Observations and inanities by a second-shift assistant supervisor in the Puppy-Grinding division of the Evil Atheist Conspiracy® (our motto: "Sure it's cruel, but think of the jobs!"), your host, Brent Rasmussen.
Grist For The Mill
Evolution is a fact. It happens. It has happened. It continues to happen.
This is not in question. Those who protest either don't know what the heck evolution actually is, or they are lying to themselves and to you.
What I would like to talk about today is the perception that people have about what evolution is and is not, as well as what I believe we can do about it.
I have been arguing the creation/evolution debate for a long, long time. Back in 1986 I jumped into the infant online world with both feet, learning how to think critically and how to construct arguments. I have been an atheist since I was about 17 years old. I have been interested in science and the scientific method for much longer than that. The idea of a personal invisible imaginary friend seemed ridiculous to me even at the age of ten.
So, when the virtual world of the the new online services presented itself to me, I was floored. Here was a pure realm consisting of exact meaning. A world where people talked to each other almost mind-to-mind - cutting away the traps and the pitfalls that usually accompanied face to face conversation. Nervousness, apprehension, emotion, forgetfulness, shyness - none of this mattered when you were composing your thoughts off line in a text editor. You were able to edit and vet your words, making sure that they flowed well and made sense.
But those things which so attracted me to online text-based communication seemed to make others dumber than they would have been otherwise. Time and again I witnessed ostensibly intelligent people stumble and rush through a message or a rebuttal, making themselves sound like fools due to incoherent rambling, spelling and grammar errors, and faulty, fallacious reasoning.
It's almost as if they didn't care how they were perceived when they were online.
I didn't understand it then, and I don't understand it now. Online communications in this day and age - YouTube notwithstanding - is primarily text based. That is to say that if you cannot form cogent and thoughtful sentences, spelled correctly with the meaning coming through crystal clear, then why the hell are you arguing online - using text to try and get your meaning across to the other guy?
But that is neither here nor there - except as a base for my thoughts about evolution and the way that I have observed that people look at it.
More below the fold...
In my long experience in talking and arguing the topic of evolution I have noticed a couple of things:
1. People seem to think that evolution is a "thing". They almost seem to consider it to be a thinking being - a totem if you will. Something possessing a will and an agenda.
2. They conflate evolution with superficial buzz-phrases like 'survival of the fittest' and concrete physical things like a 'ladder'. These analogies only serve to confuse people about the reality of evolution.
First, please allow me to define evolution so that I can be very clear about what I am referring to when I type that word. "Evolution" is very simple. It is a change in the frequency of alleles within a gene pool from one generation to the next. The gene pool is the set of all genes in a species or population. An "allele" is any one of a number of viable DNA codings occupying a given place on a chromosome. Billions of years coupled with these small changes are the reason why there are so many different species of biological organisms on our planet. They are the reason why we exist.
I will not explain further. If you do not understand these basic definitions, then I suggest strongly that you stop reading right now and do a little personal research into the subject. It is not hard for a layman to understand the basics if he or she is willing to simply make the small effort necessary.
Now, because alleles have been observed to change frequency from one generation to the next, both in the lab and in the field, this means that evolution is a fact. However, the word "evolution" also encompasses the different theories by which the mechanism that causes the fact of evolution to happen - happens. :)
Simple, huh? Heh.
The word "evolution" contains meaning that describes both the fact that evolution happens, and the many different theories that attempt to explain the physical mechanism by which the fact of evolution happens.
So, "evolution" is both a fact, and a collection of theories.
This is not a bad thing, and this is not a flaw. This is instead a strength that when understood, demonstrates the collective will and dogged desire of our human race to comprehend ourselves, our world, and our universe.
How awesome is that?
Now to the mind-blowing part.
Evolution is not a being. It does not posses intelligence. It is not a person. It is not conscious. It happens whether or not we understand it, whether or not we believe in it, and whether or not we want it to happen. It is wholly uncaring and unconscious. Human beings have been evolving, and will continue to evolve. Deal with it.
It doesn't matter how much we understand it. If we eventually understood every thing there was to know about evolution - it still wouldn't matter one bit. Evolution would still march on - selecting for successful survival traits, and stomping out without mercy those genetic traits that are not successful to the survival of the species.
Everything - and I mean everything - is simply grist for the mill.
Let's say that sometime in the future we figure out how to tinker with our genes and modify our progeny - our children or descendants. Would that mean that we were somehow "directing" evolution?
Not a chance.
There is no way that we will ever "direct" our species' evolution. We can add grist to the mill, but the only measure of success is survival. Period. The end.
If our species survives, we win. If we die out, we lose.
Simple as that.
