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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
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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,
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actively support scientists in respect to this field. In fact, Richard Dawkins, a wellknown 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
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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 Earth 64).
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.
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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
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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 socalled “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
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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
fossilization is 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
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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
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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
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world and everything in it in six days. Creationists oppose evolution, the sciencebased 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
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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
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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.