Evolution as a secular religion
« on: 2003-06-12 12:15:35 »
[rhinoceros] This one appeared in the Science Magazine as a response to an article by Michael Ruse titled "Is Evolution a Secular Religion?". I also posted the initial article.
Teaching any aspect of science as a religion is harmful to science -- not to religion. The science teacher does not expect most students to become professional scientists. Many will forget the details of snails and quasars. However, the teacher does hope that students will learn the scientist's way of thinking about nature. When science teaching succeeds, students continue to apply their thinking through life.
The last thing science teaching needs is to take the scientist's ways of thinking about nature (evolution, for example) and turn them into doctrines, to be believed in their own right. That is like staring at the light bulb, instead of using it to illuminate a page. Not only will you not see what you need to see, you will soon not see clearly at all. Evolution has great explanatory power, but only when applied to subjects it best explains, not when treated as a dogma into which all events in life must be fitted. Indeed, part of what makes evolution controversial is the persistent habit of some evolutionary biologists of using principles derived from Darwinism to pronounce on controversial topics such as religion. In these instances, their explanations often lack explanatory power, principally, I suspect, because they are oblivious to the fact that human culture is, as S.J. Gould pointed out, a Lamarckian, not a Darwinian inheritance. People purposefully adapt their religion and culture during their own lifetimes and pass them on. As a result, the evolutionary biologist probably doesn't even have an edge over the sociologist, especially if the sociologist knows the turf better.
Evangelists for traditional religions sense the weakness of evolution as a religion, and discredit it with little effort. That is part of the reason that so much of the American public, for example, does not "believe in" evolution. It was promoted as a religion to be believed in, failed to make as many converts as hoped, and generated hostility. However, that outcome should be no surprise; the evolutionists were amateurs matched against experts.
Science functions best and teaches best with the knowledge that all scientific hypotheses are provisional, and not a form of dogma or a rule of life.
A major complaint of the Creationists, those who are committed to a Genesis-based story of origins, is that evolution--and Darwinism in particular--is more than just a scientific theory. They object that too often evolution operates as a kind of secular religion, pushing norms and proposals for proper (or, in their opinion, improper) action. Evolutionists dismiss this argument as merely another rhetorical debating trick, and in major respects, this is precisely what it is. It is silly to claim that a naturalistic story of origins leads straight to sexual freedom and other supposed ills of modern society. But, if we wish to deny that evolution is more than just a scientific theory, the Creationists do have a point.
The history of the theory of evolution falls naturally into three parts.(1) The first part took place from the mid-18th century up to the publication of Charles Darwin's theory of natural selection as expounded in his Origin of Species published in 1859. Up until then, evolution was little more than a pseudo-science on a par with mesmerism (animal magnetism) or phrenology (brain bumps), used as much by its practitioners to convey moral and social messages as to describe the physical world. At the end of the 18th century, Charles Darwin's grandfather, Erasmus, wrote evolutionary poetry, hymning the progress of life from the monad to man--or, as he put it, from the monarch (the butterfly) to the monarch (the king). He derived this notion of biological progress from the successes of the Industrial Revolution and then used it in a circular fashion to justify the cultural progress of the Britain of his day. For example, in his Temple of Nature,(2) Erasmus Darwin wrote:
Imperious man, who rules the bestial crowd, Of language, reason, and reflection proud, With brow erect who scorns this earthy sod, And styles himself the image of his God; Arose from rudiments of form and sense, An embryon point, or microscopic ens!
The same sort of stuff can be found in the writings of other early evolutionists, notably in the Philosophie Zoologique, published in 1809 by the Frenchman Jean-Baptiste Lamarck.
