What Darwin Got Wrong

When a book begins its preface with the words, “This is not a book about God; nor about intelligent design; nor about creationism. Neither of us is into any of these (xiii),” it cries out the need to be read. So began the book, What Darwin Got Wrong (2010). It was written by two professors of cognitive science – Jerry Fodor and Massimo Piattelli-Palmarini. Fodor is at Rutgers; Piattelli-Palmarini is at the University of Arizona.

These men are bold in their anti-theistic sentiments. The last two sentences in the book are: “[Darwin] killed off God, if you like, but Mother Nature and other pseudo-agents got away scot-free. We think it’s now time to get rid of them too” (163).

Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini most notably take exception to Darwin’s theory of natural selection. “In fact, we don’t know very well how evolution works. Nor did Darwin, and nor (as far as we can tell) does anybody else” (xiv). These men lament the fact that, in their view, “an extensive interdisciplinary discussion of evolutionary theory between philosophers and biologists might have proved profitable” (xv).

I’m not sure what planet these men inhabit, but in the creation-science realm and in the newly formed “intelligent design” movement, this “interdisciplinary discussion” has been going on for a very long time. Just within the churches of Christ, Thomas Warren (philosophy) and Bert Thompson (biology) were showing the multi-disciplinary flaws in evolution a very long time ago. Outside of the churches of Christ, John Whitcomb and Henry Morris have argued against evolution from a biological perspective since the publication of their book The Genesis Flood in 1961.

Be that as it may, Fodor and Piattelli-Palmarini are quite courageous in their attack against natural selection. Their primary argument against the theory of natural selection, as their dig at “Mother Nature” quoted above might suggest, is that the theory implies “selection,” which of course, in nature cannot exist. “Selection” implicitly involves a mind. Nature does not have a mind. Therefore, nature cannot “select.” In The Origin of Species, Darwin based his theory of natural selection on artificial breeding.

Fodor and Piatelli-Palmarini write: “the idea [in Darwin] was that natural selection works just like breeding, except that, in the case of natural selection, there isn’t any breeder. But there isn’t, of course, an intelligent designer in the case of evolution; indeed, there isn’t any designer at all. That makes the situation very tricky for the theorist” (115; emph. in orig.). Now, as adamant as they are that God could not have created the world as He could not exist, they are just as adamant that Darwin’s theory of natural selection also does not explain the origin of life: “we don’t know what the mechanism of evolution is. As far as we can make out, nobody knows exactly how phenotypes [the visible body plan and structure] evolve” (153).
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My question is – Do they think their position now is intellectually more fulfilling or somehow scientifically more enlightening? The bottom line is that if science points us to a mind that created everything, then the existence of Mind is scientifically defendable. These authors implicitly admit this (as so many evolutionists do) when, in chapter 7, “The Return of the Laws of Form,” they repeatedly use the terms “law” and “principles.”

How can you have a “law” without a “Lawgiver?” How can you get principles, even scientific principles, out of chaos?

Isn’t it simply more intellectually grounded to say, “By [Christ] all things were created, both in the heavens and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities – all things have been created through Him and for Him. He is before all things, and in Him all things hold together” (Colossians 1:16-17).

–Paul Holland

Veritas non verba magistri

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