GEORGE TEMPLETON: COMMENTARY
[Gazette Blog Editor's Note: This is the third and final installment of a series of articles on Evolution. To read the first two, click on the GEORGE TEMPLETON tab at the right.]
Creation
The ad in the business magazine encouraged CEOs to move
their operation to China,
claiming that they are harder working, more motivated, better educated, and
blessed with the latest multi-million dollar equipment brought from around the
world. The followers of Confucius have no religious motivations outlawing stem
cell research. They are betting that biotechnology will be tomorrow’s prosperity,
transforming the lives of everyone. America,
a world leader because of scientific innovation, risks going the way of the
failed Ottoman Empire by adopting anti-science
policies.
Science is under attack because of
the problems it might provoke. Creationists accuse secular science and
education as being indoctrinating religions, thus rallying fundamentalists who
constitute the majority of American religious thought. Supernatural
explanations are always very simple, emotional, and attractive for those
reasons. They have long been used as explanations that were either incomplete
or later found wrong.
Science is like the carpenter who
must measure and cut without disputing the architectural plan. Because it is
objective, it lacks emotion. Because it is complex, many have no desire to
understand it. Science does not deny God, faith, or man’s creation of art
and beauty. It does not treat the meaning of life or the purpose of the
universe. It can’t accurately quantify love, hate, ambition, altruism,
and attitudes. However, higher education reveals ambiguity, challenges values,
is demonized for that reason, and claimed to persecute the faithful. Science
cannot advocate only those beliefs supporting conservative, political-religious
values.
Religion is more persuasive,
emotional, and comforting than a science that brought us weapons of mass
destruction. Science challenges fundamentalist ideas about biological
evolution and mankind’s stewardship of the earth. Well financed, organized
and politically shrewd creationists are adamant about indoctrinating religious belief
in the classroom at taxpayer expense and they object to funding of science that
does not start with Genesis. Arizona SB1213 is their latest effort in the
anti-science, culture-war. Its sponsors are Judy Burges (R-District 22),
Chester Crandell (R-District 6), Steve Pierce (R-District 1), Don Shooter
(R-District 13), and Steve Yarbrough (R-District 17).
Intelligent Design (ID)
deceitfully claims that it is scientific and not religious, but it is in a
quandary. It can’t be religious to be taught in public schools but it
has to be religious to secure public support and funding. It is disingenuous
to deny its foundation and religious history, but ignoring that and allowing it
to deny secular science we must ask, how does ID work? How does it explain
reality?
When the Answers in
Genesis Ministry exhibits show children and dinosaurs playing
together, and claim that their message is not contradictory to science, they
are wrong. Science and a literal interpretation of Genesis cannot be
reconciled. Religion does not explain scientifically how life came to be.
Science cannot justify why. The Bible, desiring to win the world instead of
struggling against it, raises two questions. The first regards how we are to
hear and understand it. The second concerns how the message relates to the
content of our own intellectual being.
The attempt to force science to become literally Biblical
is ill conceived. It subjects the truth of the Bible to scientific testing,
unwittingly buoying the Truth Decay
described by Douglas Groothuis in his book. If history is under God’s
influence, then so must be evolution. Man’s relationship to God, in
science, evolution, and history, is revealed because they are part of the
fabric of reality.
Strata
Simple observation confirms that the earth is more than
6000 years old. It is obvious that the mountains, geologic faults, and outthrusted
layers of rock, and continents that drifted could not have happened in an
instant or have been caused by a world-wide flood. The distribution of flora
and fauna seems not specially placed and carries the signature of land masses
that once adjoined.
Embryology
Before Darwin,
scientists noticed that the young embryos of many species were a similar non-descript
clump of cells that gradually developed adult features. This led to the exaggeration
that they replayed evolutionary history and eventually to the biological
principle that the features of a large group of animals appear earlier in the embryo
than the special features. For example, cartilage that appears in all fish
comes before the bones that are found only in bony fish.
Missing Link
Science classifies nature in a branching, hierarchical
tree structure where lower organisms fan out in many related but different
forms. Creationism denies this, claiming that each “kind” was intelligently
and simultaneously created for its particular role and purpose. Perhaps as
many as 50 billion species have evolved on the earth. Science finds 18,000 new
ones every year.
The claim that the Bible has no ambiguity prevents
thinking about what “kind” is. If all the animals could fit on the
Ark, there must
be few kinds and millions of found links. If kinds are like species, then
there are many missing links, but the animals won’t fit on the Ark.
The two pound Chihuahua
and 180 pound Mastiff are both species of wolf but different breeds created by
artificial selection. They could mate by artificial insemination, but it does
not happen in nature. We could fix this problem of great differences by
classifying these dogs as different species. Then we would have the speciation
that creationists claim cannot exist.
Evolution sometimes is sudden, like camera flashes that
leave no evidence. It has been identified with “accelerated”
regions in DNA. It’s part of the scarcity of transitional fossils. Creationists
especially deny fossils linking humanity to ape-like creatures. Pride, not the
Bible, prevents apes and humans from being related.