Charles Darwin, a serious full-time scientist, set out to change all of this. First, he wanted to give an empirically grounded basis for belief in the fact of evolution. Second, he wanted to persuade his readers of a particular mechanism of evolution, the natural selection of the successful brought on by the struggle for existence. In his first aim, Darwin was spectacularly successful. Within a decade of the publication of his Origin of Species, thinking people were convinced of the fact of evolution. However, regarding his second aim to convince folk about natural selection, Darwin had less success. Most people went for some form of evolution by jumps (saltationism), inheritance of acquired characteristics (Lamarckism), or some other mode of change. Darwin failed in another respect, too. He hoped to upgrade the study of evolution to a respectable, professional science--the kind offered in lectures at universities, with dedicated students and well-funded research. It was not to be. A kind of bastardized Germanic evolution did make it into academia--but it was concerned less with mechanisms and more with hypothesizing about histories, being more connected to Ernst Haeckel's biogenetic law ("ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny") than anything to be found in the Origin of Species. As a mature professional research area, evolution was a flop. It simply did not materialize.
Why was this? Darwin himself was an invalid from the age of 30, and any profession building had to be done by his supporters, in particular by his "bulldog," Thomas Henry Huxley. In many respects, Huxley played to Darwin the role that Saint Paul played to Jesus, promoting the master's ideas. But just as Saint Paul rather molded Jesus' legacy to his own ends, so also Huxley molded Darwin's legacy. At the time that the Origin of Species was published, Britain was a country desperately in need of reform, as revealed by the horrors of the Crimean War and the Indian Mutiny. Huxley and others worked hard to bring about change, trying to move public perceptions into the 20th century. They reformed education, the civil service, the military, and much else. Huxley's own work was in higher education, and he succeeded best in the areas of physiology and morphology. He realized that to improve and professionalize these fields as areas of teaching and research, he needed clients (a must in all system building). Huxley sold physiology to the medical profession, just then desperate to change from killing to curing. Huxley's offer of a supply of students, ready for specialized medical training, with a solid background in modern physiology was gratefully received. Morphology, Huxley sold to the teaching profession, on the grounds that hands-on empirical study was much better training for modern life than the outmoded classics. Huxley himself sat on the new London School Board and started teacher training courses. His most famous student was the novelist H. G. Wells.
Evolution had no immediate payoff. Learning phylogenies did not cure belly ache, and it was still all a bit too daring for regular schoolroom instruction. But Huxley could see a place for evolution. The chief ideological support of those who opposed the reformers--the landowners, the squires, the generals, and the others--came from the Anglican Church. Hence, Huxley saw the need to found his own church, and evolution was the ideal cornerstone. It offered a story of origins, one that (thanks to progress) puts humans at the center and top and that could even provide moral messages. The philosopher Herbert Spencer was a great help here. He was ever ready to urge his fellow Victorians that the way to true virtue lies through progress, which comes from promoting a struggle in society as well as in biology--a laissez-faire socioeconomic philosophy. Thus, evolution had its commandments no less than did Christianity. And so Huxley preached evolution-as-world-view at working men's clubs, from the podia during presidential addresses, and in debates with clerics--notably Samuel Wilberforce, Bishop of Oxford. He even aided the founding of new cathedrals of evolution, stuffed with displays of dinosaurs newly discovered in the American West. Except, of course, these halls of worship were better known as natural history museums (see the photographs).
As with Christianity, not everyone claimed exactly the same thing in the name of their Lord. Yet, moral norms were the game in town, and things continued this way until the third phase, which began around 1930. This was the era during which a number of mathematically trained thinkers--notably Ronald Fisher and J. B. S. Haldane in England, and Sewall Wright in America--fused Darwinian selection with Mendelian genetics, and thus provided the conceptual foundations of what became known as the synthetic theory of evolution or neo-Darwinism. Rapidly, the experimentalists and naturalists--notably Theodosius Dobzhansky in America and E. B. Ford in England--started to put empirical flesh on the mathematical skeleton, and finally Darwin's dream of a professional evolution with selection at its heart was realized. But there is more to the story than this. These new-style evolutionists--the mathematicians and empiricists--wanted to professionalize evolution because they wanted to study it full time in universities, with students and research grants, and so forth. However, like everyone else, they had been initially attracted to evolution precisely because of its quasi-religious aspects, regardless of whether these formed the basis of an agnostic/atheistic humanism or something to revitalize an old religion that had lost its spirit and vigor. Hence, they wanted to keep a value-impregnated evolutionism that delivered moral messages even as it strived for greater progressive triumphs.
