Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Matt Stopes, from BuzzFeed, asked both creationists and evolution-accepters at the Ham/Nye debate to write messages directed at the other side. The other day we saw 22 messages from creationists; but Stopes also collected 22 messages from evolutionists. They’re all here, but I’ve chosen a few to show below.
The quality of the messages is mixed (I’ve left out the lame ones), but if you were depressed at young people espousing creationism, here’s an antidote:
This is an excellent question:
I love this; somehow she reminds me of what Tina Fey would say:
As Ham implied, facts are mostly irrelevant to creationists:
This question may seem naive, but it makes a good point: do creationists think that all evolutionists (and many of them are religious) are either deluded by evidence or perhaps (misled by Satan?) are in some huge conspiracy to either manufacture evidence or interpret it as supporting evolution? Yes, science has been wrong before, but there’s now so much evidence supporting evolution that it falls into the “unlikely to be proven wrong” category:
Short, sweet, and telling:
Creationists: “We don’t talk about that stuff”:
Ah, the evidence from vestigial organs. How do creationists deal with “dead genes,” such as the nonfunction yolk-protein genes of humans, or the hundreds of nonfuncitonal olfactory-receptor genes in cetaceans, the remants of smelling in their landlubber ancestors? Pity that Bill Nye didn’t bring that up; I’d be curious what Ham would say:
Okay, so there’s always one of these in our crowd:
Of course accommodationists say that “the Bible isn’t a science textbook” (I translate that as “the Bible is wrong”), but Ken Ham certainly used it that way!:
While reading the famous 840-page anti-accommodationist book A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896) by Andrew Dickson White (the first president of Cornell University and a promoter of Christianity who simply hated its incursion into science), I came across the following emendation by a previous reader:
Now I don’t even know if that correction is grammatically necessary, but I had to smile at the anonymous reader who got annoyed and took the trouble to add the proofreader’s transposition symbol.
While modern Homo sapiens almost certainly descends —with the exception of a few genes contributed from Neandertals and Denisovans—from a group of ancestors who left Africa around 60,000 years ago and subsequently colonized the world, this was not the first hominin exodus from Africa. There are likely to have been several, beginning with the spread of H. erectus 1.8 million years ago and continuing through the next million years or so with other relatives, including the ancestors of the Neandertals. So when you hear the “out of Africa” hypothesis associated with a relatively recent date, remember that our relatives (some of whom contributed genes to the modern human genome) left Africa much earlier.
That is documented in a new piece in the Guardian that announces the discovery, in a muddy estuary in Norfolk, of the oldest human footprints known from outside Africa. (The oldest footprints of any hominin known are, of course, the famous Laetoli footprints in Tanzania, dated about 3.6 million years old and probably made by Australopithecus afarensis. They’re described on pp. 201-202 of my book.)
Sadly, the Norfolk footprints were exposed by receding tides, and have now been washed away. But there’s a record, and a chance that further footprints will be found:
The prints were left by a small group of people heading south across the estuary at Happisburgh, through a landscape where mammoths, hippos and rhinoceros grazed. Scientists believe they were a group of adults and children, including one with a foot size the equivalent of a modern size 8 shoe, suggesting a man about 1.7 metres (5ft 7ins) tall.
The footprints are the first direct evidence of the earliest known humans in northern Europe, previously revealed only by the stone tools and animal bones they left scattered.
[JAC: I don’t know what they mean by “direct” evidence; why aren’t artifacts also “direct”? The Guardian seems to be flirting with the “historical” vs “real time” distinction raised by Ken Ham, seeing footprints as a “real-time” artifact.]
Within a fortnight of the discovery last May, the sea tides that had exposed the footprints destroyed them, on one of the fastest eroding parts of the East Anglian coast. However, Nick Ashton of the British Museum and other scientists managed to record them before they vanished, including taking casts of some of the best-preserved prints.
