Let’s examine the situation a little more deeply. Question: What is the real connection with evolution to any kind of disagreement on theology? Answer: Absolutely nothing.  Unfortunately, evolution has been dragged into this fight presumably without first consulting it. There is nothing about atheism that connects with evolution any more than atheism connects with gravity or knot theory.  But evolution had the misfortune to have some implications that certain religious groups couldn’t reconcile with their long held myths, so it has been branded a religious debate.  Let’s not pretend that this is a completely one-sided fault either. While there may have been some Christian science watchdogs analyzing the theory of evolution and its implications from the start, there probably was an equivalent force on the other side, waiting for the opportunity to say “Hey! Look, you guys are wrong, and we have proof!” The debate is what it is today, and it’s short-sighted to claim that it was one side’s fault over the others.

But is it really untouchable? I don’t think that it’s completely out of line to say that this debate has become so polarized, that some people are so incredibly invested in one side or the other, that they may ignore any criticism from the outset. Honestly, I’ve spent enough time on the internet to know that these people are around for just about every debate you might have. It’s only because of the enormous fame of this one that these people have actually gotten real publicity. But I think that the real problem comes from a confusion of terminology that plagues evolution already. People who don’t understand the terms that scientists use will snicker at the “theory of evolution”, when it’s actually quite a solid idea. The terminology that gets lost here, though, is what people mean when they say “Evolution”. Richard Dawkins is often misinterpreted when he says that there is no doubt in his mind about evolution. “Oh REALLY?” his opponents say. “You must have some strong FAITH in that THEORY!” Or something like that. But it’s all rubbish. There is evolution the theory and evolution the fact, and it’s important to understand the distinction.

When Dawkins says that evolution is a fact, he’s stating something that we can be almost 100% certain of – creatures evolve. It has been seen; it’s a known effect. The overarching principles, the explanation of the effect, the reasons, that’s the theory. Suppose that someone said that gravity was a fact, and he was dead certain about that. Any qualms with that? Nope, he’s perfectly justified in saying that because we see the effect. Things fall down; masses are pulled together. We see it. It happens. Fact. Why does it happen? How does it happen? Can we quantify it? Those are questions for the theory. The Law of gravity is, essentially, wrong. Newton described things quite well, but he was ultimately wrong. So our theory changed, but the fact is still true. The one we have now seems pretty good, but who knows? It could change again, but I still will see things falling no matter what our best understanding is of the reasons.

I think that very few real thinkers would actually claim that we have an exact scientific theory with no holes or open questions, which will be solid forever, about evolution. What they get defensive about is that people are trying to force the idea out of consideration all together. “Look at this problem with evolution…”  is ultimately followed by “Life doesn’t evolve”, which is the mistake. It would have seemed incredibly silly for Einstein to say “I see problems with the Law of Gravity… Gravity must not exist!” But it happens every day for evolution. Science progresses by observing and theorizing, then repeating, over and over and over. Claiming that problems with our theory discount the observation is backwards – so don’t do it.

Yes, evolution is somewhat untouchable – evolution the fact. We’ll be refining evolution the theory for a long time to come.

So I finally got to reading it. Did he do what he said? Is it more even-handed and honest about its intentions? Let’s take a stroll through the introduction together, and I’ll just throw out my thoughts as they come up, ok?

<stream of thought>

Starting with a (brief) biography of Darwin. Ok, not much to say about that, if it’s factual. Not really relevant to the validity of the theory, but interesting to know I suppose.

Seems very interested in 1) Not getting good grades 2) marrying his cousin

P4:  Second time he refers to Cambridge as “Christ’s College”

P5:  And we start the discussion of Darwin’s religious views. Come on. What does that have to do with evolution? This is exactly the problem all over this debate. Religion has absolutely NOTHING to do with science. Evaluate a theory for its own merits. Portraying Darwin as a godless heathen to make him seem less credible, or to make it seem like a religious debate is wrong.

P9: The DNA code… So, did Comfort read this book before adding an introduction?

As you can see, random letters rarely produce words that make sense. But in time, mindless chance formed them into the order of meaningful words with spaces between them. Periods, commas, capitals, italics, quotes, paragraphs, margins, etc., also came into being in the correct placements. The sentences then grouped themselves to relate to each other, giving them coherence. Page numbers fell in sequence at the right places, and headers, footers, and footnotes appeared from nowhere on the pages, matching the portions of text to which they related.

