There’s a common idea that science shows appearances are often wrong. It is said science shows that earth is not flat, the sun doesn’t go around the earth, and that life is not designed, all despite appearances to the contrary. I think this is a mistaken view of what science has done.
Surveyors work with a flat earth model that works just fine for most purposes, and the sun’s motion relative to the earth can be described geocentrically. Newton’s laws work fine for many purposes despite their being superseded by general relativity.
What happens is that theories are extrapolated (or interpolated) too far and they break down. A theory is superseded by one with a larger scope but the old theory may be valid within a restricted domain. What Niels Bohr called the correspondence principle is the idea that a new theory should reproduce the results of older well-established theories in those domains where the old theories work.
So the problem is over-extrapolation (or over-interpolation). Too often people make overly broad claims for a theory. But until the limits of a theory are found, it may not be clear what the scope of the theory really is.
What is the scope of Darwinism? As far as I can tell its scope is “life” as a single category, without differentiation of kinds organically or temporally. This is a very narrow perspective, one that does not support the grandiose claims made for it. And it is not helpful in understanding different kinds of life, particularly human life, or the age of the earth.
The Bible uses the language of appearances. This is perfectly acceptable. The Bible also gives God’s perspective, which is not a theory but something that theories can aspire to. This is essentially what theologies do.
Nature is not out to trick us with deceptive appearances. Old theories that worked still work. All theories are limited.
November 2013