The views that Darwin advanced tell us nothing concrete about the origin of anything. And if science sheds no light on the problem of the origin of life, it cannot shed light on the origin of species, which depends on the origin of life. The irrelevance of the term “origin” in Darwin’s famous text is reflected in his recapitulation and concluding remarks. It is also noteworthy that the book’s index contains the terms “natural selection” and “varieties” but not “origin”.
Darwin’s overall deployment of the word “origin” is reminiscent of such usage by immigration or police officers in finding out people’s country of origin. Indeed, his use of the word is plagued with so much uncertainty that it is simply misleading. Little wonder, then, that physicist H.S. Lipson remarks:
- Darwin’s book — The Origin of Species — I find quite unsatisfactory: it says nothing about the origin of species; it is written very tentatively, with a special chapter on “Difficulties on Theory”; and it includes a great deal of discussion on why evidence for natural selection does not exist in the fossil record. Darwin, I think, has been ill-served by the strength of his supporters.
- An article that I published in Physics Bulletin (May 1980, p. 138) stating my views, has shown me that many people have doubts like my own.
- It seems to me that, in our present state of knowledge, creation is the only answer — but not the crude creation envisaged in Genesis.
- As a scientist, I am not happy with these ideas. But I find it distasteful for scientists to reject a theory because it does not fit in with their preconceived ideas.
In accepting evolution as fact, how many biologists pause to reflect that science is built upon theories that have been proved by experiment to be correct, or remember that the theory of animal evolution has never been thus proved? … The fact of evolution is the backbone of biology, and biology thus in the peculiar position of being a science founded on an unproved theory–is it then a science or a faith? Belief in the theory of evolution is thus exactly parallel to belief in special creation–both are concepts which believers know to be true but neither, up to the present, has been capable of proof.

