Yet another evolution debate

Mention the words “evolution”, and “creation” in the same sentence and a debate is sure to follow. Usually, the debate will end up sounding something like this:

Person 1: You ignorant Bible thumper!
Person 2: Call me all the names you want. You’re going to hell anyways!
Person 1: You’re an idiot!
Person 2: You’re a moron!
et cetera, et cetera, so forth and so on…

I posted a short personal essay the other day, explaining my belief that evolution and belief in a creator are not mutually exclusive. I was very impressed at the debate that ensued in the comments. It was relatively free of personal attacks, name calling, and general stupidity. These were very intelligent, informed, thoughtful and somewhat long-winded comments

You can read all 4500 words of comments here, but I’m sure you have better things to do. Therefore I have edited the comments down to about 2500 words for you reading pleasure.

Daemonax:
Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection is compatible with belief in the Christian creator god, in the same way that Thor is compatible with the modern theory of thunder and lightening.

It seems rather ridiculous to me to say of the modern theory of thunder and lightening, “oh wow, you’ve found out the method of how Thor creates thunder and lightening.”

Todd Hebert:
Daemonax,
I really like the Thor example.
Evolution isn’t compatible with the “Christian creator god”, but do you think it could be compatible with an unknown intelligent designer? Theoretically speaking of course.

blacksheep:
COULD evolution be compatible with an unknown, unknowable, intelligent designer? Sure, it could. But there is zero evidence for that and much evidence against it. The main point being that life forms really are not that intelligently designed.

Our bodies are a hodgepodge of barely working systems, jury-rigged nerves, and general piss-poor planing. If someone designed those systems they are not likely deserving of worship.

A couple really quick examples:

Our eye has the photosensitive material behind the nerves, resulting in the infamous ‘blind spot’ that all vertebrates have. Invertebrates have a much more sensibility-designed eye, with the photosensitive material not blocked by nerves and blood vessels.

The human spine is a complete engineering disaster and simply NOT designed to carry around any real weight.

The mammal spinal cord is inside out. The brain has the white matter on the inside, protected by the far more resilient and resistant to damage gray matter on the outside. The spine has this reversed, with the white matter wrapping around the gray.

Those are just the first few I can think of off the top of my head. Engineers describe the human body as a ‘kludge,’ or a collection of jury-rigged and barely working systems.

fromclouds:
I had read that the spine isn’t made to bear any weight because our spines aren’t all that different from our quadrupedal relatives, despite the fact that we’ve taken to walking on our hind legs exclusively.

My other favorite example is teeth, and how we have too many teeth to fit our jaw (our jaw has shrunken over time, but the number of teeth we have hasn’t caught up).

Todd Hebert:
Damn, I had no idea. I guess we are ‘kludge’.

blacksheep:
I have to give you a lot of credit Todd. I may not share your beliefs but I do respect you for being open to other possibilities and being willing to discuss it openly. I hope the next theist I run into is half as open minded as you.

stonedaddy:
It is my understanding that Darwin himself told people of his day that his theory was just that, a theory. Nobody on earth knows the truth about our origins. I believe in Creation. No matter what you believe about our origins, the bottom line is it takes a faith of some kind. If evolution is correct shouldn’t we be seeing the process continue? Or did the designer decide that creation was finished? I do believe that our creator put into his design the ability for his creations, plant or animal, to adapt.

fromclouds:
@Stonedaddy
When Darwin first introduced it, I guess you could say that it was “just a theory”. The problem is, your statement ignores the 150 years of research and advancement that have happened since.

I would further argue that it doesn’t take faith to believe in evolution. All the evidence is there, but you must concern yourself with looking at it. Furthermore, evolution hasn’t stopped; just because it happens in geological time (that is, too slowly for it to be visible) doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. That’s like saying that rocks don’t erode because you can’t see the accumulated effects of thousands of years of wind, water, and light on them. Remember, a watched rock never erodes.

blacksheep:
Evolution hasn’t stopped, its still ongoing all the time. And we do see it ongoing all the time.

About 20 years ago some scientists took small lizards from Africa and transplanted them onto a tiny island many miles off the coast. The lizards they started with were highly active and territorial, with flashy coloring and eating insects to support their high-energy life.

