Evolution Can't Be Proved

Texas Education Commissioner W. N. Kirby has implicitly proposed that all high school biology textbooks used in the public schools in Texas should be required to claim not only that all human beings who have ever lived on the earth (but are now dead) but also that all who are now living owe their ultimate origin to evolution (by purely naturalistic forces) from non-living, non-intelligent, non-purposive matter (for example, from rocks and dirt). This is the basic affirmation of evolutionism.

Thus, Mr. Kirby implies that there are hundreds of high school teachers in Texas who not only know that the doctrine of evolution is true but know how to prove that such is the case.

I deny that there is even one teacher in Texas who knows how to set forth a sound argument that proves that every human being who has ever lived owes his ultimate origin to non-living matter by purely naturalistic forces. I deny that there is any person anywhere who can prove such. If so, let him step forth and set out the sound argument that proves it.

While we await the proof requested above, it would be very revealing if some devotee of evolutionism would answer this simple question: “Which was first on Earth: (1) a woman or (2) a human baby?”

Let us imagine a high school classroom in which a student asks the teacher “Which was first on Earth: a woman or a human baby?” How would the teacher answer but stay in harmony with both the doctrine of evolution and the facts that every intelligent person knows? What if the teacher answered: “A woman was on Earth before any human baby.” Let us further suppose that the student replied, “Sir, your answer implies that there was once a woman on Earth who was never a human baby! Thus, I would like to ask you to explain—with all of your biological expertise—just how she came into being.”

How would the teacher answer? He might say something such as, “I don’t know exactly how it happened. I don’t know how to prove it. I just know that it was by evolution and without any action by God!”

But suppose the student then replied, “But the new law demands that you present the evidences that proves that evolution is true and that creationism (the doctrine that God created the first man and the first woman) is false. So, let us hear the proof that you have. Will you try to prove that she was born as a full-grown woman of some non-human thing (such as an ape)? Or, if you reject that view, will you say that the first woman was born of some female; ape (or some other non-human thing) and—after living for a time as some non-human thing—was suddenly transformed into a human being, either as a woman or as a girl who matured into a woman? If this is your answer, what is your sound argument to prove it?”

What could the teacher say? Perhaps he would say, “Well, it is now clear to me that a human baby was on Earth before any woman was.” The student might reply, “But your answer implies that there was once a human baby which did not have a human mother. Just how did that first baby come into existence?” Will the teacher claim that first human baby had a non-human mother? If so, what biological evidence warrants such an answer? Or, rejecting that view, would he claim that some existent which was no human was simply transformed into a human baby?

It is surely the case that all honest teachers will admit that it would be very foolish for this state to pass a law that implies that all teachers of high school biology (even if they are not well trained in logical procedures) must try to prove (1) that evolutionism is true and, thus, (2) that God did not create the first man and first woman. If the law is passed, may every teacher of biology be prepared to answer the question, “Which was first on Earth: (1) a woman or (2) a human baby?” And, may it be noted, that all of this must occur in a situation in which teachers are forbidden to teach that it is even possible that human beings owe their ultimate origin to the creative power of God.

I sincerely hope, if it becomes the law that the case for evolutionism must be presented, that the case for creation also must be presented. The problem of the origin of human beings is not strictly scientific; it is philosophical-revelational.

Thomas B. Warren
(1920-2000)

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 (Originally published March 1989, Dallas Morning News, in response to a notice from the Texas State Board of Education on guidelines for biology textbooks that require texts to discuss the topic of evolution and to refer to the work of Charles Darwin in order to be approved for use in Texas public schools.)