This all meant that by the 1940s and 1950s the study of evolution was of two sorts. There was serious empirical work, very professional, containing few or no direct exhortations to moral or social action. Along with this, almost all of the leading evolutionists were turning out works of a more popular nature, about progress and the ways to achieve it. By the 1950s, evolutionary works, such as those by the Darwinian paleontologist G. G. Simpson, discussed democracy and education and (increasingly) conservation. In 1944, Simpson published Tempo and Mode in Evolution: straight science about natural selection and the fossil record. Then, in 1949, he published The Meaning of Evolution: science for the general reader, packed with all sorts of stuff about the virtues of the American way over communism. (Remember, the Cold War was then settling into its long winter, and Trofim Lysenko was destroying Russian biology.) Finally, in 1953, came Simpson's The Major Features of Evolution, and we were back to straight science.
Things have continued in much the same way to the present. There is professional evolutionary biology: mathematical, experimental, not laden with value statements. But, you are not going to find the answer to the world's mysteries or to societal problems if you open the pages of Evolution or Animal Behaviour. Then, sometimes from the same person, you have evolution as secular religion, generally working from an explicitly materialist background and solving all of the world's major problems, from racism to education to conservation. Consider Edward O. Wilson, rightfully regarded as one of the most outstanding professional evolutionary biologists of our time, and the author of major works of straight science. In his On Human Nature, he calmly assures us that evolution is a myth that is now ready to take over Christianity. And, if this is so, "the final decisive edge enjoyed by scientific naturalism will come from its capacity to explain traditional religion, its chief competition, as a wholly material phenomenon. Theology is not likely to survive as an independent intellectual discipline".(3) An ardent progressionist, Wilson sees moral norms emerging from our need to keep the evolutionary process moving forward. In his view, this translates as a need to promote biodiversity, for Wilson believes that humans have evolved in a symbiotic relationship with nature. A world of plastic would kill us humans, literally as well as metaphorically. For progress to continue, we must preserve the Brazilian rainforests and other areas of high organic density and diversity.(4)
So, what does our history tell us? Three things. First, if the claim is that all contemporary evolutionism is merely an excuse to promote moral and societal norms, this is simply false. Today's professional evolutionism is no more a secular religion than is industrial chemistry. Second, there is indeed a thriving area of more popular evolutionism, where evolution is used to underpin claims about the nature of the universe, the meaning of it all for us humans, and the way we should behave. I am not saying that this area is all bad or that it should be stamped out. I am all in favor of saving the rainforests. I am saying that this popular evolutionism--often an alternative to religion--exists. Third, we who cherish science should be careful to distinguish when we are doing science and when we are extrapolating from it, particularly when we are teaching our students. If it is science that is to be taught, then teach science and nothing more. Leave the other discussions for a more appropriate time.
References and Notes
1. M. Ruse, Monad to Man: The Concept of Progress in Evolutionary Biology (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1996).
2. E. Darwin, The Temple of Nature (J. Johnson, London, 1803), vol. 1, canto 1, lines 309-314.
3. E. O. Wilson, On Human Nature (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1978), p. 192.
4. See, for example, E. O. Wilson, Biophilia (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1984) and E. O. Wilson, The Diversity of Life (Harvard Univ. Press, Cambridge, MA, 1992).
Re:Evolution as a secular religion
« Reply #2 on: 2003-06-12 16:25:32 »
I would suggest that while the perspectives above might seem by some to be rational, they are far from complete, and suggest additional issues for consideration.
