Apparently, theists don’t quite follow that logic.  A recent article in the Washington Post has highlighted the way some Christians approach the Bible, in particular the inconsistencies found within.

Some scholars “get fixated on some of the marginal issues about who was where and when,” said Craig Evans, professor of New Testament at Acadia Divinity College in Nova Scotia.

In the Gospels, “the discrepant witnesses are allowed to stand side by side, and I think that’s a strength in the end, not a weakness. But the naive reader — the person beguiled by the notion that discrepancies somehow cast doubt on the truth of the entire report — might not know that,” Evans said.

There are two alarming aspects to that quote.  Craig Evans seems to think that having a book with inconsistencies in it is a strength, rather than a weakness.  It’s also alarming that he treats this wholly misguided opinion as fact and suggests that less knowledgeable people may not know that inaccurate sources are better than accurate ones.  Note that he uses the word “know” rather than “believe” or “think”.

The implication that those who demand consistency and unambiguity are “naive” seems particularly irrational and disingenuous.

The obvious response, and one that’s been thrown around in faith discussions for some time, is “how do you know which bits to believe?”  In this case, I’d like to propose a different approach for dealing with Professor Evans.  Let’s accuse him of something criminal and make him stand in front of a judge and jury.  Then, let’s parade witnesses in front of said judge and jury, some of which are to lie with the aim of incriminating the good Professor.  And furthermore, let’s tell the judge and jury that they should treat the lying witnesses with more respect than the ones telling the truth.  Maybe this scenario will hammer home the reality of just how mind-numbingly stupid his statement is.

Professor Evans and his ilk are not demonstrating faith in these cases, they are demonstrating delusion and a complete failure to utilise the logical capacity of their brains.

So instead of replying individually to all the questions, I wanted to put together a single post that contains the relevant information.

Evolution, Natural Selection and Speciation

If you browse the comments on this blog, you’ll see me saying “Don’t confuse evolution and natural selection” quite a lot. And it’s an important point to make. To understand how we came to be in the form we currently are, you need to grasp two concepts, Evolution and Natural Selection. So let’s look at them in turn.

Evolution

Evolution is how we describe the changes in organisms between generations. These changes are mutations, changes to the genetic material of an organism. You can see them in every day life, just look at the attributes, or traits, children have that the parents do not. Children do, however, share many traits with their parents, inherited traits.

Natural Selection

As discussed above, the traits of an organism may be inherited from its parent or not. For a parent to potentially pass a trait on to its offspring, it must survive long enough to reproduce. The theory of natural selection tells us that those organisms that are best suited to their environment are most likely to reproduce.  When people talk of “survival of the fittest”, fittest refers to fitness to their environment, or suitability.

The upshot is that the organisms that are best suited to their environments are more likely to survive, and are also more likely to pass on their traits to their offspring. Therefore, their offspring are more likely to be well suited to the environment. This in turn makes them more likely to survive and breed, and so on. It’s a beautifully simple concept at its core.  It’s worth mentioning at this point that mutations, even if beneficial to the organism and the organism produces offspring, are not guaranteed to be passed on.  Likewise, mutations that are not beneficial to the organism may be passed on to subsequent offspring.  There is also the possibility of non-beneficial mutations preventing an organism from procreating but then occurring elsewhere in the same species.  A mutation doesn’t just appear once, either succeed or not and then disappear.

When you consider this passing on of traits, you also have to take into account inter-generation mutations. An offspring is rarely identical to its parents, even where a parent pair produce multiple offspring there are differences between those offspring. In these cases, again, the best suited to the environment are most likely to survive and breed. Mutations are hard to predict and rarely follow a defined path.

While genetic mutations are easily observed in the human species, natural selection is not. This is due to our species’ ability to prolong our own lives and help those who are in need of help. We don’t see the weaker members of our species die off before they have a chance to breed.  There are, however, mutations that are so severe it prevents that person from breeding.  This does not rule out the possibility of that particular mutation occurring in other members of the same species.

