A Hands-on Science Activity that Demonstrates the Atheism and Nihilism of Evolution

Author: John Woodmorappe

Subject: Biology

New Educational Activities for Home Schooling Science: A Hands-on Science Activity that Demonstrates the Atheism and Nihilism of Evolution

Evolution as understood by its ablest advocates is an inherently atheistic explanation. The "whole point" of the theory, as zoologist Richard Dawkins writes, is that "it provided a non-miraculous account of the existence of complex adaptations" [1]. A theory of evolution that has to be helped along by a Creator isn't a theory of evolution worth defending. At least that is what Darwin thought. Writing to his lifelong friend and confidant Charles Lyell (who worried that God would have to take a probably permanent vacation if Darwin's account were accepted), Darwin argued:

If I were convinced that I required such additions to the theory of natural selection, I would reject it as rubbish . . . I would give nothing for the theory of natural selection, if it requires miraculous additions at any one stage of descent [2].

Yet many people, perhaps even the majority, hold to the view that "God made animals to evolve towards a goal" or "evolution is God's way of creating"--not grasping that this conception of the theory is not what is taught or accepted by nearly all evolutionary biologists, for whom putting a Creator in the story is adding a superfluous element at best. But this teleological (goal-directed) view of evolution hangs on.

Surveying this puzzle, Illinois high school science teacher Jan Peczkis writes:

The misconception that evolution works towards a pre-determined goal is held by many high school and college students. This is understandable because evolution is an abstract and generally non-observable phenomenon, and living things do seem well-designed for their environments. [3]

Concerned that his students misunderstood the nature of the evolutionary process, Peczkis devised an exercise to illustrate the evolutionary thesis that living things are the outcome of accumulated accidents. According to neo-Darwinian theory, living things appear, and are the way they are, solely because of accidental changes in the genes conferring a survival advantage to the living things possessing them. There's simply no role for a Creator in the story (or none that we can discern).

In Peczkis's classroom exercise, students make imaginary "organisms" on graph paper(consult the reference). The shape of these "organisms""is determined by instructionspicked randomly from a bag. Each random instruction represents a random mutation in an organism. Every student has a different design because every student randomly picks different instructions.

The teacher then plays the role of blind nature, and chooses some shape to represent the feature favored by natural selection. For instance, Peczkis chose the most nearly circular shape of the "organism" as the factor allowing the "organism" to "survive and reproduce." The most nearly circular shape "reproduced" in a photocopier. Copies were then given back to all the students.

This "organism," now in its "second generation," was again modified by randomly chosen instructions. After being collected by the teacher, it was again subjected to selection based on circular shape. The whole process was repeated for a total of five "generations." In the end, students could see that more circular "organisms" acquired their shapes from accumulated accidents, not as an outcome of any purpose or from the will of an external being.

A bright student will notice of course that (among other problems) the first "organisms" are "spontaneously generated" from a random mix of instructions. Since the exercise only works if there are "organisms" to select, it must be assumed that randomly assembled shapes bear some relation to the great complexity of organisms--which is rather a leap. Thus if pushed the analogy collapses, since evolution needs to explain above all the first origin of organisms, something left untouched by the simulation.

But after the atheistic leap (i.e., that spontaneous generation of organisms could occur), random variation and selection take over, and a supervising Creator is unnecessary. Exercises of this sort can help students understand the real character of evolutionary theory. They may be less willing to try to paste God onto a theory that has no need for Him--and more willing to develop powerful theories of creation that explain the data better than any evolutionary competitor.