Evolving Arguments
Michael Ruse is livid at Phillip Johnson in his review of Johnson's book Reason in the Balance ("Naturalistic Fallacy," October). And why not? So was the emperor at the little kid who shouted that the emperor had no clothes. Is this why Ruse refuses to "waste time trying to refute" Johnson, or tells us that only "biblical literalists or fundamentalists" have not "made peace with evolution"? Francis Crick is a "fundamentalist"?!?
Johnson is not concerned with attacking "evolution," as is clear to anyone who reads with an open mind. He wants to unmask the complete naturalistic program that dominates current teaching about the origin of life and its diversity. Phillip Johnson is focusing attention on the actual problem--tax money from citizens of diverse opinions about origins is being spent to propagandize public school children, telling them their parents are wrong and current scientific authority is correct. All this about non-reproducible events in the remote past that are ultimately unknowable in any strictly empirical sense.
My subscription began with the October issue. It was good, and provided a surprisingly funny introduction to the state of reason in evolutionary theory.
All the reader sees in the review of Phillip Johnson's book on evolution is the high state of the reviewer's dudgeon, brought about by reading some thoughts with which he disagrees. I am curious about why the reviewer supposes REASON is an appropriate publication for expressing emotions about someone else's writings. There is a saying among engineers which goes, paraphrased in less crude form, that when there is a contest between science and emotion, emotion wins every time. Ruse whines that Johnson makes him cross, then even more cross, then truly livid. So what? Who cares? The evolutionist I suppose, for emotion--not reason--rules the evolutionist.
The Ruse book review is as good as it gets when an evolutionist defending his faith tries to use reason. In this instance that is not very good. Let me point out a few examples. Ruse trots out the "survival of the fittest" tautology with no evident shame or embarrassment. Those that survive are the fittest, and they are fittest because they survived. It is a remarkably universal tautology. So here we all are, us members of various species; and having survived so far, we are fittest. So all of the species now extant are, according to Darwin, fittest. How does this square with empirical observation? If all species are equally fit (fittest admits to no lesser state of fitness and hence all currently living species are equally fit), then why do we have an Endangered Species Act? Why is it necessary that one species (us) must intervene to protect equally fit other species?
Does the reviewer really "cherish science as a wonderful achievement of the human spirit"? Several of us think that science was, is, and will continue to be an activity of the mind rather than a spiritual quest. Science is largely a search for precedent. If this, we observe that. By applying mathematics and logic we deduce rules that are useful in understanding the physical world. Some of the precedents are quite compelling, and we call them physical laws, as in Newton's laws of motion. We can apply the rules to do useful things--make airplanes, build harvesters, make medicines, and so on.
Let's engage in a little speculation on the precedent that evolution provides. Plants and animals as individuals live and then die. Some species survive this cyclic process for quite a while. They are the species fittest to survive. We now have a precedent and know and can predict--that plants and animals live and then die. Some survive for a while. Those which survive are fittest. Someone else can try to raise capital on this knowledge.
Tautologies are absolutely true, as in, "Either it is red or it is not red." Unfortunately, these absolute truths are trivial. The theory of evolution is absolutely true, but only because it is trivial. Would that your reviewer were stronger in science and less apt in style and rhetoric.
Glenn Niblock
San Diego, CA
Michael Ruse replies: Reading your own material strikes me as a bit like self-abuse: great fun but dangerous on the eyesight. With age and the need for reading glasses, I have turned to other solitary pleasures. But reading the letters sparked by my review of Phillip Johnson's book Reason in the Balance, I went scurrying back to see what I had written.
As I remembered, and what you would never realize from my critics, in respects I was quite sympathetic to Johnson's position. I agree that evolutionists do use their theory to promote social positions, and like Johnson I am uncomfortable with that. As I also remembered, this time around, neither Johnson nor I were putting our efforts into the evolution debate--we have both done so elsewhere--but rather into the question of naturalism and its implications for society. So when correspondents go after me, regretting that I am not "stronger in science and less apt in style and rhetoric," I can only regret that they do not bother to see what is at issue this time. On the evolution question, read my contributions to my collection But is it Science? The Philosophical Question in the Creation/Evolution Controversy (Prometheus Books). Then correspond with me. You have my e-mail address.
And finally, as I remembered, what made me cross was the slipshod way in which Johnson treats philosophers (not me!) in his book. No one among my critics has spoken to this, or denied that Johnson is all very well on criticizing others but interestingly reticent on his own position. So, the next time people want to lecture me on natural selection as a tautology, could they first let me know if they think there has been a universal flood in their neck of the woods, and if so, what evidence they would put forward for this belief? In baseball, both sides must come to bat and face the opposing pitcher. So let us have the same for arguments about science and religion.