Have a lot of questions for those who believe in the theory of evolution...?

Favorite Answer

Hi there,

I am a grad student in geology and very much believe much of what science has to offer, but I also have a lot of respect for other people's beliefs, including yours. I want to address some of your questions in a totally honest way, and I hope you will read through them and think about them:

1. I do not blindly believe in science. Science is a process by which our observations about nature lead us to theories about how nature behaves. Most scientists will tell you that they do not blindly believe the things that science tells them. Instead, we simply accept certain things as being highly likely to be true because experiment has shown them to be true time and time again. Science is not about belief at all, it is about what we can learn by accumlating observations about the universe and attempting to exprapolate logical conclusions from these observations.

2.

a. I believe I have great value, just like any other human being.

b. I need to know in what sense you are asking this. I believe my body was created inside my mother's womb, but I also believe I have a unique mind and soul that has been around for much longer than my body.

c. My body will cease to function, but my spirit will go to a poorly understood plane of existence.

3. Scientists don't claim that the big bang came from nothing, they claim that all the matter in the universe was once compact into one singularity, and that this singularity exploded into the universe we know today.

4. I don't understand why you think that an earth that is billions of years old must necessarily have a desert bigger than the Sahara. There is not currrently a desert bigger than the Sahara because there is no land region on earth that has the correct climatic conditions to support a desert larger than the Sahara. This does not imply ANYTHING about the age of the earth.

5. The Gulf of Mexico has not been completely filled with mud because the Gulf of Mexico has not been around for the entire history of the earth.

6. You seem to be assuming that specific processes that are occuring today MUST have been occuring for the entire time the earth has existed. This is not the case. Geologists do not claim that the Gulf of Mexico has been filling with sediment for billions of years or that oil has been pressurized underground for billions of years. We claim only that THE EARTH HAS EXISTED FOR BILLIONS OF YEARS. It is not fair of you to try to poke holes in scientific theories when you don't even have an understanding of what those theories say. You cannot put words in our mouths that were never there to begin with, and then tell us that we're wrong.

7. Again, you're assuming that humans have been around for the entire history of the earth. They have not... they have been around only for the past few million years. The balance between the growth of society and human reproduction with predators, diseases, food shortage, and other factors that kill us is what determines the population. If you are under the illusion that the fact that the world population is not 500 bazillion implies that the earth must be very young, than you have serious misunderstandings about evolution and population dynamics.

8. Again, you put words in our mouths. Scientists have never claimed that the earth, or any life, formed from nothing.

9. Matter is not evenly distributed because the four fundamental forces of physics tend to assemble particles into units called atoms, and then condense these atoms into discrete units of mass. You would need to talk to an astrophysicist to fully understand this, but rest assured that an uneven distribution of mass in the universe is NOT inconsistent with the big bang, evolution, or any other scientific theory.

Please know that I really do respect your beliefs. I am actually someone who believes in God, and believes that God put us here for a reason. I suspect those are beliefs that we have in common. But I am also a scientist, and there are a multitude of observations of many varieties about nature that lead us to the conclusion that the earth has been around for about 4.6 billion years, and that life evolved on this planet to its present state over approximately the last 500 million years. If you wish to hold creationist beliefs and reject these scientific findings, than you have every right to do so and I will respect those beliefs. But again, it is not fair of you to try to poke holes in scientific theories that you clearly have no understanding of. None of your observations imply that the earth has only been around for a few thousand years. If you have further questions or would like to correspond about this further, please feel free to e-mail me at mnrlboy@yahoo.com. I am a nice guy, and I love to talk to people and here their points of view. But I also don't like to see my discipline ridiculed for having faults that others perceive, but do not actually exist.

Best wishes,

mnrlboy


Response to your "Additional Details" section:

I'm glad that you read and gave consideration to everyone's response... I think that demonstrates a willingness to be open. I do, however, still think that you are not really understanding the points that I tried to make in my original asnwer. The excerpt from the science text you gave was from 1989, which is nearly 20 years ago. Science is a process of discovery and constantly developing a better understanding. It is very possible that physicists have changed their view of the early universe from the "nothingness" you talk about to the view that it was a singularity with incredible mass. What may be even more likely is that this textbook is simply describing the early universe as nothingness in order to help students visualize this bizarre concept better. In any case, the issue of whether the pre-big bang universe had mass or not does not invalidate the big bang theory, and comes nowhere close to invalidating evolution.

You also point out that some answerers have given different dates for the arrival of man on the planet. This is simply because 1) the date assigned to the beginning of man depends on exactly how you define "man"... beings similar to us have been around for a few million years, but the actual species of "Homo sapiens" has been around more on the order of tens of thousands of years, and 2) Answerers on this site have varying degrees of familiarity with the evolution of humans, and are taking a ballpark guess because they don't want to take hours out of their day to look up the currently accepted timeline.

