Douglas Wilson's Letter From Moscow (About Laughing Out Loud)

The Darwinian Crack Up Will Be Televised

Douglas Wilson
Blog&Mablog

Thomas Kuhn gave us a good description of how scientific paradigms collapse. He wasn’t really talking about the theory of evolution, but what he said applies to that theory, and applies by the shovelful.

When a new paradigm is adopted, there are a few anomalies that remain unexplained. Think of the new paradigm as a wagon, and of the anomalies as rocks that the wagon has to haul. As time progresses, the anomalies accumulate, which means that somebody is throwing extra rocks into the wagon. But the wagon has been hitched up, it is going down the road, and we just deal with it. Wagons carry rocks, that’s all. But over time, the number of rocks will become a matter of concern. And a little bit past that point, the performance of the wagon starts to suffer. And right after that, the wagon collapses, we buy a new wagon, and head on down the road. The new wagon, remember, has some rocks in it.

When Darwinism was first adopted, when we bought this wagon, our knowledge of the internal workings of the living cell was approaching zilch, nada, nuffin. For all we knew, the cell was a rind stuffed with a gelatinous substance. As our scientific knowledge has exploded, the wagon—still manfully teetering down the road—has filled up with rocks. Boulders. A couple of small mountains. Darwin died in 1882, and the term genetics was not born until 1905.

The more we learn, the more the wagon has to “carry.”

Amidst a Scientific Wreck

The Lone and Level Sands Stretch Far Away

We have noted before on this blog that evolutionism is in a shambles.  We have now reached the stage where a considerable number of highly respected biologists are quietly distancing themselves from Darwinist theories.  They don't have an alternative.  Only questions.  

This phenomenon is typical when a reigning scientific paradigm is going through the process of being dismantled by evidence (or, in Darwinism's case, the lack of it).  Questions arise out of research that are embarrassing to the scientific establishment because they "don't fit".  Former proponents of the paradigm hunker down, go quiet, get about their work, and say nothing.  They become nominal evolutionists--that is, evolutionists in name only.  Meanwhile the remaining ardent advocates of the paradigm embarrass themselves in the eyes of their colleagues.

In The Beginning

The Slippery Dance Floor 

Historical debates over beginnings and origins have proved fascinating.  Since the nineteenth century it is safe to say that the overwhelming consensus of scholarship and opinion has been to favour the naturalistic (materialistic) world view.  This has led to a cosmology wherein dwells time, space, matter, and energy alone.  Nothing else.

With these assumptions, the world and the cosmos, had to come into being naturally.  In other words, there is no creator.  A prevailing characteristic of this world view is the need of vast amounts of time in order for "natural processes" to produce the breathtaking complexity and size of the cosmos--namely, billions and billions and billions of years.  What is the latest count?  Sixty-five billion years?  [At this point, we make a confident prediction: within ten years from now the "settled" naturalistic scientific consensus will be engaged in a febrifacient re-dating the cosmos to be a hundred billion years or more.  What's a few billion years amongst friends, eh?]

A curiosity amidst the surging rise of naturalism has been the way so many Christians--both Christian institutions and individual believers--have rushed to accept the prevailing, emergent world view of naturalism and the pseudo-science which attends it.  They have sought to re-interpret the scriptures to "fit in with" the brazen, allegedly undisputed facts of the naturalistic paradigm.

One expects that the reason for this curiosity is the widespread, uncritical acceptance amongst Christians of the prevailing theory of fact--namely, the idea that scientific knowledge is objective, proven, and indisputable.

Heady Times

Living Amidst a Kuhnian Scientific Revolution

Amongst scientists and the various scientific disciplines, evolutionism--as a cosmology--is collapsing.  The evolutionist paradigm is falling apart.  The more strident the secular evolutionists become on the matter, the more they betray their deepest doubts and uncertainties.  

Most scientific paradigms do not collapse due to a full scale frontal assault from a competing paradigm.  Usually they collapse from within.  Those who once held the reigning paradigm, who had been card carrying members of the Association of the Ruling Paradigm, begin to find data and results and research that just "does not make sense" in view of current received wisdom.  The disquiet grows gradually.  Usually, the stridency of the ruling paradigm is toned down.  Folk don't discuss it much in polite scientific society.  It becomes a bit of an ugly cousin no-one talks about much any more.  It takes on the characteristic of a myth, a just-so story which no-one really believes "nowadays".

The textbooks used in schools and colleges which teach the incumbent paradigm are the last to change.  They represent the "establishment", particularly the State establishment.  It is here that the incumbent paradigm becomes "official".  State schools use state approved textbooks.  State textbooks teach the dominant paradigm.  State schools and state textbooks are usually the last to hear about a scientific revolution overthrowing the existing paradigm because neither the State, nor State schools are engaged in real science.  Rather, they represent the propagandists for the incumbent view.  As a paradigm is being overthrown, real scientists distance themselves, grow quiet, and adopt a "yes, but" mien towards the ruling official view.

This is the state of the current evolutionist paradigm.  It is crumbling from within.