From my documents I think that you have picked up that I am
a Methodological Materialistic Evolutionist.
What this is, is a person who believes that God created the Universe and
then pretty much left it alone. This is
the second to last step in a progression from a flat earther (someone who
believes the earth is flat and is covered by a solid firmament, the earth is
flat and the center of the universe as the Bible pronounces, believe it or not
some of these people do exist) and Philosophical Materialistic Evolutionists
which states that there is no supernatural.
I believe God works in mysterious ways and those ways are the natural
ways things come about. I think it is
amazing that God can exert His will by basically doing nothing. This shows extreme competency in the
creation act of a supreme being rather than “Miracle Max” doing quick fix it
jobs to patch holes in creation like in Time Bandits.
This article is not to make a case for Creationism or
Evolution, that has been done before, but rather to point out the differences
in the way the two go about the argument.
When I was younger I invited some Jehovah’s witnesses to my home to a
lively debate on the subject. I was
quickly disillusioned by these individuals arguments. When I questioned as to why fossils dated back so far when the
world was only 6000 years old, I was treated to an answer that “God put those
fossils in the ground with the right amount of carbon 14”. I was knocked back time and again with a
“God did it, and you can not detect God so you can’t prove me wrong” type of
argument.
Sure, I was born yesterday and the real world and all my
memories were implanted by God. Only he
and I exist and I can’t prove otherwise.
That is a little extreme however there is no way you can disprove that
type of logic. I tired of our meetings
and decided that these people could not be helped and we had reached an
impasse. Most creationists are not THAT
extreme and want some explanations themselves.
However it is my experience that most creationists want the burden to be
on the evolutionists. They delight in
trying to disprove particular portions of evolution while not offering up any
alternatives. Actually, scientists
would be ecstatic if someone gave them valid proofs that parts of the theory
are false. This would force them to
revise the theory and thus make it stronger.
However most of the accusations are week and in some cases intentionally
leave out information in order to sway the reader.
For instance, there are claims that “there has never proven
to be a useful mutation”. This is just
outright false. The current animals
inhabiting this earth have been adapting to the current conditions for quite a
long time. Quite recently there were
animals adapted to current conditions or Ice age conditions. When the Ice age ended, the Ice age only
animals had to either adapt, move, or go extinct. Some made it to the poles while the large non swimming insulated
animals died off. So what we are left
with today are basically animals that are almost perfectly suited for their
environment. Of course any mutation
that leads them off the path of almost perfection is not going to be a useful
mutation.
Researchers have been bombarding fruit flies with radiation
in order to accelerate the mutation
rate. You wind up with “deformed” fruit
flies. Lets say that you have a
deformed fruit fly with larger sharp hooks on its appendages. Right now, larger hooks take more energy to
grow and so would be a liability to the fruit fly and they could not
compete. But, say that all fruit
started to grow thicker skin. Then,
these fruit flies would have the advantage over the traditional fruit fly and
take over because it would be easier for them to get food. Now the same mutation has gone from being a
detrimental mutation to being the reason for the fruit flies survival.
In Mexico there are what people call “dog faced boys” . They have extremely thick long facial hair
all over their faces making them look like werewolves. Obviously a mutation. In Mexico this isn’t such a great
thing. However, imagine the Eskimo who
wouldn’t love to have this mutation.
The particular mutations validity depends on environmental
pressures.
Ok, I see the argument for “this is only genetic
variability”. So far I don’t think
anyone denies the types of changes that I have discussed and feel that we have
not changed any species. However, as
time goes by, we can imagine other changes coming about. Lets go back to our fruit fly. Now, the implications of thicker skin on
fruit need further improvement from the fruit fly. Some flies are going to be bigger than others. The bigger flies are selected because they
are stronger and there fore can break through the skin easier. The flies with just the larger hooks were
intermediate and this period would not last long because other improvements
were on the way making them obsolete too.
Then perhaps some flies come along with a mutation for large hacking
mandibles also. The flies with large
claws, large bodies, and large mandibles will win out. If on an island for instance, none of the
original fruit flies will be able to compete and eventually die out. So will the intermediate versions. Now, the fruit fly is perfectly adapted to
its environment again and will stay in this steady state for a long time.
