Darwin yes, but a revelation?

There's no getting around that fact that the work of Charles Darwin is immensely influential in our society today. Whether he is actually right or wrong at this point is practically moot. However, the fact that such powerful conjecture exists creates enough of a schism to make really grease the 'science vs. religion' slope. I have studied the evolutionary theories of Darwin in not only this, but other classes as well, and if there is one observation that I can clearly make, it is that there seems to be no unbiased sides in this argument.
Personally, I have very little in the way of religious beliefs. I had no religious background growing up (save for a youth group that I visited sparsely), and in my maturing years have made no strong connections with any religious affiliation – except maybe Pastafarianism, which is a story for another day. If I were pressed on the issue, I would most certainly fall in favor of Darwin's theories, simply because I favor a reality in which we as a race has created what endowments we now posses through our work, sweat and tears, instead of them being righteous gifts presented to us by a higher power. A sort of self-elitism if you will.
But before we can really question whether or not we are evolving or static, we must first realize just what evolution is, or in this case, is considered to be. As a literary major, I find that a large portion of every argument depends on an individuals accepted definitions. In order to argue with one another and actually make any progress, we have to be clear on the ideals that we argue. Let me make a point now; I understand the theory of evolution to be a process of trial and error, through which living organisms mutate and inadvertently become better adapted to life because of it, therefore creating a sub-species which gains dominance in their environment. Looking through the list of required readings, I found myself to disagree with many of the things considered here to be 'evolution'.
One of the most popular articles on this list (in my opinion, at least) is the piece Is Google Making Us Stupid, by Nicholas Carr. In his article, Carr (and several of his contemporaries) discuss the affects they finds use of the internet to cause. Carr himself states that, “the Net seems to be chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation” (Carr, Is). He suggests, based on personal experience and similar feedback from several other individuals, that the format of research that the internet provides has caused his brain to become 'habitual'. Effectively, he is now particularly suited to reading many smaller, simpler sources, and has become less adept at analyzing larger, more complex works. While this sounds very probable to me, I am not quite sure why it has been included in a list pertaining to evolution. From what we understand, this affect on Carr's brain is no more that a habit or trained pattern. It certainly isn't a mutating of genes, and it clearly isn't occurring at the suspected rate of evolution, which supposedly takes thousands of years. It raises an interesting point, but I don't consider it to be a relevant argument in this context.
Another article I find question with is titled Get Smarter, by Jamais Cascio. Cascio's piece discusses the explosion of a super-volcano which occurred 74,000 years ago, the after-affects of which threatened to wipe out the homo-sapien population. Similar to Carr's article, Cascio suggests a change in the fundamental activity of the human brian occurred because of this eruption. Unlike Carr, however, Cascio asserts that the decision to enact such change was made voluntarily.

According to Calvin, the reason we survived is that our brains changed
to meet the challenge: we transformed the ability to target a moving
animal with a thrown rock into a capability for foresight and long-
term planning. In the process, we may have developed syntax and
formal structure from our simple language. (Cascio, Get Smarter)

While I can readily back the assumption that environmental adversity caused the need for evolution, I find the belief that homo-sapiens made the decision to evolve quite ridiculous. As I stated before, I believe evolution to be a simple mutation becoming an advantage in later generations due to it's unexpected helpfulness. The idea that a group of people might make a collective decision “get smarter” simply would not work, especially 75,000 years ago. Cascio then goes on to apply this to our current position as a society, saying that we may we need to become collectively smarter to deal with looming disasters. This idea seems more probable in the fact that, as a society, we have the means to tinker with ourselves and possibly create the outcome Cascio suggests. But for a people as primitive as early homo-sapiens, to take such initiative seems to me to be more a question of issue of society and understanding than physical evolution.
But more important than any issue of simple mis-communication is the issue of science vs. religion itself. In the article How to Teach Science to the Pope by Michael Manson, one of the issues covered is that of evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins opposition to religion. In the eternity of the article, Manson discusses the Pontifical Science Academy, and those strides that they have been making in the scientific world, despite the accepted stereotype of science and religion being at odds with one another. Several scientific ideas that had once been thought to be contradictory of God are now being reevaluated, and while evolution is still disapproved of, it is a science that many are coming to terms with. When addressing he subject of Dawkins and his book “The God Delusion”, astronomer and planetary scientist for the Pontifical Academy Guy J. Consolmagno was quoted in saying, “He has an excellent reputation as a scientist, but he isn’t a theologian” (Manson, How to).
I feel that, in beginning to find that sort of acceptance, humanity is working twoards a harmony of these two ideas. Earlier in this piece, I said that I was in favor of Dawrin's theories of evolution of religious texts. However, that isn't to say that life itself did not come about because of some higher power. Just because I don't believe in the story of Adam and Eve doesn't mean that a God didn't create some form of life, and then allow for evolution to follow in his wake. I guess what I'm getting at is the fact that, while I don't enjoy the idea of being a faithful sheep to a being greater than myself, I can't ignore some of the amazing complexities that exist in the world around me without wondering if they have an designer. To illustrate this, I present to you the following excerpt from the BBC documentary series Planet Earth.



