It is not without significance that the Darwin debate has been called 'one endless argument', the phrase being Darwin's. The publication of Darwin's Origin precipitated a debate that has never resolved itself, and which was soon joined in the next generation after Darwin by the various religious groups that now seem to cast the conflict as one between science and religion. That polarity is misleading since the real source of the the dialectical immortality of the question would seem rather to lie in a polarity of science with itself, or science with scientism: perhaps science needs a better theory, not a religious replacement. And this suggests that we are in the presence of some kind of 'antinomy' of the type explored by the philosopher Kant in his classic 'critique of reason', where the section on the 'dialectic of illusion' explored 'debates' of a particular kind, a series of them in fact, one of the most classic being the so-called Third Antinomy: Indeed, each antinomy is metaphorically depicted as a debate between a thesis and antithesis, as if, perhaps, both had unshakable proofs in their favor. This situation precipitates a crisis of reason with itself. The Darwin debate has all the symptoms of this situation, and Kant's further warning, or suggestion, that the issues of divinity, soul, and free will would prove intractable is more directly suggestive of the 'syndrome of Reason' that haunts Darwinian discussions. We see that the 'divinity' issue directly stalks the design challenge to Darwin, that the question of the biological definition of an organism as a totality fairly represents the (now conceptually exhausted terminology of) 'soul', and that the issue of free will is the eminence grise behind all discussions of the 'evolution of ethics'. Perhaps then we confront a considerable contraband of metaphysics behind the much vaunted claim of scientists to a 'science of evolution'. If so we might wish to 'cancel the debate' on the grounds of a demonstration of metaphysical limits. However, the problem arises as well from the proof of impossibility as possibility, so it could be 'no such luck', as we watch in some concern that we can neither resolve nor terminate 'one endless argument'. 

It can at least be helpful to see the question of evolution in the light of the issues of the classic critiques of metaphysics, and ask ourselves if the historical course (evolution!) of science in relation to scientism is destined to pass Ithaca, else forever wander through the phantoms of thought.