When logic and truth are not the same thing

I recently gave an assignment to students in which they must come up with any explanations they can think of for various biogeographic patterns. I tell them to consider evolutionary and non evolutionary explanations. Inevitably, the only explanations people can come up with involve evolution in one form or another, or just that God wanted it that way for obscure reasons (occasionally other explanations are offered but can be eliminated by closer examination of the patterns).

Recently a student offered a variety of evolutionary explanations, but then added a paragraph at the end, making it clear she did not accept evolutionary explanations. First, she concedes that perhaps small changes occur by evolution, allowed by or supervised by a creator (in other words, microevolution is OK). Then she adds the following sentences:

A creator would be infinitely more wise than any human, and it may be that we cannot always come up with human explanations for everything. Evolution might appear to be the logical explanation for many occurrences, but logic and truth might not always be the same thing.

I was struck by such an open argument from ignorance. The student admits that logic and evidence favors evolution. She has no alternative explanations for it, nor do others. But nonetheless, evolution should not be accepted, because you never know what we don't know. There is not even a reason given to suspect it is not true, although presumably it is faith.

This shows the problem we have in teaching evolution. It is possible to give an airtight case of convincing evidence for evolution, but that is not enough to persuade. No counter argument is even needed, other than "logic and truth are not the same thing", whatever that means. I suppose it means that something completely illogical can be true.

This is an argument used for many other fringe beliefs, even those that do not depend on God. One of the most overused quotes is from Hamlet, "There is more on heaven and earth, Horatio, than are dreamt of in your philosophy." People feel they have Shakespeare's approval to dismiss an overwhelming consensus, because there is much that we don't know. We can show that UFO's could not possibly change direction that rapidly, could not travel those distances, could not pass without leaving a trace, etc. However, the aliens know much more than is dreamt of in our philosophy, and they can do anything. We don't need to actually explain how. The known physical laws of the universe just show the limits of our knowledge.

Perhaps a point worth making to someone who admits the evidence supports a view yet still thinks it is not true, is to point out that even if they are right, the view is still useful. Whether evolution is true or not, there is no doubt it is very good at making predictions about everything from the fossil record to similarities of genomes. If in fact it was a creator that made these patterns in the rocks and DNA for his mysterious purposes, evolution manages to be a good predictor of the creator's intentions, for whatever reason. So studying and teaching evolution and the patterns it describes is still useful and necessary for understanding life, at least until we get a better predictor of the creator's mind. Perhaps the ultimate reality really is forever beyond human comprehension. But that doesn't mean we should give up entirely and reject whatever tools help us to make at least a little sense of reality.