Truth is the first casualty of war

We’re an adversarial society. We have a feel for a contest: Wimbledon, footy finals, Test Match bat against ball. We’re a little suspicious about this win on a technicality. There was no knock-out punch. Something has been dodged. The hollowness of the victory echoes in the public’s perception. In evolution, there is no greater scientific theory championed more by academics while appearing more doubtful to everyone else.

One person who did publish his peer reviewed article, “The Origin of Biological Information and the Higher Taxonomic Categories” in one of these “accredited” journals, Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington, was Stephen C. Meyer. Though concluding that the sudden appearance of new life forms in the fossil record could best be attributed to intelligent design, it passed through the “paper curtain” which usually filters such a radical suggestion. The incident became famous for the back peddling undertaken by the watchdogs of correct thinking. The Biological Society’s governing council quickly admitted they’d made a mistake. “Intelligent design will not be addressed in future issues of the journal.”

Questions were asked. How could a paper like that slip through? Was it an apparition? Who unlocked the closet door? Did anyone see Granny’s bones back there?

Of course, Western thought was not always so coy to consider the possibility of a higher intelligence. For scientific pioneers such as Isaac Newton, it was integrated into their thinking. “The most beautiful system of the sun, planet and comets, could only proceed from the counsel and domination of an intelligent and powerful Being.” Such an evaluation wouldn’t go down well with today’s scientific journals. Yet we daren’t annul the Principia Mathmatica on philosophical prejudice alone.

Were those of Newton’s era more open and honest than us today? I don’t know. But we must allow ourselves to admit that for science or any other part of society to flourish it must be free to face the tough questions, and be allowed to follow evidence wherever it leads.

Meyer later commented on the lack of openness in current scientific thought. “We don’t know what caused life to arise. Did it arise by purely undirected process, or did it arise by some kind of intelligent guidance or design? And the rules of science are being applied to actually foreclose one of the two possible answers to that very fundamental and important question.”

David Berlinski has a PhD from Princeton University and has taught at several others, and so understands academic cut and thrust. His opinion is that the appearance of living forms on the earth is, to our increasing knowledge, as inexplicable as if foam from the sea washed up and assembled itself into the Parthenon. He is not religious. He does not claim that God necessarily exists. Yet he makes this assessment: “The facts [on Darwin’s theory] are what they have always been: They are unforthcoming. And the theory is what it always was: It is unpersuasive. Among evolutionary biologists, these matters are well known. In the privacy of the Susan B. Anthony faculty lounge, they often tell one another with relief that it is a very good thing the public has no idea what the research literature really suggests. ‘Darwin?’ a Nobel laureate in biology once remarked to me over his bifocals. ‘That’s just the party line.’”

The other Charles in this story, Governor Charles Latrobe’s family motto was taken for the motto on the crest of Latrobe University: “Whoever seeks finds”. Yet those who seek truth will encounter the road blocks, detours, and “Wrong Way Go Back” signs. Experience suggests that many are just diversionary.

Some avenues of enquiry are declared off limits; with some honest questions denounced as unanswerable, invalid, or heaven forbid, unimportant. But these won’t go away until they are properly addressed.