Has the theory of evolution been disproved? 1. Is the choice between evolutionism and creationism scientific?

{ "translated_text": "\"Darwin refuted\"? In recent years in our country criticism of evolutionary doctrine has significantly intensified. The reasons are varied. First, modern evolutionism continues to develop and is experiencing another crisis. The condition for the \"crystallization\" of new ideas is a critical attitude toward established views. Second, with the dissolution of the Soviet Union, propaganda of \"ideologically correct\" views (classical Darwinism and neo‑Darwinism) weakened. Third, with the growing openness of our society, creationist and occult anti‑evolutionary propaganda has strengthened. The named reasons are linked to difficulties in teaching evolutionary doctrine in schools. Anti‑evolutionary propaganda often leaves school teachers and biologists distant from evolutionary doctrine at a loss. In this connection we begin a series of articles in which we will examine common anti‑evolutionary arguments. We hope our work will help correct the bias observed in contemporary popular literature. \"Refuting\" evolution materials are published in huge print runs. Thus one such book (1) has been issued in different languages in 27 000 000 copies! For most media the main criterion of a message’s value is its sensationalism. A message based on misunderstandings and disinformation that \"Darwin is refuted\" appears more attractive than information about real problems of evolutionary theory.\n\nIn our view, most anti‑evolutionary arguments concern rather well‑studied issues, for which, with consistent use of the scientific method, fairly definite conclusions can be reached.\n\nReligion and evolutionism\n\nAs is known, world religions differ significantly in their attitude toward science. Many streams of Buddhism are quite friendly to it. Considering the Christian point of view, it should be noted that modern science originated and reached its greatest flourishing precisely in Christian countries. Differences in the assessment of science for Christian confessions are linked to various conceptions of the origin of Sacred Scripture. The belief that the Bible was created directly by God is associated with its literalist interpretation. On the other hand, the view that the Bible was written by people who transmit their experience of perceiving God allows it to be seen as a document that appeared at a certain time and reflects a certain level of understanding of higher truths.\n\nFor the Catholic Church the greatest authority is Sacred Scripture interpreted through church tradition. This creates the possibility of modernizing church views. Pope Pius XII, in an encyclical dedicated to the origin of man, emphasized that the Church accepts the evolutionary origin of the human body (but not the soul). Pope John Paul II considers evolution proven by many independent studies. The Catholic priest Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, one of the outstanding evolutionists of the 20th century (1881–1955), spent his whole activity trying to bridge the gap between faith and knowledge. \"The Bible began to be regarded as the result of recording human religious experience, not guaranteed against errors, as well as a testimony of revelation that was understood not as a dictation by God of an inerrant text, but as the presence and activity of God in the life of Israel, the prophets and Christ\" (2, p. 87). From this perspective, the task of the biblical authors was not to recount scientific data on geological history or evolution, but to convey insights concerning the relationship of man with God and moral laws.\n\nThe Reformation was accompanied by a return to Sacred Scripture as the primary authority in matters of faith. For Luther the main point in Scripture was not its literal meaning but the significance of Christ. However, by the 17th century Protestant currents emerged that regarded the Bible as a source of infallible information on all questions, including scientific ones. The extreme expression of such a view resembles the Kabbalistic approach—a medieval Jewish movement that tried to decode God’s hidden plan by comparing the positions of letters in the biblical text (the Torah). Attempts to refute scientific data that do not correspond to biblical formulations are still found in Protestantism. The struggle against evolutionary theory is not the first step in this direction. For example, biblical formulations about the Sun’s movement across the sky forced literalists to reject the heliocentric model of the Solar System already at a time when, from a scientific standpoint, the issue had been definitively settled. Today the leaders of this activity are the \"Jehovah’s Witnesses\".\n\nCharacterizing the attitude of the Orthodox Church toward evolutionary doctrine is rather difficult. On the one hand, it shows little interest in scientific questions. In the person of some of its representatives (e.g., Alexander Men) Orthodoxy relates to evolutionism quite calmly, while other representatives strive to refute it, sometimes using arguments borrowed from the \"Jehovah’s Witnesses\" (3).