It's All a Trick of the Devil

Creationists have been getting a lot of press lately, with their new propaganda film out and their continued efforts to undermine the teaching of science in our school system. These creationists, the ones who hide behind the pseudo-scientific title of “Intelligent Design,” clearly have no understanding of evolutionary theory or even science in general. They are woefully misinformed and, as I’ve discussed elsewhere, approach the whole issue from the wrong end; trying to punch holes in a theory in order to validate their theory, rather than getting any evidence to support their views. These are people who, because of their preconceived notions, genuinely feel that the evidence supporting evolution is flawed or inconclusive. They may believe the Earth is six thousand years old and they may fight tooth-and-nail against anything that contradicts the word of the Bible but I genuinely feel that most of them, if presented with the full scope of the evidence in support of evolution, would at least take it upon themselves to look more closely at the matter, rather than stick dogmatically to their views. That isn’t to say that they would necessarily change their minds, but that if they really knew the full extent of the evidence in support of Evolution, their curiosity would get the best of them and they might be able to look at the situation more objectively.

Less likely to stray from the dogma, however, are the creationists that do accept that the evidence we have clearly supports the theory of Evolution. How can someone that will admit that the evidence supports the theory be a creationist, though? By believing that the evidence is--you guessed it--a trick of the Devil.

Let me go back several years for a moment, back to my very first experience with a Young Earth Creationist. I was about 20 and had only just recently learned that there were people--Americans, no less--who truly believed the Earth to be only six thousand years old. When I first heard this, I immediately thought “Wait...how do they explain dinosaur fossils in their world view?” When I finally met a Young Earth Creationist, I wasted no time in asking the dinosaur question. The answer, as it turns out, is that dinosaur bones are a Trick of the Devil. As if, upon the invention of the shovel, the Prince of Lies worried that the humans would dig straight down to Hell, and decided that ancient bones of giant beasts would be sufficient distraction to prevent such an occurrence. This was, of course, before the phrase “Intelligent Design” was thought up by some brilliant evangelical PR man and thus, before the popularization of the now generally-accepted-by-creationists notion that dinosaurs and man peacefully co-existed.

There are still people, right here in the USA, that think this way. That think that the 150 years of compiled evidence in support of evolution, even right down to the evidence contained within our DNA, is nothing more than the Devil’s trickery. How can you possibly convince these people otherwise? Well, you can’t. Not ever. The Trick of the Devil argument is the ultimate logic-stopper. It’s the adult equivalent of sticking your fingers in your ears and yelling “LA LA LA LA LA LA, I can’t hear you!!” The Devil has played many roles in the mythology of the Bible and now, in the face of overwhelming, mutually supported evidence, he has been cast as the Mark Furman in the OJ trial of Evolution.

It’s quite the confusing situation. On the one hand, these are people who are reasonable enough to look at the sheer amount of the evidence and logically conclude that it empirically supports Evolution. On the other hand, they believe that the only reason Evolution is so clearly obvious is because that’s what the Devil wants us to think! Where does the line get drawn on such reasoning? At what point can someone in that mindset accept anything as reality? After all, it is the clearest example of willful ignorance I can think of. They choose to believe it is a trick of the Devil because they simply aren’t willing to accept the alternative, no matter what the physical world my have to say about it. So where is the line? If one of these people comes home to find their spouse murdered, for example, can they accept that? If they’re unable to accept the shock to their world that the truth of Evolution would be, how can they possibly accept that God would allow someone to murder their beloved husband or wife? If you go to the museum, a dinosaur fossil is just as tangible as the mutilated corpse of a loved one. God could not allow such a thing, the corpse must be a trick of the Devil, right?

Yes, that example may be a bit extreme, but that’s the point. If you’re willing to accept that objects that you can hold in your hand can have been created by Satan to mislead you, then there’s literally no limit, no cut-off that can be clearly defined for what can be accepted as fact and what is test or a ploy perpetuated by the Nemesis. It is the ultimate form of conspiracy theory, where literally everything can be fabricated, in some cases with God’s consent, to lead us to the wrong conclusions. It’s a small stumble from that place to a state of being fully delusional, forming your own beliefs regardless of what you may see, hear, taste, smell or feel to the contrary.

Make no mistake about my intention; I think that most of the people who use the “Trick of the Devil” argument will never use it for anything but as a trap door to escape a debate that their religion can’t win. But it’s important to acknowledge the full extent of the self-deception at work in such seemingly innocuous statements. Only a tiny fraction of one percent of such people may ever make the leap to full-blown paranoid delusions ... but they’re all standing on the precipice.

How Smart Was Darwin?

In a recent interview promoting his propaganda film, “Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed,” Ben Stein stated that Darwin had no idea about the complexity of the cell, was totally ignorant of DNA, RNA, the Human Genome, how chromosomes and genes worked, etc. To Ben Sein I say: EXACTLY!

Exactly, Ben. Charles Darwin did not know about these things in the nineteenth century. He was ignorant about a great many things that would come later, both in general science and in his field of biology. And yet, he still managed to come up with an exquisite, unifying theory of biological sciences that would be reinforced and strengthened by those future discoveries of things he could not even conceive of. It was the understanding that his theories brought that even allowed us to discover things like DNA in the first place.

And it isn’t just discoveries in the field of biology that have given countless pieces of empirical evidence in support of evolution, but discoveries in the fields of geography, geology, chemistry, genetics, climatology and several other sciences that I’ve probably never even heard of. For the sake of argument, however, let’s focus just on biology for a moment, with a quick detour through physics.

