TPI has a sterling example of the fact that theologists are much better trained thinkers than biologists when it comes to philosophy. Usually when biologists try to write articles debunking faith in favor of evolution, they come off as arrogant. Creationists usually come off as bitter.
However, for me, the evolution/creation debate has evolved (forgive me) into a question of the past overshadowing the present. The big thing religion, especially Christianity does, is paint a picture of how things were, are, and could possibly be in the future. Evolutionary biology has no ability to predict the future, in fact, evolutionary models of the rise of modern humans completely break down upon the advent of advanced civilization, where normal human breeding behavior radically changed. Add modern contraception into the mix, and human evolution is completely off the rails. The impact of humans, arguably, has altered the evolution of every other species away from the predicted evolutionary models. Adaption has had to increase at mathematically difficult rates, in order to keep up with how humans are changing the face of the world.
Contrarily, religion becomes an increasingly cloudy subject to take as fact the farther back you go. I am not arguing, however, that evolution explain our past and religion our future.
What I want to emphasize is that the smartest minds in all history are converged on this topic of where we came from. Did we evolve from little amoeba in the deep blue sea or did we come from the clay? Did we form via spontaneous creation of matter or did we evolve from ever-more-complex creatures battling for dietary supremacy? Did the world form 10,004 years ago, or is it billions of years old?
Why are these such important questions? Is it because both the religious and the evolutionary believe by debunking the beginnings of the opposing movement, the whole movement will collapse?
Evolutionary biologists and theologians must stop bickering about how or why the ancient past happened and start concerning themselves with what is going on today. Is there a way an evolutionary biologist can explain this behavior? Is there a way a Creationist can really, believably explain dinosaur fossils being dug up in North Dakota? There isn't. These two things, in their own way, are unreconcilable to the point that evolutionary biologists and Creationists must "agree to disagree" and move on to much, much more important matters, like curing cancer, or the 26,000 babies that died from starvation last night, or AIDS. Why do we put our complex, wonderful minds so hard to explaining an event so far in the past (to a point where it borders on irrelevance) when we instead need, I repeat need more thinking minds to concentrate on how to fix the present, and prepare for the future.
Stop trying to tell me that the world is 10,000 years old! Stop trying to tell me that I evolved from a phytoplankton that lived in acidic seas a thousand millenia ago. These are both so unimportant to the security of my life and health that I just shake my head that people waste their lives arguing them.
I think the reason Richard Dawkins is such an outspoken person is because he was wronged. Something must have happened to him that made him feel he must get even. I can only imagine what it was. His book, "The God Delusion", turns the ire of any religious person just by its title. If Dawkins wasn't an angry, vengeful person, but instead was trying to educate the masses and open the eyes of the close-minded to the possibility that evolution was the driving force for the creation of modern humans, his book would have been titled "Isn't It Possible That Something Other Than God May Have Caused Modern Humans To Arise?"
But books, and lectures, and debates meant only to debunk one side or another are typically angry, vengeful, and a complete waste of sharp human minds and resources.
And it seems awfully sad to think at the end of one's life, their greatest achievement was they wrote a book telling other people how wrong they were.
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Monday, February 9, 2009
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2 comments:
Stop trying to tell me that the world is 10,000 years old! Stop trying to tell me that I evolved from a phytoplankton that lived in acidic seas a thousand millenia ago. These are both so unimportant to the security of my life and health that I just shake my head that people waste their lives arguing them.
Quite right. It seems often (though not always) to be the case in the science wars that both sides are getting away from their core competencies. And it's not like we don't have a lot of work to do in those areas. Bioethics is a huge and very immediately relevant field that is not helped at all by someone like Dawkins. And likewise the churches ought to be thinking harder about how Christians should be educated as full citizens, rather than obsessing over what kinds of evil knowledge we need to be protected from.
Evolution is the pillar on which biology is built -- I consider that very important. Evolution has shaped how we approach treatment of infectious disease as well as cancer, and it's shaped how we've come to classify the living world around us. In considering anything that lives on this planet, evolution has touched on some part of our understanding of how that creature interacts with its environment, survives, procreates, and fills its niche. It is a fundamental recognition that anything that lives, changes.
The argument is important, at least in my humble opinion, because it's a battle for truth. And truth is good. I personally see no mutual exclusivity between these viewpoints: God created the world, why can't he create evolution? But many scientists find it appalling that despite evidence, despite peer review, and despite plain ol' experience (antibiotic resistance, anyone? Not all of that is due to evolution, but some of it is), people still choose faith rooted in literalism rather than to critically appraise the world in which they live.
Also, I think you're confusing evolution and natural selection. While many human populations still exist within the boundaries of natural selection (e.g., starving people in Africa), there are others that have derailed natural selection but certainly not evolution. We circumvent natural selection by providing the health care necessary to keep premature babies alive, for example. This alleviates the negative pressure necessary to ensure that gestation lasts 9 months -- who knows how long gestation will be in 100,000 years? Since our species (Homo sapiens) is still relatively young, it's hard to show that evolution is occurring, but it's undoubtedly is. A creepy potential future? The rich and the poor diverge into 2 different species. I can see it happening!
And last thing: as for Dawkins, I think he's capable of saying some pretty profound, non-angry things. I haven't read his book because I'm not interested in his negativity, but I'm not sure his views are completely rooted in hate:
"After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with color and bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked - as I am surprisingly often - why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad to go to your grave without ever wondering why you were born? Who, with such a though, would not spring from bed, eager to resume discovering the world and rejoicing to be part of it?"
-Richard Dawkins
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