Letters to the Editor
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An attempt at a non-arrogant clarification of the schism between religion and science
First, I enjoyed the article. Second, I would agree that Wilson is best described as an agnostic. But I tend to find this a bit cheap, and muted down by social pressure. He squeezed in there a "I don't believe in a Judao-Christan god" which is really the core of it. It's that while science doesn't categorically rule out a lot of things, it so restricts what they could be, that what's left is pretty meaningless.
This applies to the evidence for saying there aren't ghosts. Sure, there might be ghosts. If they never interact with the real world, or they know when a skeptic is around, and never do anything that's possible to detect. What does that leave you? And what would their existence entail, in terms of allowing minds to exist without a physical basis?
The thing with science is, the pieces fit, more or less, together. Sure there have been mistakes. More often, there have been refinements. Einstein didn't prove Newton *wrong*, he just showed that his equations were only valid in a subset of circumstances. For almost everything that Newton could observe he was bang on (== within experimental error ;D)
A similar death-by-a-thousand-cuts happens to the idea of a Judao-Christian type of god (let alone a specific one). Such a belief system doesn't even seem internally consistent. For example, there is a benevolent god, but I only get to heaven if I believe in him. Even if I'm born somewhere where I could never learn about him. Hmm. Doesn't seem so ... benevolent. So non-fundamentalists tend to say, yeah, well, no, as long as you sort of believe in a big vague God, it's all good. But then there's suffering in the world, and the fact that none of the creation stories seem to match up, or the presence of evil, or whatever. It just goes on and on, and in the end, all you have left is the possibility of some mysterious force which might have started the universe, but doesn't care about us, doesn't meddle with universe, and doesn't make moral judgements. What is there to believe in there? Now spirituality that just deals with human nature, that's all good and interesting (well actually there's a lot of hokum involved too, but there's wiggle room for interesting stuff).
A last note to "a parent", I don't normally bother trying to disabuse people of their faith -- if it makes them happy, and doesn't harm me, good on'm -- but the rise of fundmentalism is bad thing in my mind, and you're propagating ignorance. A few quick notes:
- Carbon dating does go further back than 14000 years. It is based on radioactive half-lives, which say that after a length of time (~5730 years), half of the amount of Carbon-14 will decay into nitrogen. After twice as much time, only one quarter will be left. A quick google search will find lots of sites which explain it. And you can't just reject pieces of this -- to do so means the scientists have been lying, and that nuclear power plants and bombs don't work (and other stuff!). Not directly, but connectedly.
- Entropy increases for a *closed* system, which means no energy or mass is coming in or out. The earth is not a closed system. The main exception is all the energy coming in from the sun. A single creature is not a closed system, what with eating and all.
Okay, this is already too long.
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Gross oversimplification of Darwin's thinking and family history
The idea that Darwin had no glimmer of evolutionary beliefs in his mind when he set sail just plain isn't right. The guy's own grandfather, Erasmus, had developed some evolutionary ideas at length, and there was a strong strain of the stuff in his family. Darwin was like a lot of other naturalists at the time. The overwhelming physical evidence of evolution -- past forms of life on earth -- was coming clear in the fossil record, and people who were interested in the natural world wanted to understand it all.
Wilson is painting in black and white with respect to Darwin's religious views, too.
It frustrates me to read statements about Darwin's internal life on these points from someone who seemingly hasn't read a popular biography of the man. I'm not at all sure how to tease Mr. Wilson's own views apart from Darwin's, and not sure I'd go to Wilson as an authority on Darwin in any case based on this interview.
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Ah, but what about the moon?
- I will grant to all that carbon dating works for about 50,000 years, not the 14,000 I had thought... of course, that would mean all the estimates of any life form being older than 50,000 years simply aren't credible...
... and as we all should know, the Cro-Magnon men and proto-men and any transitional forms of artistic creation are simply that- works of fancy.
- In the billions of fossils found since Darwin, who said, in the Origin of the Species "if the fossil record does not bear out my theory, it should be abandoned"- there are NO transitional fossils... sure I can, with software or clay create a piece of art that looks transitional, but there are no half-bugs/half-humans or anything like that... so that's a problem
- Yes entropy affects a closed system, but please show me somewhere outside of evolutionary theoretical religion where basic elements gather to become more complex- if not, again, that's a problem for those who pray to Darwin for salvation from the implications of sin-
Because be honest with yourselves, THAT's what this whole discussion is about. If, as I believe, there is a God who really CARES not just for your soul, for your family and for your welfare, but cares about what you do in this world, that's a problem if you just don't want to be responsible.
You want to do what you want, when you want. You want your MTV. Gimme gimme gimme and don't ask for anything in return.
THAT's what enrages people- the idea that there might be a Creator, a Standard by which we are all accountable...
It's so much easier to believe that all this is random- even though through the billions of stars we have looked at, there is no other Earth anywhere, nobody else but us in the known Universe...
I'm sure it's all coincidence.
I'm sure it's all random chance.
Maybe, just maybe, you ARE open minded. Open not to being beat over the head with "my" truth, certainly, and Lord knows I could be more eloquent and don't mean to sound like a jerk, but if you're really open to seeing what science, hard science, just like that which you currently hold dear in your heart- might have another view
If you dare, check out
http://emporium.turnpike.net/C/cs/