Zoloty1
Zach Zoloty
Mrs. Stonitsch
Honors English 10 3°
15 May 2013
Proselytizing the Blind Masses: Science is the True Saviour
When many people think of evolution, they think of a fish that miraculously learned to live on land and then eventually turned into monkeys and later on, people. It is because of this very poor general understanding of evolution that it is not emphasized as much as it should be. On top of this, people hear the word ‘theory’ and assume that whatever is used in conjunction with it is just an ideological proposition that holds no empirical evidence. This is essentially correct when referring to the non-scientific use of the word. However, when dealing with science, the word ‘theory’ is used to denote a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that, through time, have accumulated enough empirical evidence through means of repeated testing to be accepted as the explanation of a phenomenon. Creationists, people who believe that a supernatural deity created the entire universe single-handedly in 6 days approximately 6,000 years ago, choose to ignore that a strong scientific theory, like the theory of evolution, has so much physical and theoretical evidence that it is inherently fact, as the support for the theory is made up of fact. The theory of evolution has just as much evidence and is just as strong of a scientific theory as the theory of gravity, the germ theory of disease, and the chromosome theory of inheritance. The theory of evolution can be further supported and essentially proved through the discussion of natural selection, artificial selection, and the fossil record.
In order to talk about evolution, a good understanding of creationism must first be established. What is creationism? Why is there so much conflict between creationism and evolution? The New Dictionary of the History of Ideas says that “Creationism in a general sense refers to the theory that God made the world on his own, by miraculous means, out of nothing” (Ruse). In a more specific sense, creationism is the belief that a divine being created the world and all organisms in their present form during a period of six days, asserting that no organisms have changed as a species in any way. Creationists support the story of Genesis in the Bible and believe that the world is between 4,000 to 10,000 years old, with most believing it to be 6,000 years old. The main reason that evolution absolutely cannot work at all with the assumptions of creationism is because the 6,000 years that creationists believe the world has been in existence is temporally inadequate for evolution to take place as much as carbon dating and the extensive fossil record thoroughly suggests it has. Creationists are well known to be the way they are due to their intense faith in their religion. However, it should be known that many senior clergy and theologians have no problem with evolution and, in many cases, actively support scientists in respect to this field. In fact, Richard Dawkins, a well-known and respected ethologist, evolutionary biologist, and author, has collaborated on several occasions with Catholic bishops, such as Bishop Harries of Oxford, and written letters to important figures such as the Prime Minister of England in regards to teaching evolution as it should be taught. This includes teaching evolution in faith schools, which both Dawkins and Harries supported. According to Dawkins, “the Archbishop of Canterbury has no problem with evolution, nor does the Pope (give or take the odd wobble over the precise paleontological juncture when the human soul was injected), nor do educated priests and professors of theology” (The Greatest Show on Earth 6). If the Pope, a world renowned religious leader, can accept the theory of evolution, then evolution can and should be accepted by those who have strong faith in their religion and should not be written off as mere blasphemy.
As aforementioned, natural selection greatly supports evolution and is a great discussion piece when trying to explain the complexity of evolution. It should be known that natural selection is not something that can be witnessed in a short period of time; it is a temporally demanding phenomenon. As Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, said in On the Origin of Species in regards to natural selection, “We see nothing of these slow changes in progress, until the hand of time has marked the long lapse of ages, and then so imperfect is our view into long past geological ages, that we see only that the forms of life are now different from what they formerly were” (qtd. in Dawkins, Greatest Show on Earth64). Natural selection does not just happen; there is reason for why it does. The science behind natural selection is that of survival; there is no actual ‘selection’ being made. The ‘selection’ is that those who possess superior genes and capabilities are the most likely to reproduce, and by doing such, the most likely to pass on the genes for possessing these superior qualities. Thus a gradual transition is made from the old qualities of the species to the new qualities, and as time goes on, the qualities become so different from the original qualities that it is considered an entirely new species. Even if creationism suddenly and miraculously attained a substantial amount of irrefutable scientific evidence to support it, it would not remove natural selection from the equation. Natural selection would still be taking place just as it normally is thought to, as the struggle for survival and the hereditary traits passed through genes would still exist. The fittest animals to survive would still do so, reproduce, and slowly the species would change to be more fitted to survive due to the marvelous power of genes. It is this display of survival of the fittest, as well as that of the unmentioned topic of genetic drift (genetic drift is the change in the frequency of an allele not due to survival of the fittest, but due to random sampling and essentially, luck), that keeps the mechanics of evolution running smoothly, consistently, and constantly.
