In his July 11 commentary, David Kupelian makes some comments about the evolution debate that I think need to be addressed.  It's true that the articles appearing on WorldNetDaily have struck a nerve, but I fear that the surprise Mr. Kupelian expresses is a bit disingenuous.

"...even though WorldNet Magazine's July issue says nary a word about ... beliefs held by many creationists ... we have been inundated with insulting mail."  Well, now.  The headline, used in the banner ads for that issue of WorldNet Magazine, and repeated at the bottom of Mr. Kupelian's article, reads, "EVOLUTION: The complex and profound basis for all life, or a fairy tale for scientists who reject God?"

This headline suggests that scientists who accept evolution -- even the large numbers of such scientists who are Bible-believing Christians, must by definition reject God.  This is akin to the casual assumption on the part of the political left that "of course" Republicans are selfish, mean-spirited bigots.  Yes, I daresay you did strike a nerve.

Let's start with the bottom line.  Mr. Kupelian states that "Evolution is about whether the universe, including the earth and all the life that inhabits it, was created by God or whether creation created itself with the passage of time."  Unfortunately, this is incorrect.

Evolution is about how (and indeed, whether) living things have changed and continue to change over time.  It is a study of what sorts of changes occur, and what the mechanisms for these changes may be. The question of God's role in the creation of the universe is a matter of theology, and specifically of cosmogony.

Now science is a discipline which attempts to explain the universe, or pieces of the universe, in materialistic terms.  Forces operate on matter, causing it to move and change.  Chemistry is explained by the electrical interactions between atoms, and not by the alchemical spirits of various elements.  Planets move in their orbits on account of the force of gravity, not because angels are directing their courses.  Diseases are the result of germs, or genetic defects, or other material causes, not curses bestowed by an irate God, bent on punishing mortals.

Science, by its very nature, cannot admit supernatural or non-material causes into its stable of explanations.  As soon as you call in a supernatural entity or a causative element outside the realm of nature, you are no longer doing science.  (And if a supernatural entity should ever be shown to be scientifically provable, then it ceases to be supernatural.  I wonder why so many people seem to want God to become "just another part of nature".)

The real "bottom line" in the evolution vs. anything else debate is, did we get here as the result of natural processes, or were the rules set aside in order to produce us?

Part of the problem, a big part of the problem, is that people are using the word "evolution" to mean many different things.  Mr. Kupelian uses "evolution" where most scientists would use the word "science".  Evolutionary biologists define "evolution" as meaning, "an observed change in the frequency of genes over time".  By this definition, evolution has been, and continues to be observed in every life form on the planet.

Perhaps we can compromise?  Let's define evolution as "the assumption that living things arose and came to have their present forms as the result of processes which exist in nature."  This is not much different from a similar assumption used elsewhere in life.  In the courtroom, for example, the jury is expected to assume only those things and processes that can be shown to be real and plausible.  A jury in a murder case is not allowed to impute reasonable doubt because Martians (or Satan, or God) might have teleported a smoking gun into the accused's hand seconds before the police burst through the door.

Evolution assumes that life came to be the way it is through naturalistic processes.  Five paragraphs up, I point out that science as a whole assumes that things in the world happen as the result of naturalistic processes.  Since evolution is one of the theories science deals with, it is necessarily restricted to invoking only naturalistic processes.  As soon as any extranatural process is invoked, the person invoking it is no longer doing science, and his ideas have no rightful place in a science class.

Let me say a few words as well about "Evolution is a fact" vs. "Evolution is a theory".  In fact, it's both.

One of the confusingly many uses of the word "evolution" is, "the study of how living things have changed over time."  Even a cursory glance at the fossil record reveals that hundreds millions of years ago, the world was inhabited by creatures that were very different than what we see today.  We also see that creatures that are abundant today didn't exist.

This is a fact (unless you absolutely don't believe that any accurate information can be obtained from the fossil record.  And this belief is, by the way, a theory).  Theories enter the picture when people try to explain how these changes occurred. In other words, theories of evolution (mechanisms that would result in changes) are introduced to explain the fact of evolution (the changes that are observed in the fossil record, and in the world around us).

