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Darwinism: Science or Philosophy?
Book by Buell, Jon
- GenresEvolution
Hardcover
First published January 1, 1994
About the author
Jon A. Buell
2 books1 followerFounder and President
Foundation for Thought and Ethics
Buell is a graduate of the Stanford Publishing Course (advanced level). He was an invited participant in the White House Conference on Education. He has served as a director of International Impact, and has served on a task force for the Dallas Independent School District. Buell holds memberships in the American Scientific Affiliation and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. He is an editor, publisher, and speaker nd is listed in Who’s Who in American Education.
In 1992, in association with the C.S. Lewis Society and Dallas Christian Leadership, Jon Buell and FTE crafted the platform for a revolutionary exchange of views in a symposium between leading Darwinists and ID theorists. The extraordinary event sent shockwaves through the scientific and educational communities, and was mentioned or discussed in the scientific press for years. Prof. Phillip E. Johnson, leader of the intelligent design movement, has pointed to the seminal role of this historic meeting that took place on the campus at Southern Methodist University.
Foundation for Thought and Ethics
Buell is a graduate of the Stanford Publishing Course (advanced level). He was an invited participant in the White House Conference on Education. He has served as a director of International Impact, and has served on a task force for the Dallas Independent School District. Buell holds memberships in the American Scientific Affiliation and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development. He is an editor, publisher, and speaker nd is listed in Who’s Who in American Education.
In 1992, in association with the C.S. Lewis Society and Dallas Christian Leadership, Jon Buell and FTE crafted the platform for a revolutionary exchange of views in a symposium between leading Darwinists and ID theorists. The extraordinary event sent shockwaves through the scientific and educational communities, and was mentioned or discussed in the scientific press for years. Prof. Phillip E. Johnson, leader of the intelligent design movement, has pointed to the seminal role of this historic meeting that took place on the campus at Southern Methodist University.
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March 7, 2025
A SYMPOSIUM WITH MANY OF THE ‘MAJOR’ FIGURES IN THIS DISCUSSION
This book contains the proceedings of a symposium entitled ‘Darwinism: Scientific Inference or Philosophical Preference?’ which was held on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, Texas, on March 26-28, 1992.
Phillip Johnson wrote in the Introduction to this 1994 book, “Evolution is a word of many meanings, some of which are controversial and some of which are not. One… that is highly controversial is ‘Darwinian’ evolution … when it is offered as a general description of how life progressed from very simple beginnings to its present complexity and diversity… I call [this] the ‘blind watchmaker thesis’… [which] argues... that life evolved … by the purposelessness material mechanisms of random genetic change and natural selection. The implication is that humanity is a cosmic accident produced by a mindless cosmos… The question discussed at this symposium is whether… ‘Darwinism and neo-Darwinism as generally held in our society carry with them an a priori commitment to metaphysical naturalism, which is essential to make a convincing case on their behalf.’” (Pg. 1)
He continues, “it is necessary … to reflect on the state of the debate over evolution and creation. Historically, it has taken the form of a debate over the authority of Genesis… The organizers of this symposium … had to work hard at overcoming those suspicions for the symposium to occur at all… The SMU symposium was never meant to resolve the great debate over evolution and creation… It was meant to set an agenda for debates in the future, with papers of the highest professional quality dealing with the scientific and philosophical issues in dispute.” (Pg. 3)
In his keynote presentation, Johnson quotes Stephen Jay Gould’s book ‘Wonderful Life,’ then comments, “For whatever reason, Gould did not point out … that the utterly un-Darwinian Cambrian fossil record provides no support whatever for claims about the role of mutation and selection in the creation of complex animal life, or for metaphysical speculations about the purposelessness of the process that created humans. Instead, he indulged freely in just such speculations himself, rightly judging that his audience of intellectuals would accept uncritically his casual assumption of metaphysical naturalism… On the contrary, the genuine scientific portion of ‘Wonderful Life’ provides ample grounds for doubting the expansive notions of metaphysical naturalists… But because of Darwinism’s rules of reasoning, even anti-Darwinian evidence supports Darwinism.” (Pg. 14-15)
In his presentation, Michael Ruse explains, “I am an evolutionist … because of all of the evidence. I find particularly convincing the evidence of morphology. Why is it that the limbs of vertebrates , used for all sorts of different purposes, have the same isomorphic pattern of bones (‘homologies’)? Why do we find repetition between the forelimb of the human (a grasping instrument), the front leg of the horse (running), the flipper of the whale (swimming), the wing of the bat (flying), and more? My answer is that if you think in terms of unbroken law, then evolution makes the most sense.” (Pg. 24)
