Do Kids Really Need More Evolution Schooling?

In a recent issue of The Scientist, in an article entitled, “The Devolution of Evolution,” the author, in a somewhat reverential tone, laments the shortfall of evolutionary training in new grads. He argues that not getting enough evolutionary pabulum ladled to students makes them less fit for their careers.

The article caught my attention for all its nonsense, so I wrote a letter to the editor. That particular science journal is replete with evolutionary bias so the chances of them printing my response is probably nil. But I had to vent.

Here is the gist. There is absolutely no proof for the assertion that if students are not brainwashed with evolutionary propaganda that they are somehow less fit for careers in the biological (or other) sciences. The author attempted to draw a parallel between engineers, who must learn the fundamentals of mathematics and physics, and biologists, who ostensibly need the fundamentals of evolution and knowledge of speculative “evolutionary history.” Equating math and physics with evolution is absurd. The former are proven and practical sciences embodying laws, facts, and repeatable experiments. Evolution is a pure guess that contains no laws, no facts in support of it (that life can arise from nonlife; that organisms can spontaneously complexify), and has absolutely no predictive value.

Certainly, math and physics are necessary tools to build bridges and space ships. On the other hand, evolution is no tool at all--it has no practical application and does not create discovery. It is simply a belief (like a religion) into which facts must be shoehorned.

The evolution idea is not robust and capable of practical application, nor even heuristic, but rather a purely hypothetical exercise, a pretending to know what we patently do not. Over time, ideas that have true value blossom and flourish; those that do not wither and die. Evolution (pay special attention to this: in the atom to man sense I am speaking, not in the simple genetic variation within types sense) has never been responsible for any discovery that could not have been more easily obtained without this religious-like, unquestioned assumption that beleaguers and hamstrings the minds of researchers and intelligentsia.

Little wonder it is falling into disuse in curricula. Although students still must receive their first communion in it with their biology courses, when it comes to applying it in the field or on the bench, it has no practical use whatsoever.

Evolution is a notion on life support needing stiff shots of faith, hope, and belief. It is not critical to scientific advance, it is its nemesis. New grads without a cathexis to evolutionary dogma are actually more fit to tackle the real world. They are not encumbered with an idea that is opposite to the zetetic spirit of true science.

One final point. The opposite of evolution, devolution, is alive and well as a fact and science. The entire physical world, including biology, is experiencing devolution under the unrelenting force of The Second Law of Thermodynamics which demands that entropy [disorder] in a closed system will always increase. Don’t put constant, intelligent, concerted effort into keeping the house, yard, closet, garage, and car neat, clean, and repaired and we all know what happens. The Second Law is fact, not faith. Therefore, devolution (the breakdown of the complex to the less complex, the change from order to disorder), not hoped-for evolution, is a far more productive and rational study since it is based on real science, actual natural laws, and empirical facts.

Why is the topic of evolution and our origins important and so hotly debated? Because notions of where we came from have everything to do with why we are here. What we believe about why we are here has everything to do with how we act and behave.

For all the rational and scientific ammo you will ever need to explode the evolution hypothesis, get a copy of my books, Solving The Big Questions--As If Thinking Matters, and my 1975 book that is just as valid today as it was then, The Creation-Evolution Controversy.

cathexis

1. How You Were Born

2. Sheep on a Dam

3. Guilty Dog