April 17, 2008...11:53 am
Not very well thought out
With all this controversy surrounding Ben Stein’s new [documentary | attack | sensationalism], I was reminded of one argument, in regards to the evolution / creation debate, typically masked as a question that I absolutely can’t stand.
Let me start off by saying that I don’t claim to know any “truth”. Both the ideas of creation and evolution are simply guesses. I tend to find evolution more convincing, though. Again, that doesn’t imply that I believe evolution to be true, but I find the information presented to be more persuasive. In the end, I think David Bowie said it best when he wrote, “Knowledge comes with death’s release.”
Nevertheless, the debate continues, and one statement that just rubs me the wrong way is, “If man evolved from monkeys, then why are there no half-human half-monkeys?”
For the same reason there are no half-ape half-orangutans! I think the theory that man descended (Doesn’t “descended” imply we’re below them? Shouldn’t it be “ascended”? Am I a prideful human? Yes.) from “monkeys” doesn’t mean that the species turned from A into B, but that from the tree-trunk of primates humans are a single branch, next to lemurs, monkeys, and apes. We’re the smart branch! (Well, sometimes…)
5 Comments
April 17, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Man, I hate any of the “gotcha” type questions. The classic reversal would be “Why aren’t there dinosaurs in the Bible?” Sigh. I agree pretty much with what you’ve said here, Alex. Although, I’ll add that some of the other shades of the argument are interesting too - the more vague ones where creationism and evolution are not necessarily mutually exclusive. But I honestly don’t give daily thought to it. Ha ha. How tiresome that would become. In any event, I really like Ben Stein, and have always found him to be humorous and insightful. (I hope he wasn’t leveling that argument, by the way.) I’ve not seen his new film (and probably won’t for a long while), so I can’t comment. But I did hear him give a speech at my college, and it was the single best one I attended.
April 17, 2008 at 6:15 pm
I’ve heard nothing but criticism of the film, but you can never be too sure what sort of bias you’re reading into from any source. I’d like to catch it on DVD when it comes around, since I won’t be paying 1,000 yen to see it in the theatres. The best review is always your own, right? It carries with it the most meaning, after all.
April 18, 2008 at 12:36 am
I’ve been really disappointed with Ben’s ideas on evolution, as I tend to like him too. Even his Nixon stuff.
Now then, I don’t feel it’s about two guesses. I think evolution is a time-tested and backed up theory based on a hypothesis–an educated guess. I think like Ben a lot of people still only have a natural-selection level understanding of evolution. They are still trying to wrestle with Darwin, while modern science has moved on quite a bit from those humble beginnings.
As for the other “guess”: I see creationism as desperation or willful ignorance. Guess I don’t hold it in high esteem; though when I was more religious and young, I basically created my own form of creationism (back before I was aware of other people talking about it). I still think it’s okay to personally think God may have had something to do how things formed, but it has no practical applications when we are in the lab.
The idea that teachers should be required to take time away from actual science to pander to religion seems downright un-American to me. People’s faith should have nothing to do with how we apply what we have learned to the natural world. Faith is in the realm of sociological affairs. Talk about religion in sociology class.
April 18, 2008 at 9:53 pm
Well, it’s really hard to convince a religious believer that any single portion of their belief system may not be true, because once the snowball starts to roll down the hill, it’s really hard to stop the avalanche that it turns into. If the idea of “creationism” is incorrect or not the entire truth, and that’s the beginning of the religion itself, then where does the entire truth actually begin?
Don’t get me wrong - I hope there’s an afterlife, cause I don’t like to think about the party ever ending. Even joining a spiritual energy stream would be better than abolute nothingness. I think we’ve established that having watched The Neverending Story, am I right? But nature is a powerful entity, and evolution is not a theory to be taken lightly.
April 30, 2008 at 12:30 pm
Wow. The Neverending Story. I mean. Wow. Ha ha ha.
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