Cult of Dan Brown: Religion vs Science

Atheists are no more the cause of "chaos" than any others who think differently from you. Your Utopia would only be possible in a world where everybody shared the same beliefs in the same things--i.e. the same religion. Even within the same religion we see divergent schools of thought--sects that differ in how exactly they interpret the scriptures of their faith. Among the Christians there are Catholics and many Protestant sects; among the Jews there's an entire range of orthodoxy; among the Muslims there are Sunnis, Shi'ites and many more varieties. Even if there were no atheists at all, you'd have "chaos" whenever people of different beliefs came together.

Whether it's "my god is better than your god," or "you're misguided and going to hell, but I can save you," differences of faith have been the root cause of more of the world's violent conflicts than anything else. It's the very fact that neither side can prove to the other that they're right (or wrong) that makes such conflicts inevitable--neither side can reason with the other where matters of blind faith are concerned.

Is this something you were taught in school? Whoever taught you that nonsense was scientifically ignorant, and should be fired, or at the very least ignored.

Evolution, like every other scientific model, is based on evidence, observation, and experiment, not "faith." Any scientist who put forth a theory based on elements that would need to be taken on "faith" would be utterly roasted by his scientific peers. The scientific method relies heavily on peer review, and the ability of independent researchers to reproduce the experiments of others. Models that can't be experimentally verified or independently reproduced end up getting discarded. A scientific model doesn't survive for 100+ years unless it has been confirmed repeatedly by independent researchers.

As a model, Evolution has proven itself to be extremely robust, contrary to the myths being spread by the Creation/Intelligent Design crowd. Much of our medical knowledge, in fact, stems from our understanding of Evolution, particularly where drugs and gene therapies are concerned. Understanding the process of genetic mutation--the key to the Evolution model--is what enables us to develop new flu shots to adapt to the evolving strains of influenza that appear every year. The fact that viruses like influenza demonstrably adapt from year to year in order to survive is a very compelling confirmation of the Evolution model.

Now, the Creationists/Intelligent Design folks love to talk about "the missing link" in the Evolution model, in the hope that it will spread doubt about the rest of the process. Their strategy is to point out one missing piece of the puzzle and use that to suggest that the whole puzzle is somehow invalid. This just illustrates a complete and utter lack of understanding of how the scientific method works.

Let's use that puzzle analogy for a moment (as I did in another thread around here a while back). Suppose that you're handed a bunch of puzzle pieces, but you don't know what the puzzle is supposed to look like. You start trying to fit pieces together, and gradually you start to see bits of what looks like an ocean, and bits that look like a setting sun, maybe a tropical island. As you start to see the pattern forming, it becomes easier to "guess" where the next pieces should go--the bits that look like part of the ocean don't belong in the middle of the sun, or in the middle of the island, so you can rule those out. Soon you get the puzzle almost finished--it's very "obviously" a sunset over a tropical island--except that a couple of puzzle pieces are missing in the middle of the ocean. You've got a pretty good "idea" what those missing pieces should look like, because you've seen the overall pattern of the puzzle. You'd expect them to have an ocean-like texture to them, though it's also possible that there might be a rowboat, a shark fin, or a rock sticking out of the water. In other words, you don't know for certain what those missing pieces will look like, but you've got a very reasonable guess, and if you found a couple of pieces between the couch cushions you could tell at a glance whether they're your missing pieces or not.

On the other hand, if the pieces you find in the couch cushions look like they're part of a human face, or a Ferrari, you'd rule them out--they're "obviously" not part of the same puzzle. That doesn't mean that your puzzle isn't a sunset over a tropical island, though, it just means you still haven't found the "right" missing pieces. And of course just because you're missing a couple of pieces doesn't change the fact that the overall pattern is a sunset over a tropical island.

With the Evolution model it's much the same situation--there are a few evidentiary gaps in the middle, due mostly to the fact that fossil evidence from certain periods of history are very rare. We see plausible evidence that the Evolution model worked before the gap, and after the gap, so the fact that there's a gap in the middle doesn't invalidate the model. Instead we can use our understanding of the model to interpolate and predict what the "missing piece" most likely was.

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