In the same way Isaac Newton discovered the physical laws of motion and gravity, Charles Darwin attempted to discover the natural laws of evolution in The Origin of Species. Natural selection became Darwin’s proposed natural law, as expressed in the title−The Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection.

Today, Darwin’s theory of evolution is promoted as a “fact” that accepted by “all scientists”. Evolution as a “fact”, not theory, is center stage in the realm of politics. The media hammered presidential candidate Rick Perry for stating that evolution is “just a theory”. Ironically, though, the facts of evolution continue to elude even the vast majority of the most educated in Western society.

In an article published in BioEssays (2011) entitled “Why is it so difficult to accept Darwin’s theory of evolution?” Jacques Dubochet, professor of Ecology and Evolution at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland, was amazed to discover that less than 20% of attendees to a celebration of Darwin’s 200th birthday could “[w]rite down in a few words, the essential elements of Darwin’s theory of evolution”.

“Most educated people”, Dubochet concluded, “do not understand Darwin’s theory of evolution.” Underscoring the reasons against understanding evolution, he “states that life evolves without a goal and in the absence of finality is shocking for most people because it clashes with their idea of the meaning of life.” This is a philosophical problem for evolutionists.

The fact is “most educated people” are not brain dead to the chicken or the egg problem. As Dubochet notes, “how can it [natural selection] account for an eye or a wing since they must first exist before selection can take place?” This is an empirical problem for evolutionists.

“The idea of biological design is so obvious that,” Dubochet laments, “it constantly appears in discussions on biological matters and even in the scientific literature.” The intuitive influence of design in nature is pervasive even within the realm of evolutionary scientists. Intuitively, Dubochet concludes, “[t]he principle of Darwin’s theory of evolution is much more difficult to grasp”. Evolutionary biologists still intuitively slide into a world of hypocrisy.

The “in biology, nothing makes sense except in the light of the theory of evolution” dogma once espoused by Ukrainian evolutionary biologist, Theodosius Dobzhansky, in 1942 has now become the sound of discordant rhetoric.

James Le Fanu, physician, medical journalist, and author of the award winning The Rise and Fall of Modern Medicine, reminds us in the article “Inconsistent Nature: The Enigma of Life’s Stupendous Prodigality” that “[t]he purpose of such inconsistencies, if there is one, must be to remind us that Nature is too profound to be readily accessible to the finite human mind. And while many aspects of the diverse being and ways of life are more or less well described, hardly anything is really understood.”

Dubochet’s discovery on the educated reflects the actual state of evolution in 2011: a consistent theory of evolution simply does not exist.   This realization has been highlighted by the 2008 Altenberg Summit coordinated by Massimo Pigliucci of Stony Brook University and Gerd B Műller of the University of Vienna.

The purpose of the Altenberg Summit was to develop a new comprehensive theory of evolution following the demise of the Modern Synthesis theory of evolution once championed by Dobzhansky earlier in the mid-twentieth century.

The sixteen evolutionary scientists attending the summit contributed to the book “Evolution, the Extended Synthesis” published by The MIT Press. Contrary to the goal of achieving a new single unifying and comprehensive theory of evolution, sixteen different theories of evolution emerged.  In the last chapter of the book, Alan C. Love of the University of Minnesota concluded “that a fully unified view of evolutionary processes may be out of reach.”

With at least sixteen different popular theories of evolution at play today, the fact that nearly 20% of Dubochet Darwin’s 200th birthday celebration attendees came close to any single theory registers as a near phenomenon.

In 1975, Jacques Monad, an early Modern Synthesis advocate noted that “a curious aspect if the theory of evolution is that everyone thinks he understands it. I mean philosophers, social scientists, and so on. While in fact very few people understand it, actually, as it stands, even as it stood when Darwin expressed it, and even as we now may be able to understand it in biology.”

The words of French geneticist Jerome Lejeune encapsulates the current theory of evolution and should resolve Dubochet dilemma: “[t]here is no theory of evolution”. Italian geneticist Giuseppe Sermonti agrees, “[e]volution is really more of a paradigm or methodology than a theory.”

Evolution is only a “fact” as a philosophy−but, not as a natural law. The scientific basis of evolution has remained unchanged for more than 150 years. Dubochet and evolutionary scientists could regain credibility by stating the essential elements of Darwin’s own words in a letter Asa Gray in 1857: “I am quite conscious that my speculations run quite beyond the bounds of true science.”