Those familiar with the scientific world view know that evolution is a strong theory, explaining and predicting the why of an observed phenomenon. It does not speak to those things which religions purport to deal with, i.e. A "religion" is: "a set of beliefs concerned with explaining the origins and purposes of the universe, usu. involving belief in a supernatural creator and offering guidance in ethics and morals" (wordsmyth.net), although it certainly can have massive implications for religious assertions (including by those sociologists asserting a Lamarckian social inheritance in the face of genetic evidence to the contrary).
But, despite the clever explanations (rationalizations?) given above, evolution is undoubtedly not alone in being seen as a "replacement religion" by the ill-educated. How about the Big Bang Theory (No creation)? Or information theory (No omniscience). Or Newton's laws (The Earth is not the falt center of the Universe)? Or quantum mechanics (No omniscience.)? Or Special Relativity (No omnipotence)? All these fields have and do offer massive contradictions to the religious cosmology of the day. However, the disapprobation of the religious public seems to focus (I would suggest fairly equally) on evolution and the equally strong BB theory. I would suggest this may simply be because most people obtaining a general education are exposed primarily to these two concepts, and more importantly, because these theories undoubtedly offer the most visible challenges to the "explanations" offered by the religious for the "origins and purposes of the universe" to which the religious have frequently internalized (committed to) by the time that they reach school. Extreme dissonance follows and the earlier memeplex tends to win out over common sense. In other words, it is here where most people are first exposed to the catastrophic failure of their religions to rationally address cosmology and the development of life and as such, evolution and the BB theory are seen by religious literalists and those with similar yearnings (sociologists?) as being "in opposition," leading to vast screeds being written attempting to refute the theories, most of them based on religious beliefs (although there is a growing tendency for creationists and young-earthers to attempt to disguise this) while ignoring the huge mass of observations which necessitate them.
The failure is not all on the part of the religious. In the main, the languages spoken by man have been tailored (sometimes deliberately (as e.g. Webster did) and sometimes simply through sloppy usage as in "agnostic") to communicate religious concepts in such a way as to minimize the inevitable conflict between religious beliefs and observation and to strengthen the acceptance of religion in a seemingly inexplicable world of coincidence. When scientists fail to take this into account when speaking, when through laziness or unawareness we use words which have become contaminated, in an attempt to defend our rational world views, we make it a great deal more difficult for ourselves to communicate effectively with the great unwashed. When we are "caught" attempting to pedantically redefine words, we generate resentment by those who are not sure of exactly what we are doing, but are sure that it is not good for their (to themselves) indispensable beliefs. Being certain (through belief) that their morals are "god given", the religious see any attempt to divorce our origins from their gods as a measure of our immorality. Being sure that their gods created the Universe, and thus predated man, the religious see any attempt to reject this assertion as a sneaky means to introduce the concept that the gods were created by man. Not seeing the ethical requirement that man have some system to evaluate the goodness of their gods before following them can be termed a "moral decision" the religious scream in quite understandable anguish that the scientific perspective is immoral and "against" them. The scientists see their work taken out of context, trivialized and dismissed (for no rational reasons) and a barrage of invective replacing reason. And conclude that the religious are inherently "anti-science."
