Origins 3(1):3-5 (1976).
EDITORIAL
In a recent public discussion on a state university campus in the
eastern United States, a genetics professor who teaches the basic course in evolution at
that institution stated that the developments in molecular biology have established that
Charles Darwin was wrong in the mechanism he proposed for an evolutionary development of
life. This professor went on to say that although there is at present no evidence that
clearly supports an origin and development of life by naturalistic processes, there is no
justification for saying that an evolutionary or non-theistic explanation for life is
incorrect; the task facing the scientific community is to find new explanations concerning
how evolution did occur, not to abandon the concept.
Three aspects of these comments deserve consideration. First is the
recognition that despite what are often strong claims to the contrary, the accumulation of
scientific evidence has been increasingly unfavorable to mechanistic evolutionary concepts
of origin. Professor D. E. Green of the Institute for Enzyme Research at the University of
Wisconsin and Dr. R. F. Goldberger, chief of the Biosynthesis and Control Section,
Laboratory of Chemical Biology, U.S. National Institutes of Health, in their book Molecular
Insights Into the Living Process say that " . . . the macromolecule-to-cell
transition is a jump of fantastic dimensions which lies beyond the range of testable
hypotheses. In this area all is conjecture. The available facts do not provide a basis for
postulating that cells arose on this planet" (1). Dr. John Keosian of the Marine
Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts, at an international conference on the
origin of life held in Barcelona, Spain, in June 1973, said " . . . the simplest
heterotrophic [obtains food from outside sources] cell is an intricate structural and
metabolic unit of harmoniously coordinated parts and chemical pathways. Its spontaneous
assembly out of the environment, granting the unlikely simultaneous presence together of
all the parts, is not a believable possibility" (2).
Professor Marcel P. Schützenberger of the University of Paris has
stated "that there is a considerable gap in the neo-Darwinian theory of evolution,
and we believe this gap to be of such a nature that it cannot be bridged within the
current conception of biology" (3). In a presidential address to the Linnaean Society
of London, Errol White, Fellow of the Royal Society, stated: "We still do not know
the mechanics of evolution in spite of the over-confident claims in some quarters, nor are
we likely to make much further progress in this by the classical methods of paleontology
or biology. . . " (4).
Thus, as stated by L. Harrison Matthews, F.R.S., in his introduction to
the 1972 edition of The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin, "Belief in the
theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation — both are
concepts which believers know to be true, but neither, up to the present, has been capable
of proof" (5).
The second aspect of these comments that deserves consideration has to
do with the nature of scientific evidence. The inability to obtain incontrovertible
support for a proposition does not eliminate that proposition as a possibility. As an
example it may be noted that failure to establish guilt does not guarantee the innocence
of an individual charged with crime. Overwhelming evidence for the possibility of
an evolutionary development of the living forms known today would not guarantee that these
organisms are the consequence of such a process. Nor would lack of such evidence prove the
contrary.
Science is more effective in showing an idea to be incorrect than in
establishing its correctness. Consequently a theory is considered to be more suitable for
scientific purposes if it is vulnerable to experimental disproof. In this respect the
popular theory of progressive evolutionary development of organisms is being increasingly
recognized as a defective scientific concept, since much of it has become irrefutable,
regardless of the nature of the data input (6). Creation theory, it must be noted, from a
scientific viewpoint suffers the same defect.
At the level of molecular biology, evolutionary theory is subject to
experimental refutation. A naturalistic theory of origins must reasonably account for a
transition from relatively simple inorganic compounds to complex biologically active
molecules, and for the assembly of a vast array of such components into a functioning cell
structure. The understanding of chemical reaction dynamics, allowable primitive earth
characteristics, and molecular biology has reached a level that precludes these basic
steps in a naturalistic process of evolutionary development. While it is correct to say
that the lack of supporting evidence does not disprove an evolutionary process as
the correct explanation for the origin of the organisms now found on planet Earth, it does
indicate a need for an alternate explanation. The above quotations from Schützenberger
and White show it to be now well established that a purely evolutionary explanation of
origins that does not go beyond the properties presently exhibited by matter is virtually
impossible. The evidence favors intelligence, rather than inanimate matter, as the first
cause.
Finally, the professor's remarks which stimulated this editorial
illustrate the elements of faith and personal preference that enter into views regarding
origins. For many the evolutionary explanation is held regardless of the evidence for or
against — it is accepted with faith that rivals the faith associated with the most
devoted adherents to abstract religious concepts.
REFERENCES
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