Here There Be Dragons

It is not legitimate to define "evolution" as "that which produces classification." That's just another tautology without power to explain. Too much is assumed by "relationship." But this goes unrecognized (as is usually the case with presuppositions). Accordingly, objections to Darwin's theory are often met by indifference--those may be problems for the mechanism proposed by Darwin but they do not overthrow the concept of evolution, which is accepted as fact based on biological relationships. It constitutes a just-so story.

Stephen Jay Gould once observed, "Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts do not go away while scientists debate rival theories for explaining them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's, but apples did not suspend themselves in mid-air pending the outcome. And human beings evolved from ape-like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other, yet to be identified."

Gould's reasoning is fundamentally flawed, for he attempts to make a comparison between observable phenomena (apples falling from trees) and conclusions extrapolated from a concept (no one has ever witnessed ape-like creatures evolving into men or even identified a certain common ancestor). Gould drew the line between fact and theory at the wrong place. This is why so many claim evolution is a fact and natural selection the theory--they've composed their boundaries without really examining the map.