What’s the problem with unguided evolution?

By JERRY COYNE - WHY EVOLUTION IS TRUE
Added: Tue, 17 Jul 2012 15:50:57 UTC

Not to beat a dead horse (I think it’s still alive), but I vehemently oppose those evolutionists and accommodationists who won’t affirm that evolution is unguided and purposeless (in the sense of not being directed by a higher intelligence or teleological force). For to the best of our knowledge evolution, like all natural processes, is purposeless and unguided. After all, scientists have no problem saying that the melting of glaciers, the movement of tectonic plates, or the decay of atoms are processes that are unguided and purposeless.

So when you hear people who accept evolution nevertheless refusing to admit that it’s unguided and purposeless, you know you’re dealing with someone who is osculating the rump of faith. For it’s only evolution that elicits these disclaimers, and it’s only evolution that requires such disclaimers to satisfy religious believers.

But evolution is, as far as we can tell, purposeless and unguided. There seems to be no direction, mutations are random, and we haven’t detected a teleological force or agent that pushes it in one direction. And it’s important to realize this: the great importance of Darwin’s theory of natural selection is that an unguided, purposeless process can nevertheless produce animals and plants that are exquisitely adapted to their environment. That’s why it’s called natural selection, not supernatural selection or simply selection.

Theistic evolution, then, is supernaturalism, and admitting its possibility denies everything we know about how evolution works. It waters down science with superstition. It should be no crime—in fact, it should be required—for teachers to tell student that natural selection is apparently a purposeless and unguided process (I use the word “apparently” because we’re not 100% sure, but really, do we need to tell physics students that the decay of an atom is “apparently” purposeless?).