This most beautiful system of the sun, planets, and comets could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being…This Being governs all things, not as the soul of the world, but as Lord over all; and on account of His dominion he is wont to be called Lord God pantokrator, Universal Ruler.(Newton, 1687, 369, 370)6
This God no longer “seemed compelling” to Newton? Certainly we are not talking about the same Isaac Newton as is quoted here! Let’s at least be honest!
The scientific revolution which resulted in the acceptance of the scientific method went hand in hand with the Reformation. It was not that God had become irrelevant–He had become more relevant. The Reformation emphasized that the God of the Bible had created the universe. The scientific method worked because God was a God of order, not confusion. We could do inductive experiments and make observations and the results would not be random. Why? Because the universe is orderly.
One could go on and detail the history of the period of Galileo and Newton–no time in European and American history before or since has the Christian religion been such a critical issue as the period between 1520 and 1789. Most of the wars and many political movements resulted from it or in reaction to it. English-speaking North America was settled in most places for religious reasons. One of the main motivations of the American Revolutionaries was resistance to England’s attempts to make a uniform state religion of the Anglican Church in the colonies. The concept of God was hardly irrelevant during this era!7
Who Was Behind the Attack on Galileo?
OK, some say, what about Galileo? He got in trouble with the Pope. Well, the Pope was one of the reasons for the Reformation. The Roman Church in the Middle Ages had adopted Aristotle as a model for science, and even for a lot of theology. Luther in particular was very critical of this.8 The Pope’s opposition to Galileo was Aristotelian. It was Aristotle who taught differently than Galileo. (The Bible doesn’t have word about the planet Jupiter or its moons…) The Reformation succeeded in knocking Aristotle’s influence down a few notches, in the area of science as well as theology. Galileo had to take the rap for using the scientific method just as Luther had to for emphasizing the Bible. But if it had not been Galileo, it probably would have been someone else who was using the scientific method who might have gotten into trouble with authorities.
It is also important to note that Galileo actually had the support of Pope Paul V and the Jesuits, but the faculty at the Universities of Padua and Pisa hated his experiments and anti-Aristotelian views. He was sentenced by Pope Urban VIII, but the charges which brought him before the pope were filed by academics.
It appeared that the church’s major sin was capitulating to the pressure from the scientific community and Galileo’s enemies. Only as a result from much pressure from the secular establishment and Aristotelian philosophers did the church side against Galileo. (Bergman, 1995)
Even a general reference source acknowledges that:
Since the full publication of Galileo’s trial documents in the 1870’s, entire responsibility for Galileo’s condemnation has customarily been placed on the Roman catholic church. This conceals the role of the philosophy professors who first persuaded theologians to link Galileo’s science with heresy. (Drake, 1996)
It was not the church that led Galileo’s inquisition, it was academia. Today academia uses the secular courts rather than the ecclesiastical ones, but the result is the same, to try to silence the scientific opposition.
Darwin, Aristotle, and Spontaneous Generation
This leads into Darwin. As I mentioned earlier, Darwin called himself a disciple of Aristotle. I speak of Aristotelian science–the science of analogy. That is what evolution is–analogous traits in various species come from a common ancestor. Keep in mind that The Origin of Species was published in 1859. Most of Pasteur’s work was done in the 1870’s and 1880’s .People did not know of the significance of microbes. It was still common, for example, to say that malaria was caused by bad air. That is what the word malaria means. (Cf. Thoreau, 1854, 132) Though there were some experiments disproving it, it would still be possible to find intelligent men like Darwin who believed with Aristotle in spontaneous generation. For example, if you read Walden, published in 1854, it appears that Thoreau did. (Cf. Thoreau, 1854, 325ff.) The Origin of Species is an example of latent Aristotelian science. Some well-meaning scientists are still trying to spontaneously generate life out of chemicals. (If it could be done, we should be able to take a cadaver–which already has the chemicals–and bring it to life. We can’t even do that…) By the nineteenth century, Aristotelian science was pretty much a historical relic. Darwin brought it back from the dead and it is an unreasonable, self-contradictory monster.
