Faith in Facts

_4.6 Billion Years Ago The Solar System was Created

_4.5 Billion Years Earth was created

EVOLUTION FAITH IN FACTS

_3.8 Billion Years Simple Cells (Prokaryotes)

1

EVO

1

LVE.

4 _3 Billion Years Viruses

_2.15 Billion Years Photosynthesis

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Careful Persuasion

& The Theory of Evolution

Creationism is like a roly-poly clown that pops back up when you punch it.

We must resist the temptation though.

There is overwhelming evidence that evolution is fact. To those who are uncertain about explanations of life’s diversity, people who hold faith-based positions - you have to wonder how many people that are “uncertain” will be won over eventually. With constant discussion on evolution versus intelligent design/creationism you’d think world might think that the evidence is something is worth taking into account, but more often than not the information is met with, “I found your evidence for evolution very convincing - but I still don’t believe it”. It is unfortunate that there are large numbers of people for whom no amount of evidence and elegant argument will do. For those of us comfortable with the fact of evolution, even those already familiar with many of the arguments and the examples demonstrating evolution, there is much that is new and stimulating, even refreshing. When creationism is spreading to the extent that there is even a creationist church in the main town in the Galapagos, of all places, we need to look further into the argument.

In biology, evolution is change in the genetic material of a population of organisms from one generation to the next. Though changes produced in any one generation are small, differ-

5 _1,850 Million Years Complex Cells

ences accumulate with each generation and can, over time, cause substantial changes in the population, a process that can culminate in the emergence of a new species. Indeed, the similarities amongst species suggests that all known species are descended from a common ancestor (or ancestral gene pool) through this process of gradual divergence.

The basis of evolution is the genes that are passed on from generation to generation; these produce an organism’s inherited traits. These traits vary within populations, with organisms showing heritable differences (variation) in their traits. Evolution itself is the product of two opposing forces: processes that constantly introduce variation, and processes that make variants either become more common or rare. New variation arises in two main ways: either from mutations in genes, or from the transfer of genes between populations and between species.

In species that reproduce sexually, new combinations of genes are also produced by genetic recombination, which can increase variation between organisms.

Two major mechanisms determine which variants will become more common or rare in a population. One is natural selection a process that causes helpful traits (those that increase the chance of survival and reproduc-

_1,700 Million Years Multi-Cellular Life

tion) to become more common in a population and causes harmful traits to become more rare. This occurs because individuals with advantageous traits are more likely to reproduce, meaning that more individuals in the next generation will inherit these traits. Over many generations, adaptations occur through a combination of successive, small, random changes in traits, and natural selection of the variants bestsuited for their environment. The other major mechanism driving evolution is genetic drift, an independent process that produces random changes in the frequency of traits in a population.

Genetic drift results from the role that chance plays in whether a given trait will be passed on as individuals survive and reproduce.

Evolutionary biologists document the fact that evolution occurs, and also develop and test theories that explain its causes. The study of evolutionary biology began in the mid-nineteenth century, when studies of the fossil record and thediversity of living organisms convinced most scientists that species changed over time. However, the mechanism driving these changes remained unclear until the theories of natural selection were independently discovered by Charles Darwin and Alfred Wallace.

Darwin’s landmark workon The Origin of Species of 1859 brought the

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new theories of evolution by natural selection to a wide audience. Darwin’s work soon led to overwhelming acceptance of evolution among scientists. In the 1930s, Darwinian natural selection was combined with Mendelian inheritance to form the modern evolutionary synthesis, which connected the units of evolution (genes) and the mechanism of evolution (natural selection). This powerful explanatory and predictive theory directs research by constantly raising new questions, and it has become the central organizing principle of modern biology, providing a unifying explanation for the diversity of life on Earth. Logic is defined by the Penguin Encyclopeadia to be “The formal systematic study of the principles of valid inference and correct reasoning”. As a discipline, logic dates back to Aristotle, who established its fundamental place in philosophy. It became part of the classical trivium, a fundamental part of a classical education, and is now an integral part of disciplines such as mathematics, computer sciences and linguistics. Logic concerns the structure of statements and arguments, in formal systems of inference and natural language. Topics include validity, fallacies and paradoxes, reasoning using probability and arguments involving causality and time. Logic is also commonly used today in argumentation theory.