Memetics (and indeed, evolutionary biology) might offer a clue as to what happens next. The scientifically oriented attempt to refute the arguments made and fall right into the trap of using the phrasing employed by tormented theists and desperate deists in an attempt to be both persuasive and thorough. Instead of simply saying (as I would argue rational people should): "Your assertions are so wrong that we cannot meaningfully discuss your statements in the terms you use", we use the language developed over the centuries by believers in an attempt to refute their protestations. Oops. This leads to extreme confusion. The scientist says "it is a strong theory." The believer says "it is only a theory." Neither recognizes that the word "theory" means different things to the other. The scientist means that his understanding, while consensus based and well supported by evidence is appropriately falsifiable. The believer identifies possible falsification with an unproven possibility. The scientist says, "I believe that evolution is well supported". The religious say, "That is only your belief. I believe god created everything and my belief is better (inject ad populam, ad historiam or other fallacy du jour here) than yours." Again there is confusion. When the scientist says "I believe", the scientist probably means "I consider that I have a sufficiency of evidence to necessitate, and insufficient evidence to refute, that which compels acceptance". The believer takes belief to mean "I accept in the absence of evidence or even in the face of contradictory evidence, something which I don't know to be true or rationally consider to be false." So long as this level of misunderstanding (and intellectual dishonesty) is present, disagreement is likely to be fierce. Unfortunately, the trained scientist, faced with a slew of logical fallacies from the outraged believer will usually do the logical thing. And walk away. Leaving the believer the master of the terrain and more convinced than ever that his unanswerable perspective derived from his upbringing and exacerbated by his high dopamine levels (which prepare him to see patterns - and thus causation - in any random happenstance) - must have been provided to him by his gods. Thus the believer and non-believer move ever further apart and the world divides into self-selecting and ever competing rational and irrational groups, both with seemingly infinite contempt for the other. Perhaps there is something evolutionary going on after all. Then again, maybe not. The trouble with such arguments, like those this reply seeks to address, is that they tend to include fallacies of definition and explanation*, if not worse, in their unstated assumptions.
All it then takes is for a few self-identified scientists and rationalists to step out of field, abandon peer review, pick up on some pet peeve and make ex cathedra pronouncements on how others are guilty of what the religious accuse them of, preferably introducing some stray sexual, racist, green, libertarian, objectivist or feminist memes to make the affray appeal to everyone, for the circus to expand to include at least three simultaneously ludicrous acts. I suggest that the above articles, at least to this reader, appear no more - or less - than this.
Hermit
Fallacies of Definition
Too narrow: The definition does not include all the items which should be included
Over broad: The definition includes items which should not be included
Non-elucidatary: The definition is more difficult to understand than the word or concept being defined
Circular: The definition includes the term being defined as a part of the definition
Conflicting: The definition is self-contradictory
Fallacies of Explanation
Subverted Support: The phenomenon purportedly being explained has not been demonstrated to exist
Non-support: Purported evidence for the phenomenon being explained is biased
Untestable: The theory which purports to explain the phenomenon cannot be tested
Limited Scope: The theory which purports to provide an explanation can only explain one thing and does not address apparently related things
Limited Depth: The theory which purports to explain a phenomena does not appeal to the underlying causes of the phenomena
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
The human brain is very good at one thing: reducing complexity to simple symbols. When you see a tree you don't bother with each leaf, the symbol 'tree' is enough. Religion, apart from being a tool to suppress us, appeals to this, as it assigns wrong, but attractive symbols to the world.
This is where science steps in, trying to find the right symbols and their real inner workings. For example, the symbol 'thunder caused by the god of thunder' is replaced by the symbol 'thunder caused by lightning caused by electricity'. These scientific symbols are more complex, as the world we live in is very complex. On the other hand, they provide simple rules to successfully survive thunder and lightning, which the naive religious symbols don't.
In the same way the symbol 'creation by god' is replaced with 'creation by Evolution', or 'moral' by 'laws to live together in a stable and peaceful way'.
For those who are just used to dealing with simple symbols this may seem like a transition from one religion to another, where in reality it is the replacement of religion and philosophy by science based on the Theory of Evolution.
Of course all of us should refrain from thinking and communicating in simple symbols, 'Theory of Evolution' should not be used in the same way as 'god', but we are humans being used to be thinking in symbols, and it's hard to not to be attracted by the wonderful insight of Charles Darwin in such a way as not to find this great feedback loop taking chances imbedded in all complex systems.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Evolution as a secular religion
« Reply #5 on: 2003-09-16 20:17:19 »
I honestly can't see how those who worship something imaginary can complain about people admiring scientists and using their rationality as a structure for a community.
I couldn't dislike Creationists any more, i've read creation magazine, it's seriously devoid of rational thinking.
"evolution has great explanatory power, but only when applied to subjects it best explains"
The story of Genesis has no explanatory power in well pretty much anything. So it's obviously much more damaging to teach children things that are likely to be true right, and while we are at it lets abandon scientific thinking all together and live in a make believe world where all is love.
Ack it makes me sick, nice ideals, but no reason to attack science and rationality.
I see your point that the word create implies an active creator and Evolution is a concept, not something you would attach a personality to.
On the other hand, when viewed as a big black box which contains water and chemicals and after looking some couple of hundert million years later contains life, you have to have a word for that.
The question actually goes deeper: at which point in the evolution of life does it make sense to use of the word 'create' ? When the first ape-like creature randomly used a stick, creating the first tool? When I create this post, again more or less randomly?
Just to put a little bit SF in: Let's assume the theory of the big bangs as births and deaths in a chain of universes which share some kind of gene between them, we call it physics, passing and refining it through the phase of the birth on to the next new generation is true. Would that justify the word 'create' at the moment the first DNA formed itself, no more so improbable, as huge numbers of generations of universes fine tuned the physics to be stable enough to allow for life to emerge?
Re:Evolution as a secular religion
« Reply #7 on: 2003-09-17 13:41:00 »
"Creation" is an intentional act, establishing a new thing. Thus the first act of creation was the first intentional act having that result.
Current models show that life (and the structure of the Universe), evolved through a progress of unintentional changes, constrained by the laws of physics and chemistry.
Whether our Universe is a singularity or one of a series is unknown to us, and likely always will be. The Universe did not "create life" any more than it will be responsible for "eradicating life" as our Universe collapses. The importance we ascribe to life and awareness seems to be because it is important to us, not because it matters on any wider scale. As far as we know, the Universe is not aware, and so cannot care - or create.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
You use two words when drawing a line between Evolution and creating: intention and awareness.
Most of what humans do is repetition. Seldom there is something new where you could put the label creation on, but when it is, most of the time the creator can't tell where it came from, she or he just got an insight seemingly out of nowwhere. For me the only difference is the intention in the search for answers and to force chance by systematic research, speeding things.
Viewed from a distance the way and the results are the same, and it must be, as we are a part of Evolution.
It might be that the word creation has been misused so many times by creationists that it's not liked by scientists. Well, my way is to give it a new, and better meaning, and I think that saying the process of Evolution creates life is still well within the boundary of science, provided the reader nows the scientific definition of the Theory of Evolution.
In the same way I write it in uppercase letters, because I think that it's not just one theory like gravatation or big bang, but it is the most important one, as it explains the origin of life, and equally is a paradigma providing a starting point to understand complex systems such as social behaviour, economics and politics. Richard Dawkins was one of the first to do that, and I think we are only at the beginning.
Re:Evolution as a secular religion
« Reply #9 on: 2003-09-18 18:50:40 »
Religion 3.a. Action or conduct indicating a BELIEF in, reverence for, AND desire to please, a divine ruling power; the exercise or practice of rites or observances implying this.
Secular 2. d. Of education, instruction; Relating to non religious subjects.
Oxford English Dictionary 2nd Ed. 1989
The phrase "Secular religion" is hereby banned from further use on this site.
Re:Evolution as a secular religion
« Reply #11 on: 2003-09-20 17:38:55 »
I'd argue that you are mixing the map and the territory, and running head on into the massive problems caused by too weak and too muddy a definition of "species", due to the fact that we created a nomenclature and taxonomy before sufficiently comprehending genetics.
While it is true that it has been argued that speciation occurs when the genetic distance between different groups of offspring of a particular phenotype becomes sufficiently established to prevent interbreeding, this fails when we recognize that learned behaviour can prevent breeding (e.g. birdsong), that the species boundary may be soft (e.g. horses and zebras) and that variation within a species may easily outstrip the distance to related species (e.g. humans and chimpanzees). In consequence, the concept of "species" is becoming softer and we are gradually aligning what was the concept of "species" with actual DNA variation.
