Evolution vs. Creationism: Not the debate you think it is

Published 2007-02-05 at 23:50:20Z under homepage, thoughts

The "evolution vs. creationism" debate bugs me. I normally love to discuss
things like this and debate the merits of science versus philosophy, but the
problem with this debate is that people don't actually understand what it is
that's being debated, which makes any educated discussion somewhat difficult.

Creationism is an explanation for the creation of life, one that that presumes
a creator. "Strict creationism" would go so far as to say that all of this
happened just a few thousand years ago, while a more allegorical interpretation
would allow for life to be "created", perhaps millions of years ago, and
subsequently evolve according to a creator's design.

Evolution is not an explanation for the creation of life. It is the observation
that life changes over time. There is zero scientific evidence that evolution
does not occur. In fact, when you take a step back and look at what we do know
about life, it's clear that evolution is inevitable and can't not occur.

Evolution of life over time

If you don't believe in things like "DNA" or "chemicals", you might as well
stop reading now and go put your head back in the sand outside. We have an
excellent understanding of how DNA functions. We may not quite understand how
all of the instructions put within DNA molecules get the effects that they do,
but this is all an issue of overwhelming complexity, not a lack of
understanding of the processes that are involved. When you take a strand of DNA
and let it "run", you get the same proteins and the same form of life. When
that DNA is mutated by the environment, or there is a failure to accurately
copy it during the process of cell division or reproduction, changes are passed
on to offspring.

Now normally when you read about evolution, this is the part where you read
that nature "selects" the more capable organism and the less capable ones die
off and disappear. This glosses over the whole process and you miss out on why
this is inevitable. DNA is like an assembly line at a factory. When you change
things around, either with the line or with the raw materials, you get a
slightly different product. Usually it isn't something you want, but
occasionally you come up with something really novel that lets you outcompete
someone else. (For practical reasons, this doesn't actually occur in real
factories, but when you're spread out over the surface of the earth and have a
few hundred million years to lounge around, shit happens.) So long as you
always have changes occurring in the mechanics of life (just like we always
have solar and cosmic radiation, or errors in cell division), it is inevitable
that these changes will result in offspring that are different from their
parents. When you always have environmental changes (like with climate changes,
deforestation, natural disasters, changes in the availability of food, or the
presence of a new species of predator that wasn't there before), you always
open the door for some of those mutations to provide a benefit to organisms
that have it. Maybe the mutation will allow them to digest a certain kind of
food they weren't able to digest previously, and a food shortage means they
need to try. Maybe it made the organism hairier, just when the temperatures
were starting to drop. Maybe it changed muscle density somewhere and allowed
the organism to run slower, but over longer distances, which turned out to be
helpful when food was starting to thin out.

If environmental change is inevitable, and mutations are inevitable, then
adaptation is inevitable. Evolution is inevitable. It's not a "theory", it's
obvious, and it's staring you right in the face.

Whenever you hear about an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacterial infection,
that is a strain of bacteria that has evolved in the last few decades. When you
invent an imperfect but effective poison that kills off bacteria, the
inevitable mutations that occur with DNA, combined with the extremely rapid
rate of reproduction of bacteria, means that at some point in the near future,
a mutated variant of that bacteria will have properties that allow it to
survive the poison. There is no disagreement in the scientific community that
evolution occurs, and the non-scientists telling you differently are flat out
lying, or simply do not understand what evolution is. Doctors and all types of
biologist are way beyond accepting evolution. It's now part of every-day
practical application for many of these professions. When someone says,
"There's no such thing as evolution," it's like telling a construction worker
that nails do not hold pieces of wood together.

Creation of life

Most people arguing about evolution are actually trying to argue about the
creation of life. Evolution, per se, is not incompatible with creationism, even
if you subscribe to the strict 6000-year-old-universe religious view. We see
evolution all the time, right around us.

Where there is disagreement is on how life got started in the first place. We
can clearly see life evolving right in front of our eyes, but what did it
originally evolve from? Evolution does not attempt to answer this question, so
it is completely inappropriate to attack evolution just because you believe in
creationism.

Strict creationists, though, might still have a beef, because the evidence for
evolution stretches back not just through the recent past, but hundreds of
millions of years. Even if they could accept that life evolves today, they
can't accept that the gradual appearance of proto-human species documented by
the fossil record ended up with us. "Maybe they existed, or maybe God just put
the fossils there to test our faith. Even if they did exist, they must have all
died off or something before God put modern humans here."

A more liberal, allegorical interpretation of creationism usually ignores the
6000-year-old rule, and even might accept the scientific viewpoint that humans
evolved from earlier forms of life, only instead of this happening due to
selective pressure and environmental adaptation alone, our evolution was guided
by a god. This helps to reconcile the two theories, and lets some creationists
sleep at night, but it can't survive scientific scrutiny.

The reason scientists look to explain the creation of life without creationism
is because creationism is not a scientific theory. This is another point of
contention among proponents of both sides. "Creationism is just another theory!
" In layman's terms, it's a "theory". In scientific terms, it is not. A
scientific theory must be something that is falsifiable, meaning that we can
devise an experiment that demonstrates that the theory does not accurately
predict reality. Any "theory" that isn't falsifiable can not advance science,
and science must necessarily disregard it. Feel free to discuss it as
philosophy, but it is not science. There are many people that view philosophy
and science as two different branches that attempt to discover "truth". What
non-scientists frequently fail to realize is that while philosophy must
necessarily incorporate some amount of science to further its pursuit of truth,
the reverse is not true. Science is all about the scientific method. It cannot
incorporate philosophical viewpoints, biases or methodologies. If you cannot
phrase an assertion as something that can be experimentally tested, it is not
scientific and must be excluded.

Consequently, when scientists study the possible origin of life, they work
based on their observations and the currently accepted views of how all of this
works. Since evolution guides the development of life on an ongoing basis, it's
reasonable to assume that evolution guided the development of early life. It
makes sense, then, when trying to see how life came to be in the beginning, to
focus on how evolution might have worked with early forms of life, and work our
way back to see what initial components could have spontaneously come together
to produce the first rudimentary life-like processes.

And for a discussion of that, I must point you to Wired magazine's
community-provided take, which (presently) gives an excellent discussion of the
current scientific thinking about all of this.

If you wish to debate evolution, please come prepared with an understanding of
what it is that you're debating.

π
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