6 _630 Million Years Bilateral Symmetry

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Perfect Sense

1859 The study of evolutionaryNicholas biology began in the Brosz, of South Dakota is ex-assembly of God member who mid-nineteenth century, an now considers himself a free thinking

tion power of Earth’s magnetic field being temporarily “shut off”. And then, if the world had suddenly gone from atheist. He converted after much thinkrotating at 465.11 m/s (at the equator) ing and after realising that the Bible to no movement at all, everything on had no concrete proof. Here are some the earth would have been shot out into of his thoughts. “The concept that space as if from a slingshot. many people have fought and died for Second, according to Genesis chapthroughout humanity’s existence. Some ter 17, Abraham’s wife managed to give The Origin of Species of 1859 brought the new theories of evolution. have fought and died for it, while far birth to a son despite having passed more have fought and died against it. menopause. Even if she had a single Here are some thoughts concerning the egg cell left in her ovaries, the chances Bible and stories or miracles mentioned of that egg being fertilized by Abraham therein. during the narrow window in which First, one of the most logic-defying it would be possible is so unlikely, it miracles appears in Joshua 10:13. could practically be called impossible.

“So the sun stood still, and the moon Third, Noah’s Ark. In order to build stopped, till the nation avenged itself a boat large enough to hold two of on [ Or nation triumphed over ] its every species of creature on Earth as enemies, as it is written in the Book of well as the food required would have Jashar. The sun stopped in the middle without a doubt caused the Ark to be of the sky and delayed going down so heavy, it would have undoubtedly about a full day.” Now, in order for the sunk. Furthermore, such a construction sun to stand still, the earth naturally task would have taken one man’s family would have had to cease rotating. many decades to build working alone, However, this would have caused not especially since according to the techonly gravity itself to cease, but also this nical specifications the Bible gives for would have caused worldwide temperathe ark, it was 450x75x45 feet, which ture changes, a temporary changing of would be 1,518,750 cubic feet, hardly the Earth’s magnetic field (causing all enough to hold 2 of every unclean creatures that use said field for navigaanimal and 7 of every clean animal on tion to be thrown into turmoil as their Earth (including many species that are “north star”, so to speak, disappeared) now extinct, such as dinosaurs). And as well as giving everyone on the bright then there’s the problem of food. How side of the Earth a potentially lethal would he feed these creatures for the dose of UV radiation due to the deflec150 days in which he resided in the

“AN EXPLANATION FOR THE DIVERSITY OF LIFE ON EARTH.”

7 _570 Million Years Anthropods

Ark? How would he and his family have managed to single-handedly give all these creatures fresh water (since the new oceans of the Earth would have been quite undrinkable if not due to salt content then due to the microbes from all the decomposing creatures that had died in the flood), cleaned out the dung (which, again, would have gone into their water source), and kept the animals from fighting or in any other way getting riled up? My parents claim that God put them all into hibernation, but that still doesn’t explain how they would all fit on the Ark, and most creatures wouldn’t be able to go into hibernation and be sustained for 150 days on nothing but body fat (reptiles included, don’t store near enough body fat to survive a 150-day hibernation without any food and then, when it was all over, having to wait until other creatures either reproduced or flora returned before they could eat). Then, Noah was informed of the water having drained from the earth (apparently to an undisclosed location, since there doesn’t seem to be that much water on Earth now) by a dove having brought him back an olive tree leaf. The problem with this is that olive trees need “average” rainfall. Being submerged for 150 days would have been more than enough to drown any olive tree (and probably any other tree as well for that matter) or at least cause it to die due to

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lack of sunlight. Furthermore, it would have taken much longer than just a the few days that the water was drained for a new olive tree to sprout and grow to the point of bearing leaves.

Of course, there’s also the miracles in which the dead are brought back to life. The problem with this is that by the time 3 days had gone by (in the case of Jesus or Lazarus), the body would have gone into an extended state of decay, all tissue in the body being dead and the brain having suffered irreversible damage. Unless Jesus and Lazarus (and others who were resurrected) could spontaneously regain the chemicals and electric signals that made up their memory (which defies all proven laws of the inability for matter to appear out of nothing), they would have been brought back to life with almost complete memory loss, not to mention their muscles being stricken with rigor mortis (which beings after 3 hours and takes over 72 hours to dissipate), which would have made them unable to even hold their bodies upright and stand.

I could go on, but it is unnecessary.

Suffice it to say that I realized how many impossible (by proven scientific facts, versus faith and biblical theory) many (if not most or all) the miracles described in the Bible are. From there I came to realize that religion was not worth what it asked for (not including

_540 Million Years Backboned Animals

the weekly church donations that costs my family some 5,000 to 7,500 dollars or more yearly) and the blinding of people to what could be a foreseeable truth, meaning if a scientist discovered groundbreaking evidence that could change the way Humanity worked but would contradict the Bible, Christians, against all logic and reason would stick to their false faith rather than go towards what may cause Humanity and the Earth as a whole to become enlightened.”

The God Delusion is a 2006 bestselling non-fiction book by British biologist Richard Dawkins, professorial fellow of New College, Oxford, and inaugural

8 _535 Million Years Since the Cambrian Explosion

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1%

35%

39%

25%

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Americans that believe in the “theory of evolution.”

