A brief little segment from a harmless article on the impending cicada invasion provides a great opportunity to illustrate something that a lot of people miss about the theory of evolution.
First, here’s the quote from the article:
Scientists believe this long dormant stage evolved as a means to outlive predators, such as the circada killer wasp and praying mantis, whose own life cycle if a far shorter two years. (You can find the whole article here.)
Notice, this just-so story is not based on any evidence whatsoever. It is merely an assumption. In fact, there is not even a way to scientifically test the hypothesis that this is why cicadas have long life spans, much less a mechanism by which a blind random process could plan and develop such a thing. After all, the language “evolved as a means to” indicates intentionality toward an end. But this is by definition contrary to evolutionary theory, yet such language is inescapable when describing the clear design of things. A cursory reading of so-called evidences of evolution are rife with such depictions. I am constantly amazed at how such yarn-spinning is passed off as scientific.
Even more troubling, this is the kind of assumptive story that is also often used as evidence of evolution. Now walk through that with me:
- Exhibit A is explained by assuming evolution.
- Exhibit A is therefore also evidence for evolution.
This is, by definition, circular reasoning! Evolution cannot be assumed in order to prove evolution!
Even Wikipedia, which is nearly universally accepting to evolutionary theory let this little blurb sneak through (although not without an “unbalanced” flag) when dealing with the subject of evolutionary psychology and its “just-so” stories:
Critics assert that many hypotheses put forward to explain the adaptive nature of human behavioural traits are “Just-so stories“; neat adaptive explanations for the evolution of given traits that do not rest on any evidence beyond their own internal logic. They allege that evolutionary psychology can predict many, or even all, behaviours for a given situation, including contradictory ones. Therefore many human behaviours will always fit some hypotheses. Noam Chomsky noted:
- “You find that people cooperate, you say, ‘Yeah, that contributes to their genes’ perpetuating.’ You find that they fight, you say, ‘Sure, that’s obvious, because it means that their genes perpetuate and not somebody else’s. In fact, just about anything you find, you can make up some story for it.
Anyhow… thanks for letting me vent.
Here a few link to a few articles that flesh this out in a little more detail:
whatandwhy.wordpress.com 