the fossil record reveals nothing about the genomes of organisms, and consequently nothing about random mutation being the cause of what is observed. That random mutation was the driving force for evolution is an assumption, pure and simple, not a result of scientific analysis of the fossil record or subsequent attempts to simulate prebiotic environments in laboratory experiments. The primary reason for believing in a natural mechanism is the philosophical persuasion that, “God wouldn’t have done it that way.” This, however, is a strange sentiment for an individual who probably does not purport to know of a “God,” but nevertheless has the temerity to assume that he knows what a “God” would do.
<42> God wouldn’t do it that way? Let us not conflate the concept of a possible intelligent designer with a benign designer. Intelligent and benign are not synonyms; for Atheists (not implying at all that all evolutionists are atheists or that all Atheists are evolutionists) to take the word of people for whom they have no respect on the nature of God (completely benign), that His purpose was to create a perfect situation, as we would assess it, is an irony explicable only if, as previously noted, I.D. is the founding symptom from which both creationism and evolution subsequently construct their discourses or I.D.’s. I.D. as a social phenomenon does not question the observational methods of modernist science but rather questions the presupposition and/or conclusion that all that exists, and particularly what exists in the biological realm, is the result of natural law. I.D. as the founding symptom of origin theories, however, deconstructs the philosophical bases of both modernist science and creationism. To the extent that I.D. destroys the myth of science as a discourse which, through observation, embodies a truth in any transcendental sense, it does represent the destruction of science. But, the death of science, much like the death of God, is more of a philosophical acknowledgment than anything else. Both science and God proceed after their declared demise.
Works Cited
Behe, Michael. The Edge of Evolution: The Search for the Limits of Darwinism. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2008.
Coyne, Jerry. Why Evolution is True. New York: Penguin, 2009.
Darwin, Charles. The Origin of Species New York: Random House, 1993.
Dawkins, Richard. Climbing Mount Improbable. New York: Norton, 1997.
----. The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution. New York: Simon and Schuster, 2009.
----.“Review of Blueprints: Solving the Mystery of Evolution.” New York Times. April 9, 1989.
Dennett, Daniel C. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1996.
Denton, Michael. Evolution: A Theory in Crisis. London: Adler and Adler, 1986.
Hawking, Stephen. The Grand Design. New York: Bantam, 2010.
Hazen, Robert M. Genesis: The Scientific Quest for Life’s Origins. New York: Joseph Henry Press, 2007.
Huber, Claudia and Guenter Waechtershaeuser. "Peptides by Activation of Amino Acids with CO on (Ni, Fe)S Surfaces: Implications for the Origin of Life." Science 281(1998).
Imai, Ei-ichi et al., "Elongation of Oligopeptides in a Simulated Submarine Hydrothermal System," Science 283 (1999).
Johnson, Donald E. Programming of Life.New York: Big Mac Publishers, 2010.
Kauffman, Stuart. At Home in the Universe: The Search for the Laws of Complexity and Self-Organization. London: Oxford University Press.
Krukonis, Greg. Evolution for Dummies. New York: For Dummies, 2008.
Feyerabend, Paul. Against Method. London: Verso, 1993.
Ratliffe, Evan. “The Crusade Against Evolution.” Wired 12.10 (Oct 2004). www.wired.com.
Simpson, George Gaylord. The Major Features of Evolution. New York: Columbia University Press, 1955.
Sumrall, Colin. “Paleobiology of Extinct Species.” Evolution and Science: A Church’s View on the Science of Evolution. www.fumcor.org.
Wald, George. “The Origin of Life.” Scientific American. August, 1954.
Notes
1 “Our ignorance of the laws of variation is profound” (Darwin 209).
2. The negative arguments for evolution, which posit the observed phenomena and relics of the earth in contradistinction to what a “created” earth would look like, still hold pride of place in popular science texts and secondary school instruction.