In addition to the quiet, large-scale workings of natural selection, there is something called artificial selection which can better demonstrate the ideas of evolution due to it being on a much smaller scale. Humans have a long record of managing to tweak nature to their liking, as exemplified by deforestation and selective breeding, otherwise known as artificial selection. Artificial selection is the breeding of animals and plants by humans in order to bring out particular traits. To the untrained ear this may not sound like evolution at all. However, a great example of artificial selection is domestication. Domestication is a much more common idea than artificial selection, yet the two are almost exactly the same. The only difference is that domestication specifies that the animals/plants are bred to accentuate the traits which can benefit humans, whereas artificial selection just specifies that the animals/plants are being bred for particular traits. Both of these ideas, however, are fine examples of evolution, as they both show the change in the inherited characteristics over successive generations of the animal/plant being bred, which is exactly what evolution is. If visible proof for evolution is needed, look at a domestic dog. That dog has come a long way as a species, genetically speaking. This is because the common ancestor of all domestic dogs truly is the wolf, which is still around today. Compare the savage wolf to a cute and cuddly pug; there are so many differences it seems like the wolf never could have been domesticated into a pug. The pug was indeed descended from the wolf, despite the many differences between them. Artificial selection like that takes a great amount of time. The wolves needed to be bred to become docile, bred to be shorter, and bred for neoteny (neoteny is the retainment of juvenile characteristics into adulthood; in this case it would be referring to the very short and smashed-looking muzzle of the pug). All dogs, big and small, long-snouted and short-snouted, were domesticated from the wolf. Richard Dawkins greatly emphasizes domestication’s “astonishing power to change the shape and behavior of wild animals, and the speed with which it does so” in several chapters of his book The Greatest Show on Earth (28). Grasping this idea can help a person to understand the idea of evolution much more easily, as domestication is just evolution on a smaller scale.
Another piece of evidence that is not necessary to prove evolution, but is a great asset to visualizing the concept of it, is the fossil record. The fossil record consists of all of the fossils in the world, both discovered and undiscovered, as well as their placement in fossiliferous rock formations and sedimentary layers. Although the fossil record is not even necessary to prove evolution, many creationists use so-called “gaps” in the fossil record to fight against evolution. Sure, there are “gaps” in the fossil record, but this is because of the great difficulty at which fossilizing an organism holds. The circumstance under which a well-preserved fossil is formed is phenomenally difficult to come about. Among the most important requirements for such a circumstance is for the organism to be in the right place at the right time and to becoming caked into the sedimentary rock around them for years and years under a constant high pressure without being agitated. This is why there are certain species which have no fossils at all, others which only some of the organism has been retained in fossils, and others where human understanding of the organism is phenomenal due to the great circumstances under which they were fossilized. Probably the most well-known example of this would be “Sue” the tyrannosaurus-rex. There are not many well preserved fossils of t-rexes, let alone nearly complete fossils of the entire bone structure. Most fossilized t-rex specimens only have less than half of their bones fossilized and preserved. Sue, however, is the largest, most extensive, and best preserved tyrannosaurus-rex specimen ever to be recorded. Sue’s existence as a fossil has greatly increased the scientific understanding of t-rexes as a species and is a great example of how unpredictable the fossilization process can be. The unreliable process of fossilizationis also why there are “gaps” or “missing links” or whatever else the masses wish to call them. They are not truly “missing links”; the transition from species to species is still there. However, this is not to say that evolution could not be disproved in a split second should a single fossil turn up in the wrong date order. This would overturn the entire theory of evolution. This is not necessarily a bad thing, though, as evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins says that “a good theory, a scientific theory, is one that is vulnerable to disproof, yet is not disproved” (The Greatest Show on Earth 147). This seems to further support the theory of evolution, as a fossil has never turned up in the wrong date order and there is no evidence that this will ever happen in the future. In addition to this, carbon dating combined with the fossil record further helps to prove evolution. Carbon dating is a technique used to estimate the age of organic materials based on the decay of carbon-14. Age can be determined through this technique because carbon-14 forms at a constant rate, so by measuring the radioactive emissions of organic matter and comparing its activity to the equilibrium level of living things, a nearly accurate measurement of the time elapsed can be made. As such, the age of fossils can be determined, providing more evidence that evolution has occurred and is occurring. Carbon dating helps to explain the progression from fossil to fossil, proving that the fossils were not just randomly placed throughout sedimentary rock formations;they actually have specific date orders based on when they were fossilized. It helps to further connect the ideas of evolution as well as the human understanding of evolution and how it works.
