Scott Walker, governor of Wisconsin, has been scoring high in the early polls of Republican voters looking forward to the 2016 primaries for the Republican nomination for president. This early, it means little, but he is being asked some pointed questions because of his front-runner status.
On a Wisconsin-trade trip to England last month, he went to a think tank and was asked his position on Evolution. He declined to answer, saying he would “punt” on the question because the issue shouldn’t be politicized.
Naturally, the Twittersphere was scandalized, some saying he was silenced by Science. Others said the question reveals more about the media than it does about Scott Walker.
I think his answer was smart. Do we really want politicians deciding issues of science? Or Federal judges for that matter? The problem is, many people consider evolution “settled science” much like “Climate Change”, so questions about it are great “gotcha” questions for those who agree on the answer and think they are smarter than anyone else.
Obviously, it’s handy to have major questions “settled”, so you don’t have to think about them anymore. However, anybody who knows anything about science knows that new studies routinely upend accepted theories, models and paradigms. “Settled Science” is not scientific at all because it can no longer be challenged. And I THOUGHT unimpeded questioning was essential to science.
I should stipulate that I am not a scientist, but I have tried to look at the issues. Other non-scientists who believe evolution is “Settled Science”, like breathless journalists or Hollywood stars, usually haven’t even examined the issues. They took what their college professors taught them at face value and snicker at those who question evolution as ignorant, inbred hicks.
What they don’t know is that there are numerous Nobel laureates in various scientific disciplines who believe that Darwin’s theory doesn’t stand up in light of the most recent scientific discoveries. Some of them even say Genesis 1:1 (“In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth”) is as good description as any of what must have happened to get everything started. That doesn’t necessarily mean they believe God created the universe in seven days and it doesn’t mean they believe the earth is only a few thousand years old.
It should also be pointed out, on the other side of the coin, that disbelieving in evolution as a theory of how life began doesn’t mean that one doesn’t believe that populations change over time due to what can properly be called Natural Selection. There’s a big difference between seeing a majority population of moths changing from light brown to dark brown and deciding how the very first life appeared.
How can it be that noted scientists question Darwin and believe in God and creation? It is simply because each successive scientific discovery, rather than buttressing Darwin’s original theory and discrediting the Bible, is making Darwin’s theory increasingly difficult to defend, especially as a theory of origins. It has necessitated the formulation of “Neo-Darwinism” to adjust for the increasing dissonance with the original model.
After all, Darwin talked about “simple cells” as the way life began, however Genetics and Molecular Biology since Watson and Crick’s discovery of DNA has made it impossible to describe any known living cell as “simple”. Instead, cells are known to be complex protein factories with specialized molecular equipment for performing the task of generating proteins which themselves are precisely constructed digital information strands. Any error in their construction can be disastrous.
Such complexity strains credulity that it could have come to be through unguided processes in a hostile environment. One such scientist has said that postulating that a cell could be formed by natural processes in a pre-biotic environment is like saying a tornado in a junk yard could assemble a 747 jumbo jet. Such is the difficulty of envisioning complex living systems coming into being through chance and Natural Selection.
The fact that science can be done at all is an argument against blind naturalism as an explanation for the existence of life, since science endeavors to discover nature’s laws and capitalize on them. Notice that no scientist claims to have “invented” any natural law; only to have discovered the laws which already exist.
Therefore, increasing numbers of scientists are seeing that there had to be an intentional plan and the plan must have a Planner.
Even “New Atheists” like Richard Dawkins concede that all forms of life “appear to be designed”, but, he says, they are not really designed. He doesn’t really have science to prove that point, he just doesn’t believe in a Designer; saying that “science” doesn’t allow that kind of “metaphysical” statement. However, the word “believe” gives away that the position is not based on science but faith; faith in a Naturalism that will not even consider evidence to the contrary.
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