Andy Flowers, pastor at Calvary Baptist Church in Woodland, has been teaching a class on evolution vs. creationism, and has concluded that both sides require some level of blind faith; However, his grasp of science doesn’t appear to be adequate for teaching such a class. It alarms me to find this misinformation being perpetuated in my community and published in my local newspaper, and I feel I need to address his misconceptions directly.

In his The blind faith behind evolution piece in the Daily Democrat, Pastor Andy Flowers argues that “evolution has never been anything more than a theory”:

Evolution has never been anything more than a theory. It is a guess at the origin and development of life based on observation of the process of natural selection. It’s never been proven, yet it is taught as though it were fact.

Evolution is indeed a theory. Pastor Flowers is simply using the incorrect definition of the word to make this statement. The Oxford English Dictionary defines two relevant meanings of the word theory:

Theory, Sense 1: A scheme or system of ideas or statements held as an explanation or account of a group of facts or phenomena; a hypothesis that has been confirmed or established by observation or experiment, and is propounded or accepted as accounting for the known facts; a statement of what are held to be the general laws, principles, or case of something known or observed.

Theory, Sense 2: A hypothesis proposed as an explanation; hence, a mere hypothesis, speculation, conjecture; an idea or set of ideas about something; an individual view or notion.

In science, the word theory is defined as the first sense above. This is the sense that is inferred when describing the theory of evolution, as well as the theory heliocentrism, the theory of gravity, and is what we mean when we say scientific theory. The word hypothesis is the word science uses to refer to educated guesses that have not been adequately tested and peer reviewed or have otherwise not found to be true. This definition is mistakenly used by Pastor Flowers in his argument against evolution.

In science, only mathematics is allowed to use the absolute term of “fact”, but for the sake of argument, in the sense of being true or false, yes, evolution by natural selection is indeed a fact to the same degree that heliocentrism (the theory that the planets in our solar system orbit our sun) is a fact.

Pastor Flowers goes on to address what he considers to be three major problems with the theory of evolution. The first:

Evolutionary theory can’t explain the complexity of a living cell or the information contained in our DNA. There is an old philosophical argument for the existence of God that suggests that if you were to find a watch on a path in the wilderness you would logically assume that there is a watchmaker. The complexity of the design and the construction demand a creator. It is completely illogical to look at the complexity of this world and assume that it came about by accident.

As scientists are unlocking more and more secrets of our DNA and genetic structure we are discovering just how much information and intelligence is contained within DNA. Professor Fred Hoyle put it this way, "The evolutionist is asking us to believe that a tornado can pass through a junk yard and assemble a jumbo jet."

Evolutionists have a blind faith that chance and luck resulted in our complex world.

Natural selection—the theory that organisms with traits that make them more likely to survive are also more likely to reproduce and pass on their beneficial traits to their offspring, while organisms with harmful traits are less likely to reproduce and pass on their traits—explains how the complexity of living cells and organisms is achieved, and is hardly random. The mutations which contribute to these traits are random, but the evolved traits they result in that help increase an organism’s chance of survival are evolved through trial and error over many generations. They have been observed in the wild, tested in the lab, peer reviewed, re-tested, and have even been exploited by breeders and botanists for centuries (this is known as artificial selection).

William Paley’s watchmaker analogy, published in his 1802 book, Natural Theology, is thoroughly explained away by Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection in his book, On the Origin of Species, which was published 50 years after Paley’s book.

Pastor Flowers attempts to refute this by arguing that “Evolutionary theory misapplies natural selection,” but reveals that his understanding of evolution is incorrect:

Evolutionary theory misapplies natural selection. Natural selection is the process where living things adapt to their environment. Favorable genetic characteristics are passed on and weaker genetic traits are bred out.

It was the process of natural selection that Darwin observed and used to propose his theory of evolution. He believed that this process resulted in the development of the variety of life that we see today. He thought that in the future there would be numerous fossil discoveries that showed this transition from one kind of animal to another; a "missing link."

However, natural selection never results in animals transforming from one kind to another kind. Cats don’t become dogs, fish don’t become birds, and monkeys don’t become people. Natural selection helps animals to adapt to their surroundings, but it doesn’t transform them into different animals. Darwin had a blind faith that archeologists in the future would prove his theory.

150 years after the first printing of On the Origin of Species, and just as Charles Darwin hypothesized, we do in fact have thousands of examples of evolution in the fossil record, and they are on display at natural history museums across the globe for everyone to see. The mistake that Pastor Flowers makes is that evolution is the process of cats becoming dogs, fish becoming birds, and monkeys becoming people, etc.. This is widely known in the creationist vs. science debate as the crocoduck incident.

