How Evolution Works

Evolution has become the major topic on this blog during the last couple of months. However, it seems that my readers who criticise it do not have a good understanding of the theory. Some of my creationist readers have the following misconceptions:

1) The theory of evolution requires that organisms must be able to predict the future in order to evolve.
2) Evolution has never been observed.
3) Evolution means that an animal of one species must give birth to an animal of a new one.
4) All mutations are harmful.
5) Evolution cannot explain bilateral symmetry.

I found the following simple introduction to evolution online and I would suggest that my creationist readers take a few minutes to read it.

How Evolution Works

Is an Imprecise View of Words the Foundation of Biblical Literalism?

(In this post, I directly take on a couple of my blog-friends. I mean no disrespect.)

In the comments of a recent post, we got into a discussion about words. Sadie Lou claimed that I was "splitting hairs" when I insisted that the distinction between "choosing" a belief and "being compelled to accept a belief" was important. I think this is possibly the most important debate we'll have on this blog since if we can't agree on what we mean by the words we're using, we'll never be able to understand each other.

Especially when debating in abstractions like God, belief, meaning, morality, the use and understanding of words must be as precise as possible or we'll become quickly lost.

I got to thinking more about this and I realized that this disagreement is a metaphor for our larger disagreement about whether the "Bible is literally true." I've had a very hard time understanding how one could believe such a claim since it seems to me so self-evidently false. In our earlier discussion about the firmament, Sadie Lou made a comment which is to me clearly not literal: that the "waters" mentioned in Genesis which are "above" the firmament might actually refer to the Universe itself, since we often refer to the Universe as "a sea of stars."

I believe that Sadie Lou, and probably most other biblical literalists, can believe that the Bible is "literally" true because they aren't interested in drilling down to the exact meaning of the very words they claim to believe in -- or to the meaning of the word "literal." Otherwise, a biblical literalist must believe -- literally -- that there exists a "firmament" above the Earth, which the sun, moon, and stars are inside, and which has "waters... above" it, something which is so clearly at odds with the respective positions of the Earth, atmosphere, sun, moon, and stars that nobody in modern times could believe it true.

I don't want Sadie Lou to think I'm picking on her, so I'll give another example. JC Masterpiece when posed with the same dilemma made the following argument, among others:

"If you are looking from the ground through the firmament it would appear that the sun and the stars were in the firmament."

This is obviously not a literal interpretation of the text, which says "Let there be lights in the firmament," not "Let there be lights which appear from beneath to be in the firmament."

Also, he argued that I was putting too much emphasis on the word "in" in the phrase "Let there be lights in the firmament," since the Hebrew word might have some nuances that we're missing. My understanding of Hebrew notwithstanding ("in" means "in") this is a patently non-literal argument since it asks you to believe that "in" means something which is completely the opposite of "in" (i.e. "not in.")

I now believe that at least these two biblical literalists continue to consider themselves literalists only because they choose not to take the actual words of the bible seriously. They criticize others who don't believe that the Bible is literally true but ignore the fact that even they don't, ultimately, believe it.

Nikon's Small World Contest

This isn't directly related to Judaism or atheism, but it is really cool science. The Nikon Small World contest has 30 winning photographs through a microscope. The Universe is just as cool on the small scale as it is on a big one.

Bacteria growth in petri dish (30x through a stereoscope)



Muscoid fly (house fly) (6.25x)



I'll throw in one point about evolution -- look how cool and different the house fly's eyes are from ours.

via Boing Boing.

Evolution of the Eye

Someone I'm corresponding with via email claimed that there is a huge missing link between primitive eye-spots and the advanced eye. In researching the history of the eye, I found the following picture from the late Stephen Jay Gould's website. I thought my readers might find it interesting as well. (You'll have to click on it to read the text -- for some reason I can't get Blogger to show the full-size version.)

A Question for my Creationist Friends

When responding to evidence that suggests the Universe is much (MUCH) older than the Bible says, my creationist friends have provided a couple of basic responses:

1) God created an already mature Universe approximately 6000 years ago.
2) The Flood caused many of the changes on Earth which make it appear older than it is.

Here's the question:

Assume that there is a smart, curious man who has never heard of the Christian God or the Bible. All he has to help him figure out how the Universe came about are the scientific data and theories.

Would it be reasonable for this man to believe the Universe and Earth are billions of years old?