Foundations of Evolution

I was recently involved in a Disqus exchange regarding the bias present in the Creation/Evolution controversy. Eventually the discussion focused on the foundations of evolution and why many seem to have such animus against the concept of creation. I thought that animus should be examined, especially when we understand how prevalent evolutionary thought has become. To begin, let’s look at the foundations of evolution.

From the Bottom Up

Why didn’t I bother addressing the foundation of creationism? There isn’t much need to do so because creation (or Intelligent Design as some people refer to it) is self-explanatory. If God created everything then creationists would expect that things were created by design and with a purpose. That basic understanding is where evolutionists have an issue because their issue is with the very foundation of creationism.

One of the principle foundations of evolution is materialism. The scientific community at large holds to the belief that the best explanation for life is the process of natural selection. By doing so they restrict discussion of life’s diversity to physical laws, matter, and observable process only. To claim anything else, they say, is to employ a teleological argument – something that they will not allow. The mere presence of a  non-materialist explanation is quickly shouted down. In fact, that bias is so pervasive that creationists can find no place for their research papers to be accepted (much less published) outside of the ID and creationist realm. Then scientists point to the lack of peer-reviewed articles as ‘proof’ that ID/Creationism is pseudoscience. But it gets even worse.

Primordial Goo

The starting point of life in a materialistic view must, by the rules defined above, begin through the process called abiogenesis. Biopoiesis, as it’s also called, is the proposed origination of life strictly from inanimate substances. Elemental chemicals form complex molecules, which form long chains of differing molecules, which form self-replicating structures (like RNA), which form cells, which form multicellular organisms, which forms all life.

The process just described is what materialists proclaim as the way life started. There are a number of problems with this view of the origin of life (which we will get into later), but that is the standard which the scientific community has declared to be the only acceptable cause for how life came to be.

This is Part One of a multi-part series. Keep watch for the next installment!