Freeing Up Inquiry

What we need for now is people who want to promote genuine inquiry, not people who have all the answers in advance. In good time new theories will emerge, and science will change. We should not try to shortcut the process by establishing some new theory of origins until we know more about exactly what needs to be explained. Maybe there will be a new theory of evolution, but it is also possible that the basic concept will collapse and science will acknowledge that those elusive common ancestors of the major biological groups never existed. If we get an unbiased scientific process started, we can have confidence that it will bring us closer to the truth.

For the present I recommend that we also put the biblical issues to one side. The last thing we should want to do or seem to want to do is to threaten the freedom of scientific inquiry. Bringing the Bible anywhere near this issue just raises the Inherit the wind stereotype and closes minds instead of opening them. 

We can wait until we have a better scientific theory, one genuinely based on unbiased empirical evidence and not on materialist philosophy, before we need to worry about whether and to what extent that theory is consistent with the Bible, Until we reach that better science, it is best to live with some uncertainties and incongruities, which is our lot as human beings—in this life, anyway. For now we need to stick to the main point: In the beginning was the Word. Moreover, the "fear of God"—recognition of our dependence upon God—is still the beginning of wisdom. If materialist science can prove otherwise, then so be it. But everything we are learning about the evidence suggests that we do not need to worry. 

One by one the great prophets of materialism have been shown to be false prophets and have fallen aside. Marx and Freud have lost their scientific standing. Now Darwin is on the block. 

Some of us saw a clip of Richard Dawkins being interviewed on public television about his reaction to Michael Behe's book. You can see how insecure that man is behind his bluster and how much he has to rely on not having Mike Belie on the program with him, or even a lesser figure like Phil Johnson. Darwinists have to rely on confining their critics in a stereotype. They have learned to keep their own philosophy on the stage with no rivals allowed, and now they have to rely almost exclusively on that cultural power. 

These are exciting times. When I finished the epilogue to Darwin on Trial in 1993, I compared evolutionary naturalism to a great battleship afloat on the ocean of reality. The ship's sides are heavily armored with philosophical and legal barriers to criticism, and its decks are stacked with 16-inch rhetorical guns to intimidate would-be attackers. In appearance it is as impregnable as the Soviet Union seemed a few years ago. But the ship has sprung a metaphysical leak, and that leak widens as more and more people understand it and draw attention to the conflict between empirical science and materialist philosophy. The more perceptive of the ship's officers know that the ship is doomed if the leak cannot be plugged. The struggle to save the ship will go on for a while, and meanwhile there will even be academic wine-and-cheese parties on the deck. In the end the ship's great firepower and ponderous armor will only help drag it to the bottom. Reality will win.