This is nothing like evolution, and pretending so is either blatantly misleading, or it shows a complete lack of understanding. Here’s a better example, easy to visualize. Take 100 dice and throw them on the table. What are the odds you get all 6’s? Pretty slim. Do it again? Still pretty slim. How many times do we have to do this to get all 6’s? A huge number (think almost 100 digits). Now, play this game: take one die and roll it until you get a 6. Set that one aside. Take another and roll it until you get a six. Set it aside too. Continue to do this until you have 100 sixes. How long would that take? A while, but not really, compared to the first. It isn’t magic ink falling from the sky into perfectly formed words in one shot.

P11: DNA similarities -

To the question of whether sharing 96 percent of our genetic make-up with chimps makes us 96 percent chimp, Steven Jones, a renowned British geneticist, humorously commented, “We also share about 50% of our DNA with bananas and that doesn’t make us half bananas …”

Well of course not. Who said it did? I have two parents – am I half of each of them? I have 4 grandparents, am I 25% of each of them too? So I’m 200% of a human already, how far back do I go and still say I’m xx% of that? When you say that DNA is similar, it’s an observation. He’s trying to use that as evidence for a “common creator”, but at the same time acting like it’s ridiculous to consider. Pick one, man.

p15:

The creatures that Gingerich was looking at were simply different animals with similar hearing ability, and his conclusion was merely unscientific speculation.

Oh the irony of “unscientific speculation” in this context! Still, discussing “transitional forms” and lack of a “missing link” is interesting. Sure, on some level we will always wish for more fossils than we have. But what if we found some sort of transitional form between two species? Actually now there are 2 gaps to fill! Now we need to find two transitional forms to convince him! In all seriousness, evolution doesn’t happen linearly or on an even time scale. Changes in environment cause the need for a species to evolve, which happens in spurts and jumps. The fossil record is not going to be quite the pretty picture that Comfort seems to demand.

P 20:

Admittedly, this puts a tremendous responsibility on mutations to accidentally create complex new body parts, and on natural selection to recognize the benefit these new parts will eventually convey and make sure the creatures with those new parts survive.

Is Comfort admitting this? That doesn’t count as “admitting”, since you’re arguing against it. And really, he’s talking about irreducible complexity. I’ve said my piece on ID before.

P 23:

Therefore, mutations are not logical adaptations that make a creature better suited for its environment. They are completely random—the result of mindless, undirected chance.

Yes! Precisely! But I don’t think that means what you think it means. They are mindless and undirected, but that doesn’t mean that some of them don’t happen to be beneficial. The unhelpful ones don’t have any reason to propagate, and the helpful ones do. Mindless, undirected, but when viewed over a large population and large timescale – evolutionary.

P 26: Evolution’s difficult questions.

I’m a little tired of this. Does anyone actually claim that evolution is perfect and ties up everything in a perfect package? I doubt it. That’s not how science works. The real error is to say “Evolution isn’t perfect, ergo – GOD”. Science works on improving theories and finding better and better explanations (a little evolutionary, no?). So, yes we should ask the tough questions, but not having an answer for them (yet) isn’t checkmate – it’s how we make the theory better.

P 27: Which came first blood or heart?

Oh Good! This one again. Here’s the answer. Also, quit using irreducible complexity as a scientific rebuttal. There’s no prediction of the theory, it just says “is this one irreducibly complex? No. Ok what about this one? No. Ok what about…” How long do we have to play that game to satisfy you?

P 30:

However, if an organ were no longer needed, it could at best be considered devolution. This is consistent with the Law of Entropy—that all things deteriorate over time. What evolution requires, however, is not the loss but the addition of information, where an organism increases in complexity. “Vestigial organs” therefore do not serve as evidence for evolution.

Oops, nope. Let’s remember to keep our vocabulary correct. Evolution is the name of the theory and refers only to change. There is no ultimate goal of evolution, and no such thing as devolution. A species could perfectly well evolve to adapt to a certain change, and evolve back if a new change spurred it. There is no “perfect species” that we’re all progressing toward, and evolution doesn’t say that. It merely makes us fit together. If you can’t live in your “niche” then you either evolve or die.

Plus – Entropy? Really? That’s not exactly what entropy is about. By your logic, we shouldn’t be able to build a car, because that’s not deteriorating those specific atoms, which violates thermodynamics.

P 31: Darwin’s unsavory views, Atheism, Christianity

I knew it… <sigh>. Here’s a fun list of topics we get to enjoy: social darwinism, Darwin’s racism, atheists agree he was a racist, disdain for women, Hitler (!), lots of Hitler, Darwinism = Atheism = do-whatever-you-want-no-morals-ism, nothing created everything, theist scientists from history, lots and lots of “let me save you from Hell”, analyzing other religions as answers to Christianity’s questions?, go love Jesus, go love Jesus, come on just be a Christian!