\n\nRefuting criticism of evolutionary theory that, for example, cites Orthodox tradition, we will not make any judgments about Orthodoxy as such. The possibility of dialogue between science and religion, knowledge and faith does not imply the permissibility of their mixing. The intrusion of religious argumentation into scientific territory must be countered by scientific methods. At the same time, scientific analytical methods should not be applied to resolve matters of faith.\n\nAlongside individual confessions, occultism in all its diverse forms has also attacked evolutionism. Most often occultism adopts the idea of spiritual evolution, which has no relation to scientific concepts of biological evolution. The author is unaware of a systematic critique of scientific views from occultists. More frequently, extravagant reports appear about some astonishing “discovery” that overturns all existing ideas upside down. Later we will examine several examples of such sensationalism.\n\nAre evolutionism and creationism theories? Most often not only anti‑evolutionary agitation but also the arguments of evolution supporters begin roughly like this: \"There are two theories of the origin of species (life, man) — creation by God and emergence as a result of evolution. Let us consider them impartially.\" Bias appears already at this stage.\n\n[IMG_1]You are offered to choose between the \"theory of evolution\" and the \"theory of creation\"? You are being misled: evolution is a fact, whose mechanisms are described by many theories, and creation is a dogma! On the one hand, \"evolution\" is not a theory. The phenomenon of evolution itself, i.e., the historical change of organisms, species and ecosystems, is a fact repeatedly demonstrated in various fields of knowledge and practice (several quick examples: development of antibiotic resistance in pathogenic microorganisms; adaptation of weeds to agricultural techniques; changes in guiding fossils in sedimentary rocks...). The problem that has not yet found a complete solution is the description of evolutionary mechanisms, which is the subject of many theories. As shown below, the artificial mixing of these theories has become for opponents of evolutionism one of the ways to mislead readers.\n\nEven more important is what is not a theory: \"creation\". A theory is a tool of scientific cognition. It is based on facts. A mandatory requirement for scientific status is falsifiability, i.e., the possibility of refutation based on inconsistency with facts. The logic of scientific cognition is such that any theory is continuously potentially questioned, being tested against new facts (see more in 4, pp. 7‑8). The notion of the world’s creation by God is not a theory but a dogma, a matter of faith. For a Christian who reads Sacred Scripture literally, the question of accepting or rejecting Divine creation of the world (or, for example, the immaculate conception of the Savior) cannot stand as a scientific issue. If a person claims that he cannot accept a certain scientific position because it contradicts his faith, he occupies an honest stance that does not require debate. However, when confronting the high authority of science, certain apologetic positions may mimic scientific theories. In doing so, opponents of evolutionary doctrine imitate that, in solving concrete questions, they are ready to rely on experience and reason. Then, using one or another system of arguments, they try to demonstrate the inferiority of scientific truth and place Scripture in the place of science. These systems of arguments should be examined in more detail.\n\nEvolutionists against evolution? The idea of change in organisms over time is very old and dates back to antiquity. In the 18th‑early 19th centuries this idea existed as transformism, widely spread among biologists and philosophers. Although many bright guesses had been made before, they were not scientific. The first synthesis of evolutionary ideas and data from different fields of knowledge was Darwinism (5, p. 259). Charles Darwin’s main merit is not that he voiced some hypotheses, but that he created a fairly coherent evolutionary theory that explained a whole range of biological facts. As is known, Darwinism contributed to the progress of biology in the second half of the 19th century. However, after a period of victorious accumulation of facts clarified by Darwinism, the first evolutionary synthesis entered a phase when phenomena inexplicable by classical Darwinism came to the fore. The crisis of the first synthesis was overcome by the creation of the second synthesis—the synthetic theory of evolution (STE). This process began in the 1920s in the USSR with the works of S. S. Chetverikov and was mainly completed (after the defeat of advanced directions of Soviet biology) in England and the USA in the 1940s. The crisis of the first synthesis also gave rise to several other, less successful scientific directions—finalism, saltationism, neo‑Lamarckism and others, each composed of many theories and hypotheses.\n\nThe present time is a period of crisis of STE and, probably, the emergence of a third synthesis. What this synthesis will look like is a topic for an independent series of works. The author is convinced that, among other things, components of the new synthesis should include M. A. Shishkin’s epigenetic theory, V. A. Krasilov’s ecosystem theory, R. Goldschmidt’s neo‑saltationism, the concept of species monomorphism by C. S. Schwartz, Y. P. Altuho and H. L. Carson, N. Eldridge’s and S. Gould’s theory of punctuated equilibrium, and others.