EVOLUTION REDUX

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes
on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color, bountiful with life. Within decades we
must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief
5 time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake
up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I
bother to get up in the mornings.
—Richard Dawkins

10 A few years ago, a group of businessmen in a ritzy suburb of Chicago asked me to speak
on the topic of evolution versus intelligent design. To their credit, they were intellectually
curious enough to want to learn more about the supposed "controversy." I laid out the
evidence for evolution and then explained why intelligent design1 was a religious rather
than a scientific explanation of life. After the talk, a member of the audience approached
15 me and said, "I found your evidence for evolution very convincing—but I still don't
believe it."
This statement encapsulates a deep and widespread ambiguity that many feel about
evolutionary biology. The evidence is convincing, but they're not convinced. How can
that be? Other areas of science aren't plagued by such problems. We don't doubt the
20 existence of electrons or black holes, despite the fact that these phenomena are much
farther removed from everyday experience than is evolution. After all, you can see fossils
in any natural history museum, and we read constantly about how bacteria and viruses
are evolving resistance to drugs. So what's the problem with evolution?
What's not a problem is the lack of evidence. Since you've read this far, I hope you're
25 convinced that evolution is far more than a scientific theory: it is a scientific fact. We've
looked at evidence from many areas—the fossil record, biogeography, embryology,
vestigial structures, suboptimal design, and so on—all of that evidence showing, without
the tiniest element of doubt, that organisms have evolved. And it's not just small
"microevolutionary" changes, either: we've seen new species form, both in real time and in
30 the fossil record, and we've found transitional forms between major groups, such as
whales and land animals. We've observed natural selection in action, and have every
reason to think that it can produce complex organisms and features.
We've also seen that evolutionary biology makes testable predictions, though not of
course in the sense of predicting how a particular species will evolve, for that depends on
35 a myriad of uncertain factors, such as which mutations crop up and how environments
may change. But we can predict where fossils will be found (take Darwin's prediction
that human ancestors would be found in Africa), we can predict when common ancestors
would appear, and we can predict what those ancestors should look like before we find
them (one is the remarkable "missing link" between ants and wasps). Scientists predicted

1
a non-scientific view that "certain features of the universe and of living things are best explained by an intelligent
cause, not an undirected process such as natural selection."
40 that they would find fossils of marsupials in Antarctica—and they did. And we can
predict that if we find an animal species in which males are brightly colored and females
are not, that species will have a polygynous mating system.
Every day, hundreds of observations and experiments pour into the hopper of the
scientific literature. Many of them don't have much to do with evolution—they're
45 observations about details of physiology, biochemistry, development, and so on—but
many of them do. And every fact that has something to do with evolution confirms its
truth. Every fossil that we find, every DNA molecule that we sequence, every organ
system that we dissect, supports the idea that species evolved from common ancestors.
Despite innumerable possible observations that could prove evolution untrue, we don't
50 have a single one. We don't find mammals in Precambrian rocks, humans in the same
layers as dinosaurs, or any other fossils out of evolutionary order. DNA sequencing
supports the evolutionary relationships of species originally deduced from the fossil
record. Despite a million chances to be wrong, evolution always comes up right. That is
as close as we can get to a scientific truth.
55 Now, when we say that "evolution is true," what we mean is that the major claims of
Darwinism have been proven correct. Organisms evolved, they did so gradually, lineages
split into different species from common ancestors, and natural selection is the major
engine of adaptation. No serious biologist doubts these propositions. But this doesn't
mean that Darwinism is scientifically exhausted, with nothing left to understand. Far
60 from it. Evolutionary biology is teeming with questions and controversies. How exactly
does sexual selection work? Do females select males with good genes? How much of a
role does genetic drift (as opposed to natural or sexual selection) play in the evolution of
DNA sequences or the features of organisms? Which fossil hominins are on the direct line
to Homo sapiens? What caused the Cambrian "explosion" of life, in which many new
65 types of animals appeared within only a few million years?
Critics of evolution seize upon these controversies, arguing that they show that
something is wrong with the theory of evolution itself. But this is mistaken. There is no
disagreement among serious biologists about the major claims of evolutionary theory—
only about the details of how evolution occurred, and about the relative roles of various
70 evolutionary mechanisms. Far from discrediting evolution, the "controversies" are in fact
the sign of a vibrant, healthy field. What moves science forward is ignorance, debate, and
the testing of alternative theories with observations and experiments. A science without
controversy is a science without progress.
At this point I could simply say, "I've given the evidence, and it shows that evolution is
75 true. Q.E.D." But I'd be careless if I did that, because, like the businessman I encountered
after my lecture, many people require more than just evidence before they'll accept
evolution. To these people, evolution raises such profound questions of purpose,
morality, and meaning that they just can't accept it no matter how much evidence they
see. It's not that we evolved from apes that bothers them so much; it's the emotional
80 consequences of facing that fact. And unless we address those concerns, we won't
progress in making evolution a universally acknowledged truth. As the American
 philosopher Michael Ruse noted, "Nobody lies awake worrying about gaps in the fossil
record. Many people lie awake worrying about abortion and drugs and the decline of the
family and gay marriage and all of the other things that are opposed to so-called 'moral
85 values.' "
Nancy Pearcey, a conservative American philosopher and advocate of intelligent
design, expressed this common fear:
Why does the public care so passionately about a theory of biology? Because people
sense intuitively that there's much more at stake than a scientific theory. They know that
90 when naturalistic evolution is taught in the science classroom, then a naturalistic view of
ethics will be taught down the hallway in the history classroom, the sociology classroom,
the family life classroom, and in all areas of the curriculum.
Pearcey argues (and many American creationists agree) that all the perceived evils of
evolution come from two worldviews that are part of science: naturalism and
95 materialism. Naturalism is the view that the only way to understand our universe is
through the scientific method. Materialism is the idea that the only reality is the physical
matter of the universe (the stuff you can touch), and that everything else, including
thoughts, will, and emotions, comes from physical laws acting on that matter. The
message of evolution, and all of science, is one of naturalistic materialism.
100 Darwinism tells us that, like all species, human beings arose from the working of blind,
purposeless forces over huge periods of time. As far as we can determine, the same
forces that gave rise to plants, mushrooms, lizards, and squirrels also produced us. Now,
science cannot completely exclude the possibility of supernatural explanation. It is
possible—though very unlikely—that our whole world is controlled by elves and fairies,
105 or some other unknown magical creatures. But supernatural explanations like these are
simply never needed: science manages to understand the natural world just fine using
reason and materialism. Furthermore, supernatural explanations always mean the end of
questioning: that's the way belief systems want it, end of story. Science, on the other
hand, is never satisfied: our studies of the universe will continue until we go extinct.
110 But Pearcey's notion that these lessons of evolution will inevitably have an impact on the
study of ethics, history, and "family life" is exaggerated. How can you derive meaning,
purpose, or ethics from evolution? You can't. Evolution is simply a theory about the
process and patterns of life's diversification, not a grand philosophical scheme about the
meaning of life. It can't tell us what to do, or how we should behave. And this is the big
115 problem for many believers, who want to find in the story of our origins a reason for our
existence, and a sense of how to behave.

Allan Border