An atheist wrote and said, “What do Darwin’s personal views on race have to do with our modern understanding of evolution? Nothing. Absolutely nothing, Ray. Even a fool knows this.” Indeed, Darwin’s racism has nothing to do with the credibility of the theory of evolution. It should stand or fall on its own merits. However, the theory itself teaches that all men are not created equal. Darwinian evolution doesn’t say that human beings are made in the image of God and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights. It rather states that they are mere animals, some closer to apes than others, and it therefore opens wide the door to racism.

He was so close to an intelligent thought I got chills, but then another flatline. No, the theory says nothing about rights, a God or anything like that (including some people being closer to apes than others, which is a blatant lie). There are many ways we can derive morals and rights, which have nothing to do with being told how to live by a God. It doesn’t open the door to racism, but what if it did? I don’t advocate racism in any way, but the social implications of a theory don’t make it wrong. What if I had some crazy way to connect gravity with killing babies. Does that mean that you’re going to stop believing in gravity because you think killing babies is wrong? Evolution stands or falls by itself, and clouding the issue with this is incredibly misleading, dishonest, and sad.

</stream of thought>

Well, I have to say that whether or not he actually changed the introduction to be more fair like he said he would, it’s exactly what I expected. There are blatant lies, misleading facts and irrelevant crap all over the place. It’s a shame that he did it, but What do we do about it? Exactly what I’m doing. Share your thoughts. Expose the crap that doesn’t belong in this discussion. As he notes just before the actual text:

Someone once graciously said, “I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” However, it seems that some contemporary atheists don’t share such honorable convictions. When they learned about this publication they threatened lawsuits, book burnings, and even censorship in vowing to tear the Introduction out of the book.

And for once, he’s entirely right. This is exactly the wrong reaction. If ideas are good, they will be judged as good. It’s not up to us to keep ideas from anyone, only to combat the bad ones with even more good. Instead of burning them or tearing out the pages, why not get out a red pen and mark the crap out of it, go back to the street and hand it out to someone new?

As you can imagine, this has caused quite the uproar. There are people saying they want to take as many as they can and throw them away, or rip out the introduction and redistribute it, or even organize book-burnings because of the introduction. Until now, I’ve stayed quite on the issue, because I wasn’t quite sure how I felt about it. It’s not the clear-cut issue that some people would make it out to be.

First, if the theory is good, it should stand up to criticism. As long as he doesn’t lie outright about the facts, shouldn’t a discerning mind be able to decide if the introduction has better arguments or the book itself? Of course, this relies on the “discerning mind” to do the legwork, and if we’re talking about someone who only decided to investigate the issue because a free book was handed to them in the course of their daily campus stroll, then maybe they won’t. Still, I remember college being full of people on the sidewalk handing out pamphlets and bibles for free, and that doesn’t mean that I read them and immediately agreed with them.

But then I read about how his introduction would be fraught with, at the very least, deceptive tactics in order to discredit not only the theory, but the man (who I might add has nothing to do with the merit of the idea). Indeed, some on his side even find this admirable:

The introduction gives a time line of Darwin’s life, and his thoughts on the existence of God. It lists the theories of many hoaxes, exposes the unscientific belief that nothing created everything, points to the incredible structure of DNA, and notes the absence of any undisputed transitional forms.

To show the dangerous fruit of evolution, it also mentions Hitler’s undeniable connections to the theory, Darwin’s racism, and his disdain for women. In addition, it counters the claim that creationists are “anti-science” by citing numerous scientists who believed that God created the universe — scientists such as Einstein, Newton, Copernicus, Bacon, Faraday, Pasteur, and Kepler.

“The dangerous fruit of evolution”? “Hitler…racism…distain for women” ? What do these have anything to do with the validity of the theory? Unfortunately, I don’t always think that people correctly see through these misleading issues. I was about to jump right in and say “shame on him” for trying to win a scientific (well, at least on one side) debate with such sleaze. But I investigated and it seems that he’s trying to change it to make it a little less repulsive. According to his website, he’s changing the introduction to account for a lot of this: check it out for yourself. It isn’t available by the time of this writing, so we should keep checking back. I want to read it. If he’s willing to make it not such a complete mockery of real debate, then maybe this will actually turn out to be good.

Can giving away 100,000 copies of a very thought-provoking book be bad? I would hope that anyone who had their consciousness raised to this debate would use this as motivation to search for more answers. For me, it’s clear where that should lead. If we get him to make his introduction even-handed and let him spout bible-literalism, I really think it will do the opposite of what he wants.

