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Dispelling the myths...

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With thanks to Dawkins especially, but many other leading scientists and philosophers too.


1.  Can Evolution and God Coexist?

Evolution and God cannot comprehensibly coexist. It is a complete nonsensical idea, and is only ever suggested on the behalf of the christian, who realising the in-deniability of evolution, tries to cling to some 'fiat' life raft.

Evolution is a theory, tested and proven/observed that very accurately and brilliantly raises our consciousness to the fact that complicated things (such as humans) arrive 'on the scene' after a very very very long and very gradual process (the process of evolution). Evolution shows how and why we came to be the way we are in a very easy, understandable and acceptable way.
Now, to postulate that some creator of intelligence far far faaaar beyond us simply came into being out of nothing, (the 'unmoved mover' theory), simply defies all 'laws' of evolution - which have been tested and shown. Complex matter arrives on the scene after a very very long time, to postulate it is created immediately and out of nothing, simply defies evolutionary theory. And few religious people realise this fact when they say they accept evolution.

Now evolution does not deal with the creation of the universe - that's the realm of physics, to which I'd point you toward Hartl and Hawkings. But alone, evolution goes to sufficiently prove that however unlikely you find the concepts of [quantum] physicians and their claims (which have been estimated and 'proven' to levels of supreme accuracy), the concept of a supreme intelligence simply 'appearing' out of nothing is many many many Many leagues harder to comprehend - this is simply not how things work.

To claim that god does not evolve and is not restrained/made the same way humans are (and ‘made’ is said in terms of ‘evolved’), please see the following 2 points.


2i.  “But isn’t God above our physical and temporal world and restraints, above our understanding?”

Isn't that just too easy?

The arguer immediately talks himself or herself out of the difficult situation/paradox by declaring that it does not apply to them/their god (in some terrible cases, they suggest to even argue it is some kind of ultimate sin!). The point is, by an argument by fiat, god seems to declare himself out of line of laws and constraints of which condemn him to the realm of impossibility.
To believe he is above all of that, is just that: "belief", and if that’s enough for you, then that’s fine, but please do not 'pollute' evolutionary theory by trying to match it up to creationism/intelligent design - for they are in many respects complete opposites!

2.ii.
EDIT:  “we will never understand god/ he is above our understanding/ he does not evolve”

To my astonishment (at first) most people still seem swayed by this point in continuation of point 2i, and when confronted will often back down to it and stay there. It appears some people lack the ability to distinguish excuse from proof, what is statistically likely from what is so unlikely as to be impossible.
Let me elaborate a little.

What I tried to convey in point 1 was the verbose way of saying a) god doesn’t exist, science has all but shown it or b) if a god did exist his role would be so minuscule/worthless that his existence for all intents and purposes may as well not be existent. Occams Razor will suffice to show why: basically god is the lesser explanation and in light of physics discoveries and theories and evolution, he is unnecessary – he thus needs to be given the great heave-ho.

This is not easy to come to terms to, and as I say, when backed against a wall, most will still simply rely on their old friend “science cannot prove anything”. But this lacks all sincerity and meaning. For instance, when said theologian becomes ill, I’m more than certain they go straight to the nearest chemist, pharmacy or hospital and rely on their ‘scientifically proven effective drugs’ – much more than idle prayer alone – which, by the way has been shown to make patients more ill!!!.
Similarly, if science were to ‘prove the existence of god’  - how many faithers would object with a “NO –science cannot prove anything!” – not many!!!

But to return to point, if you accept evolution, you cannot accept god. OR (and this is me throwing you the only scrap of a lifeline possible) if you do, you accept him/his role as being so unnecessary and remote, that he may as well not exist (and that’s leaving aside the glaring contradictions of his existence! – see later ‘dispelling the myths’). If you do not accept evolution, then I suggest you read some more books and facts. And if you don’t accept god evolved, then you believe in miracles… please see point 2i.

To state god set in motion evolution (or some form of ID argument) is to try to bring together two ideas that really are incompatible, once fully understood and appreciated.
It would be like suggesting you helped write someone’s prize-winning essay, because you brought him or her the pen – you either do it, or you don’t, as they say…

Put another way

”Isn’t it enough to see the garden as beautiful, without having to believe there are fairies at the bottom of it too?”  ~Douglas Adams

And, if you are still convinced/wanton to believe in said fairies, because science can’t disprove them, then remember: “we’re all atheists in the cases of: Thor, Zeus, Apollo, Wotan, Amon, Ra, Baal, Mithras, the golden calf and the spaghetti monster… some of us just go one further”  ~Dawkins.