Sexual reproduction, chromosome reduction and mutation are responsible for establishing DNA variation in that they establish the allele distributions which the evolutionary process eventually filters once the variations become sufficiently distinct to affect reproductive fitness. In other words, evolution does not "create alleles" it selects for them.
In contrast, a species is nothing but a label for a (till recently) arbitrarily selected particular allele distribution. Meanwhile, evolution doesn't care about labels, only about the temporary goodness of fit of a particular set of alleles into a particular environment. Thus, evolution has nothing to do with "creating species", we do that when we label an allele distribution as a species.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Evolution as a secular religion
« Reply #12 on: 2003-09-21 00:50:35 »
I don't think I am confused when I say that evolution created millions of different species that went extinct long before any human was around to name them.
Re:Evolution as a secular religion
« Reply #13 on: 2003-09-21 01:41:29 »
The key was, I think: Quote:
Sexual reproduction, chromosome reduction and mutation are responsible for establishing DNA variation in that they establish the allele distributions which the evolutionary process eventually filters once the variations become sufficiently distinct to affect reproductive fitness. In other words, evolution does not "create alleles" it selects for them.
Evolution is a filter, a reduction process. As noted above, other well understood processes cause diversification which evolution then selects upon. So in your example, the evolutionary process sometimes determined which of the millions of allele distributions established by other mechanisms survived and thrived to breed again. Some of those selected-for did so in sufficient numbers and died in ways which left them to leave fossil imprints for humans to later find and possibly label as species.
The allele distribution alteration mechanisms are sexual reproduction, DNA exchange, chromosome reduction and mutation. These are not "creative processes" when exercised by nature, as they have no "intent". Even so, these processes result in all of the diversity we see. Evolution reduces that diversity to the "most fit" for a particular environment. It creates nothing.
Your example is like saying that if I have a field of mixed red and green peas and I then remove all the red peas, that I have "created" a field of green peas. Neither the field nor the peas were created. Only the artificial human construct, "a field of green peas" was "created". The "evolutionary process" here is a much more deliberate one than "natural evolution", and if applied with care over many generations of seed stock selection, eliminating peas from plants that eventually resulted in red peas in later generations, I might end up with only green peas in my fields. Would I have "created" the green peas?
Now let's say a spontaneous mutation results in some purple peas appearing in my fields. I, as the "evolutionary agent" would have the choice of crossing purple peas to establish a new variant. Or weeding them, to eliminate them. Say I elected to cross and so perpetuate them. Would I be responsible for "creating" the purple peas?
You see the trouble with your argument? If I as the "intentional evolutionary agent" am not responsible for "creating" the purple peas, then "evolution" cannot be responsible for "creation" either.
Now let's say that I, still acting as the "evolutionary agent" determined to eliminate the purple peas. Would this mean that I had "created" the green peas? If the answer is no, as I suspect it must be, then no matter whether "evolution" prunes or does not prune a phenotype, it has not "created" anything. It has merely, as Darwin said, selected for fitness.
With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion. - Steven Weinberg, 1999
Re:Evolution as a secular religion
« Reply #14 on: 2003-09-21 12:43:13 »
Your argument fails on three accounts:
1) I already mentioned that the act of creation does not require intent. The universe was created in the big bang. New stars are created out of the remnants of supernovas. The elements that give rise to life were created in stars. None of this happened with intent as far as we know. 2) Evolution does not refer to only the latter of half of variation and selection. Evolution necessarily includes both. The sources of variation that you mentioned are part of the process of evolution. 3) It is possible to create something new by selectively removing parts of something that already exists (consider Michaelangelo's David).
« Last Edit: 2003-09-21 12:48:42 by David Lucifer »
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