There will be no difficulty in computers being adapted to biology. If someone tells me that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in my opinion he should see a psychiatrist. One of the most frightening things in the Western world, and in this country in particular, is the number of people who believe in things that are scientifically false. Just as a changed environment need not set in motion selection for new adaptations, new adaptations may evolve in an unchanging environment if new mutations arise that are superior to any pre-existing variations It is naïve to think that if a species' environment changes the species must adapt or else become extinct. I once made the remark that two things disappeared in 1990: one was communism, the other was biochemistry and that only one of them should be allowed to come back. And if you read the animal behavior journals, you'll see that this requirement sets the bar pretty high, so that many assertions about evolutionary psychology sink without a trace. My own view is that conclusions about the evolution of human behavior should be based on research at least as rigorous as that used in studying nonhuman animals.
The first commandment for all versions of NOMA might be summarized by stating: "Thou shalt not mix the magisteria by claiming that God directly ordains important events in the history of nature by special interference knowable only through revelation and not accessible to science." In common parlance, we refer to such special interference as "miracle"-operationally defined as a unique and temporary suspension of natural law to reorder the facts of nature by divine fiat. Since 'change of gene frequencies in populations' is the 'official' definition of evolution, randomness has transgressed Darwin's border and asserted itself as an agent of evolutionary change. Virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance. He called his answers "just-so stories." When evolutionists try to explain form and behavior, they also tell just-so stories-and the agent is natural selection. Rudyard Kipling asked how the leopard got its spots, the rhino its wrinkled skin. Natural selection directs the course of evolutionary change. Variation is ubiquitous and random in direction. The essence of Darwinism lies in its claim that natural selection creates the fit. I have championed contingency, and will continue to do so, because its large realm and legitimate claims have been so poorly attended by evolutionary scientists who cannot discern the beat of this different drummer while their brains and ears remain tuned to only the sounds of general theory. The world is not inhabited exclusively by fools, and when a subject arouses intense interest, as this one has, something other than semantics is usually at stake. To assert that "God did it" is no more than an admission of ignorance dressed deceitfully as an explanation. Where religion purports to explain, it actually resorts to tautology. Any one whose disposition leads him to attach more weight to unexplained difficulties than to the explanation of a certain number of facts will certainly reject the theory. It is so easy to hide our ignorance under such expressions as "plan of creation," "unity of design," etc., and to think that we give an explanation when we only restate a fact. Charles Darwin (c1880)Īlthough I am fully convinced of the truth of the views given in this volume, I by no means expect to convince experienced naturalists whose minds are stocked with a multitude of facts all viewed, during a long course of years, from a point of view directly opposite to mine.
There seems to be no more design in the variability of organic beings and in the action of natural selection, than in the course which the wind blows. We can no longer argue that, for instance, the beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell must have been made by an intelligent being, like the hinge of a door by man. The old argument of design in nature, as given by Paley, which formerly seemed to me to be so conclusive, fails, now that the law of natural selection has been discovered.
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