A little story in honor of St. Darwin from a few years ago:
Once upon a time, a man took a long trip on a boat to a faraway island to look at birds and bugs and think about the origin of life. He came up with a Theory that nothing became everything all by itself, and he wrote a book about it.
His friends liked the book very much and began to look for all sorts of evidence to support the Theory. They searched up and down, high and low to find all sorts of things that proved how nothing became everything all by itself.
Soon they all got together and formed a little club called “Friends of the Theory.” They began to insist that the Theory was the only possible explanation for all the evidence they had gathered to support the Theory. They refused to play with anyone who questioned the Theory or even to talk with them.
“How can nothing do something?” a wise old man once asked, scratching his head in confusion. "It just doesn’t make sense." The Friends the Theory laughed at the old man and threw stones at him and called him names. “Religious stupid head,” they yelled, which made the old man very sad.
Then the Friends of the Theory went to a judge so that no one could say anything bad about the Theory ever again. The judge ruled the Theory that nothing became everything all by itself was “science” and not religious stupid head stuff.
The Friends of the Theory were very happy with the judge. “See, all the smart people agree with us,” they said. “And anyone who doesn’t agree with us is a religious stupid head.”
And that, my children, is how everyone came to believe that nothing became everything all by itself.
The moral of the story is: When people believe nothing, they will believe anything.
_______________
For what can be known about God is plain to them, because God has shown it to them. For his invisible attributes, namely, his eternal power and divine nature, have been clearly perceived, ever since the creation of the world, in the things that have been made. So they are without excuse. (Romans 1:19-20)
Thanks for the cool story and Darwin poster.
You might find this article of interest: Darwin’s Birthday Poll: Fewer Than 4 in 10 Believe in Evolution – http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,491345,00.html
Ah, the unenlightened. I guess you can’t fool all the people all the time after all.
Happy Darwin Day to you too, Reverend. Although I am thinking that the theory of natural selection came about through an accumulation of evidence, not the other way around. Darwin was extremely careful. Dishonesty in any scientific endeavor is eventually outed. I believe that is why science works so well. The evidence for descent with modification is too massively supported to be the result of cherry picking by research biologists. I think you are unfairly characterizing biologists as intentionally dishonest.
Just taking a good-natured pot shot at the illuminati. Of course they would never characterize believers as ignorant and superstitious now, would they?
It’s the descent from nothing that fascinates me the most. Or was it space aliens, as the prophet Dawkins speculates?
Besides, retroductive science is always a tenuous circumstantial evidence case at best. I guess four out ten jurors aren’t yet convinced. I too prefer my science to be inductive and empirical.
I love this. And I have to confess that I used it today with credit to you.
Thanks.
For those of you who are worried about the tender religious feelings of evolutionary biologists on Darwin Day, here’s a fun little video of biologist PZ Myers signing a communion wafer at the Atheist Alliance International 2008.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=av8CCueUbXo
Yup, lots of mutual respect going on there.
“God bless.”
For those of you who are worried about the tender religious feelings of evolutionary biologists on Darwin Day…”
I guess that would be me. Apparently enough of them haven’t gotten depressed enough to shoot themselves in the head as the work in evolutionary biology goes on. I would think you find [url= this]http://www.pnas.org/content/105/23/7899.abstract]this and the lab work of Lenskiempirically compelling. Don’t you find the fulfilled predictions regarding tetrapod, whale and hominid evolution found in the fossil record equally compelling? Or that comparative genetic analysis has done nothing but strengthen the case for common descent? How much more sciencey can you get? You know better than I that science is not a search for truth but for the better explanation. Creationism/ID isn’t even playing the same game.
Even I, as a contender for Worst Catholic in the World, have a visceral reaction to PZ’s desecration of the Host. I don’t understand why he would go out of his way to tick people off. But it has little to do with his lucid writings on developmental biology. Same with Dawkins. Whether they use evolutionary theory to bolster their own non-belief systems doesn’t speak to the accuracy of the science. And atheism or even being a nice guy isn’t a requirement to be a biologist. Witness Collins and Miller (I don’t mean to imply that they are not nice guys). Heck, Ken Miller even wrote the book.
For all intensive purposes Darwin was a very religous person. In fact it is well known that he initially planned on becoming a clergyman. In addition there is a common misbelief that Darwin said that we came from monkeys, however if you look through his research he never once said that we came from monkeys, only that we may have had the same ancestor.
As for myself I am a believer in creationism and in evolution. The definition of evolution falls along the lines of the addaptation of a species in order to survive in an environment. Upon which there is proof that over the centuries humans have addapted and changed in order to survive in different environments. This is why we have different races and cultures through out the world. And why human body shapes and life expectancies have changed over time.
Here’s a little story about a scientist in the future who visits a group of settlers who have been living in an orbiting space station for 2000 years.
The settlers know nothing about Earth anymore and their only remaining literature from the planet is the Bible. They welcome the scientist and want to hear all about the planet in which Jesus once lived.
The scientist says, “Well first off, we have gravity and do not have to float around everywhere.” Having no experience of gravity, the scientist must explain it to them in detail. They laugh at him and say that surely he must be joking. He informs them that he is quite serious.
He is then ridiculed and accused of heresy. “Heresy!?,” he says.
“Oh yes, you must be an agent of the devil for we know the Bible never says anything about God creating this so called ‘gravity,’” replies the leader of the settlers.
“Well maybe God created gravity when he created everything else and doesn’t mention gravity because evidence for it is so overwhelming you’d have to be devoid of all senses and reason not to notice it,” says the scientist.
“No, we have studied the Bible for many years and would know if gravity existed. Now, the penalty for heresy is getting sent out the airlock…”
Moral of the story: Science and religion should never try to inform the other.