Now, If we were to look at the fossil record for our
fictitious island, we would find many of the original fruit flies, very few of
the intermediate types, and many of the new type. This is just what we see in the fossil record. After a few thousand years, these fruit
flies pick up many other small variations in their genes and would eventually
be unable to breed with the original main land fruit flies. If we were to come across these two types of
flies, we might say this: “Humm... this fly is twice as big, has huge cutting
claws and huge mandibles, they do not mate with normal flies so we have a
different species.”.
If that sounded plausible, try this one on for size. Some monkeys are cut off from the trees and
are forced to live in the savanna. This
probably happened many times. Every
time they were killed off by the lions.
However this time there is a monkey who had a genetic defect so that he
had to stand more erect for a longer time than his fellow monkeys. This would be a problem swinging around in
the trees, but here, he can spot the predators earlier and thus his band
survives. His genes are prized by the
females as the one who keeps them away from danger and he passes this previous
“defect” along. As the years go by, the
one who can stand upright is the one who survives. Now, a baby is born with
a slightly larger brain. This extra
cerebral material is better at picking out patterns. And thus he can see the predators even more easily (have you ever
wondered why you can see the lion in the documentary but the gazelle has no
clue?). The sun is hot now that the trees no longer are here to offer
shade. So, children born with more
sweat glands and less hair will be preferred to the more hairy. They will be
able to travel farther than those who get heat exhaustion. And so on and so on.
A chimp only differs from our DNA by 2%. If you really think of what changes need to
be made to a chimpanzee to make him human, it really isn’t that much. Reduce the size of the hair to allow for
sweat glands (we have the same amount of hair, a chimps is only thicker),
change the limb proportions slightly, modify the feet for walking, Modify the
pelvis (all three for upright walking), modify the hands for better grasping
(tools to fight those pesky predators), get taller (see over the grass),
protrude the nose (to breath the drier air of the savanna), protrude the skin
on the inside of the mouth (not sure off hand what that’s for), grow the brain
(better communication when there is little cover, tool use, and 1,001 other
uses). There would be no advantage to
becoming stronger since we would need to vastly improve our strength to even
start competing with a lion. Anyone who
tries to fight one will die. The
limited energy we have is better invested in the brain (which consumes 30% of
your calories). A little more brain
goes a long way in the form of early detection, communication, and evasion.
Each one of these things can be taken as genetic variation
as individual events. But is it hard to
believe that these things could all happen given 4.5 million years? But there can be no doubt that the end
result is a different species.
Back to the debate, I do believe that I spent considerable
effort to try to convince you that evolution is possible. The difference between creation and
evolution is that anyone around the world can study the fossil record, study
the anatomy of living creatures, visit the zoo, and come up with the same
conclusions about evolution. However in
order to believe in creation, (Christian in specific here) someone must make
you aware that Moses went to the top of a mountain where God reveled the
secrets of creation to him. Then you
must believe that God didn’t dumb it down for Moses and Moses didn’t dumb it
down for his followers.
That leads me to the problem of creation in schools. I do not advocate this. First of all, for the reason I mentioned in
the previous paragraph, and second, creationists wish for equal time. Who is the school system to decide which man
on the mountain to follow? There are
hundreds of creation stories around the world which are equally believed by
their followers. Think about it. If you are a Christian, why do you believe
in your version of creation. Because it
is right? No. You don’t know it is right.
You take it on faith to be correct.
Why? Because that’s what your
parents believed in. That’s what you
were brought up with as a child. Or,
that’s what you promised you would believe in if you were converted. You take it on faith. Why should we teach this in school over “the
cosmic egg” that someone from Finland might believe in? If we teach one arbitrary, theory based on
faith alone, we should teach them all in the interest of “equal time”. Heck, maybe Xenu did kill all those aliens
75 million years ago. Would you want The
school teaching your children scientology just because it is what some people
believe? Better stick to something that
anyone can come up with and not just the “chosen ones”.
With evolution, we can at least live with knowing the
probability of correctness. For a
theological view of creation, the chance of us determining the probability of
correctness is absolutely zero. As far
as the Bible goes, just because more people believe in it than any other theory
does not give it any more credibility.
Everyone believed “the world was flat”.
Everyone believed “the earth was the center of the Universe”. Everyone believed “heavy objects fall
faster than lighter ones”. It takes the
scientific process to separate beliefs from truth. At least with science we are actively working to find answers
and looking at evidence rather than taking someone else’s word for it.
And as far as peoples faith in the Bible goes, when was the
last time your children were killed because they cursed you (Leviticus
20:9)?
I’m just going to let that one hang.
