My post remarking that Richard Dawkins is right attracted quite a few comments. Although the roof of the Moot House now accountably has a number of items of headwear on it.
But one commentator suggests that whereas the people at Cern who found the superphotonic muon neutrinos are willing to put their findings up to inspection. Whereas if anyone dared suggest Darwinian evolution was wrong they'd be howled down. That the Theory of Evolution is in some way dogma.
And I'd like to start by recognising that it's the howling of fundamentalists on one side, and the cheesy dismantling of straw men on the other by Dr Dawkins, that give us this impression of a war between religion and science. The fundamentalists do it because they've invested too much on their version of Bible interpretation - their house of cards is only too likely to collapse. While Dr Dawkins presumably does it because he enjoys the adulation of spotty, anoraked earnest students and 2nd-rate or fading comedians. And for the money. And, of course, because he really does believe religious belief is dangerous.
But on the question of who is right about the science behind the Theory of Evolution - God is with Richard Dawkins. I base this on the statement by Jesus that "I am the Truth". And if Christ is the Truth then he as Logos - the organising and creating force behind the universe, the source and origin of Log-ic and rationality - is with Dawkins on the science.
Much play is made by some of it being "only a theory" of Evolution. Well, it's "Only a theory" of Relativity as well. But that doesn't stop some flat-earthers trying to hijack it into a proof - against all evidence and common sense, based on one naive reading of Holy Scripture - that the universe is actually remarkably young.
The Theory of Relativity does what all good scientific theories do. It explains observable facts and it enables us to make predictions which we can then construct experiments to test. And in general (and in Special.... ho, ho) it works. As I mentioned previously if someone tells you Einstein is wrong, your first step is to doubt your experiment.
Which is why, all joking about Higgs Bosons aside, the guys at Cern have done what they have done. They've said - "we appear to have found something remarkable here. Please can everyone look at it and prove us wrong? Ta ever so much."
But the Theory of Evolution is much the same. It's a theory which is as well-tested as to say - it's a fact. What Darwin gave us - not knowing about genes, not understanding the underlying physical causes of mutation - was a theory that fits the facts as they can be observed, and also enables us to make predictions that can be tested. As usual with these things we can have tweaks and even quite large changes and refinements - as General Relativity expands Special into the realms of gravity, and as Quantum Theory gives us new strangeness to the universe again - but the basic over-arching theory is sound.
In fact, and this may just be my view but I'm going with it, for me it's easier to imagine the Theory of Relativity being fundamentally re-assessed (as it will have to be if those neutrinos are really that quick) than that Evolution will be. Evolution at root isn't a physical theory - it can't be supplanted by a new constant, or a bigger atom-smasher or a surprising discovery that a universal constant changes over time. It's statistical. It's descriptive. And it works. If you read Dawkins's Greatest Show on Earth you will realise how and why.
Evolution is a scary thing. It challenges our picture of God. It makes you re-evaluate a lot of things. But then it should do. Because it's true.
"dismantling of straw men"? Sounds like Dawkins has been hijacking a Beaker autumn ritual. Perhaps you good people of Husborne Crawley need to get back to the tradition of bringing in your scarecrows before the first frost, and invite Dawkins to join you for the event. But warn him to dress smartly in case someone doesn't recognise him and he ends up locked in for the winter at the back of your barn!
ReplyDelete"Cheesy dismantling of straw men". Cheese-straws, that was the idea I was aiming at.
ReplyDeleteThe Theory of Evolution proposed by Darwin is an excellent explanation of variation within species, and how those variations which are advantageous become dominant within a population.
ReplyDeleteExactly how this occurs within species was demonstrated by Gregor Mendel, who showed that variation in phenotype (observed characteristics)are the product of variations in genotype (genetic make-up). However ...
... there is still no adequate explanation of how genetic mutations on the scale required to produce whole new species occurs. The science of genetics has found that the vast majority of - if not all - large-scale genetic mutations are lethal to the organism which carries them. It is true that chimpanzee DNA is 95% identical to human DNA, but 5% is a massive variation in genetic terms. My point here is that the Darwinian Theory of Evolution has some way to go before it can claim to be proven, although it is probably the best scientific theory proposed to date to explain the Origin of Species.
