Entry 2247, on 2022-11-07 at 22:27:45 (Rating 3, Religion)
I can't believe that I have to make this blog post in the year 2022, but I do. I have recently come across several individuals or groups who still reject evolution. In most cases this is because of religious beliefs, but there are other reasons as well. I used to do a lot of religious posts, but have moved more into politics recently. However, here is a defence against the most common argument religious people use against evolution.
Here's what they say: "How can you believe that human life, with all its complexity, arose through random chance? It's like a hurricane went through a junk yard and a fully formed 747 was left behind. The chances of that happening are basically zero, yet life is so much more complex. Atheists are the ones who really rely on faith."
There are other variations on this theme, but basically it always come back to it being impossible for something incredibly complex to be created through random chance. Of course, there are also other arguments against evolution, but this is the most common one, and something which superficially seems to make sense. Except, of course, it doesn't. Allow me to explain why...
First, evolution is a fact by any reasonable definition of the word. We see evolution in the fossil record and in species as they change today. What most people think of as "evolution" is actually the theory of evolution by natural selection. This states that existing species change through environmental factors acting on mutations which are beneficial at a particular time and place.
So if I ask a creationist (or other anti-evolution type) if they believe the science behind genetics - that attributes of one generation are passed on to the next through genes - the usual answer is yes. If it isn't, I don't know what they might be thinking!
Next I ask if that process is perfect. Considering that no natural process is perfect, and that we can clearly see mutations as they happen, almost everyone again says yes.
Then I ask if mutations might be helpful, just by chance. This one gets a bit more resistance, which is fair enough. But I explain that a "good" or "bad" mutation is meaningless in absolute terms. What is a bad mutation in some situations might be a good one in others. The classic example is sickle cell anemia. This causes red blood cells to be deformed, which is usually a significant disadvantage to the individual because the cells don't carry oxygen as well. But if there is a lot of malaria around it can be advantageous overall because malaria cannot easily infect a sickle cell. So despite the disadvantage in most situations, it can be beneficial too.
At this point, if the person accepts all of this they already basically agree that evolution is true, but there is one significant problem we have to overcome. Many creationists say they accept "microevolution", which causes small changes, but not "macroevolution" which results in new species. But those words aren't really particularly meaningful in science, and macroevolution is just the result of a series of microevolutions (if you even accept the use of those words).
Then there is the issue of time. Young earth creationists claim the universe is much younger than science says it is. At the extreme are those who say the world (in fact the whole universe) is only 6000 years old; an interpretation which follows from one (quite reasonable) reading of the Bible. Others say 10,000 and various other numbers, which are all well short of the scientific age of 14 billion years, for the universe, and 4.5 billion for the Earth.
There are numerous ways to establish the age of the Universe and Earth, all of which depend on different branches of science, and they all agree remarkably well. These include radioactive decay (chemistry); the processes of star formation (astronomy); the formation of geological features (geology); the time it takes light to transit long distances (astronomy again); and the cosmic background and recession of galaxies (cosmology). And this is just a small sample. If there was a major problem with the estimated age it would show up with anomalous results in at least one of these fields, but it doesn't.
So evolution has had billions of years to take place, but is even that enough? Actually, no, it isn't. There is another factor to be considered: that is that the evolution of life is like a huge experiment, carried out in parallel trillions of times simultaneously, in event living cell on the planet.
And another point the opponents of evolution seem to forget is that evolution proceeds in small steps, and the successful changes are maintained as a basis for the next step. We see these steps in many places in the fossil record. Sure, there's not necessarily a step by step explanation for every complex structure we see today, but the fossil record is incomplete and we shouldn't expect to have all the answers. And even without fossils, we see more primitive structures in some living organisms today where evolution hasn't proceeded in the same direction as others, because they might live in an environment where evolution of that structure isn't advantageous.
Finally, evolution doesn't have an end goal, beyond survival of genes. It is purely by chance that the life we see today takes the form it does. There could have been a mutation in a certain environment in the distant past which favoured a body structure completely different than what we have today. Evolution producing humans (or any other species) exactly like they are today is unlikely, but producing advanced life in some form is completely plausible.
So let's put it all together and modify the "747 from junk" theory I mentioned at the start, and which the creationists seem to like.
Imagine a trillion junk yards, all being continuously hit by hurricanes for billions of years. Imagine if a couple of pieces of junk stuck together purely by chance and they had some advantage. Take that piece of junk and repeat the process, over and over. Now tell me how you could *not* get a 747, or an iPhone, or a human out of that. Think about it. Evolution is inevitable.
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