Here are photos of the footprints and a schematic of their layout, all from the Guardian article:
Footprints from Area A at Happisburgh, Norfolk. (Photo by Martin Bates)The size of the Happisburgh footprints compared to a camera lens cap. (Photo by Martin Bates)Footprints from Area A at Happisburgh, Norfolk. Photograph: Happisburgh Project
The footprints were dated from the geology, lying beneath later glacial deposits and the fossil remains of extinct animals, which Simon Parfitt, of the Natural History Museum, has identified as including mammoth, an extinct type of horse and an early form of vole.
On the day the small group walked across the wet mud, Britain was still joined to continental Europe. Their river valley, surrounded by coniferous forest, with saltmarsh and freshwater pools, offered a rich variety of food, including edible plants and seaweed, shellfish and animals for meat.
There’s a thrill in about seeing footprints of our close hominin relatives that you don’t get by simply seeing their bones or spearpoints. Footprints mean that we can imagine those ancients in action, walking around and looking for noms. The Laetolian footprints suggest two australopithecines walking side by side, with one set of prints larger than the other—perhaps a male/female couple. Moreover, the smaller prints are deeper on one foot than the other, suggesting that they might have come from a woman with a baby on her hip. Little did those early hominins know that their tracks, and their presence, would be marveled at millions of years later.
Now what the Norfolk researchers found (and what you see above) were footprint-sized ovals, but their spacing and size convinces me that I need to defer to the experts on this one. And the article adds the confirming information:
Photogrammetry, which combines photographs to create a 3D image, confirmed that they were indeed footprints, perhaps of five individuals. Some were clear enough to show heel, arch and toes – allowing an estimate of the height of the individuals at 0.9-1.7 metres.
These tracks are, by the way, about twice as old as the previous known footprints in Europe: the 345,000-year-old “Devil’s Footprints” from Campania in southwestern Italy, originally made in hot ash (by H. heidelbergensis), which hardened into stone. Here’s a video about those:
The video below was posted by, of all venues, the World Science Festival. It’s run by physicist Brian Greene and his spouse Tracy Day, but of course it’s partly funded by the Templeton Foundation. And because of that Templeton dosh, they always include a completely irrelevant, non-sciencey but accommodationist event, just to let people know that All That Science doesn’t mean that their religion is wrong.
Here’s Philip Clayton, Ingraham Professor of Theology at Claremont School of Theology in California. That site identifies him as “a panentheist [who] defends a form of process theology that is hypothetical, dialogical and pluralistic.” Notice that it’s “panentheist”, not pantheist. The latter sees God as the cosmos, the former, as Wikipedia notes, differs a bit:
Panentheism (from Greek πᾶν (pân) “all”; ἐν (en) “in”; and θεός (theós) “God”; “all-in-God”) is a belief system which posits that the divine (be it a monotheisticGod, polytheisticgods, or an eternal cosmic animating force) interpenetrates every part of nature and timelessly extends beyond it. Panentheism differentiates itself from pantheism, which holds that the divine is synonymous with the universe.
In process thelogy, of course, that all-pervasive God is affected by the world. Good luck in defending that “hypothetical” theology which, I suppose is no more bizarre, and no more supported by evidence, than any other theology.
Theologian Philip Clayton explains what science and theology can learn from each other. Watch more on this topic at WorldScienceFestival.com
The message is one of comity and mutual supportiveness of science and theology. “There’s a lot that science has to learn from theology.” What do we have to learn? “That humans have multiple ways of intuiting and grasping the world around us.” We can learn, he says, about areas such as theology, philosophy, and poetry.
That’s pretty much malarkey, of course. While philosophers can contribute to science by instilling in us rigor of thought, and helping catch our logical errors, that’s a way of “thinking,” not of “knowing.” As for poetry, it’s great to read, but show me a scientific advance promoted by Yeats or Milton. And forget theology: it adds nothing to science and, in fact, has acted as a brake on its acceptance (think creationism).
