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I
have read all the
papers on the website and I regret not being there
myself. That would have enabled me to discuss some of the points
presented there to gain better understanding of the arguments. You asked
my view about the presentation, so here I go.
The question whether the theory of evolution can be reconciled with religion is a question I have been
very interested in for quite some time. Whenever someone approaches this
question, it usually becomes Creationism vs. Evolution. Most of the
people think that theory of evolution strikes at the heart of
creationism. Then the analysis pursues in the direction of seeing
whether the creationism described in various scriptures can agree with
the theory of evolution or not. At the conclusion, it is
pronounced whether any reconciliation or part-reconciliation is possible
or not. To me, the debate should be on a different plane, a level lower
than creationism. I think that the clash between theory of evolution and
religion is at a more fundamental level than whether God created the
life in one go in the current form or over a prolonged period in stages
of evolution. Creation of universe and life in it by an omnipotent God
is one of the basic tenants of religion but more important is the
existence of an intelligent creator. According to creationists, the
universe is designed by an intelligent creator whereas the theory of
evolution suggests life on earth without any conscious design. To
me, that is the main difference and any study of a possible
reconciliation must be done at this level.
This difference of opinion manifests itself in many examples but the
best one I can think of right now is the example of a stick-insect.
These are the insects that have a natural camouflage system against
predators. When a stick-insect is hanging on a tree, it looks exactly
like a twig and hence indistinguishable. A creationist and an evolutionist
can reconcile the evolution of the stick insect but there would still be
a major difference. The creationist would look at it and say "God
designed it or evolved it the way it is so that it can survive" but the
evolutionist would say "It survived because it is the way it is". Both
agree that the insect survives because of its shape but disagree how the
insect acquired that shape. For evolutionist, its random mutation
coupled with natural selection, and
for the theist, its conscious design.
Theory of evolution didn't just upend the Creationism; it also
turned the argument of a conscious design on its head by saying that the
world is one giant roulette table. Species evolve certain
characteristics by random chance. If the evolved characteristic help
improve their chances of survival, the characteristics become permanent. On the other
hand, if they are detrimental to the species' survival, the species may
become extinct.
Lets analyze this statement in the backdrop of the argument of a
conscious design. Lets first establish that species do go extinct. The
most famous species to go extinct were different classes of dinosaurs.
The fossil record shows many others. Numerous Cambrian marine
invertebrates are now gone. Pleistocene Epoch claimed almost all the
giant mammal species in Australian Continent. In the presence of the
fossil record, it's hard to argue against the phenomenon of species
extinction.
So why do species go extinct? Darwin has a simple answer; they find
themselves unsuitable for survival. The more suitable species evolve
and/or survive. What do creationists say about the extinct species? How would they account for a faulty design on part of an intelligent and
omniscient designer? A perfect design to me would be a design that can
withstand all the possible permutations. Sometimes a slight change in
climatic conditions renders a species extinct. Whenever I raise this
point to my theist friends, I am told that they must have been designed
that way and their time on earth and their subsequent extinction must
have been by design. I call that the theory of supernatural selection.
This "must have been" is an article of faith. You can't rationalize it
and so the debate gets deadlocked. I'm not aware of any scripture
detailing the process of species extinction and explaining the reasons of such a design. For an outsider
like me, conceding to that argument would be like buying a machine that
has no known purposes to me.
Mr. Joshua says in his article "But this is
too simplistic since it ignores a God who is interested in mankind and
intervenes and controls the process to accomplish some ends." What ends?
If I could know what ends are those that the God is trying to accomplish
by this design, we can take the discussion further down that road but in
the absence of any knowledge about those ends, again, its like buying a
machine with no known purposes.
Religious scholars love to say "but evolution is just a theory", as if
what they believe in has been proven beyond any doubt using scientific
methods. I maintain that existence of an intelligent designer, God, is
also a theory. Let me concede that it's a theory more appealing to the
common sense. If only common sense could be a reliable judge of right
and wrong. It was common sense that led to the belief that earth was
stationary and everything else revolved around it. The existence of
religious scriptures itself is a pronouncement of inadequacy of common
sense. It is quite true that for a scientific theory to be accepted,
incontrovertible evidence is required which is an inconvenience religion
doesn't have to deal with. It is also true that the theory of natural
selection is yet not proven in lab but if that is the only criterion of
acceptance, lets all light up a cigarette because it has not been proven
in lab that smoking causes cancer. In the early part of last century,
Einstein presented his theory of general relativity and many people
found it hard to accept because Newtonian physics disagreed with it. It
was only when Eddington studied an eclipse and photographed it that the
theory was accepted in scientific circles and Newton was proven wrong.