The July 2010 issue of National Geographic magazine
described the oldest missing link, four million year old “Ardi”,
who had both ape and human characteristics. Like the chimpanzee, we are made
of flesh and blood. Although our brain is larger, we have no new parts.
There is no vector of man’s ascendency from the
apes, as depicted by the picture showing knuckle walkers gradually and
continuously changing into modern upright walkers. Instead we find a bush of
life, with multiple parallel lineages, corresponding fossils, and mixes of
adaption for life in the trees and on the ground. Evolution tried many
variants of man. Ancestry is not clear. What we know is their extinction.
We, who hold the fate of the world in our hands, are all that is left.
DNA
All life on earth, bacteria, plants, animals, and man uses
the same universal DNA system that codes its building plan in every cell of our
bodies. Created “kinds” are not distinctly separated. We share
common DNA and are all related.
Comparison of identical DNA in different species confirms
the ages of the earth’s epochs and ancestry in the tree of life. Constant
stretches of DNA are preserved by the forces of disadvantage and death.
Damaged DNA can cause genetic diseases or beneficial adaptations that are
passed on by sex.
Most small random changes in DNA are inconsequential. They
occur at a constant rate called the “molecular clock”. Minor DNA
changes that give rise to new species accumulate in regions of accelerated
change. Evolution is not a constant process. It jumps, jerks, and coasts and
has a complexity barrier arising from the mechanics of DNA switches,
regulators, RNA, amino acids, proteins, and cells.
Recent advances in computer technology allow comparisons
relating differences in DNA to traits. Larger differences in DNA correspond to
longer time intervals between the separations of species on the tree of life.
Ninety-nine percent of our DNA is identical with chimpanzee DNA and fifty
percent the same as a banana.
Verifying Evolution
Evolution is no longer a theory that cannot be seen in
action. We see cause and effect in DNA. Even more than the atom, whose
inferred atomic structure explains physics and materials science, DNA explains
life form changes.
The growth of bacterial antibiotic resistance is an
example. Rapid evolution and corresponding DNA changes have been documented in
birds and fish responding to drought and new competitor species. A gene has
been identified that does the same job in birds and fishes that live continents
apart. Genetics, human speech defects and bird song have been correlated in
DNA structure.
Probability
Evolution is not just about random mutation, parental gene
mixing, and reproductive advantage. Life finds a way.
That the laws of probability could give rise to man and
our fine-tuned universe seems unlikely, but we must remember that people win at
the lottery even though the chances are slim. If forever exists, everything
that can happen will eventually happen. Science does not deny miracles though
it does have rules for the application of mathematical probability that predict
the outcome of multiple draws from a set of similar equally probable things.
It is meaningless to extrapolate technical probability to the creation.
Intuitional probability arises from intensity of
conviction and is not mathematical. For example, it is nonsense to walk
outside blindfolded, pick up a rock of a particular color, size, and shape and
expound about how unlikely that would be. If the parameters of the rock had
been specified beforehand, our feelings might be justified. Likewise, it is
absurd to claim that something found to be complex and functional must have
been “specified” by intelligence.
We think that evolution could not create the information
necessary to make a man, but simple hidden rules generate surprisingly ordered
complexity. The hidden order in DNA arises from the geometry of its double
helix structure and the mechanics of atomic bonding. It is the reason why
there is no Minotaur. The pieces fit together only in particular ways that are
not random.
Program or Book
Evolution has always been about changing the process of
growth instead of specifying an end result. DNA is an image recording the
world, a continuing process of creation, adaptation, and growth, instead of a simple
but long computer program with an intended purpose and a fixed meaning
independent of species, geographical environment, and time. DNA is more like a
book than a plan, but it is a strange book that jumps forward and backward and
that reads and writes itself. DNA letters have no meaning apart from their
context and use. Details like globalization, the jet airplane, and drug
resistant disease change. Evolution includes non-genetic inheritance
mechanisms that are passed on by culture, disease immunity, technology, and
psychology. Evolution depends on the consequences of itself. The results of evolution
are not independent of its path. Our trip from yesterday to tomorrow is not
reversible and alters reality forever.
Linguistics
The limits of our language mean the limits of our world.
Words change with usage and the thought and will of those speaking. Language
is the harmony between thought and reality. Meaning shifts as knowledge grows.
The ancients of the Genesis story felt that plants did not
live and that life was like a breath. Darkness was tangible, not just the
absence of light. Demons caused disease, not germs. It was 4400 BC when the
creation and meaning of life needed to be communicated to the people and
culture of that time. Would different words be used today? Could God have
used evolution as his tool for creation?
he
White House apparently believes the best way to strengthen its hand in
the upcoming "sequester" showdown with Republicans is to tell Americans
how awful the spending cuts will be, and blame Republicans for them.
potentially explosive report has linked the resignation of 