The Big Question (to borrow a Templeton trope) is why this kind of stuff is in the World Science Festival. It’s not science—not in the least. It’s there because Templeton wants it there, and because somehow this kind of theobabble is supposed to make people science-friendly. I really wish Greene and Day would stop this kind of stuff: it’s embarrassing and demeaning to stick theology into a festival supposedly devoted to “science.” If they’re going to do that, why not add discussions of homeopathy, astrology, and spiritual healing?
Hili seems to be expanding her curiosity beyond her solipsistic world of birds, rodents, and nonliving noms:
Hili: So, how is it with religion and science?
A: First people tried to give horse sense answers to difficult questions.
Hili: That’s religion. And science?
A: Then they exchanged a dull blade for Occam’s razor.
In Polish:
li: To jak to jest z tą religią i nauką?
Ja: Najpierw ludzie próbowali odpowiadać na trudne pytania na chłopski rozum.
Hili: To religia, a nauka?
Ja: A potem zamienił stryjek kijek na brzytwę Ockhama.
“Imagine science and religion connecting! Imagine technology and spirituality combining!”
Yes, that’s the explicit message of the one-minute ad run by, of all groups, the Church of Scientology during this year’s Super Bowl.
The “higher states of existence” attainable through joining this cult presumably refer to the plush lives led by David Miscavage and other Scientology higher-ups. That, and the cost of running this ad during the Big Game (30-second spots were going for $4 million!) are likely funded by the dosh raked in by Scientology’s phony technology, including “E-meters.”
For the second year in a row, Scientology staked out local airtime during the Super Bowl for an ad that quickly became fodder for confused observers on Twitter. The ad’s tranquil sights and aggressive lens flare culminated in a promise of “higher states of existence,” and “creepy” was the general reception. As with last year, the ad appeared limited to some regional urban markets, including New York, and aired later in Washington, D.C. The spot itself has been on Scientology’s YouTube channel since at least Jan. 8.
Taking the same conciliatory tone that characterized his notorious “Don’t be a dick” speech, Phil Plait has taken it upon himself to tell us how to solve the problem of creationism in America. The answer is in Plait’s analysis of the Ham/Nye debate that he just posted at Slate: “The creation of debate.” In short, it’s this: scientists, says Plait, are doing an awful job at communicating evolution to the public, and that is why, at least in the U.S., there’s so much resistance to that branch of science. The answer is not in imparting more facts to people, but in convincing people that evolution is not contrary to their religion. In other words, he advocates the NCSE/Chris Mooney/BioLogos/Clergy Letter Project strategy of accommodationism.
What Plait doesn’t seem to realize is that that’s the strategy that people have been using for decades, and it hasn’t worked. Somehow, he thinks, evolution-promoters impart the message that evolution is antagonistic to religion, and tantamount to atheism. Well, as a matter of fact it is, though it’s not always useful to discuss that explicitly that in public speeches. But we can’t pretend that it isn’t, for the message of evolution is one of pure materialism, of a process—natural selection—that involves horrible suffering, of ourselves as a species that is not in principle different in our evolution from any other species, of a species that doesn’t differ from other primates except by our bigger brains and our possession of culture and language—but not by our unique possession of a soul. The message of evolution is of an uncaring, unplanned, naturalistic process in which humans are just as evolved as, say, a possum.
And all of that is inimical to religious belief, which sees us as God’s Special Species, the one equipped with a soul and free will. The only way to comport theistic religion with evolution is by accepting theistic evolution, and the majority of those believers who accept evolution indeed adhere to the theistic version, believing that evolution was started and/or guided by God. Well excuse me, but that’s not the way scientists see it—any more than physicists see that God is really guiding the leptons and neutrinos in our cosmos.
But let me back up and give you some of Plait’s quotes:
Given that creationism is provably wrong, and science has enjoyed huge overwhelming success over the years, something is clearly broken in our country.
