Evolution Redux

I got a response to an older post, Transitional Life Forms, and I figured I post my response here. You can read the response in the comments, but the essence is that it takes more faith to believe in evolution than creation and that there is no evidence for evolution. Here's my response.

Aw, but MonkeyMom, the evidence is plentiful. Over the 4.5 billion years of its existence the fossil record clearly records the emergence, extinction, and continuation of all of the kingdoms. It just happens over extremely long periods of time. So if you expect to see it over the period of your lifetime or even during the period of recorded human history then you'll probably miss it. People easily misjudge probabilities because they can't easily fathom the magnitudes of the involved numbers. But to state that there is no evidence is simply wrong. It's there even if it is just fragmentary snapshots.

What's completely lacking is any evidence that supports a single creation event where all of the world's species were created with no new ones emerging since that creation.

The beautiful thing about science is that it's not afraid to say when it doesn't know something. Regardless, what we do know is that the earth is significantly older than 6000 years and that life has existed on it for a very, very long time, and that the types of life have changed radically over those long periods and that they have changed from simple life forms to increasingly complex life forms and that the life forms have changed to match the conditions.

If you know what fossils are, you probably know how rare they are and that they are only formed under very special circumstances. The result is that the fossil record is incredibly incomplete. This makes it very unlikely that we'll ever see a complete fossil record showing transitions. However, it does show the appearance of increasingly complex organisms over very large time periods.

Evolution is a theory that tries to explain the known facts. So far, it is the most plausible although like all theories it will be modified and perhaps discarded as new evidence is found that either supports it or undermines it.

That's the beauty of science.

I was, of course, joking about dogs being evidence of transitional life forms. I'm not sure that I buy the theory of evolution either. I'm willing to say I don't know. I think that it's quite likely that there are processes that we don't or can't understand because they happen over millions, billions, or trillions of years. Also, by the very nature of the question, I'm not sure we'll ever be able to know the answer.

What I am 100% certain of, is that the Biblical creation account is not how it happened. The evidence on the ground completely contradicts the account unless you read it as a purely metaphorical story whose details are essentially meaningless.

Since you've studied this so much, I'm sure you're also aware of the problems with postulating an all powerful creator. On the other hand, if you had you'd probably understand why that is an even more improbable theory than evolution.

I'm sure it is comforting to believe in a simple answer: God did it. But if I concede that, then you still have to explain what God is and how he did it. Which kind of brings us back to square one. In the end, "God did it" is just a comforting way of saying, "I don't know." And I'm okay with that answer.

In the end our existence is miraculous, amazing, and astounding. Whether or not we believe in God doesn't change that one bit.

Transitional Life Forms

Man, Kirk Cameron is a nut job. I was watching Nightline and they had a "debate" between the Christian religionists and a couple of atheists debating the existence of God. The best proof of the atheists was the stretched analogy between a painting and the universe; a painting is proof of a painter so the universe is proof of a creator. They had no good answer to the question of if everything has a creator then who created the creator (i.e. infinite regress). They claim, incorrectly, that most people disbelieve in God because of evolution. Their chief complaint seemed to be the lack of transitional life forms. Cameron put up artistic rendering such as a croco-duck, a bull dog, etc. Humorous, but I think he was being mocking.

The trouble is that these arguments seem to hold sway with creationists which just shows how ignorant they are about evolution and science in general.

Just last week I stumbled into an evolution discussion with a co-worker. I quickly found myself scurrying to extricate myself as the claims became more extraordinary and the lack of touch reality mounted. All this with an intelligent, well-educated, engineer. I was amused when he admitted that the whole point of intelligent design was not to put forward an alternate scientific theory but to use real or perceived holes in scientific knowledge as evidence that there must be a God. He also admitted that it was essentially appealing to magic to explain what we don't understand.

As Dawkins would point out, just because we don't know something or that a scientific theory is disproved doesn't mean that the default belief should be God or some other supernatural explanation. God is such an improbable being that it should require extraordinary proof before being seriously considered at all.

Looking back over the past 1000 years, compare the contributions of science and technology as opposed to religion. Religion, scripture, and revelation have never given us light and knowledge about the universe and its workings. Quite the opposite. Religion has had to be dragged kicking and screaming, resisting all the way, and often denouncing truth as heresy.

Anyway, here are my examples of transitional life forms that will probably never be found in the fossil record. Seriously, look at what has happened to the poor old wolf. All the following animals are very, very close genetically to the wolf at the top and in the case of the Doberman are very recent inventions by breeding. Gene sequencing shows remarkable sharing of genes between completely different species. All of these things are to be expected based on evolution. But, let's say that we never are able to explain how one species evolved from another. Does this automatically mean that they were created or engineered by a creator? Perhaps that does become more likely. But then, how did he do it? Was God really a master recombinant DNA engineer and breeder that engineered the earth with natural means? Or was it magic? Is he truly supremely powerful?

I'll favor non-magic explanations because I see no evidence in the world I know to suggest that magic is real. In fact, nature is continually yielding up her secrets to the questioning of science.

Besides, if God does exist, then he has a lot of explaining to do because his creation is a real mess.




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