Evolution vs. Intelligent Design/Creationism: The Great Debate

Wednesday, April 18, 2012

http://knowitstrue.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/evolution.gif

Just thought I'd share this, don't think anyone else has posted it on here yet.

Monday, April 16, 2012

In northern Kentucky, you can find the Creation Museum, a museum dedicated to explaining the Earth’s history, geology, and paleontology through the lens of the Bible. In other words, the Creation Museum argues that the Earth has existed only 6,000 years and was created in just 6 days by God.

An example of the museum’s exhibits includes one dedicated to dinosaurs. The many fossils displayed are explained to have originated during different periods, such as the Lower Jurassic and Upper Cretaceous. However, all those same dinosaurs are said to have gone extinct in 2348 B.C.—the year of the flood in which God is said to have wiped the Earth clean of all but the animals kept safe on Noah’s ark. The museum addresses the issue of the movement of the tectonic plates once again using the biblical flood, claiming that the turmoil caused by the water broke the plates apart and washed them across the globe.

Scientists who have visited the Creation Museum—and a brave few have out of pure curiosity—are baffled by these explanations. Another exhibit near the museum’s entrance displays a girl feeding a carrot while two dinosaurs loiter nearby. Derek E.G. Briggs, director of the Peabody Museum of Natural History at Yale, who visited the museum with a group of other scientists, could find no words to describe this scene beyond, “It’s rather scary.”

Since Noah’s arc could not possibly have fit all of the world’s animals, the Creation Museum explains that he just took two of each similar animal. So rather than taking two wolves, two cocker spaniels, and two golden retrievers, Noah had just two dog-like animals on this boat. From these two generic dogs, all of our current dog-like animals diversified. The museum even claims that foxes descended from Noah’s two dogs.

The differences between dogs and foxes are profound and no one would argue them as the same species. Beyond their physical differences, dogs and wolves have 78 chromosomes while a fox has only 34. The museum claims that all the diversification of Noah’s dog occurred in around 4,200 years, much faster than an evolutionist would ever believe possible.

To explain this rapid change, the Creation Museum says only, “God provided organisms with special tools to change rapidly.” To which Dr. Bengtson, a professor of paleozoology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History, responded, “Thus in one sentence they admit that evolution is real, and that they have to invoke magic to explain how it works.”

And that brings me to my point: creationists are welcome to provide a counterargument to evolution. Everyone is entitled to an opinion. But a theory such as creationism that has no scientific evidence to back it up cannot be claimed as scientifically sound. Nor should believers in creationism expect that it be taught on the same level in schools as the well-developed and explained theory of evolution. Until places like the Creation Museum, which as a museum should by all rights have endless evidence for its claims, can back creationism with true empirical evidence, creationists should not expect evolutionists to give creationism real consideration.

~Katelyn Larson

To read more about the Creation Museum feel free to visit:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/science/30muse.html?pagewanted=1

and

http://tierneylab.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/30/creationism-evolution/#

Atheism and Science

"Why should you be so aggressive? Is anything gained by trying to force these new ideas upon the mass of mankind?”

--Darwin

Scientists such as Richard Dawkins (though he is an incredibly accomplished researcher) may alienate much of the public when they tie personal beliefs to all scientists. Whether or not atheism is correct, suggesting that science requires atheism might disrespect spiritual and religious scientists and turn lay people away from science. Darwin himself was a Christian until he was 40, literally believing the Bible and training to become an Anglican clergyman, before his discoveries about natural selection turned him towards agnosticism. Yet, as the quote above shows, Darwin expressed sensitivity towards respecting the religious beliefs of others.

“His own illustrious example was encouragement, was for a command to every thinker to make known to all his fellows that which he believed to be the truth."

--Aveling and Büchner, on Darwin

So what might drive Dawkins to pursue his arguments denouncing religion, despite these possible, negative effects? I believe the answer is what forms the basis of science: individuals’ desire to find and proclaim truth. And, Dawkins’s view is that we should treat ‘the God Hypothesis’ as a scientific hypothesis “which should be analysed as skeptically as any other,” leading him to conclude that no God exists. Perhaps Darwin’s actions support Dawkins’s proclamations. As the quote above shows, Darwin made the huge step of announcing his findings, even though they contradicted contemporary views on religion and alienated many people (including his wife). One might ask: why shouldn’t atheist scientists do the same?

However, many scientists believe that the question of the origin of the universe lies beyond science. After all, how can we observe whether or not the universe is all that there ever was? Indeed, Darwin eventually published controversial claims, but these claims were based on the accumulation of natural observations.

So, I leave it up to the reader: Are Dawkins’s claims valid? If so, are they supportable enough to be worth controversy, as Natural Selection was?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Darwin%27s_religious_views

http://www.antitheists.co.uk/resources/Richard%20Dawkins%20-%20The%20God%20Delusion.pdf

Sunday, April 15, 2012

Religion, Education, and Evolution

Photo Credit: http://coturnix.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/family-tree-cartoon.jpg?w=584

Here I’d like to talk about two articles that I consider particularly interesting because they contradict what I consider to be a general opinion at least in some media and in academia.