I suspect that what’s wrong is our messaging. For too long, scientists have thought that facts speak for themselves. They don’t. They need advocates. If we ignore the attacks on science, or simply counter them by reciting facts, we’ll lose. That much is clear from the statistics. Facts and stories of science are great for rallying those already on our side, but they do little to sway believers.
About last night’s debate, my colleague Mark Stern at Slate argues that Nye lost the debate just by showing up, and I see that same sentiment from people on social media. But I disagree. We’ve been losing this debate in the public’s mind all along by not showing up. Sure, science advocates are there when this topic comes up in court, and I’m glad for it. But I think that we need to have more of a voice, and that voice needs to change. What Nye did last night was at least a step in that direction, so in that sense I’m glad he did this.
Isn’t Richard Dawkins an advocate? Isn’t David Attenborough an advocate? Isn’t E. O. Wilson an advocate? Weren’t Steve Gould and Carl Sagan advocates? Does Plait really think that in this Era of Evolution, the way forward is to have more debates like the one with Ham and Nye? Well, it’s not that simple. According to Plait, we need not more popularizers like Dawkins (who, I think, has done more to promote the acceptance of evolution than any accommodationist around), but more accommodationists (my emphasis):
But we need more, and it’s not so much what we need as who. Let me explain.
. . .. But Ham is insidiously wrong on one important aspect: He insists evolution is anti-religious. But it’s not; it’s just anti-his-religion. This is, I think, the most critical aspect of this entire problem: The people who are attacking evolution are doing so because they think evolution is attacking their beliefs.
But unless they are the narrowest of fundamentalists, this simply is not true. There is no greater proof of this than Pope John Paul II—who, one must admit, was a deeply religious man—saying that evolution was an established fact. Clearly, not all religion has a problem with evolution. Given that a quarter of U.S. citizens are Catholics, this shows Ham’s claim that evolution is anti-religious to be wrong.
So evolution is not anti-religion in general. But is it atheistic? No. Evolution takes no stand on the existence or lack thereof of a god or gods. Whether you think life originated out of ever-more complex chemical reactions occurring on an ancient Earth, or was breathed into existence by God, evolution would take over after that moment. It’s a bit like the Big Bang; we don’t know how the Universe came into existence at that moment, but starting a tiny fraction of a second after that event our science does a pretty fair job of explanation.
I can’t stress this enough. The conflict over the teaching of evolution is based on the false assumption that evolution is antagonistic to religion. This is why, I think, evolution is so vehemently opposed by so many in the United States. The attacks on the specifics of evolution—the claims about irreducibility of the eye, for example, or other such incorrect statements—are a symptom, not a cause. I can talk about how we know the Universe is old until the Universe is substantially older and not convince someone whose heels are dug in. But if we can show them that the idea of evolution is not contrary to their faith, then we will make far, far more progress.
Phil Plait’s “false assumption” is in fact a true assumption. Not only is evolution antagonistic to religion, but the methods of science are antagonistic to religion. Evolution just happens to be the one branch of science whose implications are sufficiently antireligious to inspire direct, persistent, and vociferous opposition. If you use the methods of science, then your religious beliefs don’t stand up under scrutiny. Indeed, evolution takes no direct stand on gods, but can’t Plait see that its message is anti-God? That is why most evolutionists, and most good scientists, are atheists.
As for the Catholic Church, they are not down with religion in the same way scientists are. Catholic dogma still holds that Adam and Eve were the literal progenitors of all humanity. Science tells us that’s wrong. And if Adam and Eve didn’t exist, and didn’t sin, then what’s the point of Jesus; indeed, what’s the point of Christianity? Catholics also believe in theistic evolution: it is their explicit dogma that humans were endowed by God with a soul at some point in our evolution. Does Plait believe that? If not, then scientific evolution is at odds with Catholicism. As I note in my 2012 paper in Evolution:
Nevertheless, 27% of American Catholics think that modern species were created instantaneously by God and have remained unchanged ever since, while 8% do not know or refuse to answer.
