22 Evolution and the Fossil Record
to Believe in Creation, the “scientists” interviewed confess that they started out as fundamen-
talists, then wrestled with the evidence of evolution (usually not to any great depth), and
then came back to their original belief system. I know of absolutely no scientists who rejected
evolution on purely scientific evidence without the powerful force of religious fundamental-
ism operating behind the scenes. Instead, these creationist “scientists” all came to their con-
clusions because their religious beliefs demanded it, and afterward began to take seriously
the phony “evidence” against evolution that we’ll discuss in the rest of the book.
By contrast, true scientists must reject a cherished belief if enough evidence goes against
it. A classic example was the revolutionary idea of continental drift and plate tectonics,
which swept through geology in the 1950s and 1960s, and by 1970 was as well established
as any idea in science. The reactions of the geologic community say a lot about the sociology
of science. The “Old Guard” who had a lot of time and research invested in fixed continents
tended to be skeptical the longest, and many held out until the evidence became overwhelm-
ing. Eventually, they all had to concede their cherished beliefs were wrong. In contrast, the
first to accept the new ideas were the “Young Turks,” mostly younger scientists (especially
graduate students) who did not have emotional connections to the old ways of thinking and
were more willing to try out new concepts.
One of the bravest examples of this process was the famous geologist Marshall Kay, who
passed away just before I arrived at Columbia University to take classes from him. He had
spent his entire life explaining the complexities of geology based on the assumption that con-
tinents did not move; he even published a major book in 1951 that detailed the nature of the
thick sedimentary basins, assuming fixed continents. Yet when the evidence for plate tecton-
ics and continental drift became overwhelming in the 1960s, he wholeheartedly embraced
plate tectonics. Even though he was near retirement age, he began redoing his life’s work
using the new concepts. Such intellectual honesty and bravery is an admirable and rare
trait in humans. How many people do you know nearing retirement age who are willing to
redo their entire life’s work because they’ve realized that the assumptions they followed for
50 years were wrong?
Richard Dawkins (2006) points to another admirable example. In his words,
It does happen. I have previously told the story of a respected elder statesman of the
Zoology Department at Oxford when I was an undergraduate. For years he had pas-
sionately believed, and taught, that the Golgi apparatus (a microscopic feature of the
interior of cells) was not real: an artifact, an illusion. Every Monday afternoon it was
the custom for the whole department to listen to a research talk by a visiting lecturer.
One Monday, the visitor was an American cell biologist who presented completely
convincing evidence that the Golgi apparatus was real. At the end of the lecture, the
old man strode to the front of the hall, shook the American by the hand and said—
with passion—“My dear fellow, I wish to thank you. I have been wrong these fifteen
years.” We clapped our hands red. No fundamentalist would ever say that. In prac-
tice, not all scientists would. But all scientists pay lip service to it as an ideal—unlike,
say, politicians who would probably condemn it as flip-flopping. The memory of the
incident I have described still brings a lump to my throat.Contrast this with the way in which creationists operate. Those who have actually looked
closely at the overwhelming abundance of evidence for evolution have several choices: