A bit of a Heavy One (Beware)

I just finished leaving a comment on another's blog and I got so excited about the topic that I felt the desire to continue it on my own blog. Basically it's about the difficulties in conceiving of the possibility of evolution. I haven't heard from the blog author, so I thought I'd wait before including a link to the page here (I don't want to step on anybody's toes). What I will do is copy and paste my own comments:

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comment 1

First, I think it's good to question these things, so thumbs up for that. It's tricky, when I started my studies I had this idea that we were devolving (actually I can't believe my spell checker accepts the word), because the technologies we had were allowing more and more of us to survive, hence cheating nature and natural selection. The direction of evolution is not determined by some ultimate goal, but rather by the environmental niche the organism is filling. For example, imagine that all the parasites that lived in/on us evolved into people. All of a sudden there would be an energy source which no one is taking advantage of, so something else would evolve to fill the empty niche. So in fact, we'd expect the diversity and delicate equilibrium that we actually do see in the environment. That said, it's a common misconception. The idea of evolution toward some perfect goal is, in my opinion, a hangover of creationism. The idea that God created us in his own image, and therefore we must be as close to perfection as possible. I agree that the idea of evolution from primordial slime to humans is mind boggling, but then so are the time scales involved. It's like imagining the Grand Canyon being cut by single drops of water. But what is also mind boggling to me is egotism involved in inferring that God is like us. Without saying whether God exists or doesn't, God is at best a concept to us. There is no proof, because there can't be proof. God didn't make us in his image, we made him in ours.

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comment 2

I was thinking further on this topic and I wanted to add something. When I say proof of the existence of God, I mean scientific proof. This is far from the only important thing. I think it's BS when people say they believe in science and therefore not God. God is outside of science. What's important is what you believe, not what can be proven. In my opinion, all that matters is that you keep an open mind and you risk hypocrisy if you outright deny another's beliefs.

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I also desired to talk about the supposed science of "Intelligent Design", but felt that I had already rambled on to much, hence shifting to here, where Owen rambling is the norm.

By the lord, these creationists can cause a lot of trouble. There was a big stink some years ago over in the USA (the moral lighthouse of the western world), when some creationists came up with this new science called "Intelligent Design" which sought to discover arguments against evolution to demonstrate that some kind of intelligence was required, i.e. a creator. I saw a good documentary on TV about it. The stink was caused because these jerks had managed to have the teaching of evolution stripped from the syllabus of some schools and replaced by the science of Intelligent Design. Now, an important value we have in our society is that education should be non-secular (at least in public schools). As an aside, consider John Howard arguing about holy (i.e. Christian) matrimony when deciding whether Australia (i.e. non-secular Australia) should recognise homosexual marriage. This makes my blood boil. I'm going to have a ramble about the intelligent design arguments which are difficult to explain so maybe skip over to the next ***

I can't remember exactly, all this is off the top of my head, so I might make mistakes in my arguments (be warned). I believe there are two main arguments the Intelligent Design people had against evolution. One was an example of some biological design so complex that "they" were unable to explain it by evolution. The second was a calculation of the improbability of the world as we know it under the evolution hypothesis. First argument (i.e. complexity of design) rebuttal: if you can't work out how to explain something you don't just attribute it to something supernatural. It's just not science. To attribute the complexity of the world to God is just putting off the issue, as now you have to explain how God came to be and what his intentions are. You can say that God "just is", but if you do this you've moved outside of science, (i.e. you can't convince me with evidence). You can conclude whatever you what in your own beliefs, but it is irresponsible to teach your own (strongly disputed) ideas to children as the "Truth". (By the way, I also think it is silly to conclude that science is the "Truth", although many do, hopefully not science teachers). Second argument (improbability) rebuttal: How much would you bet that I couldn't show you someone toss heads 10 times in a row? What is the probability that someone could toss a coin and get heads 10 times in a row? Well, it's quite small (in fact, 1 in 2^10 = 1024). What is the chance that I could show you someone who has tossed heads 10 times in a row? Well, give me 1024 people and we'll hold a tournament, pairing off people and eliminating the tail flippers each round (1024 -> 512 with one -> 256 with two -> 128 with three -> 64 with four -> 32 with five -> 16 with six -> 8 with seven -> 4 with eight -> 2 with nine -> 1 with ten). There is nothing special about this person (or organisation of the world) apart from the fact that they happened to get lucky in the tournament (were selected for by natural selection). The Intelligent Designers have been duped 1:1024 (much bigger odds for the world). Or maybe the children who are taught this crap have been duped.

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There was this big court case and a whole lot of the evolution bigwig scientists/philospher were there and, thankfully, the replacement of evolution with intelligent design in schools was declared unconstitutional. And there was much rejoicing. By the way, the people in the church, to their credit, who have realised that evolution and religion aren't necessarily at odds, didn't like what the intelligent design dicks were doing, (which is, moving spirituality into the realm of science). They, like us, just wanted them to shut the hell up.

Now comrades, what are we going to do about John Howard's homophobia and argument of Holy Matrimony?

PS. Now this blog did get a bit too heavy, sorry about that. But no masturbation talk, yay for me!