At this point in time, the biological organism called "human beings" have struck upon a successful survival strategy. Our self awareness, our achingly large brains, have enabled our species to rule this planet. Please don't gloss over the preceding sentences. I said "at this point in time". Understand that we have been conscious, sentient beings for only the barest eye blink in the history of this planet, this evolutionary cycle. There is no guarantee that our sentience and intelligence is a long-term survival trait. Understand that this brief period of racial lucidity may fade away, never to be seen again. It may retreat and give way to a more successful survival strategy that does not include sentience, or self awareness.
Scary thought. Luckily, one that we are able to think right now.
In any case, I believe that evolution-deniers just aren't looking at it correctly. Again, evolution doesn't care if you believe in it or not. It happens, regardless, with no more thought than an avalanche thundering down a hill. Everything that gets in it's way is swept up, assimilated, and made into a part of the greater picture.
Does this mean that our human lives are devoid of meaning? Of course not. Part of our success is the ability to rise out of the flow of time and live in the moment. This enables us to create meaning for ourselves and not be crushed by the psychological weight of the whole of time. This unique ability - which I also believe to be a survival trait that our species has taken evolutionary advantage of - allows us to create and assign meaning and worth out of our existence regardless of the inexorable march of evolution.
We do what every biological organism on this planet does - we survive as best we can. Between the survival behaviors, we live our lives. We love each other. And we strive to understand our world - our universe.
This is our best destiny. Even if it is a dead end, I believe that trying to understand is our best course.
We will survive, or we won't. I just hope we keep pushing the envelope. Otherwise our existence is ultimately superficial and mundane - to ourselves. And what's the point in that?
Gods and monsters have populated our collective imaginations since the dawn of self-awareness. They were an imaginative stopgap solution to our impetuous, knowledge-craving minds. Now we know better. The time now is for real answers to age-old questions. Real solutions to the obvious evolutionary dead-end that continued existence confined to this one, single ball of dirt spinning through the outer arm of our insignificant spiral galaxy.
We can do this.
We can beat the odds and win the whole damned thing if we quit making up fairy tales to explain things and put our heads together.
I have faith in us.
(Edited to correct my erroneous definition of "time binding". See the comments below. A tip of the ballcap to Toast of Two Glasses. -Brent)
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Evolution
Well most people do acknowledge that the theory of evolution is true but to say that it is the reason why a higher power (i.e. God) does not exist requires a huge leap of faith that this biological mechanism is the be all and end all of existence. Sure evolution disproves the mythology of biblical creationism but to use evolution to support atheism defeats the whole idea of scientific inquiry altogether.
The way I see it is that mystical/spiritual experience should be seen as something subjective and science should keep its paws off it and that religious/spiritual establishments should stay out of science. I see a belief in a higher power as something similar to the emotion we commonly refer to as 'love.' You cannot scientifically prove that love exists in the objective sense and there is no way for you to prove that love exists but I am sure that you have experienced it one way or another.
Science is just a tool for us to model the world around us and its biggest problem is that scientific formalism (the assumption that there is an absolutely objective universe that allows itself to be quantified even in theory) is more common among laypersons who dabble in science than actual scientists. Quantum mechanics, general relativity, chaos mathematics, Rupert Sheldrake's experiments in telepathy, and many other bleeding-edge scientific theories have dispelled the notion of pure objectivity in science. General relativity tells us that no frame of reference is absolute, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle and the experiments that support it tell us that the objectivity of scientific measurement is a functional impossibility, etc..etc.... What I'm getting at is that anything that's not explained by the tenets of scientific inquiry are automatically excluded from its description of reality and therefore it should only be seen as a tool to model a small but important part of our reality.
Great post!
I'm not so sure about your definition of evolution.
If evolution is a variation of frequencies of alleles, then an organism can only vary within the scope of its gene pool or species.
This is the variation that means we can get white roses and red roses of the same species, but no matter how many other variations there might be, a rose is limited to vary only within the genetic information available to that species. So a rose will always be a rose.
Or have I got this wrong?
There are 100 to 150 different species of roses.
There are 100 to 150 different species of roses. They all had to get here somehow...
--
Ponies are atheists, you know, technically.
That's just proof...
...that God doesn't like roses as much as He likes beetles, Sporkyy, since there are an estimated 350,000 species of them bugs. Because, obviously, God is the only explanation possible...
Jim Downey
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
The Zero-Sum Game Game
I am very sorry d_b, but you do indeed have it wrong.
You see, the thing you need to wrap your head around is that roses were not always roses. If you search back far enough, roses and humans are related. Those little changes in the frequencies of alleles produced both us, and roses from a common biological ancestor.
It's a problem of scale.
To us, a hundred years is a long, long time. We experience the flow of time in such a manner that we lose sight of the big picture. Our lifespan on this planet is embarrassingly short. A hundred years (if we are fortunate enough to live that long) is nothing more than a blip on the radar. Our species is related to roses, that part is sure, but our species parted ways literally billions of years ago.
It's very nearly impossible for us to imagine a billion years. Nothing in our experience allows us to relate to that span of time. So, we shrug it off with protestations of "impossible" and "no way!"