But think about the time between the presentation of the theory and
Eddington's photographing the eclipse. Did people believe it? Yes, many
did because it could be proven mathematically but observational evidence
was required to seal it. Lucky for Einstein that by the time he
presented his theory, telescope had been invented otherwise the theory
would have had to wait till the invention of telescopes to be proven. Same
is the case with Darwin's theory, the fundamental problem is that
mutations are random and any mutation that is engineered in a lab can
not qualify as random. These mutations occur on such a large scale of
time that its too early to see Darwin's theory prove itself. Despite the
fact that the entire body of the theory , all the sub-parts of it, is not proven yet, it has raised
some questions that the intelligent design proponents are struggling to
answer. A while ago, a very religious friend of mine quoted one of the
Muslim Caliphs to me as saying "I recognized God by the failure of my
intentions" to which I replied that I recognized absence of God by the
mole on my nose that has no purpose and is a design flaw (which is
actually wrong since that mole is the most documented part of my body as
a sign of identification on official forms. That is why, now I have
replaced it in the above sentence with nails on my toes; useless and a
nuisance to maintain). There are so many anomalies in the system of
nature. A person who knows about the random mutation of DNA writes them
off easily. But an omniscient intelligent designer should have done
better. Color blindness, diseases and disabilities by birth, and other
such anomalies are easier to deal with. Tailbones in humans, hind-leg
bones in whales, breast nipples in males, eyes in cave-dwelling
salamanders that are totally blind, wings on ostriches that can't fly,
wisdom teeth in humans are all examples of sloppy engineering (unless
you are a dentist). Once, during an interview, someone asked Arthur C.
Clarke that didn't the intricacy of human eye lead him towards the
possibility of an intelligent designer? Clark replied (and I am
paraphrasing) "If I hire an engineer to design for me an optical
instrument and he designs something like a human eye, I would fire him".
The comparison between religion and the theory of evolution is
not an apple-to-apple comparison. One is a scientific theory and the
other an article of faith. With all due respect to all the people who
believe in a God, when they ask for the proof of the theory of
evolution, the purpose is only to dismiss the theory without discussing
it and not finding out if it can be really accepted or not. If tomorrow
or in distant future, some proof is given that Darwin was absolutely
right, I doubt if most of the religious folks would forgo their faith.
They will, then, try to interpret scriptures in a new way and in a fresh
attempt to reconcile with new realities. I say that because that is the
nature of faith. There is enough scientific evidence to demonstrate that
a virgin cannot give birth to a child. How many Muslims and Christians
have stopped believing in the virgin birth of Jesus Christ? On the other
hand, American astronomer Harrow Shapely spent better part of his life
advocating the idea that the Milky Way galaxy was the only galaxy in the
universe and everything was contained within Milky Way. His own junior
subordinate, a man named Edwin Hubble, discovered Cepheid stars in
Andromeda galaxy that helped him calculate the distance to
the galaxy. The distance put the galaxy way outside the Milky Way. He
sent his findings to Shapely in a letter. Later in his life, Shapely
always referred to that letter as "the letter that ruined my universe".
That is the nature of science; no matter how fiercely you believe in
something, you don't make it an article of faith. Of course, I am aware
of the scientists who held on to a long-held
belief for a little longer than necessary but they don't represent the
larger scientific body. People who claim to have faith in religion but
don't practice it easily outnumber such scientists.
I would like to address
Mr. Don Joshua's assertion that its unfair to teach Darwinian
theory in schools as science. He asks "Is it fair that the philosophy of
the 9% should be taught as unchallengeable truth?". Since when the
truth has become a number's game? I guess the same kind of argument must have
been used against teaching Galilean model of solar system in Christian
societies in Galileo's time. It was right but majority thought that it
was wrong. They taught their kids that the sun was revolving around the
earth and the earth was stationary. Not just that, they made Galileo
himself say that earth was stationary but, n Galileo's own words at the
end of the trial, "and yet it moves".
Neither religion nor science would settle this argument. What will
eventually settle it is a common phenomenon called "death'. Death
is the
great exterminator of wrong ideas. A generation believes in
something profoundly even when the evidence is mounting against it. Not
many people change their minds easily. The next generation has yet to
make up their minds so its easier for them to be less profound. With the
passage of generations, the wrong belief gets weaker and weaker till a
generation comes that totally dismisses the wrong idea. After all, no
one ever proved that Zeus never existed, the belief just gradually died
with its holders. Who knew that the theory of natural selection would be
applicable to the world of ideas as well?
In the end, to give credit (or discredit to some) where its due. Most of
the ideas and arguments presented above are heavily borrowed from that
brilliant evolutionist of our times, Richard Dawkins, especially from
his gem of a book titled "The Blind Watchmaker". There isn't a day when
I don't thank God for Richard Dawkins.
Aamer
rafiaamer@comcast.net
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