Personally, I find it astonishing that such basic organisms as molds and fungi could possibly become so varied, without some sort of greater guidance. Even in the example illustrated by Cascio; if not evolution, then what spurred the homo-sapien population to get smarter? I see the merits in evolution, and I certainly believe that it should be considered hard scientific law, but if that means that the possibility of a god is taken out of the picture altogether, then I guess I'm really not sure.

Works Cited

Carr, Nicholas. “Is Google Making Us Stupid?”. The Atlantic. 2007. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200807/google

Cascio, Jamais. “Get Smarter”. The Atlantic, July/August 2009. http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200907/intelligence

Mason, Michael. “How to Teach Science to the Pope”. Discover Magazine. August 18, 2008. http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/18-how-to-teach-science-to-the-pope/article_view?b_start:int=1&-C=

I'm with Darwin

When I think of Darwin, I think of my brother. This association is partially connected to the fact that my brother was hooked on the “Darwin Awards” books when he was growing up, but mostly because of the way he thought. As a young teenager going through conformation he was the odd man out. He was the only student to ever declare his “statement of non-faith,” as he now refers to it. Our minister described my brother as “marching to the beat of his own drum” back then, and to this day it still holds true. At the time I was so surprised by my brother being an atheist I didn’t know how to react. I imagine that this is somewhat similar to how people reacted to Darwin’s theories of evolution years and years ago.

Today, I stand in the same place that my brother did. The more and more I think about God, Creationism, and organized religion as a whole the more it baffles me. I think back to when I was a small child in Sunday school listening to Bible stories and knowing that I would get munchkin donuts at the end of class was the only thing keeping me sane. I think back to when I was going through conformation and declaring my faith in god because I felt that is what I was supposed to do. Unlike my brother I didn’t have the guts to say what I was really thinking. Now I’m a sophomore in college reading about Darwin’s ideas and somehow it’s all making sense to me now: that religion has never impacted anything in my life up to this point and I don’t think it’s going to change. I’m with Darwin.

The stereotype of being an atheist entails extreme hatred toward organized religions and a turbulent lifestyle, but for me it’s not like that at all. I don’t discriminate against people who are in fact religious and I don’t dismiss their beliefs of the creation story. Learning other’s beliefs has given me a better understanding of other cultures. For example, reading “How to Teach Science to the Pope” opened my eyes to the Vatican’s Academy of Sciences. Brother Guy Consolmagno stated that “The idea that the universe is worth studying just because it’s worth studying is a religious idea. If you think the universe is fundamentally good and that it’s an expression of a good God, then studying how the universe works is a way of becoming intimate with the Creator. It’s a kind of worship.” Even though Brother Guy is very religious he can appreciate science as a type of worship in itself. I agree with him and believe that it’s important to explore the universe, though I don’t believe in a Creator myself.

Another piece that I found interesting this semester was Michael Shermer’s writing entitled Genesis Revised: A Scientific Creation Story. It is a bit satyrical, but overall I would say that it bridges the gap between the Evolutionists and Creationists by bringing in scientific ideas where at the same time explaining God as the creator of the universe. Shermer took something that can be incredibly controversial and turned it into something that everyone can laugh at. It’s a perfect depiction of a contemporary view of creation.

