Posted on 11/05/2005 6:34:38 AM PST by billorites
Darwin's On the Origin of Species was published 150 years ago, but evolution by natural selection is still under attack from those wedded to a human-centred or theistic world view. Edward O. Wilson, who was raised a creationist, ponders why this should be, and whether science and religion can ever be reconciled
IT IS surpassingly strange that half of Americans recently polled (2004) not only do not believe in evolution by natural selection but do not believe in evolution at all. Americans are certainly capable of belief, and with rock-like conviction if it originates in religious dogma. In evidence is the 60 per cent that accept the prophecies of the Bible's Book of Revelation as truth, and in yet more evidence is the weight that faith-based positions hold in political life. Most of the religious right opposes the teaching of evolution in public schools, either by an outright ban on the subject or, at the least, by insisting that it be treated as "only a theory" rather than a "fact".
Yet biologists are unanimous in concluding that evolution is a fact. The evidence they and thousands of others have adduced over 150 years falls together in intricate and interlocking detail. The multitudinous examples range from the small changes in DNA sequences observed as they occur in real time to finely graded sequences within larger evolutionary changes in the fossil record. Further, on the basis of comparably strong evidence, natural selection grows ever stronger as the prevailing explanation of evolution.
Many who accept the fact of evolution cannot, however, on religious grounds, accept the operation of blind chance and the absence of divine purpose implicit in natural selection. They support the alternative explanation of intelligent design. The reasoning they offer is not based on evidence but on the lack of it. The formulation of intelligent design is a default argument advanced in support of a non sequitur. It is in essence the following: there are some phenomena that have not yet been explained and that (most importantly) the critics personally cannot imagine being explained; therefore there must be a supernatural designer at work. The designer is seldom specified, but in the canon of intelligent design it is most certainly not Satan and his angels, nor any god or gods conspicuously different from those accepted in the believer's faith.
Flipping the scientific argument upside down, the intelligent designers join the strict creationists (who insist that no evolution ever occurred) by arguing that scientists resist the supernatural theory because it is counter to their own personal secular beliefs. This may have a kernel of truth; everybody suffers from some amount of bias. But in this case bias is easily overcome. The critics forget how the reward system in science works. Any researcher who can prove the existence of intelligent design within the accepted framework of science will make history and achieve eternal fame. They will prove at last that science and religious dogma are compatible. Even a combined Nobel prize and Templeton prize (the latter designed to encourage the search for just such harmony) would fall short as proper recognition. Every scientist would like to accomplish such a epoch-making advance. But no one has even come close, because unfortunately there is no evidence, no theory and no criteria for proof that even marginally might pass for science.
In all of the history of science, only one other disparity of comparable magnitude to evolution has occurred between a scientific event and the impact it has had on the public mind. This was the discovery by Copernicus that Earth, and therefore humanity, is not the centre of the universe, and the universe is not a closed spherical bubble. Copernicus delayed publication of his master work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres until the year of his death (1543). For his extension of the idea, Bruno was burned at the stake, and for its documentation Galileo was shown the instruments of torture and remained under house arrest for the remainder of his life.
Today we live in a less barbaric age, but an otherwise comparable disjunction between science and religion still roils the public mind. Why does such intense and pervasive resistance to evolution continue 150 years after the publication of On The Origin of Species, and in the teeth of the overwhelming accumulated evidence favouring it? The answer is simply that the Darwinian revolution, even more than the Copernican revolution, challenges the prehistoric and still-regnant self-image of humanity. Evolution by natural selection, to be as concise as possible, has changed everything.
In the more than slightly schizophrenic circumstances of the present era, global culture is divided into three opposing images of the human condition. The dominant one, exemplified by the creation myths of the Abrahamic monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam - sees humanity as a creation of God. He brought us into being and He guides us still as father, judge and friend. We interpret His will from sacred scriptures and the wisdom of ecclesiastical authorities.
The second world view is that of political behaviourism. Still beloved by the now rapidly fading Marxist-Leninist states, it says that the brain is largely a blank state devoid of any inborn inscription beyond reflexes and primitive bodily urges. As a consequence, the mind originates almost wholly as a product of learning, and it is the product of a culture that itself evolves by historical contingency. Because there is no biologically based "human nature", people can be moulded to the best possible political and economic system, namely communism. In practical politics, this belief has been repeatedly tested and, after economic collapses and tens of millions of deaths in a dozen dysfunctional states, is generally deemed a failure.