Not only does carbon dating provide such valuable information in regards to evolution, but it also immediately disproves the concept of creationism. This is because creationists believe the world/universe is only approximately 6,000 years old, and carbon dating is used to date organic material to approximately 60,000 years ago, which is 10 times longer than creationists believe the world even existed. This is not saying that the world is 60,000 years old instead of 6,000 years old; just that the world is much older than 6,000 years old which immediately shows creationism to be false. On the other side of things, there is no reason to believe that the theory of evolution, or any detail of it, is false. The ignorance of the evolution-denying masses must not be enabled any further than it already has. The theory of evolution is not just an idea thrown together by a couple of scientists based purely on deduction and reasoning; evolution, along with other strong scientific theories such as gravity and disease, started as a hypothesis and has gained an extremely substantial amount of support from the deluge of empirical evidence generated from countless experiments and theorizing. Not only is evolution supported by the ideas of natural selection, artificial selection, domestication, the fossil record, carbon dating, reproduction, and the gene pool, but the theory of evolution itself connects all of these ideas and helps to uncover the many mysteries that the natural world still holds. In The Greatest Show on Earth, Richard Dawkins says that “evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, uninformed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eye witnesses to the Holocaust” (8). Creationism has no such support. Creationists merely “accept the creation story in the Bible’s book of Genesis as the literal truth, maintaining that God created the world and everything in it in six days. Creationists oppose evolution, the science-based theory of how many species of living things have developed from some forms into others over millions of years” (“Creationism”). Such a belief is purely religious and holds no concrete support or empirical evidence; the only such evidence is that a 2,000 year old book, the Bible, told them that creationism was true. It is not just an assumption that evolution is reality; it is a well-developed scientific theory which holds as much truth as the theory of gravity holds. Creationism and its purely ideological base cannot stand up to the great mass of evidence that evolution carries with it. Creationism is trumped in every way. There is no empirical evidence that the world was created 6,000 years ago, there is no empirical evidence that the world (and the universe) was created in 6-7 days, and there is no empirical evidence that all species of organisms on Earth were put on this planet at the same time. In fact, there is undeniable evidence that all species of organisms on Earth did NOT live during the same time period, and there is undeniable evidence that evolution is, in fact, reality. Those who deny evolution are, as Richard Dawkins puts it, “history-deniers.” There is no reason to believe in Creationism, nor any evidence to believe in it, other than that it is what a 2,000 year old book, the Bible, says is true. Yet many people still believe in such a ludicrous idea. Would a modern-day doctor read a 2,000 year old medical journal to read up on techniques for blood-letting and to get some advice on trichinosis? The answer to that is no.
Evolution, however, has all the reason to be believed in as the truth. It is obvious that evolution is not just some idea that monkeys mysteriously turned into humans. Evolution is nothing like that at all. Numerous biological phenomena such as natural selection, artificial selection, and the fossil record itself all support the theory of evolution and all that it has to offer to human understanding of the world. Domestication of animals and plants is an example of evolution on a small scale. Carbon dating combined with the fossil record further the proof that evolution is a fact, and carbon dating on its own disproves the creationist view of the world by proving that the world is much more than 6,000 years old. Even the concept of reproduction and heredity provide support for evolution. Evolution is complex, evolution is mysterious, and most of all, evolution is true. Evolution is not just some ‘theory.’ Evolution is as much of a fact as gravity. Evolution has as much scientific support and empirical evidence as the theory of gravity; the only thing missing is the worldwide acceptance of it as a fact. It is accepted worldwide that gravity, a scientific theory, exists. So why is there so much denial of the theory of evolution when it comes to the public? Is it because the words evolution and theory are so often connected? For this should not be the case, as a scientific theory is not some ideological proposition with no empirical evidence, but rather a hypothesis or hypotheses that have over time accumulated so much support and evidence that it becomes a widely accepted explanation of a phenomenon. The scientific community as a whole accepts the theory of evolution as fact, and so do many educated theologians and priests, including the Pope. There is no legitimate reason whatsoever for a person to deny evolution as a fact. As said in Intelligent Design vs Evolution in 2007, “evolution is no longer a theory to be proven but an agreed-upon fact” (Evolution is an Accepted Fact Dawkins). Science, not religion, is the true saviour of mankind.