The island they were transplanted to however had fairly few insects living on it, and was not large enough for them to continue their territorial lifestyle.

As a result, in just 20 years (or about 30 – 40 lizard generations) we have an entirely new species of lizard. Sluggish, social creatures with a multi-chambered stomach to accommodate eating plants instead of insects. Their bodies are larger to hold their expanded guts, and their legs are shorter and stronger to support larger bodies. Their flashy colors, no longer needed for territorial displays, have given way to stone-colored camouflage to help them hide from seabirds.

You may argue that that’s not evolution, since one species of lizard simply changed into another species. But that is the very crux of evolution. If one species of lizard can become another in just 20 years, there’s no telling what might happen in a thousand, or a million years.

MFJ:
Blacksheep,
I will try not to be hostile, but it is going to be difficult. My apologies in advance. I have no idea of the state of the evidence for your African island story. I am skeptical. However, if all is exactly as you stated you have demonstrated a shocking lack of understanding about biology and evolutionary theory. Indeed you highlight one core problem for Darwinism (and the reason as a theory it is dead in the water supported only by the faith of its adherents.) If one has a LaMarcian view of genetics (as Darwin did) your story makes some sense. The lizard adapts and passes on those changes to its offspring. This is provably not true. Our adaptations to our environment are not passed on unless we have genetic change. Genetic change is not responsive to the environment – it happens by random chance during the reproductive process. The possibility of random chance producing adequate variation to lead to selection of the changes mentioned (different bodies, different stomachs, different coloration, different social interaction, etc) is zero. It is not possible. To believe that has happened is entirely irrational, one step below believing in Thor the thunder God.

Again, I apologize for the potential hostile tone.

fromclouds:
@MFJ
I would tend to agree that the story seems infeasible in terms of scale and time, but that does not disprove Darwinian evolution. Specifically, your claim that:

“If one has a LaMarcian view of genetics (as Darwin did) your story makes some sense. The lizard adapts and passes on those changes to its offspring. This is provably not true. Our adaptians to our environment are not passed on unless we have genetic change.”

Is spurious at best. The story makes no claim that successive generations of lizards were the benefactors of individual lizards’ successes, and that these successes accrued over the life of said lizard improved their offspring. Furthermore, I’m fairly sure that Darwin’s own theory of natural selection was the death knell of the Lamarckian theory. After all, Darwin espoused “variation and selection”. The evolution detailed in this study does not hinge upon the adaptability of individual lizards.

The changes introduced in the lizard population, under the framework of Darwinian evolutionary theory would be attributable to mutation, and the story makes no claim otherwise. This of course does not make the account true, though your arguments do nothing to falsify it (other then your [and my] incredulity at the numbers). Though blacksheep could put that all to rest with a well-placed citation.

As for your claim of trying not to sound hostile, when you disparage someone’s account, likening it to a belief in Thor is just being an asshole.

blacksheep:
@MFJ
I don’t have the original article at hand because I read it well over a year ago, but I will look for it.

I’m going to leave you with an argument I’ve come up with after many such discussions with theists.

Assuming that all we believe about God is true, that He is divinely good and wants the best for us, which is more likely?

That God would give us senses to observe the world around us and free will and intelligence to interpret what we see as it makes sense, but would then fill the universe with evidence contrary to the truth of the bible and punish us for believing the evidence that He Himself has presented us with…

OR that the writers of the bible misinterpreted His word and His work and put together stories that made sense with what they knew at the time? Wouldn’t it make more sense to base our beliefs on the actual WORKS of God that surrounds us as opposed to His WORDS as interpreted and written then reinterpreted and rewritten by small, flawed, limited humans over and over again over the last 2000 years?

As Todd said in his original article, belief in scientific ideas is not mutually exclusive to belief in God, only the literal word of the bible. Which even the most devout of theists have to admit has a lot of parts that don’t make sense in today’s world.

mfj:
Blacksheep,

Let’s backtrack a second. The purpose of the story you presented was to show that evolution is ongoing. Now maybe by that you meant that over time a species will vary as influenced by its environment and even produce sub species. However, this is uncontroversial and has been known (if in not always in the same language) for thousands of years.

