God: The Failed Hypothesis by Victor Stenger Read Free Book Online Page A

of cells and how it is modified by random mutations. It is not my purpose here to give yet another exposition of evolution. Darwin’s theory, updated by the many developments since his time, resides at the foundation of modern biology. Evolution by natural selection is accepted as an observed fact by the great majority of biologists and scientists in related fields, and is utilized in every aspect of modern life science including medicine. In terms of the same strict standards of empirical evidence that apply in all the natural sciences, Darwinian evolution is a well-established theory that has passed many critical tests.
    A common argument made by opponents of evolution is that it is not a “true” scientific theory, like electromagnetism or thermodynamics. They wrongly claim that evolution does not make predictions that can be tested and is thus not falsifiable. In fact, evolution is eminently predictive and falsifiable.
    Darwin specifically predicted that recognizable human ancestors would be found in Africa. Many now have been. Evolutionary theory predicted that the use of antiviral or antibacterial agents would result in the emergence of resistant strains. This principle is, of course, a mainstay of contemporary medicine. Paleontologists correctly predicted that species showing the evolution from fish to amphibian would be found in Devonian strata.
    This example, among many, refutes the frequently heard creationist claim that “transitional forms” (presumably meaning transitional species) do not exist. Paleontologists had expected to find transitions from land-based mammals to whales for years. In the past decade, science journals, as well as the media, have been full of these finds. A simple Internet search will yield hundreds of examples of transitional species.
    The failure of many of these predictions would have falsified evolution. They did not fail. It is a trivial exercise to think of other ways to falsify evolution. For example, evolution would be falsified if we were to find bona fide remains of organisms out of place in the fossil record. Suppose mammals (horses, humans, or hippos) were found in the Paleozoic strata associated with trilobites, crinoids, and extinct corals. This would show that there was no evolutionary process. But we do not find any such inconsistencies.
    My favorite example is over a hundred years old. Shortly after its publication in the nineteenth century, the theory of evolution was challenged by the famous physicist William Thomson, Lord Kelvin, whose thermodynamic calculations gave an age for Earth that was much too short for natural selection to operate. Darwin regarded this as the most serious challenge to his theory.
    However, at the time, nuclear energy was unknown. When this new form of energy was discovered early in the twentieth century, Kelvin and other physicists quickly realized that the energy released by nuclear reactions at the center of the sun would be very efficient, allowing the sun and other stars to last billions of years as a stable energy source. In fact, evolution can be said to have predicted the existence of such an energy source!
    When he learned of nuclear energy, Kelvin graciously withdrew his objection to evolution.
    As we will find several times in this book, some scientific arguments for the existence of God once had considerable force, and it was not until recently—within the last century—that accumulated knowledge not only eliminated these lines of reasoning but also turned many of them on their heads to support the case against God. These examples amply refute the claim that science has nothing to say about God. One can imagine endless scenarios by which observations of the universe and life on Earth might confirm God’s existence; we will mention just a few in this book.
    The discovery of human ancestors, the DNA and anatomical connections between humans and other animals (and even plants), and the use of animals in medical research falsify the