\n\n[IMG_2]\n\nRates of evolutionary change according to various views\n\nThus, modern evolutionism is a complex of many, mutually complementary and to some extent contradictory theories. This is where the strength, not the weakness, of scientific cognition manifests. However, many opponents of evolutionism try to exploit this circumstance. One favorite tactic of anti‑evolutionists is to quote scientists who claim that classical Darwinism is outdated or who dispute some modern concept. For example, it is quite natural that the creator of the theory of punctuated equilibrium, the \"renowned evolutionist and paleontologist Niles (Nils) Eldridge said: \"Passions flared as a result of doubt that undermined the former genteel self‑confidence that characterized evolutionary biology of recent years\" (1, p. 15). Opponents of evolutionism who cite Eldridge want to create the illusion that he doubts evolution. Of course, he does not! Eldridge refutes only the principle of gradualism, according to which evolution proceeds at a constant small rate!\n\nGlossary\n\nEvolutionism, evolutionary doctrine (from Lat. evolutio — unfolding) — doctrine about the laws of historical development of the organic world. It considers the emergence of life and all species (including humans) as the result of a natural evolutionary process.\n\nCreationism (from Lat. creatio — creation) — the assertion that life, individual species (or large taxa) and, especially, humans are not the result of natural development but were created by God in one or several acts of creation.\n\nTheory (from Gr. theoria — observation, experience) — a system of scientific views that generalizes a certain set of facts. One of the main criteria of a theory’s scientific nature is the possibility of its falsification if it does not correspond to facts.\n\nTransformism (from Lat. transformare — to change) — a system of views on changes and transformation of species.\n\nDarwinism (from the name C. Darwin) — a well‑known evolutionary theory proposed in the second half of the 19th century. Given the diversity of evolutionary views, it is undesirable to use this term to denote evolutionary doctrine in general.\n\nSTE, synthetic theory of evolution, “neo‑Darwinism” — a theory of evolution formed in the 1920s‑1940s that views evolution as a consequence of changes in gene frequencies in populations due to natural selection, genetic drift and other factors.\n\nNeo‑Lamarckism (from the name J. B. Lamarck) — a doctrine according to which the main evolutionary factor is the direct influence of the environment or (psycholamarckism) the striving of organisms toward perfection.\n\nSaltationism (from Lat. salto — jump) — the assertion that evolution proceeds by abrupt changes, large jumps. Modern forms (neo‑saltationism) are linked to the study of the role of chromosomal rearrangements, hybridization, developmental abnormalities, etc., in evolution.\n\nFinalism (from Lat. finalis — final) — the doctrine that evolution has a certain goal, aimed at achieving a particular state of the organic world.\n\nEpigenetic theory (from Gr. epi — after, above and genesis — origin) — a theory according to which evolution proceeds by restructuring mechanisms that ensure stable individual development.\n\nEcosystem theory — a doctrine according to which the rates and directions of species evolution are determined by the state of the ecosystems they belong to.\n\nConcept of species monomorphism — a provisional name for views according to which species integrity is maintained by the commonality of certain traits, the invariability of a certain part of the genome, etc.; during speciation this monomorphic part of species traits is restructured.\n\nPunctuated equilibrium theory — a theory proposed by American paleontologists according to which the history of a species consists of relatively long periods of stability alternating with relatively short periods of rapid evolutionary change.\n\nGradualism (from Lat. gradus — step) — the view that evolution proceeds by continuous accumulation of small changes.\n\nCited literature\n1. Life — how did it arise? By evolution or by creation? Watch Tower Bible & Tract Society of Pennsylvania, 1992. — 256 p.\n2. Barbur I. Religion and science: history and modernity. Kyiv: Biblical‑Theological Institute of St. Apostle Andrew, 2000. — 434 p.\n3. Hieromonk Seraphim (Rose). Orthodox view on evolution. Moscow: Publishing House of St. Vvedensky Monastery of the Optina Desert, 1997. — 96 p.\n4. Danilova O. V., Shabanov D. A., Braion A. V., Danilov S. A. Biology. Textbook for 10th‑grade general education institutions. Kharkiv: Torsing, 2001. — 256 p.\n5. Vorontsov N. N. Development of evolutionary ideas in biology. Kyiv: Publishing Dept. of UNTS of MSU, Progress‑Tradition, ABF, 1999. — 600 p.\n\nAdditional materials:\nIs the theory of evolution refuted? 2. Variability of scientific knowledge — drawback or advantage?\nIs the theory of evolution refuted? 3. Problem of transitional forms\nIs the theory of evolution refuted? 4. What is man?\nCreationism as a form of intellectual doublethink" }