3.  “How can evolution work, it cannot produce any new information”

When you say evolution cannot produce new information, you are not understanding the 'mechanism' of evolution...
It's like saying you have a scrap yard of material... then you rummage around in it and throw things to one side, and 'hey presto' a Boeing 747 appears... You have not created any new information (if we take the bits of junk to be DNA, you've not created any new ones..) what you HAVE done, is create/design a complex integration of the parts which existed... this is the process of evolution - the gradual building of more complex (generally) beings, with greater likelihood of survival and reproduction.
It makes NO claims to 'create information', it only claims, and has proven how existing information can be put together to make ever complex beings, such as we see today.
So you're argument of the 'creation of more information' falls down badly.
Incidentally, the fact that I said 'you' 'made the Boeing 747' doesn’t count in the argument for a god creating life, as evolution shows how a god is *extremely* unlikely to have created life - to the point of absurdity really. So please do not misinterpret what I've said as some kind of proof of god, it is not at all.


4.  “In some studies of evolution, taking a 100years, no signs of evolution have been shown”

You look at the evolution of a species over the course of 100 years and claim it has not changed much... We would not expect it to; given the history of this planet (billions of years old), and the fact that the homosapiens line has taken many millennia to evolve (as has every other species)... 100 years is a very very short time span.
However, if you care to research the Darwin finch, you will see its beak size change dramatically, so as to create what has to be considered a new species (evolution occurring!!) in the space of about 40years or so..... It does happen, creationists just like to ignore it,... no idea why.


5.   "The spontaneous generation of life could not of happened by the random mixing of chemicals "

I couldn’t agree more, and luckily for me, evolution theory makes no such claims. Evolution is the exact OPPOSITE to randomness (see the scrapyard-boeing analogy for the example). Evolution shows how gradual incremental increases in complexity go to build the types of intricate complicated life form we now see, and these are anything but random, as they are guided selectively through the mechanism we know to exist, which Darwin 'discovered' - and that is natural selection!


6.   ”Evolution is flawed, as half of an (any you like) organ wouldn’t work at all”

The idea that 'half an organ doesn’t work' is a very very old spanner to be thrown at evolutionary theorists, and the eye is more commonly used...
All you have to do is realise the complex being you see before you, has taken millennia to evolve to become that way, and started out being a lot simpler. And all you have to realise (in the case of the eye) is that 5% of an eye (or light sensitive cells) is better than 4%, but 6% is better than 5%, and so gradual incremental rises in sensitivity to light occurs, each of which is likely to happen, and once it happens likely to lead to greater increments...
The problem of creationism, is that it suggests that what we see simply occurs all at once - which is the thing that’s near impossible to comprehend!


7.   “Isn’t it just vastly unlikely that a planet such as ours could arise to give life… surely there must be a creator”

The Anthropic Principle worked out:

"It has been estimated that there are between 1billion and 30billion planets in our galaxy, and about 100billion galaxies in the universe. Knocking a few noughts off for reasons of ordinary prudence, a billion billion is a conservative estimate for the number of available planets in the universe. Now suppose the origin of life, the spontaneous arising of something equivalent to DNA, really was quite a staggeringly improbable event. Suppose it was so improbable so as to occur on only one in a billion planets. A grant -giving body would laugh at any chemist who admitted that the chance of his proposed research succeeding was only one in a hundred. But here we are talking about odds of one in a billion. And yet... even with such absurdly long odds, life will still have arisen on a billion planets - of which Earth, is of course, one." ~R. Dawkins


8.   "So what started it all off, where did the cells/DNA come from?"

This is a question for a physicist over an evolutionist -we deal with how life evolves, not the question of where it came from, so to speak. This however is not adequate enough I know, and a lot of people feel compelled that under such an answer, they have nothing left but some kind of God.
I would firstly suggest you re-read points 1, and 7 as to the explanation of this.
Hartl and Hawkings suggest a very clear and precise way as to the creation of the universe, and phycisists have many other ways/theories in which the universe could have, and most likely did come about. All of which, however hard to believe and understand they are, are still many many many leagues more easy to grasp and accept than some kind of supreme intellectual being (see point 1).