Stephen C. Meyer states, “I would like to argue that to exclude intelligent design a priori as a working hypothesis in, for example, historical biology is both gratuitous and anti-intellectual. Unlike Darwin, modern Darwinists can scarcely bring themselves to consider the possibility of intelligent design, let alone actually argue against it as he did. Professor Ruse… fails in his paper to mention intelligent design on his list of scientific possibilities. Yet it must be mentioned that this is precisely the theory that Darwin himself spent most of this time arguing against.” (Pg. 33-34)
Phillip Johnson asserts, “From a theistic perspective, Darwinism as a general theory is not empirical at all. It is a child of naturalistic or positivistic philosophy, which defines science as the attempt to explain the world without allowing any role to theological or providential activity. Positivism in this sense requires science to have at least a vague theory about everything really important… scientists are allowed, if necessary, to make simplifying assumptions or even to overlook difficult aspects of the problem. Even a particularly frustrating problem, such as the origin of life on earth, is considered to be solved in principle once scientists think they have some plausible general notion about how the thing might have happened.” (Pg. 45)
He concludes, “Theistic evolutionists protest (correctly) that a creative role for natural selection does not rule out the possibility of God, but they fail to understand that the entire outlook of positivistic science is profoundly incompatible with the existence of a supernatural creator who takes an active role in the natural world.” (Pg. 47)
Michael J. Behe argues, “all proteins that have been examined to date … have been seen to be surrounded by an almost infinitely wide chasm of unfolded, nonfunctional, useless protein sequences. There are no… steppingstones to cross the chasm. The conclusion that a reasonable person draws from this is that the laws of nature are insufficient to produce functional proteins and, therefore, functional proteins have not been produced through a nondirected search.” (Pg. 69)
William Dembski proposes a thought experiment he calls ‘The Incredible Talking Pulsar,’ and eventually asks, “What lesson can we learn from the pulsar? I claim we should infer that a designer in the full sense of the word is communicating through the pulsar, i.e., a designer who is both intelligent and transcendent. Intelligence is certainly not a problem here… the pulsar demonstrates that ours is the type of world where design has at least the possibility of becoming perfectly evident---with the pulsar, empirical validation for design can be made as good as we like. In the actual world, design is therefore not only possible but also empirically knowable.” (Pg.. 82, 86)
Peter van Inwagen quotes Frederick Grinnell: ‘The key question remained: is life a biochemical event, or the work of a creative intelligence?’ Then he states, “I think that life is BOTH a biochemical event and the work of a creative intelligence. And I don’t see any shadow of inconsistency or tension between the two features that I ascribe to life. I am just puzzled. I would like to know more about what lies behind the very exclusive-sounding ‘or’ in the sentence I have quoted.” (Pg. 111-112)
Leslie K. Johnson argues, “What the paucity of [fossil] links and unequivocal ancestors does not do is falsify the theory of evolution. Rather, the fossil record, for all its shortcomings, is highly supportive. What is telling is what we DON’T see: Devonian sharks with feathers and wishbones, mammals in strata with the first land plants, intermediates between trilobites and titanotheres. Instead, each new discovery corroborates the picture of life in its broad outlines, a picture that makes its greatest sense in the context of adaptive evolution.” (Pg. 123)
Michael Behe asserts, “convincing evidence of the truth of Darwinism has not yet been produced. Until such evidence is produced, no theological, philosophical, or cotton candy arguments will quell the controversy. Until then every person has the right, on solid scientific grounds, to regard Darwinism as an interesting but very doubtful hypothesis.” (Pg. 153)
K. John Morrow Jr. responds, “Dr. Behe’s objection to a Darwinian evolutionary interpretation is precisely what troubles me about the anti-evolutionary stance; because we don’t have an ironclad proof of every precise feature of evolution of the immune system in hand, Behe suggests that we just abandon the whole enterprise and accept a fuzzy and ill-defined teleology as a scientific explanation.” (Pg. 157)
Arthur M. Shapiro states, “[Charles] Thaxton et al… miss the boat when they call for inclusion of God as a viable hypothesis in ‘origins science.’ What they should say is that … claims about origins are beyond the realm of scientific ‘proof.’ … the contending traditions in the realm of origins require no ‘independent standards of rational justification,’ insofar as they have been talking at different levels. The problem between them … is not a Darwinian problem. Unless one ideologically insists upon biblical inerrancy---at which point I will go have a beer.” (Pg. 167-168)
Peter van Inwagen summarizes, “I accept the thesis of evolution… with the exception of our own species, and even in that one very special case, I don’t rule it out but merely suspend judgment…. As a GENERAL thesis about taxonomic diversity, I accept the evolutionary thesis.” (Pg. 180)
This book will be “must reading” for those studying the evolution/intelligent design controversy.
