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Elliot Sober's book on evolutionism and creationism examines the current debate about the differences between these theories and their attributes. In my essay, I want to compare evolution and creation through his perspective.
Evolution is the idea behind the existence of the differences between organisms and the processes of how they came to be through the observation of early forms of life throughout history. Creationism is the opposite, where the belief is that the universe and its life forms have come from the creation of God. Creationists/intelligent design theorists are people who stand behind the design argument, which in short claims that the explanation for the complex functions of the world and its features is due to the intelligent design by God. There are two types of evolutionism: theistic evolutionism, which believes God set evolutionary processes in motion and thus created adaptations in species that are complex, and atheistic evolutionism, which believes that there is no God but evolutionary processes alone lead to complex adaptations in species. Creationism is different from evolution because the belief here is that evolutionary processes cannot give rise to complex adaptations, but God directly interferes in nature to bring about processes. Creationists do not deny that evolution cannot explain some of the qualities we see in nature and that some changes in species might be due to natural selection, but they believe that new intricate adaptive qualities are created by God. Thus, the basic conflict between evolutionism and creationism is that evolutionism believes that mindless evolutionary events, including natural selection processes, are what create the complex adaptations we see, while creationism does not agree with this. Hence, evolution’s alternative hypothesis to the design argument is that mindless evolutionary processes like natural selection and descent with modification can create complex differences in organisms, and an intelligent designer, namely God, does not intervene in this process to create new complex adaptive features.
Sober uses the principle of common cause theory and arbitrary similarities among organisms as reasons that might explain evolutionary theory. Firstly, he talks about the principle of common cause, which he connects to the Tree of Life. The Tree of Life, according to biologists, simply states that all living things are related to one another, thus there is a common cause which is a common ancestor. The principle of common cause takes the correlation of two events and finds a common cause to answer why they might occur together. An arbitrary similarity between organisms is the genetic code, a gene that codes for a certain amino acid in a frog will code the same amino acid in a human. The genetic code does not have to be the same for the frog and human because there are many other codes that could work, it’s arbitrary, and if species were to arise independently, you would expect them to have different genetic codes. Thus, using the principle of common cause Sober states that the genetic code is the same for many organisms because we have a common ancestor, which favors evolutionary theory. Also, Sober talks about certain features found in organisms that are not useful, such as tail bones on humans or gill slits in fetuses. These useless features can be explained by sharing a common ancestor in the past where these traits may have been derived but are no longer needed for functioning.
A common issue with evolutionary theory is that it is currently unable to explain why certain animals reproduce asexually while others produce sexually, meaning there are features of organisms that are not explainable by common ancestors or by natural selection. If an evolutionist were to respond to the differences in reproduction simply by saying it occurs because of natural selection, we still do not understand why. However, Sober rejects the argument that evolution cannot explain reproductive differences by concluding that the lack of justification is scientific ignorance and only temporary. With this in mind, creationists might argue that God created reproduction without a concrete reason why as well. For example, like the objection to the problem of evil, they could argue that the ways of God are mysterious and we are unable to comprehend the intelligence or reasoning behind the creation. In comparison, Sober would argue that the creationist explanation is not scientifically testable so we cannot call this scientific ignorance temporary.
Be that as it may, Sober claims that there are certain things that will never be explained by science, and either we can accept the theistic explanation or no explanation at all. Sober makes the argument that when science in principle cannot explain a theory, we are not obligated to accept the theistic explanation, even if there is not a better one, because that would be committing the only game in town fallacy. Furthermore, Sober states that most versions of creationism piggyback on evolutionism, and the version that states that God has an impact on the traits that we see in organisms today is not testable, thus he discounts current versions of creationism. Consequently, if we were to accept that the observations we see are due to evolutionism solely because any other version of creationism does not make new and testable predictions, then we would also be committing the only game in town fallacy. The issue here is that when compared to evolutionism, a theory that involves a theistic explanation is criticized for not being testable, so it is overlooked, but even when science cannot explain a phenomenon and we are left with only an explanation that is theistic, Sober claims that it is not enough to accept it. For example, when asked a question that cannot be explained scientifically like “Why is there something rather than nothing?”, Sober states that accepting a hypothesis that claims God exists is the answer is not good enough.
To conclude, evolution and creationism differ in the fact that the former suggests mindless evolutionary processes occur without the intervention of God, and the latter states that God directly intervenes and comes up with novel adaptive traits. Sober gave some evidence in favour of evolutionary theory such as the principle of the common cause theory and arbitrary similarities among organisms. However, he claims that there is not a testable or significantly different creationism theory thus far, accepting this theory can be committing the only game in town fallacy. Likewise, Sober states that in a case where there are only theistic explanations, we are not obligated to accept this theory under the same fallacy. Lastly, theories like creationism are not often going to be testable, but that does not mean they should be disregarded, even when no other explanation persists, as doing so will exclude most theistic possibilities from the conversation.
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