It’s time to evolve beyond religious dogma

In response to the article, and follow-up letters to the editor about the article, entitled “Darwinism: Philosophy, not science,” I feel compelled to put in my two cents. That may be more value than the religiously dogmatic are willing to give it, but to those who haven’t completely ceased to think for themselves, perhaps my two cents will be appreciated.

Firstly, recall that the original article insisted that intelligent design is scientific, not religious, and therefore should be taught in science classes. Then recall the letter to the editor reiterating that intelligent design is a scientific theory, and consider that this letter was written by the RUF Campus Minister. If intelligent design has nothing to do with creationism, and nothing to do with Christian religious dogma, then why are its only proponents religious Christian zealots?

They say you catch more flies with honey than vinegar, and I know that if I hope to convince anyone to see things my way, I should take a more diplomatic, less condescending tone. But the truth is that I find the prevalent and proud display of religious willful ignorance so exhausting and infuriating that I frankly cannot be bothered.

Besides, those who find evolution an “evil” idea, those who wish to believe that everything was created by an omnipotent god, whether in six days or 4.5 billion years (as is conceded by those with enough sense to realize that 4.5 billion years of geological evidence is hard to explain away) and especially those who wish to believe that this god (sic) created humanity in his own image (though you’d think an omnipotent god could do better) will continue to believe what they wish no matter how I say what I say. So, why bother with niceties? Furthermore, I have heard enough lectures on evolution to know that professors introducing this topic to a class typically feel obliged to do it apologetically. Well, enough is enough.

A couple weeks ago, I snuck in early to a lecture hall where my organic chemistry class is held. The class preceding mine was Life Science 101, and the professor was talking about evolution. After 30 minutes of explaining the concept of natural selection, Darwin’s descent with modification and touching on the incendiary concept that humans are one of the many products of evolution (we’re like lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!) a student raised her hand and said with the utmost sincerity, “I know that Adam and Eve were the first humans, so where does all this evolution stuff fit in?” My goodness, where does one begin from there? Teach intelligent design in science class? For the damage religion has done to science over the ages, we ought to be calling for the teaching of evolution in the churches!

First they griped about the Earth not being flat. Then it was blasphemy to say that the Earth revolved around the sun. Women were burned at the stake for being witches. Perfectly good cultures were wiped out of history in the name of saving souls for Jesus. Slavery was condoned by the very “good book” (sic) itself. And these are the people you want teaching science to your children? Are you out of your minds? Or is your single open-minded neuron (as the author of the original article in question so un-scientifically put it) non-operational?

The RUF Campus Minister suggested that intelligent design shouldn’t have to comply with the scientific method (observation, formation of a hypothesis, testing of the hypothesis, and validation, eradication, or modification of the hypothesis based on the results of those tests) because the scientific method only applies to empirical sciences, not “historical sciences,” such as (his examples) archeology and forensic science. (I think archeologists and forensic scientists might beg to differ!) But then, why are we being told to teach intelligent design in empirical science classes such as biology?

The minister offered many seemingly logical examples to support his religious beliefs as scientifically valid. The problem is that those who are not properly educated in the sciences (our single open-minded neuron friend, for example) are vulnerable to being deceived by cleverly worded, seemingly scientific horsecrap.

This nonsense is to be found in all the creationist literature available and is regurgitated by the unscientific to the unscientific for the purpose of religious indoctrination, or, depending on your perspective, for the purpose of saving souls from eternal damnation.

The minister claims that “irreducible complexity (which) refers to any system that contains several interdependent parts that work together for a common purpose” is evidence for a designer because “if one of these pieces is missing, the system loses all functionality.” His point was that a system such as this could not evolve, because if one piece were to evolve without the others, the system wouldn’t function.

But biologists know that sometimes traits evolve for one purpose and then develop further to serve a different purpose, so it is perfectly possible for a complex “biological motor” to have evolved from a predecessor that either served a different purpose, or alternatively, from a physical trait that did not hinder the organism’s ability to survive and reproduce.

Moreover, the system with interdependent parts that we examine now as a successful “biological motor” exists for us to examine because it was successful. Nature has eliminated billions and billions of unsuccessful developments, some of which can be examined from what has been left behind in the fossil record, most left no record at all because they were too deleterious to the survival of the organism.

The creationists seem to like the motor analogy as evidence for an intelligent designer. If we examine the motor of an automobile, for example, we don’t think it evolved, we know it was designed by a designer.

Uh-huh. And if we were to drop this automobile out of the sky from a helicopter into an area inhabited by people who have remained cut-off from civilized society for generations, people who still live primitively and have never seen a television, people who don’t know who Pat Robertson is, people who have never experienced any of the modern gadgets we have come to take for granted. What would they think of this automobile? My guess is that, being unable to explain its existence using their limited knowledge of natural phenomena, they would assume it was created by some sort of god.