Concluding Observations
The Beak of the Finch purports to be a book about the observation of “evolution in our time.” The actual observations recorded in the book, however, demonstrate the absence of evolution among the finches of the Galapagos Islands and other species like the peppered and cotton moths, intestinal bacteria, guppies, and fruit flies. The book uses a number of self-contradictory statements which illustrate the shaky logical foundation of Darwinian evolution. The conclusion from the evidence is that “natural selection” serves to preserve species, not alter them into something else. There are also some historical inaccuracies, including one which tells much more about the mindset of evolutionists than about history. When examined carefully, The Beak of the Finch shows how fragile and illogical the dogma of Darwinian evolution is. Since this book won a prestigious prize, it must have been considered one of the better works on the subject. If this is as good as can be done for evolution, it will not be long before evolution goes the way of Aristotle’s geocentricism. The book at its root can only be taken seriously as an anti-evolutionist tract.
Synopsis
The prize-winning book The Beak of the Finch purports to be a book about the observation of “evolution in our time.” The actual observations recorded in the book, however, demonstrate the absence of evolution among the finches of the Galapagos Islands and other species mentioned by the book such as the peppered and cotton moths, intestinal bacteria, guppies, and fruit flies. The book uses a number of self-contradictory statements which illustrate the shaky logical foundation of Darwinian evolution. The conclusion from the evidence is that “natural selection” serves to preserve species, not alter them into something else. There are also some historical inaccuracies, including one which tells much more about the mindset of evolutionists than about history. When examined carefully, The Beak of the Finch shows how fragile and illogical the dogma of Darwinian evolution is.
Notes
1 There is a potential problem of logic worth investigating in Darwin s application of Lyell s uniformitarianism. The “principle” of uniformitarianism is that geologically things continue in a gradual manner without any significant change. Significant changes would suggest “diluvialism” or catastrophism. To Darwin this meant simply that the earth was quite old. But Lyell believed that he was being consistent in applying uniformitarianism to the organic as well as inorganic world by saying that species do not change. Such a change would be more akin to catastrophism. See McKinney, 1972, 33 and 34.
2 This problem was recently illustrated in an article in American Scientist:
There are, arguably, arguably some two to ten million species on Earth. The fossil record shows that most species survive between three and five million years. In that case, we ought to be seeing small but significant numbers of originations and extinctions every decade.
Keith Stewart Thompson, “Natural Selection and Evolution’s Smoking Gun,” American Scientist, Nov./Dec. 1997: 516.
3 A summary of the Dublin article is found in Brackman, 1980, 74 , 75. Quotation is from page 75. Interestingly, Darwin mentions this article in his Autobiography. He does not speak of the logic of the article or that it caused him to reflect or reconsider but simply that if he were to persuade anyone, the issue was one of propagation rather than of truth or logic. “This shows,” he said of it, “how necessary it is that any new view should be explained at considerable length in order to arouse public attention.” Darwin, 1958, 122. It appears that The Beak of the Finch tried to employ the same method, that is, repeat the idea “at considerable length” so that people will begin to believe it, regardless of the logic or interpretation of the evidence.
4 In this article T. H. Morgan says, “Selection, then, has not produced anything new, but only more of certain kinds of individuals. Evolution, however, means producing new things, not more of what already exists.” (Bethell, 1976, 74) This is actually the underlying message of The Beak of the Finch, too.
5This assessment was my own from reading the autobiographies of Lyell, Darwin, and Wallace. There is no suggestion of any unscrupulous action on the part of Darwin, and he appeared to behave in a scrupulous manner, though consistent with his beliefs. (For example, he refused to allow Karl Marx dedicate Das Kapital to him. He was an opponent to slavery, and though he was no longer a Christian, he gave money to a Christian missionary group whose activities he approved of.)
