Wandering in the Postmodern Dark Age
Somehow, I can never seem to get to bed before 2:30am. I don’t really know why this is, but it happens and I think I have visibly aged as a result.
Tonight, though, nothing particular is on my mind; well, nothing and then again everything. Today, I saw Expelled for the third time (my brother Jay had yet to see it), and even still the movie stirs up in me new thoughts.
The more I think of evolution as a theory and atheists as a people group, the more I just have to laugh. I mean, I suppose it works to simply shout louder and louder about how right you are in order to get people to actually believe you, but eventually I think the crowds start to wise up. At one point in the film, an evolutionist states “What has Intelligent Design ever gotten us?!” That question should be reversed: “What has atheistic Darwinism ever gotten us?” I mean to truly ask that question is interesting. What new, tangible things have arisen as a result of tackling the world from a Darwinian, atheistic mindset? In what ways have evolutionists NOT piggy-backed off of the work of theistic scientists? Newton? Kepler? Galileo? The list goes on… Critics mock Ben Stein’s attempt to draw a parallel between Nazism and Darwinism, but can the connection honestly be denied? Isn’t genocide and eugenics one of the oft-lauded rational conclusions to an atheistic, Darwinian worldview?
The most atrocious thing, however, is the blatant hypocrisy of atheists as they try to mount their counter-arguments, which consist almost entirely of shouting “Creationist!” To which I ask: “so what?” If indeed the evidence points towards a creator, then by all means, call me a creationist. Is that so terrible a proposition? Even Richard Dawkins admits he thinks there may be room in biology for a superiorly-intelligent creative force somewhere out in the universe. But there is more than one firm out there that offers considerable sums of money to anyone who can provide concrete, peer-reviewed documentation of Neo-Darwinian-style evolutionary processes. Why hasn’t anyone been able to collect? Why are their arguments always ad-homonym?
What evolutionists in general and atheists in particular seem to think is that evolution somehow explains away a God-figure. In fact, it does no such thing. In fact, at BEST science provides a neutral proposition. As I study this situation, I find it increasingly odd and laughable that there is such a hard-headed resistance to admit that there may be a transcendent intelligent force at work here on Earth. Does it make any sense for a scientist to become emotionally involved in scientific endeavors? Is not that sort of thing better served through metaphysical studies? Dawkins, for example, clings blindly to the concept of an alien race seeding the planet with life rather than even consider the slightest possibility a God-type of being exists. The reason? He’s somewhere along the line moved from the realm of science and into that of philosophy, even though he seems not to have realized it.
I guess, then, I just don’t understand this willful desire to be so completely nihilistic. The scientific evidence doesn’t prove the Neo-Darwinist idea of evolution no matter how many times atheists want to repeat that it does. Most scientists still have no idea why the world works even though they spout off like they do. Our culture still stubbornly refuses to let God into any sector of life while continuing the attempt to infuse things into society only a transcendent God can provide. I wonder if perhaps it might be too late for the world to pull itself out of this Postmodern Dark Age.
Without a clear understanding of the principles and processes of evolution, our society would be unable to effectively produce food, treat infectious diseases, search for new ways to treat human genetic ailments or find new drugs.
If you’re a farmer, evolution is central to selectively breeding favorable traits and eliminating unfavorable traits in your fruits or vegetables. It’s also necessary to minimize the damage to your crops from insect pests that have evolved a resistance to pesticides.
If you’re a physician or hospital worker, evolution provides a guide for treating infectious diseases and mitigating the antibiotic resistant or methicillin-resistant strains of Staphylococcus aureus, known as MRSA, now ravaging hospitals worldwide.
If you work for a pharmaceutical company, evolution is what produced the new drugs you mine from plants that have evolved unique chemical defenses, and what enables you to design improved pharmaceuticals from natural products.
If you’re a cancer researcher, the rapid evolution or changing genetic makeup of cancer cells within the body through mutation can tell you how certain cells become cancerous and why some become resistant to chemotherapy.
If you’re a geneticist developing treatments for human genetic diseases, evolution allows you to use fruit flies instead of humans to study human genetic diseases. How? So much of the genetic material has been conserved in the evolution of life from bacteria to humans over billions of years that many of the same genetic sequences that cause human diseases can still be found in flies and roundworms.
In fact, by studying the development of tissues in many animals we can actually see evolution in action. These studies have led to a new sub-field of biology that ties together evolution and development, in which biologists have begun to identify the master regulators of body-patterning that allowed animals to make rapid changes from one form to another in the evolution of new species. By learning more about evolution, we’ve now learned more about how genes and biological systems interact, which ultimately improves our understanding of how to improve human health and food production and properly manage our environment.
Scientists may quibble with one another about the subtle mechanisms and processes that drive evolutionary change. But those scientific debates are what improve our understanding of evolution.
Biologists in general haven’t done a good job communicating the importance of what they do or why evolution is important to the public, but it is vitally important none the less. And it has nothing to do with the bible, or religion.
Benjamin Franklin
13 May, 2008 at 1:24 pm
I greatly appreciate the thought you’ve put into this reply, but I think we’re suffering from a lack of proper definition. I suppose I should have included somewhere in my blog exactly what Neo-Darwinian is, rather than simply leave it to assumption.
Neo-Darwinian Evolution: The view that all organisms we see are descended from a single common ancestor somewhere in the distant past, developed through unguided processes of natural selection and random mutation.
So that is, in short, to say that all life started from a single strain of properly-aligned proteins and eventually mutated and changed over time into the vast array of DIFFERENT species we see today.
While all of the examples you provide do describe change over time through the development of genetic structures, they fail to leap the bounds from micro to macro, which is what essentially differentiates Darwinian evolution theory from those of Design.
You’d be hard-pressed to find ANY scientist, darwinian or otherwise, who refutes the idea that life changes over time. The real difference breaks down when you start discussing matters of cross-species development. Cats turning into cows, dinosaurs into rats into monkeys into humans, bacteria into virus, etc.
So my original question remains: What has atheistic Darwinism ever gotten us? In what useful ways can we apply the frame of mind that everything is random and without purpose in an endeavor which constantly seeks to discover natural processes? How is a brain surgeon aided by the fact that the organ on which he operates is simply a product of random, undirected mutation?
This isn’t to discount the idea of Darwinian evolution outright; it is merely to ask how it applies in a practical sense. What new, unique, applicable ideas has an over-arching Darwinian evolution theory provided us that the theists before had not already considered?
I honestly want to know, and after being interested in the subject for over a decade now, I have yet to receive a truly scientific answer.
Parker
15 May, 2008 at 6:04 pm
You might want to pose the question to Michael Behe, who, in his book “the Edge of Evolution” states clearly that he has no problem with the concept of common descent. If he accepts the concept of common descent, but merely questions the mechanism, why don’t you?
Benjamin Franklin
16 May, 2008 at 3:35 pm
Because I’m not Michael Behe?
I’ve met and interviewed the man and respect his work on “Darwin’s Black Box,” but if truly he has no problem with the concept of common descent as you say, then I would have to kindly disagree with him. That is unless, of course, he can provide me with some verifiable evidence to the contrary.
Parker
16 May, 2008 at 4:48 pm