This book contains the proceedings of a symposium entitled ‘Darwinism: Scientific Inference or Philosophical Preference?’ which was held on the Southern Methodist University campus in Dallas, Texas, on March 26-28, 1992.
Phillip Johnson wrote in the Introduction to this 1994 book, “Evolution is a word of many meanings, some of which are controversial and some of which are not. One… that is highly controversial is ‘Darwinian’ evolution … when it is offered as a general description of how life progressed from very simple beginnings to its present complexity and diversity… I call [this] the ‘blind watchmaker thesis’… [which] argues... that life evolved … by the purposelessness material mechanisms of random genetic change and natural selection. The implication is that humanity is a cosmic accident produced by a mindless cosmos… The question discussed at this symposium is whether… ‘Darwinism and neo-Darwinism as generally held in our society carry with them an a priori commitment to metaphysical naturalism, which is essential to make a convincing case on their behalf.’” (Pg. 1)
He continues, “it is necessary … to reflect on the state of the debate over evolution and creation. Historically, it has taken the form of a debate over the authority of Genesis… The organizers of this symposium … had to work hard at overcoming those suspicions for the symposium to occur at all… The SMU symposium was never meant to resolve the great debate over evolution and creation… It was meant to set an agenda for debates in the future, with papers of the highest professional quality dealing with the scientific and philosophical issues in dispute.” (Pg. 3)
In his keynote presentation, Johnson quotes Stephen Jay Gould’s book ‘Wonderful Life,’ then comments, “For whatever reason, Gould did not point out … that the utterly un-Darwinian Cambrian fossil record provides no support whatever for claims about the role of mutation and selection in the creation of complex animal life, or for metaphysical speculations about the purposelessness of the process that created humans. Instead, he indulged freely in just such speculations himself, rightly judging that his audience of intellectuals would accept uncritically his casual assumption of metaphysical naturalism… On the contrary, the genuine scientific portion of ‘Wonderful Life’ provides ample grounds for doubting the expansive notions of metaphysical naturalists… But because of Darwinism’s rules of reasoning, even anti-Darwinian evidence supports Darwinism.” (Pg. 14-15)
In his presentation, Michael Ruse explains, “I am an evolutionist … because of all of the evidence. I find particularly convincing the evidence of morphology. Why is it that the limbs of vertebrates , used for all sorts of different purposes, have the same isomorphic pattern of bones (‘homologies’)? Why do we find repetition between the forelimb of the human (a grasping instrument), the front leg of the horse (running), the flipper of the whale (swimming), the wing of the bat (flying), and more? My answer is that if you think in terms of unbroken law, then evolution makes the most sense.” (Pg. 24)
Stephen C. Meyer states, “I would like to argue that to exclude intelligent design a priori as a working hypothesis in, for example, historical biology is both gratuitous and anti-intellectual. Unlike Darwin, modern Darwinists can scarcely bring themselves to consider the possibility of intelligent design, let alone actually argue against it as he did. Professor Ruse… fails in his paper to mention intelligent design on his list of scientific possibilities. Yet it must be mentioned that this is precisely the theory that Darwin himself spent most of this time arguing against.” (Pg. 33-34)
Phillip Johnson asserts, “From a theistic perspective, Darwinism as a general theory is not empirical at all. It is a child of naturalistic or positivistic philosophy, which defines science as the attempt to explain the world without allowing any role to theological or providential activity. Positivism in this sense requires science to have at least a vague theory about everything really important… scientists are allowed, if necessary, to make simplifying assumptions or even to overlook difficult aspects of the problem. Even a particularly frustrating problem, such as the origin of life on earth, is considered to be solved in principle once scientists think they have some plausible general notion about how the thing might have happened.” (Pg. 45)