So where did it all come from? Well you must realise that everything started much simpler, so when we look at humans and ask where we came from, what we should really mean is where did our genes first come from. When we start considering individual genes, we see they are far far smaller units of selection, and so could come about a lot easier than a whole human (which is the whole problem of creationism). It is not hard to imagine that once units of hydrogen started interacting and forming the world as we knew it, certain gases/particles/ions/electrons etc started to interact and grow in ways that were similar to reproduction. It is the basis of viruses and germs. From there the germ-line (DNA) began to exist, and from there a few billion years later we finally raised up.

The question of the beginning of the universe is the hardest to overcome, but point1 should help, especially with point7.
From there it is but a very very small step to realise that chemical compounds could begin to interact and 'reproduce'/make replicas... from there, we have the basis of evolution.
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EDIT:
THIS HAS HAD TO BE REPOSTED DUE TO SOME WASTEFUL/USELESS/IRRELEVENT COMMENTS BEING MADE.
I apologise that some very good posts have had to be deleted, but in order for others to have the chance to ask questions easily, this is the easiest way I saw possible.
Thank you to everyone who asked and commented and conducted themselves maturely. I apologise for the deletion of your posts.

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Based on several interviews I've seen, and more especially some of the views that have been expressed within the dA forums. I've not attributed the quotes to anyone as I dont want to personalise this,...

My main reason for posting this is as the title suggests, to try to shed some good rational, scientific light on the subject of evolution.

Expect more posts, and more additions as time progresses - it appears faith is hard to overcome. . .

For now, I have one more add-to to make, on the topic: "are science and religion converging"
"NO!"
(~Dawkins, I, and any other true scientist, unaffected by the pull of the Templeton 'prize'
© 2007 - 2024 estranged-entity
Comments2
Sad-King-Billy's avatar
Okay, so since you obviously dont like me disputing your individual points- nothing new showed up in the last two rounds- let me be more general.

God is a concept alien to science. Science doesnt deal with God, God has nothing to do with science, so it's hard to expect science to either prove or disprove him.
It is, instead, very likely that science will find out that the universe itself is responsible for all that happens inside it, and it is very likely that a religious person will see this as simply a sign of God's being an engineer rather than a builder- as in, God made the universe be this way rather than God made the big bang, the stars, the moon, Earth, and all life upon it.
For example, there is the matter of quantum mechanics arguing that the universe would spontaneously appear from nothing(I'm probably outdated, and my knowledge of the field is rather shallow, but the specifics dont really matter for the argument I'm constructing)- this has nothing to do with God being unnecessary and thus disproved(note that the lack of necessity wouldnt matter one way or another, as Occam's razor isnt relevant outside of the field of science)- God's natural place would be as the one who made the universe to behave in a way that allows for a spontaneous creation of a universe.
Same goes for evolution and everything else.

Trying to 'disprove' God by constructing paradoxes involving him is quite misguided, indeed, this is in many ways parallel to the argument of irreducible complexity- yes, we dont understand God, but since we arent supposed to understand him in the first place, it does in no way suggest that he isnt here.

"Qualia, my friend, is a philosophical term we like to apply, much the same as consciousness, but both are highly debateable as anything other than extended phenotypes, and 'offshoots' of the neuronal firing... Believe cog neuroscience (my area) is leaving less and less room for some mysterious-esqu consciousness"

I disagree.
First, note that science intruding into the realm of the spirit is rather misguided from the very beginning, as it denies the existence of the spirit as anything "other than extended phenotypes" of the matter. This is an approach that is very natural for science, but it seems doubtful to be employed in this particular area.

Yes, you will probably find out a correlation between the neuronal firing and the state of the consciousness, and you will probably interpret it as the consciousness' being just a side effect of te shooting, but note that this interpretation(or call it derivation, whatever) is about as valid as the interpretation that the brain is an organ translating the impressions of matter into a form which the spirit can accept- basically, Bergson's claim- so it's natural to find a correlation between consciousness and the brain.
Yes, Occam's razor, favouring the simpler explanation, favours the first interpretation, but again, Occam's razor isnt absolute. It works for science- I have no objection to the scientific tendency to ignore an explanation that doesnt contribute anything from the purely scientific standpont- as in God and as in spirit- I just dont see it as a valid way to refute the existence of either.
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