This is a common misconception of what evolution is in creationist circles, but to anyone who has basic understanding of evolution, it is obviously not how evolution works. Evolution is the change in inherited traits of a population of organisms through successive generations that split into smaller groups which then may diversify into different species.

In plain english, fish do not turn into birds, but rather share a common ancestor that is neither a fish nor a bird. A great example of this are whales, and their closest evolutionary cousin, the hippopotamus.

Before millions of generations of Pakicetus begat millions of generations of Rodhocetus, who begat millions of generations of Dorudon, who intern begat millions of generations of our modern whales and dolphins, corroborating molecular and fossil evidence shows us that over 55 million years ago, the linage of a cloven hooved ancestor of Pakicetus’ linage split to also give rise to millions of generations of other cloven hooved animals that eventually evolved into the modern hippopotamus we know today.

In short, a cloven hooved creature that was not a hippo or a while spawned generations of creatures that split somewhere down the line to give rise to creatures that would eventually evolve into modern day whales on one side of the fork, and the hippopotamus on the other.

The fossilized remains of these ancestors are on display in museums, but the evidence for evolution is not reliant on fossil evidence, as molecular evidence that supports evolution is in staggering abundance.

Pastor Flower’s final cited problem with evolution is actually not a facet of evolution or biology:

Evolutionary theory can’t explain matter. Perhaps one of the biggest logical problems with evolutionary theory is that it cannot explain where all this stuff came from in the first place. Their best guess is that about 14 billion years ago an intensely dense and hot speck exploded and expanded and resulted in the universe that we see today.

Evolution is the study of how life branches and diversifies, not how the universe or even life itself started. It doesn’t attempt to do so. While biologists do investigate how life might have started, this is not the focus of evolution, and the beginning of our universe is a subject dealt with by cosmology, not biology. Cosmologists have their own set of scientific evidence to support their big bang theory. I am not familiar enough with cosmology to address it here, however.

In conclusion, Pastor Flowers states the theory of evolution is illogical and requires a huge leap of faith to be believed, while stating that his own beliefs in the Christian god, by contrast, are logical, reasonable, and validated by historical accounts:

Evolutionary theories are constantly changing; creationism has remained constant for thousands of years. Evolutionary theory can’t answer the basic questions of the origin and complexity of our world, creationism can. Evolution is founded on speculative science; creationism is founded of historical accounts. 

Evolutionary theories are constantly changing, but these changes all corroborate and expand upon the fact that all living things share common ancestors if you go far enough down the line. Darwin didn’t know that genes were the vehicle responsible for passing traits on to generations of organisms. As our knowledge grows, our theories change.

The purpose of science is to discover the truth about the natural world whatever it may be. It doesn’t care whether or not there is a god. It is a process specifically designed to weed out errors to find facts. Science compensates for human bias and misconceptions. To make a scientific claim, one must show examples of their research, be able to reproduce the results, and provide the conditions of the research so that others can repeat it and reproduce the same results. If something doesn’t work, it disregarded.

The scientific method is directly responsible for bringing us air travel, penicillin, farming, computers, and pretty much every modern convenience we know today. This same method has lead us to discover how life changes over vast expanses of time. It is reproducible in the lab. We have seen it happen with many species of fish and reptile on larger scales, and the corroboration of molecular evidence and the fossil record support it on a vastly larger scale. There is an endless supply of scientific evidence all pointing to the theory of evolution. This is how it became a theory.

One can apply this same scientific method to Pastor Flower’s claims about his Christian beliefs as well, but that is not a topic I care to get into here. As an ex-Christian, I can understand his reluctance to accept evolution. My purpose here isn’t to fault him for sharing his beliefs, only to correct the inaccuracies in his published piece.

Finally, Pastor Flowers challenges you with a productive task: to investigate for yourself:

Let me challenge you to investigate and see for yourself. I only listed three problems with evolution; there are many, many more. Take some time to study the truth claims and the evidence on both sides and decide for yourself which worldview requires the most faith.

If you need a place to start, just stop by the church at 506 Cottonwood St., and I will give you a free copy of The Creation Answers Book.

Allow me to make some recommendations from the evolution side. These books both provide an easy to understand introduction to the theory of evolution, and are authored by some of the leading experts in evolutionary science:

• Why Evolution Is True by Jerry Coyne
• The Greatest Show on Earth: The Evidence for Evolution by Richard Dawkins

I’m sorry I cannot afford to give out free copies of these books myself, but they may be available at the Woodland Public Library. They are available at the Sacramento Public Library.

Like Pastor Flowers, I am not an evolutionary biologist by trade. I am merely someone who was curious about why things are the way they are, and I read a few books.

UPDATED 5/24/2010: Corrected a few typos and grammatical errors.