A critical response to Gould's "Evolution as Fact and Theory

¶ … Evolution as Fact and Theory" was written in the beginning of the 1980's, 1981, and serves as a great example of how scientists or in this case, evolutionary biologists perceived the role of creationism. As Gould said in his own words: "The rise of creationism is politics, pure and simple; it represents one issue (and by no means the major concern) of the resurgent evangelical right" (Gould, "Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" 1994"). The essay itself was to argue the validity of modern creationists arguments. He states creationists have not presented a single new argument or fact. This is where the weakness in their arguments lie.

The two general counts of modern creationists as it pertains to their arguments is that they compose upon a colloquial speech misinterpretation of the word "theory" to transfer the untruthful imprint that evolutionists are concealing the terrible main principals of their structure. This is not the case. Evolutionists merely project what has been hypothesized, to some level tested, and executed. Creationists based their theory on what has been to some accounts factiously created whereas evolutionists base their theories on actual history, widely recognized and observed occurrences and so forth.

Second, creationists as observed through the essay, misappropriate a prevalent viewpoint of science to contend that they are conduct themselves scientifically in criticizing evolution. However the similar philosophy validates that their own certainty is not science, and that "scientific creationism" is a meaningless and self-contradictory phrase, an example of what Orwell called "newspeak" (Gould, "Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" 1994"). This is definitely succinct point because for instance, some creationist theories revolve around Bible-based observations like the Great Flood forming the Ice Age. Not only is that incorrect, it makes no sense.

Many of their creationist theories make no sense and are based on evidence, "evidence" that is inconclusive and most likely fictitious accounts. Simply because a work of literature or a written account is over 2,000 years old, it does not make it a fact or truth. Another silly theory from creationists is that humans existed alongside dinosaurs. While mammals, as proven through fossil records, did exist alongside dinosaurs, humans, especially what is perceived as human being today, did not come to exist until only 200,000 years ago.

Because creationists use dated and stagnant information based on a book that cannot truly be updated, their theories will always remain the same with little deviation. Scientific theories, theories based on the process of the scientific method do constantly change, evolve, and get modified because new evidence usually leads to a different conclusion. It's the constant process of innovation, rechecking, and modification that makes the theories of no creationists seem more plausible than the one dimensional, narrowed focal point theories of creationists.

Life on Earth evolved gradually beginning with one primitive species -- perhaps a self-replicating molecule -- that lived more than 3.5 billion years ago; it then branched out over time, throwing off many new and diverse species; and the mechanism for most (but not all) of evolutionary change is natural selection (Coyne, 2009, p. 5).

The quote above does a great job of explaining in a succinct way what could be the beginning of evolution of life on earth. Instead of creationists basing their claims on something that they do not for certain is scientific or even fact, it's important to see what information has already been unearthed to truly attempt to devise a theory to explain what is not truly known.

People interpret things differently all the times. This occurs in science frequently leading to fairly tense debates. Everyone has a varied and often subjective view as seen through Gould: "Yet Lamarck firmly advocated a taxonomic ordering of organisms by the conventional scheme of increasing perfection in organization. (Gould, 2002, p. 14). When looking for instance at theory and its interpretation, it's important to see which places think of what as it pertains to theory. For example, in the American dialect, "theory" frequently signifies "imperfect fact" -- part of a hierarchy of confidence running downhill from fact to theory to hypothesis to guess. Thus creationists can (and do) argue: evolution is "only" a theory, and intense debate now rages about many aspects of the theory" (Gould, "Stephen Jay Gould, "Evolution as Fact and Theory" 1994"). People perceive evolution as a theory, an imperfect fact, so everyone feels there is room for debate, welcoming off the wall theories such as humans existing around the same time as dinosaurs and the Great Flood bringing the ice age.