On the other hand, trying to us the Bible - or indeed any other religious text - as a science book is doomed to failure. The questions being asked and answered by faith and science are fundamentally different. Science asks "How?" and "What happens if?" questions, whereas faith answers "Why?" questions, including the one that science can and will never answer - "Why is there anything?"
Darwinian Evolution, with a few tweaks, is as good as proven. The thing we forget is the timescales (and numbers) involved. With mutations happening all the time, even if many are fatal and most of the rest are irrelevant, every now and then one that matters will creep in.
ReplyDeleteWe can see selection in action because we've been imposing our own selection criteria on our domesticated animals for just thousands of years - we've accelerated it for the most part, with our preference for dim pets and wrinkly-faced dogs and surreally large bunnies and all the rest of it. But just because it's artificial selection it's still selection. And if we can do that in millennia, blind chance has millions of years to get the odd one right.
Radical Believer, I should add that we also see it happening with the rapid generations of viruses and bacteria. Drug resistance is Darwinian evolution at work - today.
ReplyDeleteSorry Eileen, but it isn't. Darwinian evolution claims to be an explanation for the diversity of species. What you describe is diversity within species - not the same thing at all.
ReplyDeleteTell you what, RB - give us a proper definition of species - particularly as exhibited in viruses - one that isn't an artificial human way of convenient categorisation, but a real measurable definition.
ReplyDeleteAs a Physicist, I am wedded to the principle that a theory, to be any good has to predict things, which then can get confirmed or otherwise subsequent observation or experiment. Also no scientific theory can ever be consider 'proven - i.e. a fact'. It was Karl Popper who said that a theory exists to be knocked down, it is continually under investigation.
ReplyDeleteAs the preceding comments indicate, the natural selection clearly works in the microcosm - i.e diversity within species as Radical Believer points out. But does it work for the whole of creation? Didn't Darwin confidently predict that the fossil record would show sooner or later the whole succession - intermediate species and so on. As the little ditty went when his theory was first mooted:
'First I was a polywog, begining to begin
Then I was a slimy toad with my tail tucked in
Next I was a monkey, up a banyan tree
And now I am a scientist of a very high degree'
But so far that has not been observed. That doesn't make me a creationist, but perhaps it does indicate that it is time for a better theory. Darwin is not sacrosanct, any more than Newton was, or Einstein.
But there's so much emotion tied up with this, I wonder when any scientist will attempt it?
tsk, I look away for 5 minutes and everyone starts throwing their clothing around!
ReplyDeletePerhaps we have a classic triumvirate of straw hominids being held aloft here, firstly the old "monkeys don't give birth to humans" misunderstanding; populations evolve not individuals, so the distribution of species and genes across the plant is ample evidence (with predictive power) The second scarecrow is that there are no transitional fossils, the fact that the genetic evidence is more than enough without any fossils at all seems to pass people by; the fact that we have some stunning fossil series showing clear transition seems also to pass them by as well; Darwin predicted that complexity and diversity in the fossil record would increase with time, that's exactly what we see. It would be trivial to falsify evolution, just find a fossil rabbit in the pre-Cambrian, it’s never happened! If it did then every biologist (worth their salt) should abandon Darwinian evolution and start looking for another explanation. Claiming to know the minds of “scientists” is rather like claiming to know the mind of God I find, i.e. mostly pure speculation tainted with confirmation bias.
The last man-o-straw is Dawkins himself, people do love to attack the man rather than the substance of his (actual) argument. I don't agree with everything he says (BTW I'm hoping these spots will clear up) but I’d argue you can't have it both ways, i.e. you can't criticise literalism and then in the same breath criticise Dawkins for attacking a “straw man” of literalism, which is it? Either literalism and anti-science dogma exists sufficiently to be a problem worth criticising or it doesn't.
Steve - people throwing their clothes around while waving straw men? What do you think this is? The Beaker Fertility Folk Harvest Festival?
ReplyDeleteApart from that, mostly what you said.
I've sent Burton off to get me a decent working definition of "species", btw. I'm sure he'll do me proud.