Evolution as a Science of the Unrepeatable Past
Antagonists of the theory of evolution reject it on the basis
that it is unproveable. It is true that the theory of evolution cannot be
completely verified by direct observation of every part of the process. This is
true of all theories that provide explanations for processes that involve
immense periods of time. Peacocke comments: ‘the postulate of past biological
evolution cannot be falsified in the sense of Karl Popper,
by performing repeatable experiments whose outcomes are inconsistent with the
postulate [that evolution has occurred] - nor can most theories of geology and
of cosmology.’
Evolutionary biology, then, is akin to Big Bang cosmology,
and much of astrophysics, in that it offers models to explain processes which
are historically particular, and could never be duplicated in a laboratory. (In
the case of cosmology this is because the energies involved are too high; in
the case of evolution, because the timescales are too long.) Such sciences have
an especially broad scope for dialogue with descriptions of the Christian God.
The reason is that those descriptions tend to emphasise a Being who cannot be
put to experimental test, but who is everywhere creative, and active in every
part of history.
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link | Feedback | Contributed by: Dr. Christopher Southgate and Dr. Michael Robert Negus
Source: God, Humanity and the Cosmos (T&T Clark, 1999)
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