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Mar. 12, 2007 I must say that after perusing some of the articles and rebuttals on this site, my head hurts. The scientific ignorance being displayed here is truly astounding. I weep for our children and their ability to compete in a global – and scientifically literate – marketplace. Ah, well. Anyway, I thought I would try to correct a couple of common misconceptions. The first deals with Big Bang cosmology, the second with Darwinian evolution. Big Bang Cosmology Many of the contributors here, particularly those that appear to come from a Christian background (the horrors!), seem to be under the impression that the “Big Bang” is a theory of the origin of the universe. To be fair, most of the unscientific populace is under the same impression. Let’s clear that up. No scientist has the first clue how the universe originated, or even if the universe originated. Big Bang theory – and its cousin, Inflationary theory – describe the evolution of the universe over time, not its origin. I’ve seen a lot of preposterous arguments batted back and forth on this site that purport to falsify the Big Bang, most of them related to “uncaused causes” and similar rubbish. Unfortunately, the Big Bang says nothing about the cause of the universe, or whether the universe even needs a cause. So for all of you Christian philosophers out there, who stand on Anselm’s shoulder and claim to prove God and refute science at the same time: save your breath. Paper arguments about uncaused causes and universes “popping into existence out of nowhere” refute absolutely nothing, because Big Bang cosmology says absolutely nothing about origins. All you are “refuting” is your own off-base assumptions about a theory you have so thoroughly misunderstood. Edwin Hubble made a remarkable discovery a little less than a century ago: the universe, as seen today, is expanding. This fact is indisputable. It doesn’t take much brain power to realize, then, that an expanding universe was smaller in the past. Take that back far enough, and you get a universe much, much smaller than the visible universe of our present. How much smaller? How far back? Those are for the theorists. To ask what happened “before” the expansion is for the hack, or the scientifically ignorant. Big Bang cosmology doesn’t deal with befores; doesn’t, in fact, even deal with “afters” that are significantly close to the “origin” event. The universe may be eternal, in which case talking of its origin is pointless. Big Bang cosmology is interested only in the universe’s evolution. In fact, this is quite similar to … Darwinian Evolution Just as Big Bang cosmology deals only with the evolution, and not the origin, of the universe, so too does Darwinian evolution deal with the evolution, not the origin, of life on earth (and, indeed, life on other planets, should it exist). The origin of life – so-called “abiogenesis” – is something for which we have precious little evidence. The best that scientists can muster at the moment are informed guesses. That may, or may not, always be the case. Evolution describes how the complexity of life as we know it today evolved from more primitive beginnings. The evidence for evolution is so overwhelming that it’s a waste of time to defend it here. Either you accept evolution or you don’t; it’s that simple. In my experience, those that don’t accept evolution are simply scientifically illiterate. When they are informed of what evolution really means, they say either, “Wow, that makes sense”, or, “No, that conflicts with my religion.” (Paraphrased, of course.) The closed- minded religionists will never sway; the others come around when the assumptions they had regarding evolution are blown away. And one of the biggest assumptions most people have regarding evolution – an assumption that’s completely, utterly false – is that evolution is a random process. Natural selection is the engine that drives evolution’s car, and natural selection is the complete opposite of a random process. It’s often argued by those who feel threatened by evolution that the chance of evolution producing a protein molecule is about as likely as the chance that a tornado blowing through a junkyard would assemble a fully-functional 747. Clearly, if that’s what evolution truly described – a completely random process – you’d have to be an idiot to be an evolutionist. Evolution, of course, says nothing of the kind. Religionists are confusing (deliberately, I think) single- step evolution with cumulative selection. Evolutionary theory says that small improvements are accumulated over time. The eye (which has evolved, independently, at least 40 times over the course of history) did not pop suddenly into existence, and evolution does not say that it did. Rather, small, incremental improvements over time were accumulated into an eventual fully- functioning eye. If you can imagine an eye, fully-formed as today but with some slight incremental degradation, then you can imagine a series back in time that takes you from a fully functioning eyeball of the present (100% vision) to a simple light-sensitive patch of skin in some unknown past (1% of vision or less). As long as evolution has enough time, and as long as each successive adaptation gives its host some slight evolutionary advantage that is then saved and accumulated, it doesn’t matter the size of the increment you imagine. And evolution has had an enormous amount of time, over 4 billion years, in which to operate. Scientists estimate that it only takes about 800,000 years for an eye to fully evolve – a virtual drop in the bucket of evolutionary time. (If 4 billion years is the distance from New York to Los Angeles, then 800,000 years is about two laps around the track of your local high-school football field.) The only random element to evolution is genetic mutation. Without mutation, there would be no genetic diversity on which natural selection could operate. But random mutation, by itself, goes nowhere. Only when paired with the non-random mechanism of natural selection does evolution become such a powerful force, a force that can turn a simple replicator into a conscious being only 4 billion years later by the cumulative savings of beneficial changes. So for all of you aspiring philosophers out there, keep these simple scientific truths in mind: the Big Bang says nothing about the origin of the universe, and Darwinian evolution is the complete opposite of a random process. You’ll look like less of an idiot if you do. ------------ About the author: David E. Bernard is a scientist and atheist. His pet peeves are scientific ignorance and conservative arrogance. (Imagine the foul mood he's been in for the last 7 years!) You can reach him at davidebernard@@mac.com. A website is forthcoming. Email: Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com. Please link to this article rather than copying and pasting it onto your site (which would be unauthorized and illegal). |
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