Evolution and Creationism
A 2014 Gallup poll revealed that 42% of respondents in the United States agreed with the phrase “God
created humans in their present form within the last 10,000 years.”
So why do so many people not accept the idea of Evolution? There are quite a few reasons.
1. There is a general fear that science is a threat to religion. Because both science and religion are
ways of explaining the world conflicts between them can be threatening to people. For example, when
Galileo argued that the Earth rotated around the Sun, this conflicted with religious ideas that the earth
was the center of the universe.
2. There is a more specific fear that evolution is a threat to religion. There are clear conflicts between
evolutionary and religious ideas about such things as the age of the Earth and how organic life came to
exist.
3. There is a fear that evolution eliminates our uniqueness and degrades our humanity. Evolutionary
theory suggests people are “mere” animals and products of the same natural processes as other
organisms.
4. Evolution is associated with nihilism and moral degeneracy. The reasoning behind this is as follows.
Evolution implies that God does not exist, which leads to atheism. If people do not believe in God there
can be no morality or meaning in life. Without these there is no basis for a civil society and as a result
we will live like animals. Obviously, there are rather a lot of flaws in this “logic.”
5. Evolution is associated with struggle and conflict instead of cooperation. The phrase “survival of
the fittest” [coined by Herbert Spencer, a British philosopher, not by Charles Darwin] is extremely
misleading as it suggests the evolutionary process is all about conflict. Many have suggested that
However, cooperation and mutual support can and do occur widely in nature.
The truth is that natural selection (the primary mechanism of Evolution) favors traits that increase
reproductive success. Cooperative traits are beneficial under many conditions and so are selected for.
It’s also been suggested that a belief in Evolution somehow endorses of fosters cruelty. It’s important to
remember that cruelty is a human concept. Nature is not cruel. Rather Nature (in the form of natural
selection) is indifferent.
Creationism in the U.S.
The idea of evolution has been harshly criticized by religious fundamentalists since the publication of the
Origin in 1859. This has been especially true in the U.S. , but also has become more common elsewhere.
Repeatedly, believers in the literal truth of the Bible have attempted to have alternatives to evolution
(i.e., creationism) taught in science classrooms in the public schools and to have the teaching of
evolution either banned or restricted.
Creationists have campaigned for equal time in the classroom making their argument in part on the
basis of “fairness” or that students should hear “both sides of the story.” However, the reality is that
there is no basis to consider creationism a credible explanation for the origin and diversity of life on
earth. How “fair” is it to deny students a rigorous science education?
The reality is that “creationism” or “creation science” or the latest incarnation “intelligent design” are all
attempts to package religious beliefs as science.
Teaching creationism in public schools violates the Constitutional separation of Church and State
The U.S. Supreme Court has prohibited the teaching of creationism in public schools because it violates
the “establishment of religion” (first amendment) of the Constitution.
“Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free
exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people
peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.”
Intelligent design and irreducible complexity.
Latest attempt to insert creationism into schools is the idea of “Intelligent Design.”
The concept of “intelligent design” is outlined most clearly in Michael Behe’s book “Darwin’s Black Box.”
The central idea in “intelligent design” is that some structures in the body are so complex that they
could not possibly have evolved by a gradual process of natural selection. These structures are said to
“irreducibly complex.”
By “irreducibly complex” Behe means that a complex structure cannot be broken down into components
that themselves have a function and that the whole structure must therefore have come into existence
in its complete form.
If structures are “irreducibly complex” Behe claims that they cannot have evolved. Thus, their existence
implies they must have been created by a designer (i.e. God, although the designer is not explicitly
referred to as such). Behe’s main examples are various biochemical pathways in the body, the blood
clotting system, and structures such as the bacterial flagellum.
Since the publication of Behe’s book, it has been demonstrated repeatedly that things he has claimed to
be irreducibly complex are not in fact so. E.g. the flagellum in eel sperm lacks several of the components
found in other flagella, yet the flagellum functions well. The blood clotting system in dolphins lacks at
least one component that the human system has, yet it too is functional. In addition, plausible gradual
scenarios for the evolution of biochemical pathways including the Kreb’s cycle have been documented.
Behe’s argument that certain structures are too complex to have evolved is in reality an argument that
says “this structure is too complex for me to figure out how it could have evolved” or “I’m too lazy to try
to figure it out, so God must have done it.”
In addition, Behe’s idea leads to a logical situation where the role for a creator gets smaller and smaller
as science explains more and more aspects of the material world.
Evolution of Complex Structures
Paley’s watch. Behe’s argument of irreducible complexity is one that has old roots. It is a modernized
version of an argument that William Paley made (long before Darwin’s origin of Species was published )
where he said that if he found a stone while walking on a heath that the stone required no special
explanation for how it came to be there, but if he found a watch the watch required a different
explanation. It could not have weathered out from a larger rock as the stone might have done. It was
too complex to have just come about by chance. A watch he argued must imply the existence of a
watchmaker.
Paley then went on to say that even though a watch is complex, humans are far more complex (true by
the way) and that if a watch needed a watchmaker then humans too needed a creator i.e. God.
Paley’s argument though is wrong. It is wrong because humans were not created all at once and nor
were any of the complex structures we find in nature. As Richard Dawkins has eloquently explained in
his book “Climbing Mount Improbable” there is an alternative explanation for how complex structures
arise – natural selection. The parable of Mount Improbable is that a complex structure today (e.g. a
functioning eye or an almost perfectly camouflaged moth) represents the top of the mountain and it is
obviously impossible that a fully functional eye or a beautifully camouflaged moth could come into
existence in one step just as it’s impossible to leap to the top of a mountain in one jump.
Dawkins, explains the paradox by explaining that just as it is easy to climb to the top of a mountain by
taking a gradually sloping path to the top so too natural selection gradually builds complex structures
over many generations
Natural selection achieves this by the slow accumulation of minor improvements from one generation
to the next. It is not necessary for a structure to be perfect or even very good it just needs to be better
than the alternatives to be favored by selection. Each step on the evolutionary pathway from a simple
light sensing cell to a complex eye capable of focusing and producing color vision, must be beneficial to
the organism that possesses it and a slight improvement on earlier versions. While a simple light
sensing cell may not be as good as the eye you or I have it is much better than not being able to see any
light at all and so organisms that possessed such a cell would have been selected over those who did
not. The same logic applies as each improvement occurs randomly and is favored by selection. The
process of natural selection is one of steady accumulation of improvements.
Similarly, the evolution of the remarkable camouflage of a moth that today looks almost perfectly
camouflaged against the bark of a tree i.e. is so hard to see that you have to be very close to see it can
also be explained by a gradual process of selection. You may argue that what good is it to look just a
tiny bit (say 1%) like the bark of a tree (or a bird dropping or a leaf or any of the other things that insects
such as moths frequently resemble)? However, you have to remember that the chance of being spotted
by a predator is affected by how close the predator is and how good the lighting is among other things.
While looking a little like tree bark may not help a moth when the predator is 6 inches away the slight
resemblance may pay off if the predator is 6 feet away or pay off on a cloudy day or at twilight. For the
slight resemblance (advantage) to be favored by selection it doesn’t have to perfect or even good it just
needs to be better than the alternatives. Any slight change in appearance, therefore, that decreases
even just a little the chance of being seen will be favored by selection and gradually over time beneficial
traits will accumulate and eventually extremely well camouflaged moths will evolve.