Truth in Advertising: Damaging the Cause of Science-Part 1

Introduction

(from Darwin’s Leap of Faith, Harvest House, 1998)

If evolution is not a fact, and yet the scientific world declares evolution is a fact, then the unkind conclusion is that the scientific world is either deceived or somehow doesn’t know the meaning of the term “fact.” The Macmillan Dictionary for Students (1984) defines fact as “something known to be true or real; that which has actually occurred.” For reasons that we will demonstrate in future articles, it is impossible that evolution can be “known to be true.” Further, the evidence declares that evolution has not occurred and could never occur.

Unintentional Damage

Scientists who declare that evolution is a fact should recognize the damage they do to the credibility of science—and not just evolutionary science but all of science. As more and more people gradually learn the truth that, deliberately or innocently, science has mislead them on an extremely crucial issue, their trust in the authority of science will be over. The implications are hardly small.

The public trusts the scientific world to know the difference between fact and specula­tion, between the proper interpretation of observable data that can be proven valid and unwarranted conclusions derived from faulty premises. When scientists everywhere assert that a highly suspect, indeed incredible, theory is “an established fact of science,” why should anyone trust scientists to tell them the truth in other areas? If the scientific world won’t tell the truth in so critical an area as our own origins, with vast implications for each of us, why should it tell the truth in matters of lesser import? In fact, the public’s trust in sci­ence has already eroded significantly because of consequences stemming from its adher­ence to naturalism,^[1] and because of sloppy science generally, as the recent book Junk Science illustrates.

One of those logical consequences is a nihilistic outlook on life.^[2] Even an article in the prestigious journal Science for August 15, 1997, correctly warned, “much of the anti-sci­ence mood in the country today stems from the perception that by venerating meaningless­ness, science has become inhuman.”^[3] But most scientists are unaware of how the theory of evolution itself damages the progress of science.

Consider the comments of the Canadian scholar Arthur C. Custance, discussing a text by noted evolutionist G. G. Simpson, This View of Life: “Throughout the book this begging of the issue runs like an unending refrain. Evolution is a fact, not a theory; evolution is one of the few basic facts; it is an unassailable fact; a fact supported by all other facts; a fact which only dishonest biologists would argue against…. According to Simpson, those who refuse to accept it are either idiotic, dishonest, or both.”^[4]

Custance’s comment here is significant because it applies to so many modern science textbooks. Custance also says, “Observing the literature carefully over a period of some 40 years, it is my impression that the sense of urgency and special pleading in assuring the public that Darwin was right, has increased steadily with the passage of time.”^[5]

Actually, as more and more damaging evidence accumulates against the idea of evolu­tion, it is presented more forcefully as fact. This cannot be science (or reason) operating, this is emotion and “politically correct” science, pure and simple. And if scientists do sci­ence on the basis of emotion and “political correctness,” we are all in trouble.

Of course, lay people aren’t the only ones realizing that the scientific establishment has been less than truthful. Many scientists who investigate the matter openly are also discov­ering that the theory of evolution has little or no evidence in its behalf. As Dr. Isaac Manly (MD, Harvard Medical School) comments, “What I have learned in the past ten years of review of recent scientific knowledge of cellular morphology and physiology; the code of life (DNA), and the lack of supporting evidence for evolution in the light of recent scientific evidence is a shocking rebuttal to the theory of evolution…. There is no evidence of any kind for this theory.”^[6] Dr. Manly also commented that, as he read Darwin’s Origin of Spe­cies, he was “struck by the lack of any real evidence for Darwin’s theories.”^[7]

We continue to have the same conclusion as we read modern evolutionary literature. Manly is correct concerning Darwin’s successors attempts to prove evolution: “they were quite willing to speculate and theorize to degrees of absurdity to prove the unprovable.”^[8]

Indeed, the conclusions of noted U.C. Berkeley law professor Phillip E. Johnson can be multiplied hundreds of times from scientists on the basis of scientific evidence alone. Johnson stated evolution “is not only unproven but actually contrary to the overwhelming weight of the evidence…. [W]hat is presented to the public as scientific knowledge about evolutionary mechanisms is mostly philosophical speculation and is not even consistent with the evidence once the naturalistic spectacles are removed. If that leaves us without a known mechanism of biological creation, so be it: it is better to admit ignorance than to have confidence in an explanation that is not true.”^[9]

Even evolutionist Grasse, among the most distinguished of French zoologists, remarks that “the explanatory doctrines of biological evolution do not stand up to an in-depth criti­cism,” while evolutionist Bethel sees “Darwin’s theory… on the verge of collapse.”^[10]

If scientists want the public to trust them, and to pay taxes to fund their research, then perhaps they should start telling us the truth. Until that time, by declaring evolution a fact, they will only damage their own cause.

The same article in Science magazine for August 15, 1997 correctly warned (citing geneticist Francisco Ayala), “The financial structure of American research depends on the goodwill of a body politic that values religion. We are not wise to have the body politic seeing science as antagonistic to spiritual commitment.”^[11]

Notes

1. ↑ Cf., Phillip E. Johnson, Reason in the Balance: The Case Against Naturalism in Science, Law, and Educa­tion (Downer’s Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1995).
2. ↑ John Ankerberg, John Weldon, Darwin’s Leap of Faith (Eugene, OR: Harvest House, 1998), Chapter 1.
3. ↑ Gregg Easterbrook, “Science and God—A Warming Trend?” Science, August 15, 1997, p. 893.
4. ↑ Arthur Custance, Evolution or Creation? pp. 172-73.
5. ↑ Ibid., p. 172.
6. ↑ Isaac V. Manly, M.D., God Made: A Medical Doctor Looks at the Reality of Creation (Joplin, MO: College Press, 1994), pp. 13, 116.
7. ↑ Ibid., p. 52.
8. ↑ Ibid., p. 143.
9. ↑ Johnson, Reason, pp. 11-12.
10. ↑ BetheIl, “Darwin’s Mistake,” Harper’s magazine, February 1976, pp. 70, 72 in Bird, Origin… Revisited, Vol. 1, p. 136.
11. ↑ Easterbrook, “Science and God,” p. 890.

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