Evolution

What is the current position concerning evolution?

Colin Patterson is the senior Palaeontologist at the British Museum of Natural History, a museum which houses some 60 million fossil specimens, the largest collection in the world.  As such he is in one of the the best places, if not the best place, to comment on modern evolutionary thinking.  His thoughts and impressions are therefore very significant.

In an address at the American Museum of Natural History he said

"For over 20 years I thought I was working on evolution....[But] there was not one thing that I knew about it...So for the last few weeks I've tried putting a simple question to various people and groups of people.  Question is 'Can you tell me anything you know about evolution, any one thing, any one thing that is true?'  I tried that question on the geology staff of the Field Museum of Natural History and the only answer I got was silence.  I tried it on the members of the Evolutionary Morphology Seminar in the University of Chicago, a very prestigious body of evolutionists, and all I got there was silence for a long time and eventually one person said, 'Yes, I do know one thing - it ought not to be taught in high school'...During the past few years....you have experienced a shift from evolution as knowledge to evolution as faith...Evolution not only conveys no knowledge, but seems somehow to convey anti-knowledge." (Patterson 1981)

This address raised much controversy, but Phillip Johnson, who discussed Patterson's views with him for several hours in London in 1988, says that Patterson did not retract any of the skeptical statements he had made, but does believe that evolution is the only conceivable explanation for certain features of the 'natural' world. (Johnson 1993)

Patterson is an evolutionist, and does not believe in a God, and he does have to find explanations for phenomena.  This does not mean that his evolutionary explanations are the only ones possible for 'certain features', or even the best, but that they are the only ones that he can accept.  Creationists can find more acceptable explanations needing fewer mental contortions.  The prerequisite is that one believes in a God, of course.

References:
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Johnson, P., Darwin on Trial, Downers Grove, IL, InterVarsity Press, (1993) 173.
Patterson, C., Address at the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, (5 November 1981) unpublished transcript.