“But there were so many creation stories throughout the world God realized that this was confusing, so he created anthropologists, folklorists, and mythologists to sort it out. But confusion still reigned the valley of the shadow of doubt, so God became angry, so angry that God lost his temper and cursed the first humans, telling them to go forth and multiply themselves. But they took God literally and 6,000 years later there are six billion humans. And the evening and morning were the sixth day. So God said, Thank me its Friday, and He made the weekend. And he saw that it was a good idea” (Shermer 626).

I’m content with my beliefs as they stand today and I am thankful for having finally come to this revelation in my life. I am happy to learn about what other people believe and excited to learn more. I want to further my understanding of other cultures and hope to do so during next semester’s core classes. Until then I’m happy to say that I’m with Darwin. I believe in Evolution. I have no doubts that there will be more discoveries in our world that further explain where we come from, but until then I am content just being.

Appleman, Philip. “Darwin: On Changing the Mind” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Mason, Michael. “How to Teach Science to the Pope.” Discover Magazine. August 18, 2008.
http://discovermagazine.com/2008/sep/18-how-to-teach-science-to-the-pope

Shermer, Michael. “Genesis Revisited: A Scientific Creation Story.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

"YouTube - Intelligence (IQ) - Religious - Atheist - Democrat - Republican." YouTube - Broadcast Yourself. Web. 30 Nov. 2009. .

This is a video that illustrates a survey that was taken across the nation of people's IQs and how it correlates to religious beliefs. Now considering how many people live in this country the numbers are kind of low, but overall I find it pretty amusing.

The Problem With Worshipping Darwin

Charles Darwin dramatically changed the face of biological science. In fact, he invented a completely new kind of science: the evolutionary kind. All of western civilization knows this. So what’s the problem? The problem is that because this man gave society his ideas, we worship him for it. He is to us as Aristotle was to the natural philosophers, or at least this is true within the average population. Despite advances in evolutionary science, much of society tends to look back to Darwin for knowledge about evolution instead of looking to modern science and this often leads to people not understanding how natural selection actually works.

But before we get into the realm of people misunderstanding the ideas that led from Darwin, let us first look into the problems with misunderstanding the man himself. Our society likes our heroes to be flawless; the most minor of blemishes on their character and all of their previous work is called into question. Darwin has been elevated to Hero status, and the same expectations have been held to him.

A good portion of The Origin of the Species talks about Darwin’s theories and conclusions as they have to do with women. To those of us that know this part of his work, it is clear that Darwin stood in line with his, male, contemporaries at the time in thinking that women were inferior, and that one could prove this scientifically. Evelleen Richards in “Darwin and the Descent of Women” writes that everything that could be seen as supporting sexism or racism now “is either ignored or tortuously explained away and Darwin himself absolved of political and social intent and his theoretical constructs of ideological taint.” It is of my opinion that even if a man is the most corrupt person in all of history, if his theories are logically sound, his theories are logically sound. Darwin’s theories are logically sound in the terms of the time period from whence they came. And even if Darwin were to be quoted as saying “natural selection is a sham,” it wouldn’t affect the theory because the theory is logically sound. Racism or sexism perceived in Darwin’s writing now doesn’t affect the logic of his theories, and it is therefore unnecessary to defend him.

Now we will step back into the problems of understanding natural selection that arise from the worship of Charles Darwin. The chief reason that people don’t buy into evolution and natural selection is that they don’t understand it. Richard Dawkins says in “The Argument from Personal Incredulity” that in many cases people “misunderstand natural selection to be ‘random’ and ‘meaningless’” which it simply isn’t. In fact, natural selection is about as non-random as nature can get. The problem lies in that many people look to Darwin for how the theories work.

Darwin didn’t know about genes, genetics, or DNA. He didn’t know the mechanisms behind inheritance, he didn’t know what traits were being manifested from. We now know that the only random element of natural selection is when errors crop up when DNA is copied and spliced. These are occurrences on the quantum level, where random is the name of the game. Once the traits are manifested, the game changes and everything becomes non-random.

Another pitfall that comes with only looking to Darwin is that holes in Darwin’s theories may not exist anymore in science. Michael Behe is the father of what he calls “irreducible complexity,” the idea of a structure that would be useless if it hadn’t popped into being perfectly formed. Darwin himself says in the Origin that if an irreducibly complex object was found, natural selection would collapse. Behe uses this statement as proof that his examples refute natural selection; that nature requires a “maker.” Even if Behe’s examples didn’t have problems with them, however, his proof wouldn’t be substantial because the “irreducibly complex” problem can be easily solved.