Both of these world views, God-centred religion and atheistic communism, are opposed by a third and in some ways more radical world view, scientific humanism. Still held by only a tiny minority of the world's population, it considers humanity to be a biological species that evolved over millions of years in a biological world, acquiring unprecedented intelligence yet still guided by complex inherited emotions and biased channels of learning. Human nature exists, and it was self-assembled. Having arisen by evolution during the far simpler conditions in which humanity lived during more than 99 per cent of its existence, it forms the behavioural part of what, in The Descent of Man, Darwin called "the indelible stamp of [our] lowly origin".
So, will science and religion find common ground, or at least agree to divide the fundamentals into mutually exclusive domains? A great many well-meaning scholars believe that such rapprochement is both possible and desirable. A few disagree, and I am one of them. I think Darwin would have held to the same position. The battle line is, as it has ever been, in biology. The inexorable growth of this science continues to widen, not to close, the tectonic gap between science and faithbased religion.
Rapprochement may be neither possible nor desirable. There is something deep in religious belief that divides people and amplifies societal conflict. The toxic mix of religion and tribalism has become so dangerous as to justify taking seriously the alternative view, that humanism based on science is the effective antidote, the light and the way at last placed before us.
Religions continue both to render their special services and to exact their heavy costs. Can scientific humanism do as well or better, at a lower cost? Surely that ranks as one of the great unanswered questions of philosophy. It is the noble yet troubling legacy that Charles Darwin left us.
Edward O. Wilson is a professor of entomology at Harvard University. He has written 20 books and received many awards, including two Pulitzer prizes and the 1976 National Medal of Science. This is an extract of the afterword to From So Simple a Beginning: Darwin's four great books, published next week by W.W. Norton.
A theroy, I like it.
Then why is there a New Testament?
The germ theory of disease is just a theory also, and yet there's no sticker insisting that it be treated as such. Why not? Why single out evolution? Is it because the germ theory of disease does not offend someone's religious doctrine?
Like wise, intelligent design, small id, is a fact.
Not in the sense that is implicated in biology, not by a long shot. If it were a "fact" in the sense that the Discovery Institute would like it to be, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Such as..?
IF evolution is indeed a fact, how do I go about evolving eyes in the back of my head so no one can sneak up on me from behind?
I suppose evolution is possible, but then, so is producing a complete Encyclopedia Britanica by repeated explosions in a print shop.
Start early. (By early I mean a few hundred million years.)
"Once again, to all those who believe in Creationism and reject Evolution: How do you explain dinosaurs?
(The question that never gets answered!)"
Howdy there canuck_conservative;
Here are some references from the Bible, most of which refer to dinosaurs. The word "Dinosaur" was not invented until 1841 so we won't find it in the Bible.
Dragons, dragon and Behemoth all refer to dinosaurs. Note the specific description of Behemoth. Leviathan is probably an extinct sea creature such as a KRONOSAURUS or LIOPLEURODON.
References to Dragons (probably Dinosaurs).
Deuteronomy 32:33 their wine is the poison of dragons, and the cruel venom of asps.
Job 30:29 I am a brother to dragons, and a companion to owls.
Psalms 44:19 Though thou hast sore broken us in the place of dragons, and covered us with the shadow of death.
Psalms 74:13 Thou didst divide the sea by thy strength: thou brakest the heads of the dragons in the waters.
Psalms 148:7 ¶ Praise the LORD from the earth, ye dragons, and all deeps:
Isaiah 13:22 And the wild beasts of the islands shall cry in their desolate houses, and dragons in their pleasant palaces: and her time is near to come, and her days shall not be prolonged.
Isaiah 34:13 And thorns shall come up in her palaces, nettles and brambles in the fortresses thereof: and it shall be an habitation of dragons, and a court for owls.
Isaiah 35:7 And the parched ground shall become a pool, and the thirsty land springs of water: in the habitation of dragons, where each lay, shall be grass with reeds and rushes.
Isaiah 43:20 The beast of the field shall honour me, the dragons and the owls: because I give waters in the wilderness, and rivers in the desert, to give drink to my people, my chosen.
