Cornelius Hunter finds himself amused at the insistence of the Darwinians that their theory is a fact as well-established as the fact of gravity. I myself have read this claim on occasion and always thought it odd. Darwinism may be true, in the sense that it's certainly possible that things actually transpired in the way Darwinists claim, but the idea is hardly testable. I.e. the insistence that natural processes are sufficient to explain the diversity of life and all the appurtenances of living things is not amenable to falsification.
You can test the existence of gravity a hundred times every day before breakfast but try to imagine testing the truth of the claim that nothing but physical processes generated and diversified life. A Nobel Prize to whoever comes up with a way to do it.
Anyway, Hunter has this to say:
[E]volution has an ontological status that transcends the scientific details. There is the fact of evolution, and then there is the theory of evolution. This fact-theory dichotomy is a key apologetic in evolutionary thought. Notice that it decouples evolution from the evidence and makes the theory immune to the facts of biology. You can point out all the evidential problems you want--they don't affect the facthood of evolution.
But if the facts of biology can't hurt evolution, then they can't help either. How then do we know evolution is a fact? If evolution is not an empirical fact, and we cannot infer it from the evidence without substantial speculation and heroics, then why are evolutionists so sure?
The answer, of course, is that the only live alternative to evolution, or, more precisely Darwinian evolution, is intelligent design and that's a metaphysically repellant option to anyone who has committed his or her life to a naturalistic worldview. It's like waving a crucifix in front of a vampire (no offense intended to my Darwinian readers). People who have invested their lives in a worldview find it just as wrenching to relieve themselves of it as does an addict who tries to kick his addiction "cold turkey." Darwinism is to a naturalist what crack is to an addict. Take it away and their world is thrown into unbearable turmoil and pain. Darwinism must be true, it has to be true. The alternative is just unthinkable.
RLC