Jeff's Lunchbreak

Terry,

Thanks for taking the time to write such a thoughtful comment. I always appreciate civil discussion on these types of topics.

I guess I'll start off addressing evolution, since that's the original topic of this blog entry. First, in regard to the scientific process, when you say that good science "sets out to prove something wrong," that sounds like a noble goal, but in practice, some things are so well demonstrated that they're taken for granted to be true. For example, you no longer find astronomers trying to disprove heliocentric theory, physicists trying to disprove atomic theory, or epidemiologists trying to disprove germ theory. They're no longer the interesting questions, so the scientists have moved on to tougher problems. Technically, science can never 'prove' anything to absolute certainty, but I think it's safe to say that we're all composed of atoms.

As far as evolution, what exactly are you referring to as being unproven, or unproveable? Genetic mutation has been observed countless times. I don't think anyone doubts that. Natural selection has also been observed over and over in living organisms. There's the antibiotic resistance in bacteria that we all have to deal with, and if you want something multicellular, there have been detailed studies of Galapagos finches and increasing hind leg length in cane toads in Australia (and the changes in snakes in response to the toads). We have seen cases of speciation, such as the new species of mosquito in London subways, and the currently occuring speciation event in apple maggot flies. We have seen bacteria develop new abilities, such as digesting nylon, or the more recent lab case of e. coli digesting citrate. There's even a lizard that was introduced to an island decades ago, which has developed new structures, cecal valves in its intestines to cope with the new diet. And those were just a few examples I thought of off the top of my head. Clearly, evolution is an ongoing process that we can directly observe, so I doubt that's what you were saying was unscientific.

My guess is that you have a problem with common descent, that all organisms on this planet are descended from a single ancestral population. I guess my question, especially in regard to where you wrote that "no evolution idea is really provable today under accepted methodologies," is what type of evidence would you require to make you confident? I've seen people play semantic games, trying to say that science requires experimentation, and therefore all historical events are outside the realm of science. Never mind that that's not the definition of science (science only requires observation and evidence - it just so happens that experiments are a good way to get that evidence in certain fields), even if someone's unwilling to include historical events in science, evidence is still the way that we build confidence on past events. For example, no one alive today was around to witness the revolutionary war, but I think we all accept the evidence that it actually happened.

I've already written a blog entry listing some of the evidence for evolution, but there are much better sources out there. A couple good ones are the Wikipedia entry on Evidence of common descent, and Talk Origin's 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution. And of course, there are great books on the subject, such as the one that this blog entry is about.

I realize that fossil evidence is only a small part of the evidence for evolution (Darwin was able to realize that evolution happens with hardly any help from the fossil record), but it's still very convincing. I mean, when a paleontologist can set out on an expedition in search of a transitional from, because he knew when and where it was most likely to occur, and he ends up finding Tiktaalik, you really have to wonder what better explanation there is. And there's also the even more recent finding of Puijila darwini.

Anyway, I guess my point is that evolution is very well supported by evidence. I don't consider it a religious question at all. It's simply the way the world works, and part of the history of life on this planet.

Okay, moving on to religion - I hesitate to write about religion on this thread because I'd prefer that it be about science, but who am I kidding - how many people read this blog, anyway?

To start off, keeping the discussion related to evolution, you wrote, "Every evidence I see, every prediction, equally supports a Creator, whoever it is." That's the problem with creationism. Nothing can contradict it. If there was an omnipotent creator, nothing would be beyond his/her/its power. We could all have been created last week with false memories, and with an entire universe full of false evidence (also known as the Omphalos Hypothesis or Last Thursdayism). If you see a star millions of light years away, and assume that means the light has been travelling for millions of years to get to us, you'd be wrong, because the creator created the photons already well underway in their journey. If you take an ice core sample and see evidence for a few hundred thousand years of arctic climate, you couldn't trust it, because the creator might have made it that way on purpose. Found an archaeopteryx that looks a whole lot like a transition between non-avian dinosaurs and birds? The creator put it there just to test your faith.

You also wrote, "the first thing I learned from life experience is to not enter something with preconceived notions, because you're likely to get it wrong." It's interesting that you say that regarding science, because that's almost exactly what I finally decided regarding religion. For a good portion of my life, I was Christian, and approached all questions assuming that Christianity must be true. Sure, I accepted evolution, but only because I could reconcile it with the Bible by taking Genesis figuratively (only later did I realize how strained that interpretation was). [added 2009-06-12: Actually, a better way to say this was that since I knew evolution to be true because of the overwhelming evidence, and by assuming that the Bible had to be true, I interpreted Genesis figurative because that was the only way to reconcile it with reality. I didn't think that maybe the authors really did think the universe was created in 6 literal days.] When I first starting thinking about the problem of evil, I figured God must have had a good reason for allowing the world to be the way it was. When I heard about the Epic of Gilgamesh, I assumed there must have been a rational explanation for why a part of it was so similar to what happend to Noah (as well as assuming that there must have been some way to make sense of the story in the first place). When something bad happened to me, I tried to think of what I might have done to make God punish me. Everything I saw I examined in its relation to Christianity.

You asked me, "Are you really being honest with yourself? Or are you reacting to something you do not fully understand or disdain." I wasn't unhappy as a Christain, so it certainly wasn't disdain that made me become an atheist. I've definitely tried my best to understand religion. I've written about it quite a bit on this blog, and I have a section of religious essays on my main site. Perhaps I've made mistakes, but I don't think it's from lack of effort, or lack of honesty.

Anyway, sorry for taking so long to write this, but considering the effort you must have put into your comment, I wanted to give you a good response. I do hope that you at least check back and read it. At the very least, I hope that you find the aviation parts of my site to be useful.

Note: this comment was edited to remove a few comments about Christianity. They weren't offensive, but I figured they were just a distraction from the main topic of this comment thread.