Darwinism: Science or Philosophy - Chapter 13b

Reply to Arthur M. Shapiro - Tamed Tornadoes

by David L Wilcox
1994

This is the author's comment to a response to his original paper.


ARTHUR SHAPIRO HAS more or less suggested that I have blinded the poor
audience with a razzle-dazzle array of biological problems, a heterogenous
display of difficulties too extensive to deal with individually in this
forum. Further, his "tornado alley" illustration implies that my purpose
is to inject the hand of God into science by introducing unknowns, "gaps"
in scientific explanations. Neither objection is valid.

The diverse evidence I presented centers on a single, common problem: a
complex and structured genome that is characterized by programmed and
error-checked entities, a cybernetic base for biotic reality. Darwinian
theory is based on a "bean-bag" view of genetics, on the additive effects
of many small effect genes-or perhaps on occasional "macro" mutation. But,
in the cybernetic model, those "beans" are best explained as adaptive
buffers for the genetic goal-seeking machinery. Evidence for adaptive
change does not naturally expand into evidence for prescriptive change as
it accumulates.

Thus, it is not minor anomalies, the occasional genetic tornado. that
neo-Darwinism cannot (yet) explain. Rather, it has failed to explain the
fundamental realities of biological systems. It has failed to explain the
core of the apple. Why then has it been considered an adequate (nay, a
necessary and vital) explanation for all of biological reality?

I have no metaphysical necessity driving me to propose the miraculous
action of the evident finger of God as a scientific hypothesis. In my
world view, all natural forces and events are fully contingent on the free
choice of the sovereign God. Thus, neither an adequate nor an inadequate
"neo-Darwinism" (as mechanism) holds any terrors. But that is not what the
data looks like. And I feel no metaphysical necessity to exclude the
evident finger of God.

I conclude that the easy acceptance of neo-Darwinism as a complete and
adequate explanation for all biological reality has indeed been based in
the metaphysical needs of a dominant materialistic consensus. One can be a
theistic "Darwinian," but no one can be an atheistic "Creationist."

Foundation for Thought and Ethics.

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