Having said all that, nowadays, others are not quite so charitable in describing Darwin’s behavior towards Wallace. See, for example, Peter Quammen, The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of Extinctions, (New York: Scribner, 1996) 111ff. He details the work of a number of researchers which suggest Darwin plagiarized Wallace. Quammen writes, “Darwin had behaved weakly and selfishly at best.” (113)
Quammen’s book is also interesting in that, while it gives lip service to evolution, it emphasizes extinction, not adaptation. The biogeographic model that this book effectively presents is one of migration of species followed by isolation–the question of evolution is irrelevant. As he puts it, “Speciation could be disregarded.” (414)
6 This passage continues in a similar vein enumerating the attributes of God:
The true God is a living, intelligent, and powerful Being; and from his other perfections, that he is supreme or most perfect. He is eternal and infinite, omnipotent and omniscient; that is, his duration reaches from eternity to eternity; his presence from infinity to infinity; he governs all things, and knows all things that are or can be done. (Newton, 1687, 370)
This God hardly sounds like an irrelevant character!
A physics professor from California State University at Long Beach testified in a court case that Newton would not be recognized as a “credible scientist” if he “persisted in maintaining a creationist position as he did in Mathematica Principia.” (Vardiman, 1997) Who is “having the appearance of a closed mind”?
7The more I think about this, the more I am baffled. Even a cursory check of a high school European or American History text shows how important religion was in those three centuries or so. Even those who were opposed to religion (e.g., Voltaire) were very conscious of it and spent a lot of time and energy refuting it–and not because of any supposed scientific evidence. That really came with Huxley. I begin to wonder that the author, the publisher, many reviewers, and the Pulitzer committee can all be so ignorant of history. Is it deliberate? Are they all stupid or careless, or are they conscious that they are misinforming us? If they are honest and intelligent, then they must be anti-evolutionists trying to show how shaky the theory’s foundation is.
8 Luther’s strong words against Aristotelianism can be found in Martin Luther, To the Christian Nobility of the German Nation, 1520, in Three Treatises, Philadelphia: Fortress, 1970, 92ff. (Proposition 25).
Note 186 on page 92 of this particular edition notes that Roger Bacon and Erasmus also criticized the emphasis on Aristotle in medieval education. Roger Bacon is usually credited with being the developer of the scientific method in the fourteenth century. A Franciscan monk, he spent between two and ten years in prison for heresy. The record is sketchy, but likely this was because of his non-Aristotelian and non-scholastic views. Though he remained a Catholic, Erasmus, a contemporary and sometime friend of Luther, called for reforms similar to Luther’s including more use of the Bible in the church.
Bibliography
Links may be subject to change, especially links to articles. Links from longer works are as close as possible to relevant material or quotations. Some on-line sources are different editions or translations from those used in this text so the wording may vary. Some on-line articles may be condensed.
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http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/.22.iipart8.html (29 Dec. 1997).
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http://www.wavefront.com/ contra_m/cm/features/cm15_galileo.html (28 Dec. 1997).
Bethell, Tom. 1976. “Darwin s Mistake.” Harper’s, Feb. 1976: 70-75.
Brackman, Arnold C. 1980. A Delicate Arrangement: The Strange Case of
Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace. New York: Times Books.
Darwin, Charles. 1958. The Autobiography of Charles Darwin. Rpt.; New York:
W. W. Norton and Co., 1969. The date is not a mistake. Darwin s heirs did not release his memoirs until 1958.
_______. 1859. The Origin of Species. 1997.
http://www.literature.org/Works/Charles-Darwin/origin/ (28 Dec. 1997).
Diamond, Jared. 1993. “Who Are the Jews?” Natural History, Nov. 1993: 12-19.
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See also http://iclnet.org/pub/resources/text/wittenberg/luther/web/nblty-07.html.
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See also http://www.sciam.com/1197issue/1197review1.html.
Newton, Sir Isaac. 1687. Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy.
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Quammen, Peter. The Song of the Dodo: Island Biogeography in an Age of
Extinctions. New York: Scribner, 1996.
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Prizes. http://www.pulitzer.org/year/1995/general-non-fiction/jury/ (28 Dec. 1997).
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See also http://dev.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction/thoreauh_wald/wald_ch1.html for malaria reference and http://dev.library.utoronto.ca/utel/nonfiction/thoreauh_wald/wald_ch17.html for chapter with references to spontaneous generation.
Trachtman, Paul. Book Reviews. Smithsonian, Aug. 1998: 118-121.
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See also http://www.icr.org/research/lv/lv-r03.htm.
Wong, Kate. 1998. “Ancestral Quandary.” Scientific American, Jan. 1998: 30, 32.
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