This post is a response to the comment made by surfer fish on my
Philsophy or Atheism? post. I have read the National Geographic article linked there. Following is my reaction to it, and certain parts of it. Relative portions of the article have been italicized.
Why are there so many antievolutionists? Scriptural literalism can only be part of the answer. The American public certainly includes a large segment of scriptural literalists—but not that large, not 44 percent. Creationist proselytizers and political activists, working hard to interfere with the teaching of evolutionary biology in public schools, are another part. Honest confusion and ignorance, among millions of adult Americans, must be still another. Many people have never taken a biology course that dealt with evolution nor read a book in which the theory was lucidly explained. Sure, we've all heard of Charles Darwin, and of a vague, somber notion about struggle and survival that sometimes goes by the catchall label "Darwinism." But the main sources of information from which most Americans have drawn their awareness of this subject, it seems, are haphazard ones at best: cultural osmosis, newspaper and magazine references, half-baked nature documentaries on the tube, and hearsay.
This is an example of what I’m talking about. The scientific media assumes that one who considers creationism in any form, and doesn’t simply accept the theory of evolution as complete and an explanation for everything, must be full of “honest confusion and ignorance”, or “never taken a biology course that dealt with evolution nor read a book in which the theory was lucidly explained.” What about the people who have taken biology courses, and looking at the hard evidence, feel evolution as it is taught is at best incomplete. It does not explain how DNA drastically changes from one species to another, adding entirely new sets of chromosomes. It doesn’t come close to explaining how life began in the first place. The out-dated theory of spontaneous generation has proven to be false, but now, an evolutionary and atheistic theory of life just ignores this problem.
Beyond the theory of evolution itself, if you dive deep into science; studying the intricacies of how DNA works (which is still without explanation for the baffling mechanisms that drive it), exploring the careful balance of chemical processes that each cell undergoes, or looking for the mechanism behind basic learning. Many scientists have found the same thing; a mysterious unexplained something that seems to drive the life force. I have heard about scientists becoming rather religious after studying biology, and sometimes those who study astronomy come across the same kind of dead-ends that leads to an inductive, reasoned proof of the existence of some kind of divine force. I don’t have the time to do a lot of research right now, but I did find this one example of a very smart scientist who believes in creation,
http://www.rae.org/Damadian.htmlI think I heard that Dr Watson, of nobel-earning DNA fame, is also a creationist but I’m not so sure about that one. When I have time I’ll look for more definite examples.
Evolution is both a beautiful concept and an important one, more crucial nowadays to human welfare, to medical science, and to our understanding of the world than ever before.
I’m not sure what the writer means here saying that evolution is crucial to human welfare. It is rumored that Stalin, Hitler, and Mao were influenced to kill millions based on Darwins theory, concluding that God doesn’t exist, and that man is but an animal. There is more evidence with Stalin than the others but I think that the forced atheism in communist countries is good evidence for a link with human atrocities.
So much for one part of the evolutionary process, known as anagenesis, during which a single species is transformed. But there's also a second part, known as speciation. Genetic changes sometimes accumulate within an isolated segment of a species, but not throughout the whole, as that isolated population adapts to its local conditions. Gradually it goes its own way, seizing a new ecological niche. At a certain point it becomes irreversibly distinct—that is, so different that its members can't interbreed with the rest. Two species now exist where formerly there was one. Darwin called that splitting-and-specializing phenomenon the "principle of divergence." It was an important part of his theory, explaining the overall diversity of life as well as the adaptation of individual species….
Why should "closely allied" species inhabit neighboring patches of habitat? And why should similar habitat on different continents be occupied by species that aren't so closely allied? "We see in these facts some deep organic bond, prevailing throughout space and time," Darwin wrote. "This bond, on my theory, is simply inheritance." Similar species occur nearby in space because they have descended from common ancestors.
Do we know that these species are indeed independent species or are they simply variations of the same species? Wolves, dogs, foxes and coyotes were once thought to be different species but we now know that interbreeding amongst them, whilst uncommon, can produce offspring. It is an assumption that two different-looking mocking birds cannot interbreed (a necessary piece of information for defining an animal as a species). It was at once thought that Neanderthals were a different species of man, but we now know that interbreeding could and probably did occur between Neanderthals and early humans. Anagenesis or micro-evolution is proven beyond a doubt with current scientific observations. We can even manipulate this process through careful selection and breeding as in the case of horses and dogs. We have seen moths change the color of their wings to adapt to changing conditions. We have even seen humans adapting to different levels of solar radiation by changing the color of their skin over as few as 50 generations. By definition, speciation has not been proven in any observable case of evolution. We can selectively breed a wolf until it looks like an entirely different kind of animal, say a poodle or a Chihuahua, but it can still interbreed with other wolves. Speciation specifically involves an inability to breed. If the sperm of a goat is introduced to the egg of an cow, nothing will happen. This is the strict definition of speciation and the jump of one species to another that cannot interbreed with the previous species has never happened in any scientific observation. It has only been theorized that this is what accounts for a fish becoming an amphibian, or a rodent becoming a dog. Many of these changes involve the addition of entirely new sets of chromosomes, genes looking nothing like the supposed parent animal.
The article also talked quite a bit about the horses being found in varying degrees of horseness. Again, this is only anagenisis. It has not been proven that these animals cannot interbreed. And it shows nothing that proves that a “jump” has been made to develop a new kind of animal. Even the famous walking mud fish, proclaimed by many to be an evolutionary marvel of a creature between a fish and an amphibian. The mudfish actually fills a perfect niche by itself, surviving in both drought and wet seasons, it has no need to become a frog.
I'm not saying that since there are problems with the theory of evolution and unanswered questions that we should just throw it out. I do believe that it should be taught in schools. I also believe that creationism should be taught in schools as another theory that humanity has come up with. You can even say that there is no science behind it, only faith in some old writings. That at least leaves the door open for parents to discuss the matter with their children. As it is, parents who believe in creation are left looking really stupid when their kid goes to science class, and it undermines their efforts. I'm not saying that I believe in the Genesis story, I don't, but it has just as many crazy jumps in logic as the evolution theory does. I think scientists should look for something else to explain the diversity of the species, not excluding divine influence. I don't think we have an answer yet.
What is scary about the theory of evolution is that for the first time people blindly had some reason to find an answer for life that didn't include a creator. Suddenly, people didn't have anyone to answer to for their evil doings. This has a lot to do with degradation of society, just look at all the sex and violence! I'm not claiming that church has all the answers or anything, but I think people who don't think things through just assume that Darwin's theory explained everything, and God has been proven to not exist.
Surfer fish makes a point in the comment to my post that he has made before: that one must choose between deductive reasoning and a belief system. I have to argue that many belief systems can be arrived at through deductive reasoning, and if you properly use observation and deductive reasoning, you would find evolution to be incomplete. Evolution is just another belief system that has been widely endorsed by the popular science media.
While I would probably have to write a whole book to logically explain the existence of divine phenomenon, the point is that I could, and I have read logic that leads me to believe in the divine. I have spent much time contemplating the existence of a God. And I don’t just trip stupidly along the faithful path to come to my conclusions. While certain religions of the world do influence some of my thinking, I weigh that influence with my observations and experience. Doesn’t that sound like logical deduction to you?