Instead I assumed (rightly I believe) that the story was intended to buttress the core argument of evolution as it stands today – that more complicated life forms have arisen over time from simpler life forms through a process of random genetic change and natural selection. The story as recited provides zero evidence for that proposition. To believe it does is entirely irrational.

The question of when something is a separate species may be interesting, but is not really relevant to the larger questions. I would just suggest that reproductive viability is a bright line standard or at least closer to one, whereas behavioral divides are speculative and as your example shows here likely to breakdown quite quickly. That is if there was a behavioral divide between the parent and child species in your example, what would happen if you imported more of the parent species? Would their offspring be able to bridge that divide as they faced the same environmental factors. I would hypothesize yes. This is obviously different from bringing dogs to the island, which we would never expect to be able to breed with the lizards. Some of this discussion is semantics.

I too believe that we should use our senses to understand the world, although I do not live in the delusion that our senses are adequate to understanding all of it. When examined the universe and life in it look created not random. And the more detail and data we have the more created it looks. As best as I can tell it is the evolutionists that seek to close off debate and ignore facts. That is without a doubt true in our public schools. When I read the arguments for both sides the quality of the argumentation is not even close. The intelligent design side makes cogent, reasonable arguments based in data. The evolutionists make smoke and mirror arguments (like your lizard story), straw man attacks (like your scripture vs. reason argument above), ad hominem attacks, etc. Most people who believe in evolution do so as a matter of faith. Sometimes it is faith in those who taught them. Often it is faith that all events must have natural causes and therefore assumes out the possibility of God.
There is a reason why hardcore evolutionists often turn to atheism – it is the only sensible retreat. The God that we are going to see in nature outside of some divine revelation is an evil God. A God who creates by death, going through billions of trials to get to the end result is either a very scary or very weak God. If you believe in a divinely good God who wants the best for us who created us through natural selection you are entirely irrational. These ideas are not compatible.

I would flip your question around a little. If God is divinely good and wants the best for us, but has also allowed us by our choices to screw up His creation, how will He communicate to us. He cannot do it adequately through His creation – it is screwed up. He must find a different way. He does it first by His word, which is divinely inspired, and then by the Word made flesh, who through His willing sacrifice overcomes death. Your false God of nature uses death for His creative purposes. The true God revealed in the life, death, and resurrection of Christ, accepts the death that we have brought about into Himself for our benefit. This is what I believe. It may be wrong, but unlike the position you stated (which may or may not be yours) it is not irrational.

blacksheep:
I see you are simply not willing to look at the evidence that surrounds you. There is myriad evidence of evolution; it does not require faith to belief in it. Faith is the belief in something without evidence. Every day more proof emerges, such as this one on human genetics: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/29123062/

Your claim that you agree with me that we should use our senses to understand the world is a bald-faced lie. You reject your senses and the world around you. You reject the facts of the world in favor of a book written by humans over a thousand years ago.

I see you also completely ignored the second half of my example. You are basing your worldview solely off the bible. No one would suggest using the bible as a guide for parenting (stone disrespectful children to death) or astronomy (the earth is the center of the universe).

Finally, you claim, “When I read the arguments for both sides the quality of the argumentation is not even close. The intelligent design side makes cogent, reasonable arguments based in data. The evolutionists make smoke and mirror arguments” … I have to thank you for this one; I really needed a good laugh today. Lack of satire like that is the problem with TV today.

In all seriousness though, this claim is the absolute proof of what I said in that you are rejecting the facts of the world. Thus far, I’ve yet to see a single coherent argument for intelligent design. Even the Vatican has come out in support of evolution and said that ID is simply “bad science” and “not supported by the evidence” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article5705331.ece
They also shoot down your claim that evolution and Christian beliefs are incompatible.

But no reason to listen to the pope if you’re not catholic. So I’ll bite. I’d like to hear these claims that are so spectacular that they make fossil evidence and everything we know about genetics seem like a “smoke and mirror” claim.

Tagged as: atheism, Bible, creationism, Darwin, evolution