Jeremiah 9:11 And I will make Jerusalem heaps, and a den of dragons; and I will make the cities of Judah desolate, without an inhabitant.
Jeremiah 10:22 Behold, the noise of the bruit is come, and a great commotion out of the north country, to make the cities of Judah desolate, and a den of dragons.
Jeremiah 14:6 And the wild did stand in the high places, they snuffed up the wind like dragons; their eyes did fail, because there was no grass.
Jeremiah 49:33 And Hazor shall be a dwelling for dragons, and a desolation for ever: there shall no man abide there, nor any son of man dwell in it.
Jeremiah 51:37 And Babylon shall become heaps, a dwelling place for dragons, an astonishment, and an hissing, without an inhabitant.
Micah 1:8 ¶ Therefore I will wail and howl, I will go stripped and : I will make a wailing like the dragons, and mourning as the owls.
Malachi 1:3 And I hated Esau, and laid his mountains and his heritage waste for the dragons of the wilderness.
References to Dragon (probably Dinosaurs) I have excluded all the references in the Revelation since it refers Satan.
Nehemiah 2:13 And I went out by night by the gate of the valley, even before the dragon well, and to the dung port, and viewed the walls of Jerusalem, which were broken down, and the gates thereof were consumed with fire.
Psalms 91:13 Thou shalt tread upon the lion and adder: the young lion and the dragon shalt thou trample under feet.
Isaiah 27:1 ¶ In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
Isaiah 51:9 ¶ Awake, awake, put on strength, O arm of the LORD; awake, as in the ancient days, in the generations of old. Art thou not it that hath cut Rahab, and wounded the dragon?
Jeremiah 51:34 Nebuchadrezzar the king of Babylon hath devoured me, he hath crushed me, he hath made me an empty vessel, he hath swallowed me up like a dragon, he hath filled his belly with my delicates, he hath cast me out.
References to Behemoth (probably a four legged Dinosaur)
Job 40:15-24 Behold now behemoth, which I made with thee; he eateth grass as an ox. Lo now, his strength is in his loins, and his force is in the navel of his belly. He moveth his tail like a cedar: the sinews of his stones are wrapped together. His bones are as strong pieces of brass; his bones are like bars of iron. He is the chief of the ways of God: he that made him can make his sword to approach unto him. Surely the mountains bring him forth food, where all the beasts of the field play. He lieth under the shady trees, in the covert of the reed, and fens. The shady trees cover him with their shadow; the willows of the brook compass him about. Behold, he drinketh up a river, and hasteth not: he trusteth that he can draw up Jordan into his mouth. He taketh it with his eyes: his nose pierceth through snares. (or Will any take him in his sight, or, bore his nose with a gin?}
References to Leviathan. (Leviathan is probably an extinct sea creature such as a KRONOSAURUS or LIOPLEURODON.)
Job 41:1-10 Canst thou draw out leviathan with an hook? or his tongue with a cord which thou lettest down? Canst thou put an hook into his nose? or bore his jaw through with a thorn? Will he make many supplications unto thee? will he speak soft words unto thee? Will he make a covenant with thee? wilt thou take him for a servant for ever? Wilt thou play with him as with a bird? or wilt thou bind him for thy maidens? Shall the companions make a banquet of him? shall they part him among the merchants? Canst thou fill his skin with barbed irons? or his head with fish spears? Lay thine hand upon him, remember the battle, do no more. Behold, the hope of him is in vain: shall not one be cast down even at the sight of him? None is so fierce that dare stir him up: who then is able to stand before me?
Psalms 74:14 Thou brakest the heads of leviathan in pieces, and gavest him to be meat to the people inhabiting the wilderness.
Psalms 104:26 There go the ships: there is that leviathan, whom thou hast made to play therein.
Isaiah 27:1 In that day the LORD with his sore and great and strong sword shall punish leviathan the piercing serpent, even leviathan that crooked serpent; and he shall slay the dragon that is in the sea.
http://www.sixdaycreation.com/facts/dinosaurs/nov2001.html
A Creationist Home School expedition in Colorado has made one of the greatest Dinosaur fossil finds of all time. God has give the Creation science establishment an incredible series of finds that will shake evolution to it's very foundations.
http://www.sixdaycreation.com/facts/dinosaurs/nov2002.html
First, let's get something straight. I believe God created the Universe and all that's in it. So, you might want to argue from that basis. I'm not a big ID guy. But since you asked what a local school board does in some town in Pennsylvania is not any of my concern, nor should it be any of yours unless you vote for that local school board.