Intelligent design’s relationship to religion

First of all, I’m not necessarily one to run around saying that intelligent design is nothing more than creationism spruced up to pass off as science. It is obvious why its validity could be used as an argument for many Judeo-Christian religious life origin ideas, but the implications don’t make it wrong automatically. However, let’s investigate the implications some. For a scientific theory to mean anything, it needs to make predictions. A modern example might be string theory. At this time, there are very few testable predictions of string theory. It makes some claims, and looks quite pretty, but until you can test a prediction and say that your hypothesis is supported or falsified, you haven’t got a very solid theory in the scientific sense, just some ideas. That doesn’t mean you can’t investigate your ideas, but failing to come up with testable predictions is a huge blow to your credibility. Looking at intelligent design, what does it say? In short, that “the theory of intelligent design holds that there are tell-tale features of living systems and the universe that are best explained by an intelligent cause” [1]. But does this really answer the question if you claim that the theory is non-religious? In fact, it merely postpones the question. The whole question that they are trying to answer is “how did intelligent life come to exist?” And the answer is, “Intelligent life came to exist by the design from intelligent life.” Intelligent design advocates don’t make any mention of what this intelligence might be, but the only conclusion that doesn’t result in the exact same question is supernatural. Any natural (meant here as “part of the observable universe”) source would be intelligent life that would beg the exact same question: How did it get started? So, while the implication for a creator god doesn’t falsify the theory outright, it seems plain that either the theory is at the very least deistic or it doesn’t answer the question it pretends to.

Irreducible Complexity

The science behind intelligent design has never seemed more than vague and, frankly, unscientific to me. (No, I have not read every single article on ID that exists. If you have one that just blows me out of the water, show it to me. I’ll think about it and let you know if it changes my mind).  So let’s go into some of the major arguments, as I’m familiar with them. The one that I seem to hear most about is “Irreducible Complexity”: the idea that some biological systems are complex in a way that removal of one piece causes the entire function to cease. The infamous example is a mousetrap. There are several key components to a mousetrap, and until they are all present, the mousetrap will not function. The claim is that there are such systems in biology that could not have been built up by gradual processes because the intermediate steps would not be justified by a Darwinian process.

I have two major issues with this idea. First, it supposes a lot of understanding about the intermediate steps that they do not possess. There is no reason to say that every step of the way to evolving my eye had this result in mind. Nor is there any reason to say that every step of evolving my eye had something to do with sight. The intermediate steps could have had an organ that resembled my eye in a basic way, but supported survival in a completely different way. Or, one might argue that a partially functional eye is still beneficial, even though it may not work in exactly the same way as it does today. My second argument with it is that it doesn’t give any falsifiable predictions. The prediction is, “There exist biological systems of irreducible complexity.” This is not a hypothesis because there is no counter proof. The only test is this: “Is this one irreducibly complex? No. Ok, is this one? No. Ok, how about this one?” It’s a question designed to be unanswered forever, unless we can somehow show that we have exhausted the search of every single biological system.

Fine-Tuned Universe

As pointed out by the commenter on my post about the anthropic principle, the idea can be used by both sides of this debate to justify certain arguments. Personally, I don’t see this as a big problem. Two theories can use a previous result in different ways, and that doesn’t invalidate it, nor the theories. But the question of the finely-tuned universe is less a reason to invoke intelligence and more a realization that we don’t know everything there is to know – not very surprising.

Still, it’s worth considering its validity. The idea is that there are several universal constants that seem to be exactly what they need to be for life to form. My first reaction to this was “Well, that just means that a different kind of life might have formed”, but I think this is not necessarily correct. The question may be a valid one, because it involves the production of elements in stars. Certain constants, like the gravitational constant and the strong nuclear force, would impact the way that stars come together, if they were to come together at all, and if they would produce a useful array of elements or not.

But intelligence is not dictated at this point. It’s merely a lack of knowledge, not some “knob-turner” in the sky. Consider people long ago that didn’t have the knowledge of science that we enjoy. Does it seem like an intelligent source is making sure that the sun rises and sets at regular times that correspond very well with our need to sleep? How could it be so finely tuned that we don’t need only 2 hours of sleep and have so much extra dark time? Or how about sailors using a compass before they understood magnetism? It seems like an intelligent source is directing the movement of the needle to always show us north, no matter where we are. (And yes, the compass very much precedes knowledge of magnetism[5]). I have never seen any evidence for intelligence for this position, even from ID advocates. Usually what I see is the idea that it sure looks too good to be random, so therefore intelligence. This is not science.

I don’t claim some authoritative understanding on intelligent design. This is how I understand it, based on my own experience and research. Everything that I’ve seen and investigated has led me to consider intelligent design a pseudo-science at best. I don’t take it seriously, because I tried to take it seriously and found it empty.  No, I don’t think that evolution has all the answers to all the questions, but that’s what science is: continuously improving our theories based on evidence. Intelligent design does not do this, so I don’t take it seriously. It’s as simple as that.