It seems to me that you are trying to use very minor discrepencies and differences in wording between a few select statements in order to justify the complete dismissal of an ENORMOUS and carefully thought out body of knowledge. This is hardly any more fair than telling us what we believe, and then telling us we're wrong. Scientists are not perfect, and we do not claim to have all the answers. You will always finid disagreement and discrepency. That doesn't mean that you take hundreds of years of careful observation, painstaking data collection, reasoning, comparison of findings, peer review, calculation, experimentation, and integration of knowledge from many individuals in many different fields that miraculously coagulates into the exact same picture of earth's history, and just throw it in the trash because it's more comfortable for you to believe something different.

You say that we have been "indoctrinated" by our science books. On the contrary, the definition of the way science is done is that we are not indoctrinated by anything... we observe what we can about nature and draw our own conclusions based on what we find. That's where all the things in those science books COME FROM. It is those of you that believe in creation, without being able to explain how you reached that conclusion, who have been indoctrinated. Again, I do respect your beliefs if you still choose them over science, but you are way out of line in telling us that we are "indoctrinated" while trying to point accusingly at minor blemishes on a massive and brilliant body of work that you have not even begun to understand.

I hope you will continue to think about these issues and learn as much as you can about both your own beliefs, and the beliefs of those in the scientific community. It's quite a wonderful journey, and not as confusing as you might think.


One final note....

I must leave soon to do some of my own research into things totally unrelated to evolution, but I wanted to thank you for your response to... well... my response! We may still not agree, but I think it's great that we exchanged messages about this. I certainly learned more about your perspective, and I think you learned more about mine (and that of most scientists).

I can certainly see how the concept of life being suddenly generated at some point in earth's history, and the idea of our evolving from apes, may seem very strange. Although I am a geologist (and not a biologist), I may be able to give you a better idea what current science says about this. Scientists don't think that we mated with chimps at some point and became what we are today, they believe (and have evidence) that a subset of primates began developing larger brains and other more human-like attributes, and that because these things helped them survive better, the ones that had the traits continued to reproduce and develop into modern day human beings. You may still choose to not believe the evidence that exists for this idea, and that's fine. I guess I just wanted you to know that scientists don't just make this stuff up out of nowhere. These ideas develop after years of very careful measurement and study of a wide variety of different things, so please don't think that scientists are merely "guessing". There is certainly a lot we don't know and can't explain at this point, but there are certain things, like the age of the earth, that we are very confident of because there are many different lines of evidence for it. We are only trying to gather as many observations as we can, and assemble them into a picture that explains as many of those observations as possible.

It may comfort you to know that myself, and many other scientists, believe in a God and believe that there is a purpose in our being here. As for the physical story of how our planet came to be the way it is today, I believe what science says because I think it's a powerful and logical way to gain information. But while science is very good at explaining to us "how", it says nothing about "why". To me, just because we were once a different form of life millions of years ago, does not mean that we don't have any value in the here and now, and doesn't mean that God doesn't have great plans for us. I think that many of your beliefs, and many of the things that science says about us and our history, are not really as contradictory as you might think. Just something to think about.

Anyway, I really must go now, but again, it's been interesting having this correspondence over Yahoo Answers! I hope that nothing I've said has offended you... I haven't ever intended to be harsh, and the last thing I want to do is put down other's beliefs. I just really love science, and love to share it with people and have a tendency to stick up for it when I feel like people are misinterpreting what it says and how it works. But I think we've both learned from this and it's definitely worth doing. I'll be gone for a while, so I won't be editing this response again. Take care,

mnrlboy...Show more

Well i will try to answer your questions to the best of my ability.
1. I believe science a lot more than religion because religion has been proved to be false more times than science has.
2. a) I do not put a value on my self or any others. Everyone has an equal value in my eyes and no one is better than anyone else. b) I came from my mother's egg and my father's sperm. c) I will hopefully eaither just rot in the ground, or I will be reborn again to live another life.
3. The Big Bang didn't come from nothing. All the matter in the universe was compacted into a very small atom.
4. The Earth is 4.5 billion years old and the Sahara is located in a part where there is very little water. There is not a bigger desert because most of the other lan in the world has water to keep it from going dry.
5. The sediment doesn't leave the Mississippi River, it just clogs up the delta, which then causes the river to change where it meets with the Gulf.
6. The oil is in a place where the pressure is greater than on the surface, and things under high pressure move to a low pressure zone.
7. There have been certain events in history that has effected the population, like the Black Plague. Also disease has effected the growth of the population. The average lifespan of a person wasn't very high 5-10 thousand years ago because they didn't have the technology to keep people alive longer. Finally, according to evolution, humans have only been on earth for 200, 000 years.
8. We didn't com from nothing either. The big bang gave us the elements that we are made up of and what the planets and stars and everything else is made up of also. Gravity helped to form the stars and the plants, and meteors and asteroids with hydrogen and oxygen and other elements collided with Earth, which helped to form water, which is essential for life develop. Other elements formed bacteria, which one day split and formed the first complex creature. Things evolved from the same one-cell organisms, which is why our DNA is similar to most animals. Some things evolved from different one-cell organisms, which explains why were ahve no connection to some living things.
9. Forces acting on matter keep it from becoming distributed evenly. Gravity pulls on matter from every direction and sometimes the gravity is strong enough to keep the matter from being distributed evenly.

