Sunday, May 20, 2007

Evolution vs. Creation?

A battle rages on between the proponents of what has come to be called Creationism, essentially an attempt at literal interpretation of the fanciful biblical story of how everything came to exist in general, and in particular, where we humans came from; and adherents to scientific explanations of the origins of the universe in general, with particular emphasis on the evolutionary process that Charles Darwin is credited with first observing and describing, explaining the origins of our and other species residing on our little planet.

At times in the past and in recent years as well, this battle has become rather emotional with both “sides” hastening to “prove” their assertions, engaging in public “debates”.

It would be very amusing to watch this play out but for the dreadful implications.

Reality is whatever it is regardless of whether or not it pleases us; regardless of whether or not we recognize it or are ignorant of it.

In this “debate”, the “creationists” argue vehemently and try to muster public opinion as though consensus could somehow determine what is true. They proceed on the absurd assumption that if the other “side” looses, then their fanciful explanation must be correct. They employ all the cheap tactics ever tried on the high-school debate team but have no meaningful substance to their argument as it is based not on fossilized bones and geologic analysis, but on what amounts to a fossilized opinion in the form of ancient writings, and semantic “analysis” thereof. Consensus is a straw man – a distraction from the real issues. It’s not even remotely relevant to the subject of the discussion.

If genuine evidence were ever to surface that suggested the current theories of evolution are off the mark or even completely wrong, this would force the reevaluation of those ideas in light of that new evidence. If the evidence itself suggested a specific other explanation, that then would become the subject of the ongoing investigative quest to learn what processes are really responsible for making things as we find them. Such evidence, however, would say absolutely nothing about the creation story unless that evidence specifically and verifiably supported that explanation.

In other words, even if current theories of evolution somehow collapsed despite mountains of supporting evidence, there would still be no evidence to support the creation story. We’d be left with a blank slate and basically have to start over looking for a genuine explanation for the process.

Creationism vs. Evolution is a false choice, a false battle, and a tremendous waste of our collective intellect.