However, the fact remains that on a genetic level we share DNA with roses.
Cool, huh?
You aren't giving the roses a chance, d_b. Take another hard look at them in a million years, and you'll realize that the phrase "...limited to vary only within the genetic information available to that species" is a red herring. A fallacy. Life creates it's own diversity in response to various pressures that it deals with on a daily basis - regardless of what happens to be in there to begin with. "Genetic information" isn't a zero-sum game. It is created and produced anew by biological organisms all the time.
In fact, all it takes is time.
Thank you for the comment!
Great Post Brent
I always tell people that you don't have to believe in evolution, you simply have to acknowledge it.
You ended with "I have faith in us." Your faith isn't blind, but is the trust in ourselves developed from knowledge.
I share your "faith".
It really is about faith.
Very good meditation, Brent, very good.
Your summation:
really does finish it off nicely, and ties in to what Eric has to say about the religious community looking at its own demise. Religion, essentially, is about coping with fear. Those who oppose science think that we cannot put our faith in ourselves, in our intellect, in our evolution, that we have to invoke an outside magical force which will protect us from our fear. Just as you or I could get hit by a truck tomorrow, and die, our species could be wiped out in any number of possible ways. That fact - mortality for ourselves and our race - is just too much for many people to face. But hiding from it, denying it, saying that there is an afterlife in the Kingdom of God, does not change the fact. It only limits our efforts to define ourselves and create the meaning which we can here and now (and for the future). It is cowardly and counter-productive.
Jim Downey
"Sometimes I think we're alone. Sometimes I think we're not. In either case, the thought is staggering."
- R. Buckminster Fuller
I feel smarter already
Seriously, this is probably my favorite posting of yours so far, Brent. I'm in the middle of Dawkins' "God Delusion", mourning anew the loss of Carl Sagan, and this piece is a fantastic supplement to what I'm already immersed in. Bravo.
Excellent!!!!!
Extremely well thought-out and logical post. I wish that we could get this info into the hands of the deceived and uneducated.
I just wanted to make a comment about your questions regarding the online community. One thing that is important to remember is that the Internet is an equal opportunity enabler. The rational, scientific person with logical thoughts and ideas has the same access to the Internet as the ignorant bigot. In that scenario, the one who has the bigger and more flamboyant presence, or the one who simply says what people want to hear, will get more followers.
Scientists know the truth and have an audience that understands the process of scientific inquiry. When an ignorant person has a ridiculous idea that the scientific community rejects he can take it to a new forum via the Internet, and even if .0001% if the online community are gullible enough to believe it that is a lot of people. The individual then gets his audience and he can feel important.
Also, it is true that devout, organized religion is declining in the US. This terrifies religious leaders, who will do whatever it takes to keep their coffiers full of gullible people's money. They see their money train running out, and prey on people's lack of understanding of evolution and their desire to believe in an afterlife to con them into believing that evolution is not true. It is a twisted manipulation of the power of the Internet, and the truth is that these people do not care if evolution is true or not - they only care about power and money.
Finally, the Internet provides anonymity to people. Someone who wants to believe that evolution is false can easily find other like-minded people regardless of their location. Without the Internet, that person would be more influenced by his personal relationships, and there will typically be varied influences in the person's life. Now the person can indulge in any beliefs he wants, find people who agree with them, and still maintain his personal life, keeping that part of his life private. The same features that make the Internet so powerful are the same ones that make it potentially dangerous.
Your question seems to be, 'why is the Internet the way it is,' where my view is that the Internet is the way it is because it mimics personal behaviour and I cannot see how it would have formed any other way. In a sense, the Internet is a study in evolution, only instead of genetics and biology being behind it all it is the human element that drives change.
Eric
Time Binding
Outstanding post, with the exception of these three sentences:
Part of our success is the ability to "time bind". To discern between one moment and the next. This enables us to create meaning for ourselves because we can live in the moment and not be crushed by the psychological weight of the whole of time.
First, "Time-binding" is not the ability to discern between one moment and the next. It is the ability of a species, through the use of written language or other means of storing and transmitting information, to aggregate knowledge and transmit it from one generation to the next. (This is Korzybski's definition, at least, and I believe he coined the term.)
Second, stating that the ability to discern the passage of time is what enables us to live in the moment just makes no sense. The opposite is true. Discerning the passage of time is precisely what brings the weight of history and of our own mortality crushing down us. It takes enormous effort to raise oneself out of that awareness to a "timeless" (and more peaceful) state of mind.
Binding Time
Hi Toast. Excellent catch. It appears that I have been using this phrase incorrectly in my head for a while now. Thank you for the clarification.
Happy to Help
Glad I could be of assistance. And, again, excellent post. I just wrapped up several days of debating with some commenters of mine who are religious believers, so this was refreshing.
-Toast