Cool but not compelling. I’d be compelled if something other an an e coli bacterium crawled out of one of the petri dishes.
Darwin renounced Christianity at the age of forty and was a self-professed agnostic at the end of his life. I guess he was religious without being spiritual.
Still human after all these years. The species doesn’t seem to be improving with age, either.
It certainly demonstrates a common something, though not necessarily descent. My Saturn has a Subaru drive train, but I don’t think they’re related by descent.
If they know nothing of Earth, what have they been orbiting around for 2000 years? Also, without gravity, they wouldn’t be orbiting, so they actually do experience gravity in their orbiting. I know – picky, picky, picky.
BTW, the Bible does indeed know of gravity otherwise the millstone hung around the necks of those who scandalize the little ones of faith would not be much of an anchor as they sink into the deep.
So how can biologist Dawkins use science to disprove religion?
Insecure? Or maybe just a failure to evolve.
I’ve corrected the poster in the interest of scientific and historic accuracy.
Or that comparative genetic analysis has done nothing but strengthen the case for common descent?
It certainly demonstrates a common something, though not necessarily descent. My Saturn has a Subaru drive train, but I don’t think they’re related by descent.
As far as I know my Subaru doesn’t breed. It may be sneaking out in the middle of the night to fool around without my knowlege or consent but I have no evidence that this is the case.
Are you suggesting multiple creation events where the creator decided to use the same “template”, complete with copying errors, duplicated non-functional genes and the remnants of no longer functional retroviruses? And he happened to stage his multiple creations so that it would mimic some sort of evolutionary progression. How does that make more sense than common descent?
PZ is insecure? Maybe. It would seem to me that if he were a true non-believer he would be able to take advantage of the transcendent feelings that religious rituals can offer. Kind of like Dr. Robert Price. Living a life of reactionary struggle against God or godlessness doesn’t seem like much fun to me.
I wanted to pass this link on to you. I had forgotten what one crux of the argument in evolution was. Once upon a time, I was clear that Nazism had taken Darwin’s argument for selective breeding for humans and put it into practice! How could I have forgotten that?
I hope you enjoy this link… it helped my memory light bulb go off and remember: one reason the pro-life arguments are not easily accepted in our culture is that so many people have (through osmosis) been inculcated into subtle forms of the ideas that humans should only be valued for their utility, aesthetics, and vitality. Subconsciously, this idea is not only acceptable but seems preferable to many pro-life views against the abortion of disabled children, euthanasia, and etc.
Darwin is full of such wicked thoughts – ugh! But perhaps, these types of Darwinian quotes (like the one in the link) need to be brought into the light again and reasoned/logical arguments against selective breeding and the survival of the fittest should be resurrected?
Reformation 21 Blog: http://www.reformation21.org/blog/2009/02/darwins-subtitle.php
So how can biologist Dawkins use science to disprove religion?
I don’t think you actually mean he’s trying to disprove religion. Maybe disprove the existence of God, but he’d be hard pressed to disprove the existence of religion. I never claimed anything about Dawkins, but if he’s trying to mix science and religion I’d say the same thing to him…that he’d be better off not doing so.
I mean no offense when I say this but you’ve shown in your post and in your comments again and again that you don’t understand and misrepresent some of the basics of evolution. To suggest or think that humans came from monkeys or that evolution=improvement (“Still human after all these years. The species doesn’t seem to be improving with age, either”) is downright comical. Two of the basic understandings of evolution is that humans did not come from monkeys and species don’t “improve”, they change through natural selection. Evolution tends towards diversity and complexity, but “improving” is a loaded term that, as you’ve shown, leads to a misunderstanding of evolution.
Comedic deconstruction is part of the schtick.
As to the common ancestor error, I corrected this in the new recension of my poster by indicating that we are cousins to the apes a few times removed. The picture itself is, of course, just a bit of satirical humor which came up when I Googled “evolution” in Google images. If I understand evolutionary principles correctly, our ultimate common ancestor was indeed some unicellular bit of slime. It’s nice to know where you came from.
As to my use of the term “improvement,” I concede that it is a value judgment, though the sociologists seem to think that “diversity” and “complexity” are improvements, at least to society. I may have to side with you on that one.
You are most certainly correct, evolutionarily speaking, that according to Evolution, species are said to change and morph toward increasing diversity and complexity through the mystical mathematical process of natural selection of mutations over billions and billions of years.
It should be interesting in the billions and billions of years to come what complexity and diversity will come out of the current extinction of the species.
For the record: I do believe that evolution is about as far as you’re going to get when dealing with the origins of life under the presupposition of natural cause. Science has its limits, and certainly can’t explain everything, but I can’t blame anyone for giving it a shot. We are curious creatures (uh, sorry, I meant we are a curious species). Have at it, I say.
And if a handful of believing types uses some scientific observations to engage in a bit of natural theology and say, “it sure looks intentionally designed to me,” there’s no need to get one’s evolutionary panties in a bundle. For my money, I’m not even sure how one could tell the difference.
“So how can biologist Dawkins use science to disprove religion?” – He can’t, but he sure tries. And with that British accent and the veneer of civility, some people seem to take him seriously. I’m not sure why.
Eric Nordberg at 7:42am February 22
This is funny and profound, but it can be damning for Christians as well. It is difficult to point the philosophical finger at evolutionists as promoting meaninglessness at a time when Christianity is buried neck deep in pragmatism. If the meaning of life is prosperity and seven day sex challenges, then we have nothing touching the ultimate meaning of life any more than do the evolutionists; the message is still, “let us eat, drink, for tomorrow…?” Or in the words of the Pink Floyd song, “Breathe”: “All you touch and all you see, Is all your life will ever be.”
Yup. The sword of meaningless certainly cuts both ways. Great observation.