Here, from Michael Egnor, is one of the better criticisms of evolutionary speculationism I’ve seen in a while. It’s centered on the point that evolution can be used to explain just about any phenomena whatever. A paper by Nathaniel Dominy and George Perry on human saliva suggests that it was our spit that originally made the difference between us and the apes, and rocketed us along the path to our much larger brains and everything else that makes us human.
Egnor shows that no matter what data they had discovered about human saliva, they could have drawn equally reasonable evolutionary conclusions.
Perry et al.’s inference to natural selection is irrelevant to the specific data in their paper. ‘Natural selection’ could be invoked for any permutation of their data. Yet in science, inferences must depend on data, and must be subject to falsification by data….
Here’s the problem: that which could in principle explain any finding, any data, explains none of it at all.
The same charge gets leveled at theism: that we could use “God did it” to explain anything. For this I have two responses:
- If in fact we do that, then at least the playing field is level; naturalistic evolutionists and theistic ID proponents are guilty of the same error.
- But theists do not actually do the same. We know that when we say “God did it” we’re speaking in theological terms, and that there’s a time and a place for discussion of that sort. We don’t put it in science journals the way it was done here by an evolutionist and call it a scientific explanation.
We get charged by opponents of violating that second point, but that’s their misconstruing Intelligent Design for their own purposes. Intelligent Design advocates (as far as I’ve observed) know when they’re doing science and when they’re speaking religion, and that the two are not the same. For ID advocates like myself who believe in God, obviously there’s an inseparable link between God and nature, but we can still distinguish the concepts. Dominy’s and Perry’s empty speculation is presented as science: can they tell the difference?
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Just to save you the effort, I’ll go ahead and type the first anti-ID comment for you. It’s predictable enough, and it goes something like this:
“When they’re doing science”–never!
“When they’re speaking religion”–every time they open their mouths.
I’m pretty sure that’s what some of you are thinking. It’s pretty simple when you put it that way, isn’t it?
And here’s the short version of my answer to your first objection (as I’m predicting it to be): It’s pretty simple when you put it that way, indeed. So simple that you can be absolutely certain it’s distorted.
So, speaking to those who thought I got it right in my prior comment (and I’m sure some of you did feel that way: You might find it valuable to check your own beliefs and opinions to see where you’ve oversimplified.
“evolution can be used to explain just about any phenomena whatever”
What is Egnor saying here? If he’s saying evolution can explain just about any actual. phenomena, then that speaks in favor of the theory. But if he’s saying it evolution can explain just about any possible phenomena, then that seems like an exaggeration. To take just one example from a larger family, how would evolution explain finding fossilized squirrels in the Precambrian strata?
Evolution is a hermeneutic, when will we get it? And to take your post one step further, within evolution “time” is the factor which can “explain anything.”
CT, if you read his article you’ll see: he’s saying that if the data in question had been the opposite of what they were, evolution could have explained it just as easily.
Mr. Gilson, (and just to keep you honest) I take it that you do acknowledge the significant difference between the following two claims:
“evolution can be used to explain just about any phenomena whatever”
vs.
“For the data in question, evolution could have equally explained the opposite.”
That’s right, I do acknowledge the difference. I was hoping that context, including the context of Egnor’s article, would clarify the intent. I apologize for any lack of clarity resulting from that assumption.
I like just about everything I’ve seen of Egnor’s writing.