By Kit Bunker

 

Science, as we now understand the term, is a comparatively modern invention. It arose in the Christian west because that is
where the central and key idea of science was generally accepted.
That central idea is that the world operates at God’s command, and since God is reliable and constant, so the rules God uses to make the world operate will be reliable and regular. It therefore makes perfect sense to examine the world and deduce the rules.
It is only within the last hundred and fifty years
that science has become a profession, an activity
which may be taken up as easily by an atheist as by a Christian. It is within this time too that the utility of science has become clear; it no longer needs a philosophical justification. Everyone knows that from scientific research will flow technology, and from the technology, wealth and health. Science still seems to attract Christians; you’ll find plenty of them in any research laboratory.
It is worth reminding ourselves of the
fundamental assumptions of science as an activity.
Firstly that the ultimate authority is always experiment; what happens is what happens, like it or not.
Secondly, what happened yesterday is what – if
I do the same things – will happen tomorrow and
on any subsequent occasion.
Thirdly, it is often possible to deduce the laws
which determine what will happen, so that it is
possible accurately to predict the outcome of new
practical experiments.
Prediction is important. If what you predict
happens when you do certain things you feel
encouraged that your understanding may be
good. If what you predict does not happen, you
know your understanding must be faulty. That is
critical. You need to know when you are wrong.
To be science, an understanding (theory) must be
falsifiable. If it not falsifiable you will never know
if it is wrong.
A body of understanding is often called a theory.
Physicists will speak of the ‘kinetic theory of matter’

 

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The eminent palaeontologist and professor of
evolutionary theory at Cambridge University,
Conway Morris, (Life’s Solution) offers intriguing
evidence for an alternative hypothesis, that life on
this earth would have evolved, (if it evolved at all) to produce much the same selection of creatures as in fact did evolve; regardless of accident. He suggests that there are only so many viable solutions to evolutionary problems, and that these solutions are re-invented time and again. That is testable, go to the fossil record and look.
The evangelical Darwinists however seize on the
role of the contingent, and argue that we are the
product of accident and blind chance, and could
just as easily have been entirely different, or not
here at all. This means, they say, that we are not
made to any plan, we just happen to be – that
is all. If we are not made, there is no maker. The
evangelical Darwinists peddle the ‘good news’ that
there is no maker, no god, and certainly no God.
Evangelical Darwinism is not science; it is
religion, the religion of atheism. I have no doubt
that the evangelical Darwinists believe what they
are writing. They are as convinced of the truth of
what they say as is any evangelist. Christians need to be ready to explain that the scientific theory of evolution does not say ‘god did not do it’ any more than it says ‘god did it’.
Social Darwinism is another matter. It is based
on the idea that ‘survival of the fittest’ means more
than the survival of the fittest to survive. Survival
is seen as morally admirable. Survival, flourishing,
being on top of the heap, becomes, to the social
Darwinist, proof of being the best.
“Those who do not survive are failures, destined
to die; those like us who survive are the best, for
we survive, do we not?” Social Darwinism is the
cousin of fascism, of eugenics, a driver of brutal
capitalism, a wicked perversion. It is still ‘out there’,
and Christians need to stand ready to refute it.
Fortunately socio-biology has a lot to say on the
subject of altruism; see for example The Origins of
Virtue by Matt Ridley.
The ‘Creation Scientists’ are right, there are really
nasty ideas associated with ‘the theory of evolution’.
But they are wrong in thinking that what needs
to be attacked is the science. What needs to be
attacked is the non-science that pretends to be
science - evangelical and social Darwinism.

The Revd Dr Kit Bunker is an Anglican priest who has been both a science educator and a research scientist.

 

even though the understanding has become so much a part of the mental furniture of physics that it is simply accepted as being true by any practicing physicist.
The ‘theory of evolution’ is similarly fundamental
to biology. With the unravelling of the mysteries of
DNA, the theory of evolution is becoming more
and more firmly understood to be true every day
– particularly since prediction after prediction
based on it has turned out to be what actually
happens.
The fundamental problem with ‘creation
science’ and with the ‘theory of intelligent design’
is that they are unfalsifiable, and so are not science.
As soon as they say ‘God did it’, they have stepped outside science and into religion.
“God did not do it,” is also unfalsifiable, and
similarly has no place in science. Science has nothing whatever to say about whether or not God did it. All it can comment on is what happens when certain things are done...even such things as predicting what the next fossil fish might look like.
All this preamble about what science is and what
it is not is necessary if we are to be armed against

Science is an activity –
researchers do science.

two pernicious and totally unscientific ideas which
are often promulgated as if they were science
– ideas which often accompany discussions of the
‘scientific theory of evolution’. The ideas to which
I refer may be called ‘evangelical Darwinism’ and
‘social Darwinism’.
Evangelical Darwinism has its apologists, people
like Dawkins (Climbing Mount Improbable) and the
late Stephen Jay Gould (Wonderful Life). What has struck the evangelical Darwinists is what they
regard as the astonishing role of the contingent in
the evolutionary process – random accident and
‘blind chance’.
It is important to understand that there is no
experimental proof of the importance of random
accident. You cannot re-run the evolutionary process a million times with different random accidents and see what happens. Any statement going beyond ‘it looks as though the contingent may be important’ is speculation – untestable, unscientific speculation.
Not all evolutionary scientists would agree that the
contingent is even important.