Not in the sense that is implicated in biology, not by a long shot. If it were a "fact" in the sense that the Discovery Institute would like it to be, we wouldn't be having this discussion.
Exactly in the sense that it is implicated in biology. Like evolution, intelligent design affects changes in allele frequency.
"How do you explain dinosaurs?"
Not much to explain, they were created animals who are now extinct.
OK, fair enough, "dragons" is open to interpretation - let me try another tack, using good old common sense:
If we're all descended from one father / mother, why do we all look different?
I mean our planet's various races have different skin color, different facial features, different hair characteristics - how did that happen? Doesn't evolution perfectly and logically explain such a variety?
I'm fairly sure that neither of us have our right to free expression predicated on whether or not we can vote to directly influence the outcome. You don't care, and that's fine. You apparently think nobody outside Anytown should care either, and that's fine too. But most folks have a funny habit of deciding for themselves what they do and don't care about, what they will and won't speak out about, regardless of which zip code they happen to be in.
Like evolution, intelligent design affects changes in allele frequency.
Great, now all you have to do to establish the "fact" of ID in the DI sense is present evidence of some nonhuman designer working over structures or organisms heretofore thought to be naturalistic in origin. Be sure to show your work ;)
Those "classic" racial traits are adaptations to local environmental conditions. They have little to do with descent. Descent can be tracked by DNA, fingerprint patterns, etc.
Well, I don't know about most folks but I do know that most conservatives would look askance at the federalizing of local school board issues. But more to the point nobody told you to keep your opinions to yourself so be opinionated but stop whining about 'speaking out'.
Great, now all you have to do to establish the "fact" of ID in the DI sense is present evidence of some nonhuman designer working over structures or organisms heretofore thought to be naturalistic in origin. Be sure to show your work ;)
I don't have to do any such thing. All I have to do is support my assertions. You're stuck on ID. I already told you that I'm a creationist, in the true sense of the word, not an ID'er.
Evolution and intelligent design are both facts in biology. Both are mechanisms for changing allele frequency. What the implications are for that I have no idea nor is it a big deal in my world view. Now, just because it's not a big deal in my world view doesn't necessitate the same for you. By all means, speak out.
Well, I don't know about most folks but I do know that most conservatives would look askance at the federalizing of local school board issues. But more to the point nobody told you to keep your opinions to yourself so be opinionated but stop whining about 'speaking out'.
Great, now all you have to do to establish the "fact" of ID in the DI sense is present evidence of some nonhuman designer working over structures or organisms heretofore thought to be naturalistic in origin. Be sure to show your work ;)
I don't have to do any such thing. All I have to do is support my assertions. You're stuck on ID. I already told you that I'm a creationist, in the true sense of the word, not an ID'er.
Evolution and intelligent design are both facts in biology. Both are mechanisms for changing allele frequency. What the implications are for that I have no idea nor is it a big deal in my world view. Now, just because it's not a big deal in my world view doesn't necessitate the same for you. By all means, speak out.
"In all of the history of science, only one other disparity of comparable magnitude to evolution has occurred between a scientific event and the impact it has had on the public mind. This was the discovery by Copernicus that Earth, and therefore humanity, is not the centre of the universe, and the universe is not a closed spherical bubble. Copernicus delayed publication of his master work On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres until the year of his death (1543). For his extension of the idea, Bruno was burned at the stake, and for its documentation Galileo was shown the instruments of torture and remained under house arrest for the remainder of his life."
Wow!
Well put. The guy can write, too.
"If we're all descended from one father / mother, why do we all look different? I mean our planet's various races have different skin color, different facial features, different hair characteristics - how did that happen? Doesn't evolution perfectly and logically explain such a variety?"
Well IMHO...I'd say God explains it much better.
Each one of us is created as special unique person.
Of all the 5 Billion + folks alive today (except for identical twins....triplets & ect.) All look a little different. Yet we all have two eyes...two ears...a mouth...and nose. (With the exception of those born with a birth defect).
We all have a different DNA...each one of us have our own fingerprint...foot print...eye print.
Whats the chances of that happening by happenstance?
And God told us why he scattered us around.
