Evolution Is Not Truth-Based Inquiry

When your view has been falsified by evidence but you prohibit other views, you are not engaged in truth-based inquiry.

In a book review in Science, Marcos Huerta enjoys a fact-free suggestion about the Cambrian Explosion he found in Wallace Arthur’s new book of sweeping generalities about evolution, Life through Time and Space. Shutting his eyes to fossil data, he switches on his imagination:

In the section on biology and evolution, I particularly enjoyed Arthur’s treatment of the evolution and origin of animal life. Here, he uses a metaphor of trees rising from the sea to describe the different branches of evolution that led to the many forms of life on Earth today. One such tree produced animal life, another plant life, and still others led to funguses and brown seaweeds.

The same chapter discusses the mystery of the “Cambrian explosion,” which I had before believed to be a burst of evolution and new species. Arthur reveals, however, that it also may have been just an epoch of intense fossilization.

Problem solved! They just fossilized more intensely! Wait a minute. We know that cannot be true, because in many places (including China), Precambrian strata continue right into Cambrian strata without evidence of a break in time or conditions. If Precambrian strata could preserve delicate sponge embryos, they could have preserved the ancestors of the Cambrian animals had they existed. Can we get an empirical explanation next time, instead of “it may have”?

More disturbing is Huerta’s endorsement of Arthur’s dictatorial stance on scientific inquiry. Arthur “writes passionately and strongly against religious fundamentalism, both past and present, that suppresses truth-based inquiry.” The irony here is rich. First, understand that the Darwinian definition of “religious fundamentalism” is ‘any view that disagrees with materialistic Darwinian evolution’ including intelligent design (which is not religious, but based on following the evidence where it leads). This is how the theistic evolutionists at Biologos escape the dreaded ‘fundamentalist’ label: they take the oath that any view of origins must be materialistic, unguided, and aimless—even if some ‘god’ way out wherever started the universe.

To think that intelligent design “suppresses truth-based inquiry” – oh, my goodness. Could a PhD creation biologist submit a response to Science Magazine? How about Nature? How about PNAS? Could we teach public school students about the Cambrian Explosion? Could we encourage them to inquire critically about all the evidence pertaining to Darwinian evolution? Can we take the fake-science icons of evolution out of the textbooks, and encourage truth-based inquiry? Pretty please?