Posted on 07/22/2005 4:46:53 AM PDT by Nicholas Conradin
In a recent TCS essay ("Darwin and Design: The Evolution of a Flawed Debate") I attacked what I regarded as the excesses of both sides of the evolution-creationism debate. There were angry responses in the mail and the blogosphere from both the creationist and the evolution sides, which pleased me, since there were clearly oxen on both sides that felt they had been gored, and caps in my piece that were felt to have, uncomfortably, fit. The angry evolutionists were especially interesting, as they often wound up admitting implicitly that their real agenda was atheism -- while denying that there was any social policy message in that agenda.
In the essay I did state flatly that the theory of evolution had been proved. I wanted it to be clear where I stood. Much of the mail I received protested about that statement. I hold to it, and hold to it not as my own opinion, but as a fact, like the existence of Australia, which is not my opinion but a fact. But I do know that there are many who sincerely, and given their range of knowledge, rationally, do not believe in the theory of evolution.
By the theory of evolution I mean the origination of new species from common ancestral forms by an iterated process of genetic mutation, natural selection, and hereditary transmission, whereby the frequencies of newly altered, repeated, and old genes and introns in a given lineage can cross ecological, structural, and behavioral thresholds that radically separate one species from another. In one sense, this can be summed up in a syllogism, which must be true if we make the basic and essential act of faith that logic itself is true: survivors survive. Given enough time, variation among the genes of individuals, variations in habitat in space and time, the process by which genes translate into proteins, tissues, and organs, and the thresholds that define biological species, all of which can be observationally verified, the principle of the "survivors survive" syllogism must bring about a huge branching of different kinds of life.
The above summary statement of the theory will not convince opponents, who will be able to pick philosophical holes in it (which holes have been sewn up by countless scientists and philosophers in the last 150 years). But what opponents of evolution do not perhaps realize is what they are up against in terms of sheer human and civilizational achievement based on the evolutionary paradigm. This is not a proof of evolution, any more than the four-thousand year history of the survival of the Jewish people is a proof of Judaism or the worldwide congregation of Christianity is a proof of that religion; but it is an indication of the kind of scholarship that would be needed to refute it.
There are at least 50 major journals in the academic field of biology. All accept without question the theory of evolution as I outlined it above. They are not attempting even to prove the theory, any more than math journals attempt to prove that the sum of the internal angles of a plane triangle is 180 degrees, or engineering journals revisit the existence of gravity. But they would be nonsense without the theory of evolution, just as engineering would be nonsense without gravity. Each of those journals is published about four times a year; several of them have been in existence for over a hundred years. Each journal contains at least ten articles of about 2-20 pages, and each of those articles represents several months' or years' work by a team of trained biologists whose most compelling material and moral interest would be to disprove the work of all their predecessors and to make an immortal name by doing so. The work of the biological teams is required to be backed up by exhaustive experiment and observation, together with exact statistical analysis of the results. There is a continuous process of search through all these articles by trained reviewers looking for discrepancies among them and demanding new experimental work to resolve them. Since every one of these articles relies on the consistency and truth of the theory of evolution, every one of them adds implicitly to the veracity of the theory. By my calculation, then, opponents of evolution must find a way of matching and disproving, experiment by experiment, observation by observation, and calculation by calculation, at least two million pages of closely reasoned scientific text, representing roughly two million man-years of expert research and perhaps trillions of dollars of training, salaries, equipment, and infrastructure.
But the task of the opponent does not end here. For biology is not the only field for which the theory of evolution is an essential foundation. Geology, physical anthropology, agricultural science, environmental science, much of chemistry, some areas of physics (e.g. protein folding) and even disciplines such as climatology and oceanography (which rely on the evolutionary history of the planet in its calculations about the composition of the atmosphere and oceans), are at least partially founded on evolution. Most important of all for our immediate welfare, medicine is almost impossible as a research discipline without evolutionary theory. So perhaps the opponent must also throw in another 4 million pages, four million man-years, and ten trillion dollars -- and be prepared to swallow the billions of human deaths that might follow the abandonment of the foundations of medical, mining, environmental, agricultural, and climatological knowledge.
If what is at stake is a proposition in the theology of biblical interpretation that is not shared by a large minority or possibly a majority of Christians and Jews, perhaps it might be more prudent to check the accuracy of the theology, which, after all, is a human creation even if scripture itself is conceded to be divinely inspired. Might not God's intentions be revealed better in the actual history and process of nature, his creative expression, than in the discrepancies we might hope to find in its self-consistency and coherent development?
In other words, regardless how you rant and rave, you are wrong.
There are, however, strong philosophical arguments that good and evil exist exterior to God and can be objectively understood regardless of the whims of the Almighty.
Typical creationist. When confronted with the fact that their arguments are either dishonest of flawed, they insult the person pointing out the facts and run off like a coward.
PS. In case you want more clarification on the distinction between God's action of creating the man and the parent's action of conceiving that same man, then the difference is that God (as you've described him) knows the murderous outcome of his action in its totality. The murderer's parents do not. Moreover, God (as you've described him) retains full control over the actions of the murderous man and so obviously chooses to permit the murder to take place. The murderer's parents have no such control over their son's destiny.
Mein Gott. What has become of America?
Ah, the evil "conspiracy of millions of scientists to damn our souls to Hell."
Not a conspiracy at all. Just peer pressure. The same effect is seen in, for instance, the 'global warming' nonsense.
Well, I don't disagree with that, but I am restricting myself to the logical implications of Mike's explicit premises. If you have an alternative reasoning then I'd be interested to see it. I've provided one myself, but it seems to have been rejected.
Rather pathetic that the only argument they have against the scientific consesus on evolution is allegations of some kind of conspiracy.
Exodus?
The six day creation story is in Genesis 1, not Exodus.
Good point. The global warming crap is a great example of why there is so much mistrust in scientists.
God did, indeed, create the freedom to make evil choices. It's my belief that one who fills infinity with creations ultimately must create an infinity of variety. It's not that the Creator is any more evil than the author of a good book, villains included. Heavan would be meaningless if it wasn't exclusive. Hell would be meaningless if it wasn't a punishment.
Of course, what I just wrote means nothing to someone who needs proof that God is real. For those who need that, look at Job 26.7. There's one strong clue. FRegards....
"You keep using that word.
I do not think it means what you think it means."
Opposed. If Ichneumon were to write a book, he'd be too busy to post here.
And what have the "creationist peer reviewers" done about "Brad Harrub, Ph.D."?
Research has to be replicated. That's why real scientific papers include the assumptions, methods, processes and conclusions in such a manner that anyone in the field can duplicate the research (and hopefully duplicate the results). Every researcher in every field wants to be the one who comes up with that Earth-shattering discovery that will elevate his name to the pantheon of greats and assure him a comfortable place in not only history but his field as well. Finding evidence of God's handiwork would more than suffice.
However, here we run into a slight problem. How does one test for God? What kind of evidence would one look for? The IDers think they've got that one, but they seem to forget they are trying to prove a negative (something could NOT have come about without intervention). This is a losing proposition from the get-go because one can never prove a negative. IDers have yet to come up with a test for the positive evidence of intelligent intervention -- because they cannot define what they are looking for.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.