[1]http://www.discovery.org/a/3059

[2]http://www.discovery.org/a/2640

[3]http://www.iscid.org/papers/Luskin_HumanOrigins_071505.pdf

[4]http://www.intelligentdesign.org/index.php

[5]http://inventors.about.com/od/cstartinventions/a/Compass.htm

Not only that, but it’s easy to say it in an oversimplified way that sounds like it doesn’t solve anything. If I say, “If things weren’t like they are, we wouldn’t be here to ask why they are,” and you think that it’s a dodge of the question, read the rest of this, and then come back to that statement. Does it have a little more meaning now?

So I’ll dive right in. The anthropic principle comes in a few flavors. For the record, the one that I’m advocating is usually termed the Weak Anthropic Principle (not weak in the sense that it doesn’t stand up to itself well, but not as forceful as the others). I’ll start with the ones that I don’t advocate, because I don’t plan to spend much time on them. There is the Strong Anthropic Principle which says that the universe’s ultimate goal was to produce us, so it was fine-tuned to that purpose. Then, the Final Anthropic Principle tries to build on this by saying that if the universe intends to produce intelligent life, then it has a vested interest in intelligent life. Therefore, the universe not only must produce intelligent life, but once in existence, intelligent life will never die out. Wow, that’s quite a conclusion! As I said, I don’t like these. The vague relationship of the underlying ideas with the weak anthropic principle mean that they got to share the name, but it’s like grapes and grapefruit – the name may be the same, but one is delicious and the other is fit only for a madman.

The weak anthropic principle (I’ll drop the ‘weak’ from now on) goes like this. We look around us and see what seems to be huge amounts of order. The amount of chance events that would have to happen to end up where we are is staggering, and the probability of this is fantastically small. How then can we justify an impartial universe that seems perfectly tuned for our existence? The anthropic principle comes with this response: We are already biased to this universe/planet/whatever by our very existence. The fact that life has developed here means that this may not be such a common place, statistically speaking. Usually this is applied to cosmology and abiogenesis. I’ll borrow some ideas here from The God Delusion, and it’s worth the read, if you haven’t. One common issue people bring up with evolution is that it’s a great tool for explaining complexity from simplicity – but not from no life at all. It only applies after there is some start, which is apparently unlikely.

One of Dawkins’ arguments at this point is that, thanks to the anthropic principle, we can afford a somewhat greater degree of improbability in this first start, simply because it is only one event. We just need to get the chain started, and natural selection takes us the rest of the way easily. We seem to live in a very pleasant place, from the temperate climate of our planet and its orbit, to the star that we are around. Many things seem “just right” for us. But the anthropic principle is the idea that the very fact that we exist here means that this might just be exactly that special of a place. If it were not, who would be asking the question? It is conceivable that in different and uninhabitable-for-us  situations, an all together different kind of life would develop. They might ask the same things: why is this place so special? But it would be special to them, not us.  But the point is, the universe doesn’t necessarily have to have a temperate, life-supporting environment as the average. If this is a special place in the universe, this is exactly where we would show up. It’s not that surprising after all. We could then go into some probabilistic arguments based on the number of stars and planets to show that actually, even though it seems unlikely, the universe is so big that the fact that some places are ok for life like us is not that unlikely.

Maybe a resonable way to think of it is like the lottery. The odds against winning are incredible, and most people know this going in. But they also know that because of how many people are playing, the odds are reasonable that at least one of them could win. But in the cosmological case, losing isn’t as apparent as in the lottery. You don’t get bummed out and try again. You just simply aren’t. There aren’t life forms in uninhabitable parts of the universe to say “This is a terrible place to live,” you’re only aware because we won this lottery. And there were billions of years with billions of billions of stars and planets playing the lottery, and only once did we have to hit big. Just once, the right set of circumstances needed to come together to get life started, and the process of natural selection very logically produced what we see today.

So, if this is new to you, try that sentence again. “If things weren’t like they are, we wouldn’t be here to ask why they are.” Does it seem like a dodge still? If it does, let me know, because that means I failed at explaining it well too.

Along with the usual “Atheists believe death is the end, so they must be depressed all the time,” I occasionally hear a similar, “Atheists think everything is chemicals, so love is the same as being hungry or tired — meaningless.” Or something similar. I’m not really sure what these kinds of statements are trying to do. My knee-jerk reaction is that they’re aimed at people on-the-fence, making it appear as though being an atheist is a pitiful existence. This may not be a malicious attack, but it seems like the most logical motive. The other explanation I would offer is that it’s justification for a person’s unwillingness to let go of certain beliefs: “If atheists can’t love, then I don’t want to be one.” (Usually this is accompanied by only a vague idea of what they mean by ‘love’, which is then modified as we go along to try to stay out of reach of someone who doesn’t believe in God.)