Speciation

While not crucial to the theory of Natural Selection, the way in which species are defined is important. For the purpose simplicity, we can define a species line at the point where organisms can no longer breed. So using the discussion of natural selection and evolution above, if you imagine a species going through these transitions, a new species would be recognised at the point an organisms could no longer breed with members of its former species.

Speciation is an interesting subject, especially when you look at allopatric speciation. Allopatric speciation is where organisms from the same species are separated by the formation of a barrier. Typically this is a geographical barrier. The organisms, originally members of the same species, then evolve independently to the point at which they can no longer inter-breed if reintroduced to each other.

Evidence for Evolution

The ill-informed and the ignorant still claim there is insufficient proof for evolution.  This is, of course, ridiculous.  There is ample evidence for evolution.  In fact, evidence is so comprehensive and robust that the majority of theists have abandoned this course of argument, with many favouring hastily developed reactionary positions such as Intelligent Design.  I won’t debunk Intelligent Design here, I’ll hold that for another day.

As for actual evidence for evolution, there is plenty.  We have evolution that’s been observed in laboratories (even to the point where it’s reproducible, I called it “Evolution on tap”), observed speciation and thousands of transitional fossils.  A transitional fossil represents the preserved (to some degree) remains of an organism that exhibits certain traits which are found in later organisms.  These typically also exhibit traits found in much later organisms.  They represent an organism that bridges the evolutionary gap between species, in evolutionary terms (although it may be a species in its own right).

We are at a point where we can use evolutionary theory to accurately predict where to find transitional fossils, which period they will date from and what forms they will take.  That is the completeness of the theories and how closely tied it is to the discovered evidence.  Any sane person would find the evidence for evolution to be so overwhelming as to be incontrovertible.

Arguments Against Evolution

Despite the mountain of evidence there are still those who try and disprove and discredit evolution.  I’ve picked out some of the most common arguments I’ve come across and responded to them.  As you’ll see, most are either used by the uninformed because they fundamentally misunderstand evolution, or they are used by the informed to mislead

Macroevolution vs Microevolution

If you hear someone roll out this argument, it’s a sure sign that they have a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution.  Essentially, proponents of this argument concede that this is ample evidence for evolution, but class all the evidence as evidence for microevolution, and therefore does not qualify as proof of evolution as a cause of speciation.  Macroevolution, which is what they claim there is no evidence for, is classed as evolution at or above the level of speciation.

So, to be clear, as proof of macroevolution, they would expect a member of one species to give birth to a member of another.  i.e. an inter generation change that is far more severe than those typically seen in evolutionary history.  The argument goes that we only have evidence for very small changes as a result of evolution, not the big sweeping changes that result in the formation of different species.

The obvious failing in this argument is that the amount of change that typically causes speciation happens over many many generations and encompasses many different mutations.  Multiple instances of microevolution results in macroevolution.  To use an analogy, spouting this argument is akin to saying you believe in bricks, because you’ve seen them, and you believe in buildings, because you’ve seen them, but you don’t believe that bricks form buildings because you’ve never seen one part built.

Irreducible Complexity

Irreducible Complexity as a concept is particularly popular amongst Intelligence Design proponents.  It argues that certain aspects of certain organisms are simply too complex to have evolved naturally and therefore must have been designed (they offer to explanation as to whom designed the most complicated being of all, God).  The most famous example used is that of the eye and was one of the cornerstones of the book Darwin’s Black Box by irreducible complexity’s father, Michael Behe.  Yes, that’s the same Michael Behe who openly admitted in the famous Dover case, which completely discredited Intelligent Design as a scientific pursuit, that his own simulations demonstrated that the kind of complex evolution he said couldn’t happen could, and in as little as 20,000 years.

Even under the most casually scrutiny this idea falls apart.  Taking the eye as an example (as many proponents do), we know how the eye evolved in some detail.  Further more, we can look all around us and witness other organisms that have eyes in various stages of development.  We do not have the most complex eyes, many species of birds (e.g. Owls) have eyes that are far more complex than our own.  We also do not have the simplest, there are organisms with eyes that resemble pinhole cameras (i.e. without lenses and the ability to focus).  The evolutionary path of the eye is relatively simple to plot.  Even the most bizarre occurrences in nature, such as the bacterial flagellar motor, can be explained.  This particular example, one used by Behe himself, was covered amply in Richard Dawkins’ The God Delusion.