Another example of something that is both a theory and a fact is gravity.  Gravity is a fact, since things fall down.  Many theories have been advanced to explain why things fall down.  Aristotle thought things fell because their earthy nature was naturally attracted to the realm of earth, which was under our feet.  Galileo proposed that gravity was a uniform force, providing a constant acceleration on all falling objects, regardless of their weight.  Isaac Newton proposed a theory that had the force vary, depending on the mass of the objects involved. His theory was the dominant one until a German patent examiner came up with his bizarre notions.

Now, objects didn't cease to fall to the ground while the theories of Newton and Einstein battled it out, the fact of gravity continued to exist, and continues to this day, oblivious to humanity's attempts to explain and understand it.  (And even though Einstein's theory has superseded Newton's, Newton's theory is still taught in physics courses because, in most situations we're going to encounter, it's "close enough for government work," and a lot easier to work with, since it doesn't require tensor calculus!)

Likewise, many theories of evolution have been advanced.  These include successive creations, a mass extinction in Noah's flood, Lamarckian evolution, Darwinian evolution, and the multitude of ideas that are floating around, vying for membership in "the modern synthesis".  Is the modern synthesis the absolute truth, with everything before an "also-ran"?  No, no more than Einstein's General Theory of Relativity is the absolute truth.  (Indeed, an article a couple of years ago mentioned that the paths of the Pioneer space probes are deviating from their projected course.  We wait to see whether this can be explained by nearby objects pulling them off course, or whether there are some nuances to gravity that have been missed so far.)

Here's the crux of science: Theories explain facts.  The better a theory is, the more facts it can explain.  Newton's theories of motion and gravity explain what happens at fairly low speeds.  Einstein's theories are needed when speeds get too close to the speed of light. Some other theory will probably supersede Einstein's theories when we run into things Einstein's can't explain.

But here's the key paradox: The power of a scientific theory lies far more in what it does not explain than in what it does!  A theory that can explain absolutely any imaginable thing winds up explaining nothing.  A theory of gravity which holds that "All things move as God wills them to" can account for everything we see in the universe around us, and for any number of things that we don't see, and that we never will see.  If your car speeds off the road and into a tree, it's not because the brakes failed, it was the will of God. If your car doesn't, that too is the will of God.  Theories tell you, as much as what to expect, what <i>not</i> to expect.

Newton's laws, on the other hand, can explain only a very limited set of possible motions.  Any other form of motion would be a violation of Newton's laws, and would disprove his theory.  The fact that it took until the late 19th century for any such motions to be observed is testimony to how well-crafted Newton's theories were.

Let's apply this notion to the "intelligent design theory" theory of evolution.  It claims that life was designed by an intelligent designer.  No mechanism is proposed, so there are no apparent limits on what this designer can do.  There is no particular reason to expect any design over any other.  When someone laid up in the hospital wonders why the ligaments in his knee were designed so they would cause so much trouble, the only possible answer is, "the designer willed it so."  When we find people born with nasty hereditary diseases, the answer is, "the designer willed it so."

There is no conceivable finding that could ever disprove "intelligent design theory."  There are any number of findings that could completely wipe out the story of life on earth, as it's been drawn by scientists.  I won't discuss this story here, or the theories science has come up with to explain this story.  That has been done in any number of other venues, by writers more skilled than I.  What I will do here is issue a challenge to the "intelligent design theorists."

Just answer three simple questions.

     1)   What exactly is the theory of intelligent design?  (What is designed?  How is this design implemented?  Is there anything that hasn't been designed?)      2)   How do we tell the difference between an intelligently designed thing and an undesigned thing?  (Example: is a snowflake intelligently designed?  How about a diamond?  Why or why not?  And a valid theory will offer some method for determining the difference, not just offer an arbitrary list of things that are and things that are not designed.)      3)   What conceivable observation would be incompatible with the theory of intelligent design? (Example: Flowering plant fossils in undisturbed Devonian rock would contradict all the modern theories of evolution.)

Happy theorizing!