Saturday, March 31, 2007 10:08 PM
Slashdot has a post here about how 48% of American Reject Evolution. It's actually a link to the MSNBC article, but the Slashdot comments are what makes this post worthwhile...especially the one where this guy lambastes a believer about how if his parents had brought him up to believe in the Power Rangers, he'd be spouting off on that...ha...classic!
I actually had a discussion recently about this with some co-workers. They seemed to think it odd that I didn't believe in evolution, even with all the "eviedence" that's out there. For me, it comes down to one thing: the ear.
Think about your ear...really, think about it...check out this article I found online that describes how it works. Here's a brief outtake:
"Understanding how humans hear is a complex subject involving the fields of physiology, psychology and acoustics. In this part of Lesson 2, we will focus on the acoustics (the branch of physics pertaining to sound) of hearing. We will attempt to understand how the human ear serves as an astounding transducer, converting sound energy to mechanical energy to a nerve impulse which is transmitted to the brain. The ear's ability to do this allows us to perceive the pitch of sounds by detection of the wave's frequencies, the loudness of sound by detection of the wave's amplitude and the timbre of the sound by the detection of the various frequencies which make up a complex sound wave."
...complex subject...involving physiology, psychology, and acoustics...ear serves as astounding transducer...converting sound energy to mechanical energy to a nerve impulse transmitted to the brain...
The ear is not a simple organ to create. In fact, when you consider all the pieces that work together (the bones, the shape of the ear itself, the brain hook-up), its freaking amazing! And yet we should beleive that the concept of the ear happened by chance, unbeknownst to the organisms that through no effort of their own were able to generate this complex system...ONE complex system in a body full of complexity.
And there lies the twist...this isn't meant to be a "God vs. Evolution" post, because for all the yelling that creationists make, both Creationism and Evolution come down to one thing: belief. Both are faiths...neither can be proved in the here and now. One puts faith in a deity that created, another in time and that given enough time, all life is possible.
That's ultimately what I can't accept...the idea that Time can create...it can't...it relies too much on chance and chaos:
- The Earth happened to be just the right distance from the sun, where we see in Venus and Mars what type of temperatures and habitation can happen if you're off by a bit (ok...a few million miles might seem like more than a bit, but we're talking planets here...and you understand the analogy).
- Materials required for life to happen just happened to form on Earth
- The building blocks of life just happened to hook up
- All the diversity of life on this earth just happened by chance over billions of years of mutations, natural selection, and genetic drift
So it comes back to the ear...and not just the ear. Think about all your bodily systems: your nervous system, your circulatory system, your excretory system, your respiratory system...all these things that involve involuntary organs that run on their own without us needing to think about it. It's just too complex to all have happened by chance.
So if you are an evolutionist, don't think of yourselves as buying into evolutionary theory...just think of yourselves as believers in Time.
Hmmm...maybe if Microsoft had just left a bunch of computers running, we'd have had WinFS in Vista...same theory right?
;)
D