The Start of Life

Moving slightly away from the core principals behind natural selection and evolution, many people who accept evolutionary theory still attempt to claim that some sort of deity created the very beginning of life itself, and then allowed everything else to happen (i.e. evolution).  I won’t go into this in detail as I’ve covered the origins of life previously.

Why Do We Still Have Monkeys?

Much like the macroevolution vs microevolution argument, anyone who hinges an argument on this question, or any variation of it, has a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution.  And you can put anyone who says anything like “I didn’t evolve from a monkey” into the same bracket.  This idea that we evolved from monkeys has been pushed in an ill-fated attempt to discredit evolution.  Of course, anyone who’s bothered to even look into evolution will know that we did not evolve from monkeys as they exist today but rather we share a common ancestor with monkeys.  IDA, as pictured earlier in this post, is a common ancestor to both ourselves and some modern day apes.  That creature, or rather the particular sub-species that creature belonged to, would have had mutated offspring at some point.  Some of those offspring carried mutations best suited to forest environments and some were best suited to travelling on land.  This is of course a gross over simplification, but is necessary without explaining in detail the complete timeline of human evolution.  Reading through some of the links I provided earlier on speciation will also give reasons for the parallel evolution of species or one species breaking away from another which remains static.

Conclusion

I hope this very brief introduction to the fundamental principals of evolution, written by a layman, helps you understand the theory.  Evolution, and natural selection, is phenomenally simple at it’s core.  It is a concept of such beautiful simplicity that I believe it’s not been matched in terms of human thinking before or since.

What do you think about evolution?  Is there anything I’ve missed out?  Are there any questions you get challenged with regularly that you’d like me to respond to?  Let us know in the comments.

What I find particularly amusing is this attachment to Christmas Day, as if it’s significant in some way, religiously speaking.  In fact, there’s debate over the original origins of 25th December being used as Christmas day.  Many believe it was a carry over from a pagan festival, which was no doubt linked to the Winter Solstice in the northern hemisphere.  Others, notably William J Tighe, believe that it was down to an attempt by early christians to calculate Jesus’s actual birth date.  Note that Mr Tighe cites no sources.  It’s generally understood that the date of December 25th was decided upon by Pope Julius (I) at around 350AD.

It’s almost certain that if Jesus did exist, he was not born on December 25th.  It seems far more likely that December 25th was chosen as a date because it aligned very nicely with existing religious festivals such as Sol Invictus.  Sol Invictus,  literally referring to the birth of the unconquered sun, was believed to be a Roman celebration that allowed for multiple sun Gods to be worshipped simultaneously during the Winter Solstice.

The significance of the Winter Solstice should not be overlooked.  Prior to the Christian Jesus myth, multiple Religions celebrated significant events on or around December 25th.  This includes Mithra (born to a virgin, could raise the dead, heal the sick and his birth was accompanied by wise men bearing gifts), Horus and Osiris (who was resurrected).  To say the world of religious belief is inbred would be an understatement, no more so than around the time of the Winter Solstice.

So when you’re tucking into your turkey on Christmas day, spare a thought for all the other Gods that happened to be born on the same day, the very day that the sun is also “reborn”.

Nativity scene by alexbruda.

It takes just as much faith to be an atheist as a theist.

This, of course, is patently ridiculous.  Being an atheist requires no faith, not even a little bit.  I have to respond to this argument point so regularly I thought I’d come up with a handy chart for future reference.

Click the image to enlarge.

It’s so easy when you put it out in Matrix Form.  But just to make it that little bit easier I thought I’d add some helpful labels, so let’s explore those briefly.

Christians – The majority of modern Christians are fairly easy to pigeon hole on this matrix.  They believe in their God, yet there is no evidence for it.  There is no evidence against it, but there is no evidence supporting their position.  It’s all faith.

