Many people say that acceptance of evolution is compatible with the practicing of a religion. Now keep in mind, being religious means that you follow a religion. If you believe in a god and don't believe in prayer, sin, or any of the other human-centric traits given to gods by religion, then you're not religious.
Here is my main issue with religion and evolution by natural selection (the only scientific brand): Someone who accepts both a religion and evolution is essentially claiming that we have evolved from a single celled organism over millions of years, following a winding path whose only concern is the environment around it and the options given to it at any moment, and somehow a god has picked one particular creature in one particular spot along the ever-branching road to command worship and impose punishments?
How can anyone that truly accepts evolution, a non-stop process with absolutely no ultimate goal, actually be so self-centered as to think that a being who supposedly created evolution would be satisfied with us? How can people believe that for ~3 billion years, this god simply watched it all happen before him, allowing creatures to live stressful, painful, and dismally short lives?
He was waiting for a sentient being who could worship him you say? How can someone who accepts science believe that for the first 197,000 years of human existence on this planet, god simply watched humans come into the world, grow up, and die a horrible death from illness, weather, animals, or any other nasty affliction? Garbage.
I'm not saying that religious people can't accept evolution. I just don't believe they can actually hold both points of view if they truly analyze both ideas. Ignorance is bliss, I suppose.
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Irreducible complexity argument
ReplyDeleteIrreducible complexity argument against Darwin’s theory is based on scientific data which was not available at the time of Darwin. There is a BBC movie where the proponents of the rival theory (Intelligent Design) explain this argument. Look, say, at flagella bacteria. It has a sort of tail which rotates very fast and thus allows flagella move around. The organ has quite complex structure, it is kind of motor with . Now, the argument states that Darwin’s theory cannot explain how the organs like this appeared. Why? Look, the theory says that 1) there are mutations. 2) the mutations which can be useful for survival are saved for the progeny. 3) the mutations which are of no use, will be lost. Now, the structure of the organ like the flagella’s tail is complex, it consists of about 40 protein parts – driveshaft, bearing parts, pivot, propeller etc. The whole structure does not work if any of them missing. Now, how did that structure be evolved at all? Did 40 exactly correct mutations happen simultaneously? It is not just ridiculous, it is crazy, impossible. Had any of them occurred one by one, they would not have provided any, I repeat, any advantage for survival because they are of no use separately. If they do not provide any advantage, Darwin’s theory says, they would be lost. Now you see the point.
Darwin realized that his theory might face this difficulty. He wrote in his famous The Origin of Species, “If it could be demonstrated that any complex organ existed which could not possibly have been formed by numerous, successive slight modifications, my theory would absolutely break down.”
You can watch the movie Unlocking the mistery of Life where a group of scientists and philosophers discuss the argument at length and suggest the Intelligent Design theory as the one which explains the evidence better than Darwin’s one. The major proponent of the theory is Michael Behe, the author of Darwin's Black Box. Another proponent of the Intelligent Design Theory is
Another problem with Darwin’s theory is that the natural selection cannot explain how life evolved in the first place. It starts working from the point when life is already there, when there are molecules capable of storing genetic information and replicating (DNA, RNA). No replication – no natural selection. No selection – no evolution. So, whatever causes, whatever processes brought up life, it was not natural selection, and Darwin’s theory has nothing to say about it.
There was a theory which tried to explain how it might happen, i.e the theory of chemical evolution which states basically that different molecules sufficient for creating self-replicating molecule somehow happened to be in close proximity. In his book Biochemical Predestination, Dean H. Kenyon is advocating a theory of chemical evolution, stating that nothing more than chemistry caused life on the Earth. There is a problem though with this theory. For assempling proteins, genetic instructions are required. How the first protein was assempled then?
I think you can easily find additional information on this controversial topic. The major critic of the Intellignet Design theory is Richard Dawkins. He tries to give an answer to the argument of irreducible complexity. I guess, you can even find on youtube him lecturing about it.