Rob Stadler. The Scientific Approach to Evolution. CreateSpace, 2016.

I have been telling students for years that the theory of evolution is not based on the scientific method. There are few experiments, if any, that can be repeated, and observations of one species changing into another have never been recorded. At best, there are changes within a species or a genus. Darwin spoke of pigeon fanciers, for example. Yes, breeders can come up with a dazzling array of varieties, but they are all still pigeons. For more on this perspective, see my review of The Beak of the Finch.

The Scientific Approach to Evolution is subtitled What They Don’t Teach You in Biology. The author is a medical engineer. He holds over 100 patents for medical devices. He understands rigorous science. None of those devices would have been approved if they had not been tested and found to be reliable.

He uses the example of standards for determining the efficacy of drugs. For any U.S. Government approval of a drug, the promoter must present hard evidence that the drug works for most people. The author notes six criteria. These are the same criteria most scientific publications use before publishing a new discovery. The exception to this seems to be when dealing with the subject of paleontology.

	Criteria of High-Confidence Science	Criteria of Low-Confidence Science
1	Repeatable	Not repeatable
2	Directly measurable and accurate results	Indirectly measured, extrapolated, or inaccurate results
3	Prospective, interventional study	Retrospective, observational study
4	Careful to avoid bias	Clear opportunities for bias
5	Careful to avoid assumptions	Many opportunities for assumptions
6	Sober judgment of results	Overstated confidence or scope of results

Using examples from some of the best known apologists for evolution, the author makes a very careful distinction. He first gives examples of low-confidence evidence for evolution followed by high-confidence evidence for evolution.

Without going into detail, basically his low-confidence examples really refute much of the evidence often used to support evolution. He notes for example, Criterion #1 above, that no one has been able to duplicate the conditions under which life either emerged or evolved. The argument that “conditions were different back then” begs the question and is quite vague. There are many other instances.

His high-confidence examples are some experiments dealing with generations of fruit flies and E. coli bacteria. Under certain environmental pressures certain individual fruit flies and E. coli have developed new traits. He notes two things: these experiments went on for years and in the case of the bacterium, covered 33,000 generations.

The Scientific Approach to Evolution notes that the changes did not come close to changing the species, just adapting them better to their environment, using interventional and prospective techniques. Many more mutations were unhealthful and caused individuals to die off or not reproduce. When we consider the much fewer generations that long-lived primates like chimpanzees and humans live in a time span, if we tried to extrapolate, we could get nowhere near what would be needed to have either ape or human evolve from a hypothetical common ancestor.

There is a lot more. If the reader read no more of this book than pages 152 and 153, he could see the main point. The book also notes that “separation of church and state” such as is the current legal status of the American Bill of Rights does not mean a denial of supernaturalism in the public schools.

Is there sufficient evidence for evolution? Not with a strict scientific method. The author emphasizes that microevolution (changes within a species or genus) is not the same as macroevolution (one organism changing into another). He notes that even hard-core creationists acknowledge microevolution. Macroevolution simply extrapolates (see #2 above) to a scope that really cannot be measured when we consider all the species and organisms just on our small planet.

Stadler does not really take sides. He explains both sides well. He just says, let’s not jump to vast conclusions with vague evidence. Let us be honest about what we actually know about evolution and the difference between microevolution and macroevolution. And let’s quit messing with kids’ minds.

The appendix which lists objections and responses to Stadler’s ideas is also helpful to the reader.

This reviewer makes one observation on one of the quotations in the book. The author begins by quoting well-known proponents of evolution. One is Richard Dawkins, who wrote:

Faith is the great cop-out, the great excuse to evade the need to think and evaluate evidence. Faith is the belief in spite of, even because of, the lack of evidence. (6)

Dawkins clearly ignores how the Bible defines faith. Hebrews 11:l (NKJV) says:

Now faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen.

Gee! Right there in the “creationist” book’s definition of faith is that word evidence. We all rely on evidence for things we have not seen. We could not survive otherwise. That is true in biblical faith as it is true in particle physics. It is even more so when speaking of an old earth and evolution. None of us saw cells emerge from an ancient protein brew. None of us alive saw Moses cross the Red Sea or Jesus rise from the dead. Believing in any one of those things is an act of faith. The question is not “Is faith a cop-out?” but “What conclusions can we draw from the historical evidence?”