3. In his 1954 Scientific American article “The Origin of Life,” Wald articulates what is really at stake when it comes to the promotion and dissemination of evolutionary theory even as he remains committed to it: “The reasonable view [in the past] was to believe in spontaneous generation; the only alternative, to believe in a single, primary act of supernatural creation. There is no third position. For this reason many scientists a century ago chose to regard the belief in spontaneous generation as a ‘philosophical necessity.’ It is a symptom of the philosophical poverty of our time that this necessity is no longer appreciated. Most modern biologists, having reviewed with satisfaction the downfall of the spontaneous generation hypothesis, yet unwilling to accept the alternative belief in special creation, are left with nothing” (46).
4. The breakdown in this analogy would be that while Derrida is articulating, throughout his career, a general theory of language, we must remind ourselves that evolutionary discourse, or for that matter scientific discourse, is only one language in a larger Babelian performance. It is worth noting, as Paul Feyerabend does in his groundbreaking work of scientific philosophy Against Method that, for all the good it may produce, “Science is neither a single tradition, nor the best tradition there is, except for people who have become accustomed to its presence, its benefits and its disadvantages” (238). There are other traditions, other discourses, which may be preferable to science given particular situations, groups, or individuals. To assert otherwise is to commit an ethnocentric arrogance with potentially violent repercussions.
5. Michael Behe, who developed his objections to traditional accounts of evolution from the disciplinary perspective biochemistry while studying malaria, makes the following statement in his book The Edge of Evolution: “Here’s something to ponder long and hard: Malaria was intentionally designed [. . .] But denying design simply [. . .] it can cause terrible pain is a failure of nerve, a failure to look the world fully in the face ” (237-9). Behe does not attempt to provide a fuller philosophical perspective on these questions--it is not the purpose of the book--but one may note that his challenge to look the world “fully in the face” is an impossible one in the way I am discussing “the impossible” here. Behe does not and cannot face the impossible represented by I.D. any more than can apologists for evolution or creationism. Behe’s noirish prose merely marks the place, the edge, which even the proponent of intelligent design (although Behe uses the term “intentional,” betraying his status in the I.D. debates as outlaw scientist and amateur philosopher rather than as a political proponent of Intelligent Design as a means of sneaking theology into the secondary school curriculum) cannot fully comprehend. As already suggested, I.D., whose abbreviated form I use to retain the multiplicity of meanings I have put forth as well as the possibility of others I cannot anticipate, is the groundless ground from which all origin theories emanate in the form of a retreat. So, while evolution’s failure to acknowledge its origins in metaphysics may indeed be a “failure of nerve,” I will not, a la Dawkins, assign it a moral character so much as locate “nerve” in the nervous system, that body which the mind cannot encounter except in the form of a missed encounter which Lacan designates by the word “Real.”
6. The pamphlet advertising this event may be viewed at: http://fumcor.org/clientimages/33585/science_theology/scienceandtheologysymposiumbrochure 2010.pdf
7. The sadomasochistic ritual was consummated in its most classic form when, after Adler and Sumrall had ridiculed the idea that there was any supernatural element in the progression of life, the pastor thanked God for the seminar (and, by extension, the browbeating that the church had received).
8. Although the primary purpose of this article is to discuss the intersections of evolutionary theory and popular culture, not to make curricular recommendations (I have never run for the local school board nor do I plan to), it is both impossible and dishonest to speak of disciplinary knowledge as if it exists outside of a pedagogical context. Particularly in the case of evolution, I have to take it up as I find it, and I find debates concerning evolution primarily occurring in the didactic forms of secondary education and popular books authored by professional scientists. More than any other field, biology tends to produce a cadre of scientists who are addicted to producing these texts and arguing for the cultural necessity of teaching an authoritative and truncated version of evolution in secondary schools and to the general populace. Richard Dawkins’ comparison of those who question evolution with Holocaust deniers in The Greatest Show on Earth betrays either a complete irresponsibility with respect to rhetoric or a sincere belief that evolution is the moral question of our day.
9. Indeed, Coyne’s prose often betrays the attitude of a child who chooses not to believe in Santa Claus because he doesn’t like what he got for Christmas: “No intelligent designer would have given us this” (13); and, “imperfections […] are signs not of a celestial engineer but of evolution” (56).
10. Newsweek, May 29, 1982.
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