Lucky for us heathens, it’s not the painful drudgery of an existence that it’s made out to be. Let’s start with the fundamentals. Emotions and feelings are a part of my physical body. I have no reason to believe that there is anything supernatural about them. However, emotions, feelings and the human brain in general are so complex that I make no claims about understanding the actual mechanisms behind them. There is ample evidence, however, that as we learn more about the function of our brain we will learn more about why we feel what we feel. From an objective perspective, social emotions like love are a completely logical development for our species as well. We have evolved to empathize with each other, to form monogamous relationships and desire reciprocity of kind behavior. All of these are extremely benefitial for the species as a whole. Does any of this make the feelings less meaningful to me? Absolutely not.

Here’s what makes love seem less meaningful: when I was young, one of my best friends’ parents told me about how, without God, their marriage would have fallen apart. So, they stayed together because of God? Couples’ counseling by a religious authority very often has this slant – you stay together because it will please God (or anger him if you don’t). So what does this couple do? Are they supposed to look at each other and say, “Oh, well in that case, I guess I do love you! Thanks, God, for letting me know!” In actuality, they didn’t change their feelings for each other at all, but decided that it was more important to live unhappily now rather than displease God. How romantic.

No, I prefer love the way it is: real, physical and powerful.  I am very much in love with my fiance. Does it matter that a million years of evolution might have brought us to the point where we experience things this way? Not to me: I enjoy being happy in my life. Maybe a million years of evolution told my body that it will survive the winter easier if I eat fatty foods. That doesn’t mean that I like eating fresh chocolate chip cookies any less, and the happiness I take from this loving relationship doesn’t compare.  I’ve never understood why the possibility for a physical explanation is thought to make the feeling any less potent.

I find the Christian way of loving your spouse through God insulting and demeaning. Why are we not capable of understanding love and making our own decisions about our own feelings? Is it supposed to help keep relationships together? Statistics say it doesn’t really do anything. Why then is it so important submit their feelings for God’s approval?

The human side of our emotions makes them beautiful. I know that when my fiance tells me “I love you”, that it’s her saying it. There’s no invisible puppet master as the source of her love for me; it’s completely between us. We can ask, “What do you love about me?” and the answer has nothing to do with some unnecessary third wheel.  Everything between us is layed out on the table, and there’s nothing mystical about it. It’s just love.

For example, I remember reading some “shocking” headline that Dawkins thinks people who don’t believe in evolution should be put on the same level as holocaust deniers! He explains the position much more reasonably than this statement would have you believe. The holocaust is still an almost taboo subject in that trying to equate anything with it makes some people think you’re trying to downplay the atrocity, as though nothing could be as terrible as the holocaust so you must think it’s only as bad as this other thing you mentioned. But I think Dawkins’ example is quite apt. It’s a very real example of people denying something from history, of which there is plenty of evidence. It’s the denial he’s focusing on, and sweeping evidence under the rug is the crime of these people.

One passage really speaks to me, though, more than the rest:

Influential philosophers tell us we can’t prove anything in science.

Mathematicians can prove things – according to one strict view, they are the only people who can – but the best that scientists can do is fail to disprove things while pointing out how hard they tried. Even the undisputed theory that the Moon is smaller than the Sun cannot, to the satisfaction of a certain kind of philosopher, be proved in the way that, for example, the Pythagorean Theorem can be proved. But massive accretions of evidence support it so strongly that to deny it the status of “fact” seems ridiculous to all but pedants.

He’s exactly right about science. It never, ever claims absolute proof. This is not a problem at all, but people can try to use it as a defense of some absurd claims. He mentions how people misuse the term “theory of evolution”. I remember one year in our college newspaper, there was a guest commentary that had the laughable line, “We shouldn’t take evolution very seriously, as it’s just a theory. It’s not like it’s been proved and made a Law, like gravity.”  It’s misuse of terms like this that cause people to lose the real ideas, but people have no problem arguing with them without actually understanding what they’re saying.

(It happens in all kinds of specialized fields. For instance, in mathematics “general” and “specific” hold slightly more nuanced meanings. In common language, you might say that something is true “in general”, but there are specific cases that do not fit the rule. Rather, for a mathematician, it’s easy to prove that specific cases obey a rule, but to prove the general case means to show that all cases follow that rule.)