Creationists – Creationists occupy a place in this matrix I’ve labelled “Extreme Faith Required”.  Unlike your run of the mill Christian, creationists choose not to believe in something despite the fact there is a mountain of evidence supporting it.  Evolutionary theory, the big bang, the origin of the species, all have supporting evidence, all of which is dismissed.  This isn’t choosing to believe in something which is questionable, this is wantonly ignoring evidence and embracing ignorance.

Atheists – Atheists, or at least true atheists, have no need for faith.  If there is evidence for something, we believe it.  If there is no evidence for something, then we treat it with a healthy degree of scepticism to the point of not believing until evidence presents itself.  To see how I fit in to this, you can read what would make me believe in a a God.

I hope this clears some things up.  The take away, quite simply, is that it requires no faith to not believe in something for which there is absolutely no evidence.

One can see evidence of this behaviour in polls which question the respondents position on topics such as evolution.  For example, a recent Pew Research Poll found that 97% of scientists (unspecified disciplines) agree that Humans “Evolved over time” whilst only 61% of the public share this view.

This, I find astonishing.

To put this into context, can you imagine someone, upon being told by their doctor that they have diabetes, respond by disagreeing and instead choosing to believe that it’s actually just athlete’s foot?  It wouldn’t happen.

This alarms me because evolution is fact.  Not only does evolutionary theory match the fossil record at every turn, but we can recreate evolution in labs.  We have genetics to back up our understanding.  Yet this mountain of irrefutable evidence is not enough for some.  Why?  And just what will it take to change these people’s minds?

So how do we stem this tide of ignorance?  The simple answer is education, but unfortunately systemic failures within the education system to push objective facts, and ingrained fear of the truth from community leaders make this difficult.  Teachers can teach evolution in schools, only for fearful, misinformed, ignorant parents to turn their students against them.

Another possible option is to simply make the alternative viewpoint unacceptable.  Again, we’re dealing with facts, so in the same way espousing flat earth theories is not acceptable, so should be denying evolution.  And let’s be clear, this isn’t curtailing free speech, people can say whatever they want, but proliferating misinformation should be seen as a socially unacceptable activity.  This may be even more effective than education.  Those who reject evolution do so because their religions have offered an alternative. There’s no evidence for any of these alternatives, but they are supported by religious communities.  Followers of religions often call themselves “sheep” (The Lord is my Shepherd etc.), and it’s very apt. They follow the consensus in their community, and don’t think for themselves.  Let’s face it, anyone who chooses to believe a two thousand year old book which has very little basis in reality over centuries of scientific progress, with accompanying evidence, is not being particularly thoughtful.  Therefore, making it socially unacceptable within and around their social groups may have a big impact.

And most importantly, when the Bible says the Earth is only 6000 years old they believe the Earth is only 6000 years old.  To many, this position seems completely indefensible, yet they continue to not only believe this, but defend their position in books and on TV shows.

You’ll often find that YECs focus on small details in an attempt to discredit the scientifically calculated age of the Earth (~ 4.5 Billion years) and the age of the universe (~ 14 Billion years). It’s a fruitless pursuit however, as science does not, generally, rely on a single source. Even when looking at radiometric dating, multiple methods and techniques are used and only when they agree is the calculation treated as true.  There is redundancy built into the calculations.

Of course, none of this really matter to YECs.  The margin of error is only matched by the level of their ignorance.  So to drive home the enormity of the mistake they are making, I wanted to highlight some of the things that happened, according to science, before they believe the Earth existed.

The purpose of this exercise is to point out how far off the mark YECs are.  There are many, many, many things we know existed before YECs claim the Earth had even been created. It’s important to note that the methods used to date many of these creations and events differ, so we’re not relying on a single source (although, admittedly, radiometric dating is heavily relied upon).

People

Fairly recent discoveries have suggested that humans, broadly as we exist now, have been around for at least 160,000 years.  No doubt we were inventing Gods and using them to oppress back then, just as we do now.

