We Evolved
As I wrote here a long time ago, I used to be associated with a rather well known and widespread religion – The Jehovah’s Witnesses.
I don’t have a problem with other people’s beliefs. If I had issue with everyone that believed in an invisible superman I’d never get anything done! If someone wants to reside in a fantasy? Well, that is up to them. But I have a very big problem with anyone that misrepresents my beliefs.
When a creationist endeavours to discredit evolutionary science they often use the tactic of appealing to emotions to make decisions about what to believe is a fact. A common approach is to take a very complex and functional part of the natural world, such as a human eye or a brain, and propose a question such as this:
“What do you think is more likely: That this remarkable [eye/brain/bird] arose by random chance, or was the work of a loving and intelligent creator?”
First, evolution is not random. It relies on mutations, a regularly observed aspect of physics. Anyone claiming that the scientific theory of evolution states that every aspect of life, from a plant to a human being, came about as the result of random chance is wrong. Richard Dawkins, the rather well known evolutionary biologist and author, had this to say recently:
“There is staggering ignorance at what evolution is all about. Natural selection is quintessentially non-random… Anyone who thinks you could possibly explain the beauty and elegance of living things by some random process would be stark raving bonkers. Anyone who thinks that we think that has got to be stark raving bonkers. Of course it’s not random!”
Another issue is one of plausibility. But how does that even come into it? If there is significant evidence that something occurred a certain way, it is logical to conclude that that is how it happened - regardless of how plausible it may seem.
For illustration, imagine you find a coin on the ground. How did it get there? It is plausible that it might have fallen out of someone’s pocket. But how plausible is it that it fell from outer space, somehow survived re-entry and ended up landing at this exact location? It doesn’t seem likely at all! Compared to the many other options, that seems extremely unlikely.
Just a coin!
But what if there was evidence that is how the coin got there? Scientific analysis of the coin could show that it has radioactive properties it could only have obtained in outer space, an Astronaut could have lost a coin while outside their spacecraft as it orbited above this location on earth and the location where the coin is could have been completely isolated without any human contact since before this type of coin was first made.
When the Bible or another religious document is quoted to point out a horrific and immoral act that God is condoning, it’s often claimed that the passage is misquoted or taken out of context. You might think this would make the Jehovah’s Witnesses very careful when writing their own documentation, ensuring that any references to secular works are accurate and framed suitably.
Digging a little deeper, you can see how rampant the cheery picking of key sentences is to try and give the impression that the theory of evolution is on shaky ground.
In the Jehovah’s Witness book ‘Reasoning from the Scriptures’, there is the following quote from the late (and great) Carl Sagan:
“Carl Sagan, in his book Cosmos, candidly acknowledged ‘The fossil evidence could be consistent with the idea of a great designer.’” - Reasoning from the Scriptures, 1985, p124
That does give a very sharp impression! But the quote is not only out of context, it cuts out right in the middle of a sentence. Anyone willing to do research would see it continues as so:
“…perhaps some species are destroyed when the Designer becomes dissatisfied with them, and new experiments are attempted on an imperfect design. But this notion is a little disconcerting. Each plant and animal is exquisitely made; should not a supremely competent Designer have been able to make the intended variety from the start? The fossil record implies trial and error, an inability to anticipate the future, features inconsistent with an efficient Great Designer (although not with a designer of a more remote and indirect temperament).” - Cosmos, p29
Not a very good impression of what an intelligent designer would have to be like to be consistent with the evidence!
In a more recent article, biologist Rama Singh was quoted in the January 2015 Awake! magazine:
“SOME might assume that a scientifically-minded person would pick ‘evolution’ and that a religious person would pick ‘creation.’ But not always.”
But, once again, if you do a little bit of research, the quote in the right context paints a much different picture.
“The opposition to evolution goes beyond religious fundamentalism and includes a great many people from educated sections of the population, including biologists, nonbiologists, and the lay public. This essay will focus on the lack of belief in evolution in this latter group; opposition from religious fundamentalism has been covered in many places… There are several reasons why facts of evolution are not easily comprehensible by the general masses.”
In fact, Professor Singh was asked for comment on how his quote was used and had this to say:
“JW has indeed misquoted me and I do not agree with their article and its anti-evolution stand.”
They even go after the big guns, Richard Dawkins doesn’t escape this! One of his most popular books, The Selfish Gene, gets a strongly out of context quote in the Jehovah’s Witness book ‘Life – How did it get here? By evolution or creation’:
“At this point a reader may begin to understand Dawkins comment in the preface to his book: This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction.” – page 39
But, when examined:
“This book should be read almost as though it were science fiction. It is designed to appeal to the imagination. But it is not science fiction: it is science. Cliche or not, stranger than fiction expresses exactly how I feel about the truth.”
And these are just some examples. The misquoting is rampant, and anyone that does even simple research would clearly see that.
And that brings up a key point I want to make: If you’re devoting your life to something, isn’t it worth the small amount of time and effort to do just a little bit of research?