ON September 30, 1986, The New York Times published an article by a New York University professor, Irving Kristol. His contention is that if evolution were taught in the public schools as the theory it is rather than as the fact it isn’t, there would not be the controversy that now rages between evolution and creationism. Kristol stated: “There is also little doubt that it is this pseudoscientific dogmatism that has provoked the current religious reaction.”

“Though this theory is usually taught as an established scientific truth,” Kristol said, “it is nothing of the sort. It has too many lacunae [gaps]. Geological evidence does not provide us with the spectrum of intermediate species we would expect. Moreover, laboratory experiments reveal how close to impossible it is for one species to evolve into another, even allowing for selective breeding and some genetic mutation. . . . The gradual transformation of the population of one species into another is a biological hypothesis, not a biological fact.”

The article touched a raw nerve in Harvard professor Stephen Jay Gould, a fervent defender of evolution as a fact, not just a theory. His rebuttal of Kristol’s article was published in a popularized science magazine, Discover, January 1987 issue. It revealed the very dogmatism Kristol deplored.

In his protesting essay, Gould repeated a dozen times his assertion that evolution is a fact. A few examples: Darwin established “the fact of evolution.” “The fact of evolution is as well established as anything in science (as secure as the revolution of the earth around the sun).” By the time Darwin died, “nearly all thinking people came to accept the fact of evolution.” “Evolution is as well established as any scientific fact (I shall give the reasons in a moment).” “The fact of evolution rests upon copious data that fall, roughly, into three great classes.”

For the first of these “three great classes” of “copious data,” Gould cites as “direct evidence” for evolution the small-scale changes within species of moths, fruit flies, and bacteria. But such variations within species are irrelevant to evolution. Evolution’s problem is to change one species into another species. Gould extols Theodosius Dobzhansky as “the greatest evolutionist of our century,” but it is Dobzhansky himself who dismisses Gould’s argument above as irrelevant.

Concerning the fruit flies of Gould’s argument, Dobzhansky says mutations “usually show deterioration, breakdown, or disappearance of some organs. . . . Many mutations are, in fact, lethal to their possessors. Mutants which equal the normal fly in vigor are a minority, and mutants that would make a major improvement of the normal organization in the normal environments are unknown.”

Science, the official magazine for the American Association for the Advancement of Science, also spiked Gould’s argument: “Species do indeed have a capacity to undergo minor modifications in the physical and other characteristics, but this is limited and with a longer perspective it is reflected in an oscillation about a mean [a position about midway between extremes].” In both plants and animals, variations within a species will oscillate or move about like pellets shaken in a glass jar​—the variations are held within the boundaries of the species just as the pellets are confined within the jar. Just as the Bible’s account of creation says, a plant or an animal may vary, yet it is restricted to reproduce “according to its kind.”​—Genesis 1:12, 21, 24, 25.

For the second of his three classes, Gould offers big mutations: “We have direct evidence for large-scale changes, based upon sequences in the fossil record.” By saying the changes were large scale, one species changing into another in a few big jumps, he escapes the need for the nonexistent intermediate fossils. But in going from small changes to big jumps, he goes from the frying pan into the fire.

Kristol comments on this: “We just don’t know of any such ‘quantum jumps’ that create new species, since most genetic mutations work against the survival of the individual.” And Gould’s “greatest evolutionist of our century,” Theodosius Dobzhansky, agrees with Kristol. His statement about many mutations being lethal is especially true of large-scale, quantum-jump mutations; also significant are his words that ‘mutations that make big improvements are unknown.’ Lacking evidence for his large-scale changes, Gould falls back on the old timeworn dodge of evolutionists: “Our fossil record is so imperfect.”

Gould does, however, offer as “direct evidence for large-scale changes” what he calls one of the “superb examples,” namely, “human evolution in Africa.” But evolutionists generally acknowledge that this field is far from superb. It is a hotbed of controversy, a battleground over teeth and bits of bone that evolutionists with vivid imaginations turn into hairy, stooped-over, beetle-browed ape-men. Once again, Dobzhansky is not supportive of Gould: “Even this relatively recent history [from ape to man] is shot through with uncertainties; authorities are often at odds, both about fundamentals and about details.”

Irving Kristol in his article in The New York Times concludes: “The current teaching of evolution in our public schools does indeed have an ideological bias against religious belief​—teaching as ‘fact’ what is only hypothesis.