The Tower of Babel
Genesis 11
1 At one time the whole world spoke a single language and used the same words.
2 As the people migrated eastward, they found a plain in the land of Babylonia and settled there.
3 They began to talk about ***construction projects***. “Come,” they said, “let’s make great piles of burnt brick and collect natural asphalt to use as mortar.
4 Let’s build a great city with a tower that reaches to the skies—a monument to our greatness! This will bring us together and keep us from scattering all over the world.”
5 But the LORD came down to see the city and the tower the people were building.
6 “Look!” he said. “If they can accomplish this when they have just begun to take advantage of their common language and political unity, just think of what they will do later. Nothing will be impossible for them!
7 Come, let’s go down and give them different languages. Then they won’t be able to understand each other.”
8 In that way, the LORD scattered them all over the earth; and that ended the building of the city.
9 That is why the city was called Babel, because it was there that the LORD confused the people by giving them many languages, thus scattering them across the earth.
We've been brainwashed so badly over the years we picture our forfathers as cavemen, but that isn't so.
Gen 4
17 Then Cain’s wife became pregnant and gave birth to a son, and they named him Enoch. When Cain founded a ***city***, he named it Enoch after his son.
18 Enoch was the father of£ Irad.
Irad was the father of Mehujael.
Mehujael was the father of Methushael.
Methushael was the father of Lamech.
19 Lamech married two women—Adah and Zillah.
20 Adah gave birth to a baby named Jabal. He became the first of the ***herdsmen*** who live in tents.
21 His brother’s name was Jubal, the first ***musician—the inventor of the harp and flute***.
22 To Lamech’s other wife, Zillah, was born Tubal-cain. He was the ***first to work with metal, forging instruments of bronze and iron***. Tubal-cain had a sister named Naamah.
The First Amendment is hardly a "local school board issue", and thus when it is implicated, federalization is inevitable. You may certainly assert that it should not be so, but for the time being, it is so, whether you happen to approve or not. And something makes me think you would be somewhat less sanguine if some school board somewhere decided to ignore, say, the Thirteenth Amendment, federal as it may be.
But more to the point nobody told you to keep your opinions to yourself so be opinionated but stop whining about 'speaking out'.
Ah, I'm free to express my opinion, but of course I really shouldn't have one in the first place. Got it. ;)
Evolution and intelligent design are both facts in biology.
You are conflating two senses of the term "intelligent design". The fact that humans can manipulate organisms does not in any way lend support to the ID thesis that some ineffable designer has guided or otherwise influenced evolution in the past. However, I think I see a way out of the forest of equivocation here. We can simply include a chapter on genetic engineering and the techniques used by biochemists in biology textbooks - this will then satisfy the Discovery Institute's desire that "intelligent design" should be addressed in science class.
Or will it? Hmmmm....
".... are adaptations to local environmental conditions"
THAT'S WHAT EVOLUTION IS !!!
Just like it sounds - "evolving" to meet needs!
Is it just co-incidence that dark-skinned people live in the tropics (where the sun is more intense) and fair-skinned people live in the north?
If all this could happen in the "mere" 5000 years or so since Adam, what evolving could happen over the SIX HUNDRED MILLION YEARS that higher life forms have been around? How about the billion years before that, when primordial life was around?
Evolution works, and is even consistent with God's Work.
I really hope you don't teach science classes.
Yes you did miss something, the definitions of fact, theory and law.
Facts are observation, or data points. Theories are the explanations of those facts. Laws are descriptions. Theories do not 'graduate' to laws because they serve different purposes. Theories do not 'graduate' to facts, but are based on facts.
THAT'S WHAT EVOLUTION IS !!!
I am aware of that. Your original post seemed to mix up the distinction between the classic racial traits and the genetic traits.
One can change environments and change many of the classic traits without similar changes in the deeper genetic traits, which offer a good track on descent. Skin color, on the other hand, correlates with environment and can change in a few thousand years. One of the best examples is the Native American migration to the Americas--there was a transition from cold to temperate to jungle (with high altitude an option at no extra expense) and then to cold for those who made the entire journey.
The mtDNA patterns can follow the exact line of this migration from Alaska to Tierra del Fuego, which many of the classic traits show considerable differences. One of the most notable is the high-altitude adaptations in the Andes--the Spanish did not do well up there.
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