And most of the rest of them are probably theistic evolutionists who buy into the soul business, or think that Adam and Eve really existed.
Note that Plait is engaging in theology here, exactly as everyone who claims that evolution is compatible with religion engages in theology. Try telling a Southern Baptist, a devout Muslim, or a Pentacostal Christian that naturalistic evolution comports perfectly with their faith, and by so doing changing their mind! Even Bill Nye, with his accommodationist palaver at Tuesday’s debate, couldn’t accomplish that task. That is why BioLogos has failed, why the Clergy Letter Project has failed, and why the acceptance of evolution in the last 30 years has failed. (Note that New Atheism, if you date it from The End of Faith, is but a decade old.) During most of that time, the strategy has been one of accommodation (or saying nothing about religion). The reason why the statistics on accepting evolution are flat is not because people like Dawkins tell Americans that evolution is incompatible with their faith; it’s because people have faith, and that immunizes them against accepting evolution.
Plait has a kumbaya touch in his peroration:
That’s not to say I’ll stop talking about the science itself. That still needs to be discussed! But simply saying science is right and faith is wrong will never, ever fix the problem.
And this won’t be easy. As long as this discussion is framed as “science versus religion” there will never be a resolution. A religious person who doesn’t necessarily think the Bible is literal, but who is a very faithful Christian, will more likely be sympathetic to the Ken Hams than the Bill Nyes, as long as science is cast as an atheistic dogma. For example, on the Catholic Online website, the argument is made that both Ham and Nye are wrong, and casts science as an atheistic venture.
That must change for progress to be made.
And who should do this? The answer to me is clear: Religious people who understand the reality of science. They have a huge advantage over someone who is not a believer. Because atheism is so reviled in America, someone with faith will have a much more sympathetic soapbox from which to speak to those who are more rigid in their beliefs.
I know a lot of religious folks read my blog. I am not a believer, but I hope that my message of science, of investigation, of honesty, of the joy and wonder revealed though it, gets across to everyone. That’s why I don’t attack religion; there’s no need. I am fine with people believing in what they want. I only step up on my own soapbox when a specific religion overreaches, when that belief is imposed on others.
I think Plait has it backwards. To get broader acceptance of evolution, we have to change or dissolve those religions that immunize people against evolution—and that includes the faiths of least 46% (and more like 80%) of Americans. That is a lot of religions! We will always have creationism so long as religion is with us—even Catholicism. I can’t prove this, but I don’t see BioLogos, or the Clergy Letter project, as having much influence; in fact, BioLogos got rid of those very people who insisted on the veracity of science, and now the organization is busy driving itself nuts about the Adam and Eve issue. That’s because many Christians won’t accept a science that tells them that Adam and Eve didn’t exist. Where’s the compatibility in that?
And, of course, the benefits of getting rid of religion extend far beyond allowing more acceptance of evolution. As I’ve always said, creationism is one of the smallest problems created by religion in America. You want a real problem? How about the guilt instilled in everyone by the Catholic Church? How about the way they police people’s marriages and sex lives, and torture children with thoughts of hell? How about the marginalization of women by nearly every faith, most pervasive in Islam? How about the inter-religious wars in other lands that kill so many? Next to those things, creationism is just a mote in the eye of the cosmos.
It does the world a profound disservice to try to make people accept evolution by coddling their delusions. In the end, many religious folks are in some ways smarter than Plait, for they see more clearly than he that the implications of evolution undermine the foundations of their faith.
So my message to the good Dr. Plait is this: you are practicing theology in this piece, and it’s a form of theology not shared by many Americans. While I stand with you in wishing that Americans would abandon their foolish denial of evolution, we differ in our methods. I don’t think yours will work, but I won’t tell you to stop it. In return, please stop telling me to stifle myself. I am fully satisfied that I’ve brought more people to evolution than turned them away from it.
And remember, Dr. Plait, that your doctorate is in astronomy, not theology.
