03/01/2011

"There is something slow and soothing and gradual about the word and even about the idea [of evolution]. As a matter of fact, it is not, touching these primary things, a very practical word or a very profitable idea. Nobody can imagine how nothing could turn into something. Nobody can get an inch nearer to it by explaining how something could turn into something else. It is really far more logical to start by saying 'In the beginning God created heaven and earth' even if you only mean 'In the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process.' For God is by its nature a name of mystery, and nobody ever supposed that man could imagine how a world was created any more than he could create one. But evolution really is mistaken for explanation. It has the fatal quality of leaving on many minds the impression that they do understand it and everything else; just as many of them live under a sort of illusion that they have read the Origin of Species." -Chesterton from "Everlasting Man"

Chesterton equivocates here the idea of evolution with that of the creation myth, and uses this supposition to a great extent following this statement to deride the efforts of non-Christian scientists and anthropologists. However, this equivocation is completely illogical. Evolution is not a theory of how "nothing could turn into something" at all, in fact it is almost explicit that such it not the case. If Chesterton wanted to compare two equivocal things, he should have compared the creation myth to the big bang theory. That is a theory that states not much more than "in the beginning some unthinkable power began some unthinkable process." The idea that the theory of evolution and all the valuable insight is has provided into the history of human evolution, is rendered invalid simply because it does not append to its structure any explanation of how the process it describes began--that idea--is not only ridiculous, but obviously an exercise in bigotry.