Recently, I feel I've been attacked by friends. Granted I've yet to meet any authors of the blogs I read, I consider them 'virtual' friends as we all seem to have common threads.
Lately, there have been a lot of posts regarding religion, most of them notable for their disdain for it. Heck, one post the other day even called me ignorant because I didn't believe what she believed. And it's depressing.
Now, I don't want to get into a pissing match regarding evolution versus creation as that's not an argument that can be effectively discussed on a blog, but rather I'd like to bring up faith and how most people seem to confuse faith with fact.
For purposes of full disclosure, let me say that I am a big lover of science. I bake bread not because I like to eat it (which I don't really), but because I love the whole concept of mixing together a bunch of chemicals and seeing what happens. I read up on the Cassini and Mars Rover's projects every day. I have a lot of faith in science just like I have a lot of faith in religion. And this is what I want to discuss.
It is a matter of faith that we landed on the moon. It is a matter of faith that Napoleon existed. It is a matter of faith that the core of the earth is molten nickel. These are things that, unless you are Neal Armstrong (Hi Neal!!!), you have not personally experienced or observed and therefore must take someone else's word and observations as fact. This is faith.
When I studied electronics, we had to understand electrons, covalent shells, attraction, etc. Never once did any of my instructors actually allow me to look at an atom (then again, bouncing photons off of individual protons, neutrons, and electrons is a little difficult) nor did we go through all the complex mathematical equations needed to indicate exactly what an atom was. Instead, we observed certain events and postulated that these things exist and caused them. I took it on faith that they actually exist.
Nobody has been alive long enough to know how the Earth came to be. We can observe other phenomenon on different scales and assume that these things may have taken place many, many years ago. But it is a deep faith that these things actually happened. We simply cannot know for sure and must fill in the blank spots with leaps of faith. I feel science makes these leaps smaller and smaller, but they are leaps nonetheless.
I am a firm believer that macro evolution is a bunch of hooey. I've read many articles and papers on the subject and every single one of them require me have faith that, while they were unable to prove a particular point such as evolution, that I simply go ahead and believe it to be true. Sorry.
I can (and have) observe cellular mutations. I've seen with my own eyes many cells who, upon replication, somehow got the genetic code wrong and were different than the parent. Most of the time, these changes were fatal. The majority of the rest were superficial. I once put an onion under a radiation lamp overnight. Damn thing grew three times the size, but was lumpy, mostly brown, and totally inedible. But that's a story for another day.
Cells change. I've seen it and can accept it. However to say that entire systems can mutate at the same time is asinine. Not only does the DNA have to mutate to carry perfect instructions on building this new system, but it also has to be perfect enough to self replicate. There are two instances that I like to point out.
First, let's talk about eyes. I can accept that some glob of cells existed and that, due to mutation, one of the cells in the glob had random instructions that caused it to turn into a cell that, when hit with photons caused sodium to flow across the membrane and changing its electrical charge. Granted the entire sequence is a hell of a lot more complicated than that, but for now it will suffice.
So this glob of cells now has a cell that no longer performs the function it used to. The cell requires nutrients, and if it is not actively adding to the glob's survival, it is now putting the life of the glob into jeopardy. Let's grant the premise that the cell doesn't take too much away from the glob and that the glob can continue to hobble along.
Ok, now we have a glob (maybe 100 cells or so) that has one cell that has ceased to function but isn't fatal. This cell causes an electrical charge when hit with photons. Amazingly, at the same time it can somehow pump out the excess sodium across the membrane, but hell, this is a random occurrence so we'll just chalk it up to that.
This might sound like a great idea, but how the hell does a single, light sensitive cell do anything? To make sense of the light, something else in the glob would have to mutate to make use of the electrical charge (nerve). That in turn would have to be interpreted in some fashion. Let's assume that light is bad for the cell so in order to survive, it would have to mutate some flagellum and swim away from the light source. Man, that's a lot of random mutations to have to happen! But I'm even open to the thought of that happening. It's not impossible, just improbable.
What I'm trying to illustrate is that small changes are bound to happen. Trillions of cells duplicating themselves are bound to produce a mutation that is useful. But entire systems just don't happen.
The other illustration is that of a giraffe. It is folly to believe that some short-necked animal gave birth to a mutation that had a super long neck. See, the length of the neck isn't the only obstacle. You have to develop extra neck bones at the same time to support the new length. There has to be an entire new set of muscles, nerves, etc to support the neck as well. Also, a giraffe has a sponge-like membrane around the brain to prevent passing out when it changes height to drink water. That happened at the exact same time too? Doubtful.
So the other answer would be a gradual change, over millions and millions of years. Ok, fine. A giraffe's neck allows it to eat leaves in trees that it wouldn't otherwise be able to reach. If the change was gradual, at some point the neck would have been too long to successfully eat grass, but too short to reach the leaves. And yet it survived over millions of years with that type of handicap? I don't get it. And why aren't there millions of fossils that show medium necked giraffes?
It bothers me that someone would call me ignorant although I've studied the same information and simply came to a different conclusion. Unless you've observed evolution at every stage of every possible life form on Earth, you're indulging in the same faith that you accuse others of being ignorant for.
rolled out on
Wednesday, November 24, 2004 9:39 AM