And I’d like to make one more comment about mountains of evidence versus provable fact. For me, and I suspect for a lot of atheists, this is exactly the feeling about belief in gods. Very few claim any kind of definitive proof against gods in general, but it’s like not having strict proof that the moon is smaller than the sun. I will admit that it is not exactly the same in the sense that making this analogy more equal would require people claiming that the moon is larger than the sun, and then disbelieving that claim. But the point is that, to the atheist, the subject is on exactly the same level. I have no problem saying, “There is no God,” just as I have no problem saying, “The world is spherical” (yes, I know is actually kind of squashed into an ellipsoid). That’s where the evidence has led me, and it’s usable as a fact until there’s reason otherwise.

I’ll leave you with two great quotes. They remind me why I love science: we’re always learning more, expanding our understanding. You can look for flaws in our current theories, but the point is to make the theory smarter, not ascribe ignorance to evidence of God.

When people thought the earth was flat, they were wrong. When people thought the earth was spherical, they were wrong. But if you think that thinking the earth is spherical is just as wrong as thinking the earth is flat, then your view is wronger than both of them put together.

–Isaac Asimov

It makes us both wrong; it doesn’t make us equally wrong. You were at least *6* wronger.

–Dr. House

There are two ways that I can see this argument going. The first is a sort of implied “god of the gaps” argument, where essentially we’re faced with a question that we don’t know the answer to (but in this case, I think we do) and that points us to the conclusion that God is responsible. I’m going to assume that perhaps the person asking did not mean this line of thought, because I don’t think it’s a valid argument. Even if this one isn’t unknown, there are certainly questions for which we don’t know the answer. But a lack of understanding on our part doesn’t imply God’s presence. It merely means that we don’t know, yet. Every age has had its questions, and we’ve developed an increasing understanding of the natural world. Marvel at lightning from the gods has turned into understanding of principles of electricity – lightning rods protect buildings, where a god throwing them would not behave so nicely. This understanding of electricity allows me to type these words right here. I don’t claim that we know everything, and maybe we can’t know everything (but then maybe we couldn’t know that we can’t know everything… and we start to get a little philosophical for this talk). But the point is that people in the past have made the mistake of thinking that there was no other explanation, and it’s just as fallacious today.

The other path that this question could follow is a sort of key idea to intelligent design – irreducible complexity. I don’t claim to know all the ins-and-outs of intelligent design, but from my understanding this is the main idea of irreducible complexity can be thought of like this: Consider that you have a watch.  It has hundreds of working pieces that all fit together very nicely (like the human body). However, if you were to remove even one of these components, the whole thing would fail. It’s said that we can find a point in biological life where you can’t ‘build it up’ from individual pieces because you need all of the pieces to come together and work at once.

One unfortunate problem with irreducible complexity is that it doesn’t stand unless there are examples. It merely says “there exists in nature an irreducibly complex system,” and there’s not a clean way to show this to be false. So, we’re given an example of something irreducibly complex, and even showing why it is not proves only that this example is not valid. Then we wait for the next example. There’s no such thing as a counter example without examining every biological system to some arbitrary detail.

But what choice have we here. It’s the same as saying, “You can’t know that God doesn’t exist because you haven’t looked everywhere he could exist.” Well, fine, but if you give me an example of where you think he might be, I’ll tell you why I don’t agree.

As for the heart/blood question, I think the simplest answer is “the blood”, but only in a vague way because blood has changed too. Most organisms need a way to move things around – nutrients, waste, etc. In especially small organisms, this obviously doesn’t need to be very sophisticated.  Diffusion, where concentrations of a substance tend to find a state of equilibrium within their boundary, could account for a very small organism getting nutrients to all it’s parts, or allowing waste out. But even very simple organisms also have muscle-like functions that serve to move the ‘carrier substance’ (that only vaguely resembles blood) around. As these organisms grow in size, only then does a specialized heart begin to develop, which may not have resembled our 4-chambered heart for thousands of iterations. There has also been some real study of this progression. I have not read this entire article (you’ll need an account if you want to), but the abstract is helpful on its own anyway.  In any case, our vantage point is that our body seems to work exactly right, but this isn’t insightful. It only means that our heart is the one that works for us, right now, where we are. If it didn’t work for us right now, it would have evolved differently, to fit those requirements. And the ones that didn’t would die out or find a different role to fit into some other survival spot.