First, I’d like to look at this study that focuses on a study by Schwadel that claims that unlike popular belief, increased education actually increases a belief in a higher power. This does not mean that the more education that a person has, the higher chance they are to be Christian or Muslim, or any other religion, but rather to have general belief. In fact, the study said that the more educated someone is, the less likely they are to claim that their religion is the only way, but the more likely they are to believe in an afterlife. The article puts several more of these interesting findings very well in a series of bullet points which I will quote here:

“-Education had a strong and positive effect on religious participation. With each additional year of education, the odds of attending religious services increased 15 percent.

-Increases in education were associated with reading the Bible. With each additional year of education, the odds of reading the Bible at least occasionally increased by 9 percent.

-Education was related to respondents' switching of religious affiliations. The odds of switching to a mainline Protestant denomination increased by 13 percent for each year of education.

The more educated respondents were, the more likely they were to question the role of religion in secular society. Yet, they were against curbing the voices of religious leaders on societal issues and supported those leaders' rights to influence people's votes. “

It seems that becoming more religious as you become more educated also influences your ideas of religion and politics. Fortunately, more education still opposes outright interference of religion with politics although suggestion is supported.

Another interesting article was focused on the reasons why people accept or don’t accept evolution. Commonly, it is thought that all a person needs to do is look at the facts logically to accept evolution, and if that person does not accept evolution, he or she is being irrational.

This study introduces a new idea. Ha, Haury, and Nehm conducted a study after finding that the research on religion affecting acceptance of evolution was contradictory. In some studies religion interfered with acceptance of evolution, but sometimes it actually did not. In a quest to discover a consistent reason, they explored emotional responses to evolution. Their study suggests that the “gut feeling” that we experience is actually very important to if someone will accept evolution. If a person "just feels like" evolution is wrong, they may completely refute evolution even in light of the most air-tight evidence.

They propose presenting students with data and also presenting information about “gut feelings” and how we process information so that students can make a better, informed decision. Personally, this sounds like a much more appealing way of convincing students of evolution. Some religious groups are famous for trying to rhetorically beat acceptance into people, and that is usually to no avail. The same might be said of evolution: if you just tell someone that they must accept evolution, there may not be acceptance. Appealing to the emotions at the root of the denial of evolution might be more effective at convincing people of the facts. I'm in favor of the widespread acceptance of evolution, and this might be the start of something truly revolutionary in the classroom.

Food for thought.

Saturday, April 14, 2012

ARE WE NOT EVOLVING ANYMORE?

HUMAN EVOLUTION GRINDS TO A HALT?

Leading geneticist Steve Jones asked 'Is Human Evolution Over?' as part of the University of Edinburgh's Enlightenment Lecture Series.

Leading geneticist Steve Jones from University College of London shook up the scientific world by claiming that evolution no longer applies to modern homo sapiens, and that in fact, if we are to survive for another million years, our descendents are going to look exactly like us. His hypothesis revolves around three reasons. One, that with the advent of modern technological ease, natural selection due to competition has been erased. Two, since there are now fewer older fathers, and that men tends to copulate with fewer women as compared to earlier times, there will be less selection due to genetic mutations. Three, random change due to population isolation is dwindling due to better connectivity and lower inbreeding.

This theory is to some extent supported by the research conducted by University of Chicago Geneticist, Chung-I Wu. The study shows that while DNA sequences of primates seems to be experiencing rapid change, the sequences in the human brain remain surprisingly static. This could be because of the brain’s immense specificity and complexity, which leaves very little room for evolutionary tinkering, counters Dr. Wu. He says that even a little bit of change could render a part of the brain functionless.

There are many counter-arguments to Dr. Jones’s hypothesis, the most logical of which I found to be Dr. Hawkes’ s Weblog. Bloggers of Discover Magazine have taken it upon themselves to tear this theory down. The Guardian even published a debate about this contentious theory.

As for me, as much merit as Dr. Jones’s theory has, I lean more towards the second pool of opinions. To over-simplify, most people assume that humans will either evolve towards a super-species that is capable of incredible feats, or couch-potatoes, glued to their machines and incapable of independent thought and action. I think either of those theories is vastly radical. In my opinion, evolution will keep happening – not as radically as before because of the lack of cutthroat competition (and here, I am talking about industrialized countries – low-income countries will face their own isolated natural selection due to the high disease burden and extreme poverty). But overall, the very fact that there is lower inbreeding, greater social intermingling, less geographical division will lead to an evolution based not entirely on genetics, but also on social and cultural factors.

What else but evolution can explain this image, published on Time magazine’s cover, in 1993? It is startling, at least to me, than over 15 years later this face seems so eerily familiar.