Well I hoped these answered your questions to your liking, or they may have made you even more confused. Understanding science is harder than just being told bits and pieces....Show more

I'm not going to get into the specifics because it would do no good. The questions you have asked and answered show that you are scientifically illiterate. You have absolutely no understanding of what it is you are criticizing and you make embarrassing mistakes in reasoning.

You are attacking something without understanding it, and the picture you have in your mind is wrong. It is no different from someone attacking your religion by making all sorts of crazy claims. For example: How can you Zoroastrians claim to be moral and ethical when you hunt down people to sacrifice as offerings on your altars?

Science is not a body of knowledge. It is not a collection of facts and "Truths." Scientists try not to use the word truth. Science is a technology that was only recently invented. Science is a method of thinking used to figure things out. What the practitioners of science do is to take observations (sometimes called facts), create a model that explains those observations (hypothesis), figure out the consequences (predictions) of the model and then design experiments that test the predictions (falsifiable).

If the experiment doesn't match the predictions, then the model is wrong. It doesn't matter how smart you are or how beautiful your hypothesis is, it's still wrong.

If the experiment is consistent with the predictions, that does not mean the model is true. For example, take the Standard Model of physics. It has withstood every experiment ever designed to find some flaw in its predictions. Even though it can correctly predict how subatomic particles will behave down to the limits of our ability to measure, we know that this theory is not complete and it is not true because it does not include gravity. What scientists want are experiments that show where the model fails because that forces us to confront the new observations and revise or create a new model that is more complete and more accurate.

A theory is what scientists call the most complete and accurate model of a subject. To call something a theory in science is no insult. This is in stark contrast to creationism or intelligent design dogma. Under that scenario, the truth is already known, it makes to predictions and it cannot be falsified.

You don't address evolution at all in your question despite the title or your post. You ask about cosmology, planetary astronomy, geology, ecology, abiogenesis and metaphysics but not evolution. Evolution is not a theory. Evolution is a fact. Evolution is an observation. That is because evolution is defined as the change in allele frequency in a population over time. I have measured it. Anyone with the proper tools can measure it. What gets most people upset is deciding on the driving force behind evolution. Why does the population change? Most people will say magic (aka god). However, those with the proper education and training will accept Natural Selection as the best model that explains evolution.

You need to know astronomy, physics, chemistry, biology, mathematics and statistics to grasp the modern view of life and the universe. So you can see why so many people believe in the 6 day creation myth while far fewer know how old the earth is. That's because out of all the billions of people on this planet, only an elite few have the freedom, resources and opportunity to get the education and training required to know and understand this. What is really sad is that there are so many with the freedom, resources and opportunity but choose proudly to remain ignorant instead....Show more

(1) I can't answer this before you tell me exactly what these "none-scientific truths" are. I certainly do not see them, nor do I blindly believe in science. I think that you don't really understand the theory of evolution, nor the big bang theory. E-mail me if you want me to explain it.

(2) A: I have more then one value.
B : I came from star stuff (just as everyone else did). If you want me to get more specific, then amino acids which evolved into more advanced organism.
C: Well, Have I sinned or not?

(3) The big bang did not come from nothing. All matter in the universe was compacted into one celestial mass at one point. The "big bang" is the point where this mass exploded.

(4) This has to do with climate. The Sahara dessert once was a dense forest. Over time, the climate of earth changes, partially because of the Hadley cells, the location of the equator, and the state of the oceans.

(5) The Gulf of Mexico has not existed forever, nor has the Mississippi river. Do you not remember learning about Pangea? 80,000 tons of silt really isn't that much, and silt that is deposited is carried off and distributed throughout the oceans via currents.

(6) All mass has Gravity. The majority of mass on our planet is compacted in the dense center of earth. This is what makes us stay on the ground. Because the layers of earth above the oil deposits are compressing it, it is under pressure.

(7) Humans have not existed for several billion years. We have existed for less then 1 million years actually.

(8) The earth was created from multiple larger chunks of rock, which were created after fusion began in our sun from the remainder of the nebula which our solar system formed from. This rock, when it collided, became pressurized, and, was subjected to friction, thus, melted. After our earth was more suitable for life (when the surface of our planet cooled, and the water in out atmosphere condensed, precipitated, and formed oceans, a comet bearing amino acids (which are found in comets) hit the earth, and, thus deposited life on earth.

E-mail me if you want me to explain any of this further (or if you are up for a debate)

Why don't you start proving your own beliefs and stop trying to disprove the beliefs of others?...Show more

(7) Even if the earth is that old, it does not mean that humans have been around for that long. Evolutionists compare the age of the earth to a 24-hour time frame, and according to their understanding, humans appeared only during the final second. For most of the age of the earth, it was an inhospitable and uninhabitable place. Humans were the newcomers and even then the population was kept low due to illnesses, diseases and natural disasters and wars, etc. Only in recent history has the human race seen a significant growth in population.

I have my own theories and it doesn't matter if the world is 10,000 years young or is billions of years old. I can explain it either way without contradicting myself or ignoring scientific facts. Of course I can't explain it all here; I will have to write a book!...Show more