This also brings up an interesting point that my fiance and I have discussed many times. People often see evolution as some sort of slow march toward a goal, or like the evolution posters show with an ape that slowly morphs into common-day man. It’s a misleading way to think about it, and I think it causes some misconceptions when taken to the simplest interpretation. First, species either survive or they don’t, and the ones that survive happen to continue on their line. But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t species that failed, or that there is a single line of lineage. It’s more like a gigantic tree, with branches here or there, this branch going off and creating many branches of its own, that branch going off and stopping. We may be able to trace back the path that we evolved from to some extent, but that is not the whole story. Second, evolution does not have a goal in mind. It is not the case that you can look at some creature and say that it is 5 million years behind us. That species is evolved to fit its particular spot in the ecosystem. Crocodiles may not be on the path to being able to fly, and dogs may never evolve to talk to us, because that might not have anything to do with their survival, which is all that really matters.

To think of evolution as a straight line from a single cell to some final ‘perfect’ evolved form is incorrect. All species wouldn’t evolve to be the same, because there would be no balance, no niche for each species to survive in. If everything was trying to be the same, there would be that much more competition for survival in that area. And we can’t view evolution with a magnifying glass. It works on large scales, letting the stuff that doesn’t work die off and the stuff that does fit keep going. It only looks like everything fits perfectly because we don’t get to see the countless number of things that didn’t.

Hebrews 11-5 : By faith Enoch was taken from this life, so that he did not experience death; he could not be found, because God had taken him away. For before he was taken, he was commended as one who pleased God.

2 Kings 2-11 : As they were walking along and talking together, suddenly a chariot of fire and horses of fire appeared and separated the two of them, and Elijah went up to heaven in a whirlwind.

Acts 1-11 : Men of Galilee,” they said, “why do you stand here looking into the sky? This same Jesus, who has been taken from you into heaven, will come back in the same way you have seen him go into heaven.”

We must not allow the heathens to pollute our beliefs with the “Law” of gravity! For too long, Satan has played a trick on us. Every time you drop something to the ground, expecting it to fall, you are affirming your acceptance of this cosmic trick! We must not doubt the word of God. It is clear in the bible – believe and you can ignore the restraints of gravity. This must be true: we are charged with preserving the earth for future generations. Imagine how much easier we could do this without the need for transportation pollution! The infidels are destroying the planet with their disbelief.

The first step must be to rid our schools of any mention of gravity. First, we must present alternative scientific theories, such as “God did it.” The Law of GDI has just as much scientific merit, and since it has not been shown false, as Newton’s so called “laws” have, it is the most likely explanation. Children should not be swayed by ‘evidence’ to the contrary, as it makes it more uncomfortable to answer their annoying “How?” or “Why?” questions. It may help to discredit science in general, as well. But don’t worry about not using electric lights, computers, cars, etc in the meantime. People don’t generally catch on when you criticize scientific results while using them in day-to-day life.

Next, we should institute government incentives for individuals and groups furthering the reach of the Law of GDI, in order to encourage lower emissions. The more people that believe, the less energy it will require to overcome the illusion of gravity. We’re already tax-exempt, but maybe we could just get some more money in the form of a check, or something. We’ll figure out the details later.

Finally, make it a point any time someone mentions gravity, uses any colloquialism or idiom like “keep your feet on the ground “, or says the phrase “falling down”, to take offense. By accepting the lie of gravity, they are assaulting your beliefs. Let them know how you feel and that they will be going to hell for accepting Satan this way. This tactic is most effective especially when you don’t know them, and they weren’t talking to you. Approach them on the street, if you must. It’s a violation of your civil rights to have someone believe something different than you, if you’re in the general viscinity and you happen to know you’re right and they’re wrong.

</sarcasm>

Or, I don’t know, just accept the evidence like we have for countless other scientific results and don’t read everything so literally. I mean, you ignore half of it anyway. But, whatever’s easier for you. Doing that requires admitting that you’re wrong, so that kind of sucks.

But what makes me almost laugh about this commentary is the way he seems to bring up a good point, and ignore the elephant in the room. Exactly what has history taught us about religiously backed explanations for natural phenomena? I’ll tell you: in every instance, EVERY single instance, the religious explanation has been shown to be wrong. It is a crutch during times that we didn’t have the knowledge to actually explain it. Ancient people cowering at the lightning, thinking that Zeus was angry with them look pretty silly to us today don’t they? How can you ask the question “What has history taught us?” and igonore the obvious end to your question? History has taught us that when we think we know, we don’t. The difference between science (real science, not intelligent design) and religion is that science expects to be wrong and has mechanisms to absorb new information and evolve (pun intended). Religion fights it with all its might. Whether it’s today, next year or in 500 years, this one will too. The evidence will pile up until it is overwhelming and we will come up with something new. The common component is science, humming along in the background, making itself better and better all the time. You can try to fight it, or you can swallow your pride and let go of outdated superstitions.

Learn from history: you’re fighting a losing battle.