The holy grail of physics is a universal, unifying Theory of Everything. Currently, we have String Theory, M-Theory, various forms of Quantum Mechanics, Thermo-Dynamics, Gravity, Relativity, etc. Physicists have been looking for a single Theory that ties all these things together for a long time. Albert Einstein attempted it, Carl Sagan tried, Stephen Hawking, Stephen Wolfram and hundreds or thousands of physicists whose names are not known outside of the scientific sphere. Still, it eludes them.

The theory that has so long eluded physicists has a cousin, though. One, unifying theory that connected all the other theories of a particular scientific discipline. One that, once discovered, became the foundation, the underpinning of the entire study, allowing a deeper understanding of that science that, in turn, resulted in an explosion of new and exciting discoveries and advances in that science that would not have been possible otherwise. In the field of Biology, that universal, unifying theory is called Evolution.

Prior to Evolutionary Theory, biology was a lot like physics is today; a lot of individual, unrelated theories, each explaining an aspect or small group of aspects of life. One day, we may have an equivalent theory in physics. When that happens, we’ll have the key to the secrets of the universe. Our understanding of the way matter and energy work at every level from the sub-atomic to the cosmological will surge forward, growing exponentially and allowing for technological advances beyond our imaginations. While such a theory would give the fundamentalist Christians far more trouble than Evolution ever could, we’ll save that topic for another day. So, how come no one’s come along with weak or insubstantial evidence and made the claim to have found such a theory? Because it would never hold up. Science has a very strict way of disseminating, testing, verifying and insuring the accuracy of information. By the time the general public hears about a scientific discovery, it’s already been making the rounds for months or even years. Here’s how it works, to the best of my understanding:

        -Through the scientific method, a discovery is made
        -The scientist or team that made the discovery documents, to the smallest detail, the process they used to test, reproduce and validate the discovery, as well as what other science or knowledge they built on to arrive at their conclusions. All referenced works are listed in an incredibly thorough bibliography.
        -This paper is sent to scientific peers, other accredited scientists that specialize in the same field or related fields relevant to the claims set forth in the paper.
        -These peers, which often number in the hundreds or thousands, review the paper, checking sources, verifying claims, and using the (verified) results of their own research to cross-check the paper’s claims.
        -If inaccuracies are found, these are reported back to the scientist or team that submitted the paper, and further tests are done.
        -Once the peer review process is complete and all the information in the paper has been determined to be as accurate as can be determined with current knowledge, it is finally released for public dissemination, where anyone can read the findings.
        -As more evidence and information become available, more papers will be written, each with the possibility that future discoveries may disprove previous ones, thus furthering our collective knowledge of life, the universe and everything.

There are a couple of reasons I point out the steps in this process. First of all, it is to illustrate that scientific discoveries are not really open to debate by people like Ben Stein. By the time Stein hears about them, the most knowledgeable people in the field have already worked tirelessly to ensure its accuracy. Secondly, it is to illustrate the rigorous process that any scientific claims must go through. It takes a million collaborative pieces to form a theory, but only one tiny inconsistency or piece of contradictory evidence to destroy it. Because of the process outlined above, the general public never hears about theories, hypotheses or discoveries that don’t stand up to scrutiny. Yet, in over 150 years, Evolution has added billions of pieces of evidence to support it, including things that its discoverer could never have conceived of. Yet, in those 150 years, it has stood up to scrutiny, without a single piece of contradictory evidence. All it would take to disprove Evolution would be a certain type of fossil that is older than it should be, or younger than it should be. Or a gene sequence that wasn’t what we would expect through evolution. Or something even smaller.

So, how smart was Darwin? He was smart enough to figure out the key to understanding life on Earth without the benefit of seeing it at work at the cellular level, without the benefit of observing the patterns in genetic tests that show it, without having the tiniest idea that something like DNA even existed. Figuring out Evolution with nineteenth century technology and science is the equivalent of the Wright Brothers skipping straight to building the Concord.

I’d say he was pretty smart.




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Score one for science

I am extremely pleased to announce that I have personally and directly brought about a small victory for science in our schools.

My little sister, a Junior on High School, informed that, last year, her biology teacher stood before the class and informed them, point blank, that evolution is a myth. Furthermore, she then ignored the state curriculum that explicitly requires natural selection to be taught. What she filled it with, I can’t be sure. I can only be sure that it was not “Intelligent Design” or any other such nonsense. This, of course, was my first question of my sister.

After having heard this, I called the person in charge of the county science curriculum to enquire as to the official stance on this (at the time, I honestly did not know). Before answering my question, she seemed curious as to why I was asking. When I relayed my sister’s story, she seemed genuinely appalled and dismayed. The suspicious tone in her voice upon my asking about the county’s stance on evolution was no doubt due to a fear of an imminent argument with a fundamentalist quack wanting their child taught religion in school. In any case, she informed me in no uncertain terms that evolution was, in fact, part of the curriculum and intimated that she didn’t see how the teacher in question could possibly have taught any biology in the class, as evolution is the unifying theory that holds biology in its entirety together. She said that she would look into this and get back with me.

That was last week. Today, I received a call back and was informed that the teacher in question had been “spoken to” and that, as a precautionary measure, there would be meetings held with the science departments of every school in the county to clarify and reinforce the policy of teaching science in the classroom, not superstition. My phrasing, of course.

So, I feel pretty good about that, I must say. I’ve done my part to help students of Charlotte County, Florida receive the education to which they are entitled.