He concludes, “Theistic evolutionists protest (correctly) that a creative role for natural selection does not rule out the possibility of God, but they fail to understand that the entire outlook of positivistic science is profoundly incompatible with the existence of a supernatural creator who takes an active role in the natural world.” (Pg. 47)
Michael J. Behe argues, “all proteins that have been examined to date … have been seen to be surrounded by an almost infinitely wide chasm of unfolded, nonfunctional, useless protein sequences. There are no… steppingstones to cross the chasm. The conclusion that a reasonable person draws from this is that the laws of nature are insufficient to produce functional proteins and, therefore, functional proteins have not been produced through a nondirected search.” (Pg. 69)
William Dembski proposes a thought experiment he calls ‘The Incredible Talking Pulsar,’ and eventually asks, “What lesson can we learn from the pulsar? I claim we should infer that a designer in the full sense of the word is communicating through the pulsar, i.e., a designer who is both intelligent and transcendent. Intelligence is certainly not a problem here… the pulsar demonstrates that ours is the type of world where design has at least the possibility of becoming perfectly evident---with the pulsar, empirical validation for design can be made as good as we like. In the actual world, design is therefore not only possible but also empirically knowable.” (Pg.. 82, 86)
Peter van Inwagen quotes Frederick Grinnell: ‘The key question remained: is life a biochemical event, or the work of a creative intelligence?’ Then he states, “I think that life is BOTH a biochemical event and the work of a creative intelligence. And I don’t see any shadow of inconsistency or tension between the two features that I ascribe to life. I am just puzzled. I would like to know more about what lies behind the very exclusive-sounding ‘or’ in the sentence I have quoted.” (Pg. 111-112)
Leslie K. Johnson argues, “What the paucity of [fossil] links and unequivocal ancestors does not do is falsify the theory of evolution. Rather, the fossil record, for all its shortcomings, is highly supportive. What is telling is what we DON’T see: Devonian sharks with feathers and wishbones, mammals in strata with the first land plants, intermediates between trilobites and titanotheres. Instead, each new discovery corroborates the picture of life in its broad outlines, a picture that makes its greatest sense in the context of adaptive evolution.” (Pg. 123)
Michael Behe asserts, “convincing evidence of the truth of Darwinism has not yet been produced. Until such evidence is produced, no theological, philosophical, or cotton candy arguments will quell the controversy. Until then every person has the right, on solid scientific grounds, to regard Darwinism as an interesting but very doubtful hypothesis.” (Pg. 153)
K. John Morrow Jr. responds, “Dr. Behe’s objection to a Darwinian evolutionary interpretation is precisely what troubles me about the anti-evolutionary stance; because we don’t have an ironclad proof of every precise feature of evolution of the immune system in hand, Behe suggests that we just abandon the whole enterprise and accept a fuzzy and ill-defined teleology as a scientific explanation.” (Pg. 157)
Arthur M. Shapiro states, “[Charles] Thaxton et al… miss the boat when they call for inclusion of God as a viable hypothesis in ‘origins science.’ What they should say is that … claims about origins are beyond the realm of scientific ‘proof.’ … the contending traditions in the realm of origins require no ‘independent standards of rational justification,’ insofar as they have been talking at different levels. The problem between them … is not a Darwinian problem. Unless one ideologically insists upon biblical inerrancy---at which point I will go have a beer.” (Pg. 167-168)
Peter van Inwagen summarizes, “I accept the thesis of evolution… with the exception of our own species, and even in that one very special case, I don’t rule it out but merely suspend judgment…. As a GENERAL thesis about taxonomic diversity, I accept the evolutionary thesis.” (Pg. 180)
This book will be “must reading” for those studying the evolution/intelligent design controversy.
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