This is what the minister wants us to do every time we come across something that our limited knowledge prevents us from explaining in naturalistic terms. Hey, why not? That’s how we used to explain disease. Before we knew of the existence of bacteria and viruses, plagues were the curse of an angry god. Yes, let’s teach intelligent design in science class, and just to be philosophically consistent, let’s also go back to saying the rosary instead of getting antibiotics for an infection.

The minister then goes on to call DNA “a message.(and) a dead giveaway that life was designed.” He refers to “information theory,” I suppose to make himself sound scientific. He says, “Information theory, also universally accepted, tells us that messages never arise from the medium that contains them.” Humph! Here is how Wikipedia defines information theory:

“A field of mathematics that can be partitioned into three fundamental considerations:

Lossless compression: How much can data be compressed (abbreviated) so that another person can recover an identical copy of the uncompressed data? (See also Redundancy.)

Lossy data compression: How much can data be compressed so that another person can recover an approximate copy of the uncompressed data?

Channel capacity: How quickly can information be communicated to someone else through a noisy medium?”

Many similar definitions can be found online that make no mention of the minister’s interpretation. Search for yourself.

The minister then goes on to say that since DNA exists “in all living cells,” and based on his explanation of “universally accepted” information theory (please note, the theory may be universally accepted but the minister’s interpretation is not) “DNA could not have arisen by the properties of matter.”

Helloooo? DNA is matter. It stands for deoxyribonucleic acid. “Deoxyribo,” as in, missing an oxygen from the sugar molecule ribose, “nucleic,” as in, found prevalently in the nuclei of cells, “acid,” as in, can react with a base – the four bases in DNA being adenine, guanine, cytosine and thymine. Basically, the stuff is made up of carbon and hydrogen and other well-known elements of matter that have existed for billions of years.

The minister also makes reference to Egyptian hieroglyphics and points out that archeologists don’t try to explain their existence using natural processes such as wind erosion, but know instead these pictographs were drawn by intelligent beings. This is true. But it’s because we have scientific evidence that these intelligent beings existed. They were humans. We found their mummified corpses along with the hieroglyphics, which talk a lot about how many bushels of wheat were traded for how many sheep.

And speaking of hieroglyphics, you may know that we are able to decipher the meaning of Egyptian pictographs thanks to finding the Rosetta stone – which is kind of like the contemporary “key” that helps us to interpret complex diagrams.

Would you like to know why we still haven’t been able to fully decipher the Mayan language? Because of a priest named Diego Landa who went along for the ride during the Spanish Conquest in the 16th century and, in a fit of rage, burned the sacred Mayan texts (along with many people) because he found the heathens worshipping their own gods instead of his.

Christianity claims that science cannot provide moral guidance to the masses, but it seems to me that the evolution of our collective morality is inversely related to the level of religious fanaticism in our populations. In other words, the less zealous we have become in our religious beliefs, the more advanced we have become in our moral philosophies. And this is why I’m so angry about the contemporary rise of religious zealotry, in the United States and elsewhere.

They tempt us with alleged everlasting life, but the price is willful ignorance. It’s said that ignorance is bliss, which is why, I suppose, Christianity is so appealing to some. “Don’t worry! Jesus is coming!”

But ignorance also leads to war, hatred, racism, sexism and to the religiously sanctioned exploitation of the powerless. Ignorance impedes our moral and scientific progress. And religious zealotry breeds, indeed, mandates ignorance. Disagree? What does the Bible say is the reason Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden? Because they ate from the tree of knowledge.

Religion has been used throughout human history to manipulate and control the masses, to homogenize codes of conduct, to explain what could not otherwise at the time be explained, to make us feel better about our own mortality, to make us feel like we were special despite our similarities to other animals, to ease our grief at the passing of loved ones, to appease us in times of poverty and want and to justify our wars.

But so what if we’re not the center of the universe? So what if we’re no better than the people in other parts of the world? So what if we’re not some god’s “crowning creation?” So what if we’re not immortal? So what if we share a common ancestor with apes and dogs and mushrooms? We’re still an amazing and clever (sometimes) species that has the potential to continually improve.

And when Jesus doesn’t come, who’s going to fix things? Who’s going to save us? Or, good grief, what if Shiva or Allah come instead? People, wake up. I know it’s easier and more pleasant to believe that someone else is going to set everything right. But, no one is coming to the rescue. If we want a better world, it is up to us to create it. We have the ability to do it– – if we’d just quit waiting for a miracle and start using our brains.