Domestication of Dogs

This is an example that’s been used by Richard Dawkins previously.  Evidence (fossils in Iraq) tells us that dogs were first domesticated roughly 12,000 years ago, although one could make a case for it being a few thousand years prior to that date.  Of course, it’s not just dogs. Sheep, pigs, goats and cattle were all domesticated around 11,000 years ago and draught animals were domesticated as the world was being created, about 6,000 years ago.

Houses

Yes, we had built houses before there was ground to build houses on.  The earliest known human-made dwelling is approximately 12,000 years old and was made from Mammoth bones and hide.  It was discovered in the 1960s in the Ukraine.  Similarly to the domestication of animals, it’s highly likely that there were human made dwellings prior to this point, but as such a specific set of circumstances were required to preserve the evidence, it’s unlikely we’ll find archaeological evidence for it.

Looking at more tangible evidence.  Recent excavations have shown that postholes were installed at the Stone Henge site around 10,000 years ago.

Language

Language is not quite as simple as saying it developed x number of years ago.  Language is difficult to define and can by pigeon-holed (or should that be pidgin-holed?) into a number of categories (Pidgin, Proto, Creole, Modern).  For the purpose of this article, let’s think about the sort of language we are all familiar with.  Modern language is understood to have originated at least 50,000 years ago.  Other types of language are understood to have originated more in the region of 400,000 years ago.

Going hand-in-hand with language is writing, which dates back to about 1,000 years before the Earth was created by God.  Mathematics was beginning to be understood and utilized around this time as well.

Art

Yes, art.  Paintings in caves have been discovered in Europe that date to 32,000 years ago.  We also have cave paintings in Africa that date to approximately 20,000 years ago (conservatively).  However, art is subjective (not just the merit of a particular piece of art, but the definition itself), so you could make an argument for art dating back 75,000 years if you argue that drilled shells count as art.

Jewellery

As I mentioned above, a series of drilled snail’s shells were found in a South African cave that date to 75,000 years old.  You could argue that these are art, or you could argue that they were a piece of jewellery.  At 75,000 years old, these shells don’t qualify as the oldest known jewellery however.  That distinction goes to a set of shells that are 100,000 years old.

Clothing

As the Bible teaches us, man experienced shame in the Garden of Eden after eating the forbidden fruit.  This led to us requiring clothes to cover our shame. Except for the fact that clothes had been around for about 25,000 years when God decided to drop Adam and Even into the Garden of Eden.

Cooking

Are you enjoying that tasty burger?  Cooking utensils, hearths, ovens, flint and burnt animal remains have been dated back as far as 250,000 years.  The first controlled fires date back to around 400,000 years ago.

Farming

There’s no point being able to cook without having some raw ingredients.  Thankfully, we can conservatively date the origin of farming to 10,000 years ago where we define farming as the cultivation of certain plants for eating.  There’s some evidence for the farming of certain grains prior to that, but 10,000 years is a safe estimate.

War

Just so you don’t think things were all happy and loving before God came along and created us, I need to point out that there was war before we existed.  Graves of Nubians (from the Sudan area in Egypt) dating back 12,000 years suggest two warring factions.

Dinosaurs

Just in case we forget about the Tyrannosaurus Rex in the room, we have evidence for dinosaurs existing 230 million years ago.  They had died out before God had created the earth for them to live on (65 million years ago).  I’ve left dinosaurs until the end because of the abundance of evidence for their existence.  It just seems unthinkable that any sane, logical person could dismiss such a mountain of evidence and instead favour the word of a book that is, itself, full of inaccuracies, hate, bigotry and contradictions.

So…

As you can see, we achieved a lot before God created us, and there was an awful lot going on in the world before it was even a twinkle in God’s eye. I know that not all Christians choose to accept the Bible as a literal interpretation of events, but that begs the question of which bits of their holy book they will choose to ignore next.

The above list doesn’t even scratch the surface of the pre-God earth, it’s a shame that certain elements within our society want to diminish and compress our planet’s history.

Looking further at this concept allows us to boil it down into two related variables.  Firstly we have education (nurture) and then we have evolution (nature).

