Let’s Hear it for Evolution

11Feb07

Today is Evolution Sunday, and tomorrow is Darwin Day. What better to talk about than evolution? But first, let’s talk about gravity.

How come nobody ever asks scientists to prove gravity? After all, it’s everywhere. We have every reason to believe it has been everywhere forever, and will continue to be there into the strange aeons of time when the universe finally ends, if it will ever end. But how do we really know?

We assume gravity is everywhere in the universe, and has always been. But outside the observable universe, we by definition can’t observe anything, and so we have no idea whether there’s any gravity there at all. If there’s no gravity there, it would violate our assumption that the universe is argely the same in all directions (the Cosmological Principle). A lot of science is built on that assumption, so it would kind of topple a significant part of our world view. But why is it that nobody asks scientists to prove these assumptions?

My guess? They have nothing to gain by doing so. They have no competing visions about the nature of these matters, no alternative they’re pushing to get more funding and publicity. If they managed to convince the general public and those who sit on the money that the prevailing science in this area is largely unfounded without an alternative, funding would probably cease totally, leaving the thriving scientific field a wasteland with no alternative in sight.

This is exactly what the Intelligent Design-nuts have. They have an alternative they believe in. It’s a lousy, unscientific, unfounded, arbitrary alternative not worthy of a single dollar of taxpayer money or even private donations, but it’s an alternative. That’s why they seek to sway the public’s opinion about evolution: by planting uncertainty about the evidence, predictive power or importance of the Theory of Evolution, they’re trying to convince both the general public and those who have money that their alternative, unintelligent design, is more worthy of money and support.

To do this, they use all manner of dirty tricks. Some try to blame their perception of moral decline on the teaching of evolution in public schools. Some try to convince us that the evidence for evolution is dubious or nonexistent. Some claim that evolution is unimportant. Some assert that some features we find in natural organisms (such as the eye) or some simple living organisms are irreducible to simpler pieces, thereby seeking to disprove the theory of evolution. Some simply resort to name calling to get their voice heard. Many set up and knock down straw man caricatures of evolution and compare it to a jumbo jet appearing after a tornado has spun through a junkyard (which, as we all (should) know, fails to take into account the element of selection in evolution, namely natural selection). Common to all is their fight to get the Theory of Evolution out of schools, public opinion and both government and privately funded research programs and replace it with Intelligent Design.

If these people didn’t have an agenda to increase the influence of the ID movement, most of them would never have questioned evolution. Unfortunately for them, unlike gravity evolution threatens their arcane belief that an old man in the sky designed humans. They try to come off as concerned for the integrity of science and a perceived lack of progress on some understanding some mysteries (say, consciousness, a favorite among nutballs). What they’re really after is, of course, power. I thought greed was a deadly sin. I wonder what Jesus would have said, had he known what his fan club is up to (and ironically, according to those very same fanboys, he does know what they’re up to).

There are those who are genuinely concerned about the lack of progress and integrity of science. I believe I mentioned in a previous post that I’ve been reading Peter Woit’s book Not Even Wrong, which is about string theory’s spectacular failure to predict anything. 25 years have passed, and string theory has yet to become a falsifiable theory. According to Woit, it’s wishful thinking, a theory mathematicians call ugly matematics but fine physics while physicists admit it’s ugly physics but think it’s fine mathematics. You may disagree with him and those who support him, but at least they’ve got some tact and respect. Instead of going to personal attacks or assert unfounded statements or even try to blame string theory for the perceived lack of morality in the 21st century, they write books and blogs.

This is different from biology, where no one has come with a scientific criticism. While critics of string theory can point to a very real lack of predictions, Intelligent Design-fanatics have no valid scientific complaints, so they must make it up. They construct fables of “lots of science” that supposedly contradicts a threat to their elaborate self-deluding fairy tales. They try to justify the fact that they’ve based their whole lives on a very literal reading of a collection of myths and folk tales far removed from reality made up thousands of years ago by trying to make them reality, as if that’s something we humans have any influence on.

Let’s hear it for evolution, instead. Two years and one day from now, it’s 200 years since Charles Darwin was born. Tomorrow it’s 198 years. That’s worth celebrating a lot more than the birth of a Jewish prophet who wasn’t even born at that time at all.

Filed under: bullshit arguments, christianity, darwin, evolution, intelligent design, politics, religion, science, superstition   |  3 Comments