Dawkins gave a wonderful example of how an apparently irreducibly complex system could evolve by evoking the metaphor of a stone arch. An arch, by itself, is irreducibly complex. Take any one stone out of place, and the whole thing comes crashing down. But the arch wasn’t built all at once; it was built supported by a wooden scaffolding, all evidence of which is completely gone. The scaffolding is the support structure that makes the incomplete arch semi-useful. Once the arch is done, the scaffold is broken down, and the arch stands on its own. Apply this to biology. A structure, such as Behe’s flagellum example may appear to be too complex to evolve. However, we do not see the remnants of supporting structures that allowed limited functionality until the flagellum or other structure was completed. Once a fully-functional device is in the gene pool, the supporting structure becomes superfluous and will eventually disappear; an organism without that supporting structure is metabolically superior. This concept of a biological “scaffold” was not surmised by Darwin, and by looking only to him, we miss the totality of evolutionary science today.

Finally, one last thing is missed when we don’t look beyond Darwin when it comes to natural selection. If one were to look at Darwin’s work, they would conclude that the only things that are able to evolve are living organisms. However, this is untrue. Modern science has learned that non-living molecules such as viruses do indeed evolve over time. In fact, theoretically any replicator (such as DNA, RNA, or something human-created) could undergo a form of natural selection and evolution simply through errors in the replicating process. This general knowledge is not only useful in the realms of inorganic life or AI projects, but is absolutely vital in the realms of public health. Knowing how and why viruses and other pathogens mutate is very important. Below is the first of six videos concerning the fight between humans and bacteria and viruses. The video says that such organisms are the only real threat to our species and talks about the downhill battle which humans will certainly lose.

Darwin had no idea about these implications of his theories. Now that we do, it makes little sense to continue looking to the past.

Darwin was an incredibly influential person. He changed the face of all science and rocked old religion to its core. However, the context in which Darwin’s theories and the theories themselves have changed to the point where the Aristotelian worship of the man is hardly necessary. It is time to move on from Darwin and look at the theories instead of the man.

Works Cited

Behe, Michael. “Darwin’s Black Box.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Dawkins, Richard. “The Argument from Personal Incredulity.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

“Evolution Episode 4: The Evolutionary Arms Race.” Posted by Gravitationalist. .

Richards, Evelleen. “Darwin and the Descent of Women.” in Darwin. 3rd ed. Philip Appleman, ed. New York: W.W.Norton, 2001.

Charles Darwin And The Tree Of Life

I found this video on Digg.com it's an animation of Charles Darwin's theory of evolution. It's quite good, enjoy!

Where do you stand?

My topic for the first week of the blog is not so much current events, but rather a question for debate. I found it quite interesting, so I thought I would share it with the rest of you. As many of you probably read, one of my favorite works of science fiction is the webcomic Dresden Codak, by Aaron Diaz. I would like to point your attention to a mini series within the comic, entitled Hob. If you'd like to read the entire series (its about 27 pages) is starts here. However, if you'd rather skip the build-up, you can jump right into the meat of the story, which starts around page 8. But for the sake of this post having some meaning, let me paraphrase:
Time traveler have come from a distant future in which technology has evolved into a single planetary conciousness, a "mother" who humanity worried was slowly stealing both their and their world's prupose of meaning. In order to rewrite this terrible fate, they have sent Hob, a robot containing a guide post for their wormhole travel, to start recolinizing an earth in which A.I. is outlawed. However, protaganist Kimko Ross (devout robotiscist) sees the eventual extinction of humanity as inescapable step in the evolutionary process, and attempts to thwarts the time travelers attempts at destroying Hob's potential links to "mother".
Now, the content of the comic is interesting enough, but the main conflict is a topic which particularly interested me, and is in fact the question I wished to extend to you. If the trends of evolution do eventually point to the end of humanity, and life as we know it, would you fight for your existence, or resign to your genetic destiny? Now this is not suggesting that we simply die out and allow machine to take over. In the story, Kimiko is of the opinion that, as a race, we should sacrifice our humanity to integrate ourselves into the machine world. By contrast, the time travelers see a robotic existence not as a paraigm shift of our race, but a dying out, and struggle to cling to their believed superiority and purity. But what do you think?