It’s possible to easily track the effect education can have on religion by looking at the proportion of religious people by nation.  Different nations have different levels of education, and likewise, different nations have different levels of belief.  There’s a nifty website called YesNoGod.com that has one purpose, to measure the levels of belief in God by country.  At the time of writing there’s a clear tilt towards non-believing from the more educated countries.  Dare I say, the more developed countries.

At this point I need to point out that correlation is not the same as causation.  Not by any means.  However, there is a strong correlation and we can hope, that in this case, a certain degree of causation exists.  There’s certainly something there to suggest that as the level of education increases, the level of belief decreases.  There are, of course, some conditions that need to be applied.  For example, it has to be good, impartial education.  Teach facts, not beliefs, basically.

So what about evolution?  We need to take a limited view of evolution and natural selection in this context.  Natural selection doesn’t work as well in such a developed species as humans as we are in the almost unique position of having the superior members of the species preventing the inferior members from failing.  But, suppose we are still evolving mentally.  I would suggest the following graph as a fair representation of what we will experience.

So what does this mean?  To understand it, we have to look at the labels on the axis.  Human Evolution refers to evolution of us as a species.  This isn’t necessarily physical or mental evolution, but also represents societal knowledge and awareness.  The sum of us as species, something that is steadily increasing.  The other axis indicates the amount of faith required to be religious.  Many believe this to be fixed, but I would suggest otherwise.  To be frank, as scientific knowledge improves, and the stories written about in the various holy books are disproved, it will be harder to believe them.  It will require more faith, more devotion.  My anecdotal evidence for this is the sharp decrease in the number of people who literally believe the Bible’s description of Genesis as scientific evidence continues to prove it to be factually inaccurate.  For example, completely disproving the Bible’s claimed age of the earth.

You’ll note that the graph isn’t smooth.  In fact, it has a number of points which see sharp rises.  These are events, or discoveries, that make a significant impact on the teachings of the various religious books.  Discovering the earth’s true age would be one such discovery.

Unfortunately, this inevitable path brings with it the most hated form of religion.  Extremism.  As the amount of faith required increases, the type of person who believes changes.  Moderately religious people evolve into agnostics, or even atheists, and extremists begin to be considered mainstream.  And as you can see from the graph, I don’t for see a complete end to religion at any point.  It will just reach the stage where the amount of faith required to believe will mean only the most extreme, the most vulnerable, the least educated and the most suggestible will consider themselves religious.

I’m putting this out there, I’m interested in your opinions.  And whether you think my theories, and reasoning, are sound.

For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. For it is written:
“I will destroy the wisdom of the wise; the intelligence of the intelligent I will frustrate.”

1 Corinthians 1:18-31

 So, just to be clear.  It is in God’s plans to destroy the wisdom of the wise and to frustrate the intelligent.  If there’s anyone out there who would classify themselves as “wise” or “intelligent” I have one question for you.  Why would God, the all powerful being, want to destroy wisdom and frustrate the intelligent?

Let’s think about this logically.  If the bible says that God will destroy wisdom, and frustrate the intelligent, those who are not in possession of those attributes will look at those who do with, at best suspicion or at worse contempt.  Therefore, when the wise and intelligent amongst us stand up and declare that God clearly does not exist, the calls will fall on ears deafened to the people who can actually help us move on as a species.

Whoever wrote The Bible wants the readers to believe that God can destroy wisdom and intelligence because both wisdom and intelligence will lead to the inevitable conclusion the The Bible is a lie, and the God described within it is not real.  And as far as those in positions of power are concerned, the longer they can stunt the development of us as a people, us as a nation, the more they gain.  Because once wisdom and intelligence become widespread, so will the realization that religion is the biggest con of all time.

I’d be interested in what you think about this. It seems as if the Devil made the offer to Jesus and at a later point Jesus exhibited one of the attributes the Devil offered to furnish him with. Like I said, I’m no bible scholar (nor would I want to be) but it seems this is at least a possibility. Just putting it out there.

Timeline Map of Religion