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Americans that don’t have an opinion either way

39% 36% 73% 3% BELIEVE Americans that believe “God exsists without a doubt.”

BELIEF IN EVOLUTION (LEFT) 39% Believe 25% Do Not Believe 35% No Opinion 1% No Answer

As Darwin is being lauded as one of the most important scientists in history on the 200th anniversary of his birth (on Feb. 12, 1809), it is dismaying to scientists who study and respect his work to see that well less than half of Americans today say they believe in the theory of evolution, and that just 55% can associate the man with his theory.

Hard-core American Atheists

Naturally, some of this is because of educational differences. Americans who have lower levels of formal education are significantly less likely than others to be able to identity Darwin with his theory, and to have an opinion on it either way. Americans’ religious beliefs are a significant predictor of their attitudes toward Darwin’s theory.

F FAC Q

TS.

If we are going to teach creation science as an alternative to evolution, then we should also teach the stork theory as an alternative to biological reproduction.

12 _370 Million Years Land Vertebrates

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Richard Dawkins:

& The God Delusion

holder of the Charles Somonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at the University of Oxford.

In The God Delusion, Dawkins contends that a supernatural creator almost certainly does not exist and that belief in a personal God qualifies as a delusion, which he defines as a persistent false belief held in the face of strong contradictory evidence. He is sympathetic to Robert Pirsig’s observation in Lila that “when one person suffers from a delusion it is called insanity. When many people suffer from a delusion it is called religion.”

He then turns to the subject of Morality maintaining that we do not need religion to be good. Instead, our morality has a Darwinian explanation: altruistic genes, selected through the process of evolution, give people natural empathy. He asks, “would you commit murder, rape or robbery if you knew that no God existed?” He argues that very few people would answer “yes”, undermining the claim that religion is needed to make us behave morally. In support of this view, he surveys the history of morality, arguing that there is a moral Zeitgiest that continually evolves in society. As it progresses, this moral consensus influences how religious leaders interpret their holy writings.

Thus, Dawkins states, morality does not originate from the Bible, rather our moral progress informs what part of the

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Bible Christians accept and what they now dismiss.

One of Einstein’s most eagerly quoted remarks is ‘Science without religion is lame, religion without science is blind.’ Does it seem that Einstein contradicted himself? That his words can be cherry-picked for quotes to support both sides of an argument? No. By ‘religion’ Einstein meant something entirely different from what is conventionally meant. As I continue to clarify the distinction between supernatural religion on the one hand and Einsteinian religion on the other, bear in mind that I am calling only supernatural gods delusional. Einstein said, “I am a deeply religious nonbeliever. This is a somewhat new kind of religion. “ In greater numbers since his death, religious apologists understandably try to claim Einstein as one of their own.

Some of his religious contemporaries saw him very differently. In 1940 Einstein wrote a famous paper justifying his statement ‘I do not believe in a personal God.’ This and similar statements provoked a storm of letters from the religiously orthodox, many of them alluding to Einstein’s Jewish origins.

The extracts that follow are taken from Max Jammer’s book Einstein and Religion (which is also my main source of quotations from Einstein himself on religious matters). The Roman Catholic Bishop of Kansas City said: ‘It is sad

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to see a man, who comes from the race of the Old Testament and its teaching, deny the great tradition of that race.’

Other Catholic clergymen chimed in: ‘There is no other God but a personal God ... Einstein does not know what he is talking about. He is all wrong. Some men think that because they have achieved a high degree of learning in some field, they are qualified to express opinions in all.’ The notion that religion is a proper field, in which one might claim expertise, is one that should not go unquestioned. That clergyman presumably would not have deferred to the expertise of a claimed ‘fairyologist’ on the exact shape and colour of fairy wings. Both he and the bishop thought that Einstein, being theologically untrained, had misunderstood the nature of God. On the contrary, Einstein understood very well exactly what he was denying.

An American Roman Catholic lawyer, working on behalf of an ecumenical coalition, wrote to Einstein: We deeply regret that you made your statement ... in which you ridicule the idea of a personal God. In the past ten years nothing has been so calculated to make people think that Hitler had some reason to expel the Jews from Germany as your statement. Conceding your right to free speech, I still say that your statement constitutes you as one of the greatest sources of discord in America.

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A New York rabbi said: ‘Einstein is unquestionably a great scientist, but his religious views are diametrically opposed to Judaism.’

‘But’? ‘But’? Why not ‘and’? There is every reason to think that famous Einsteinisms like ‘God is subtle but he is not malicious’ or ‘He does not play dice’ or ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?’ are pantheistic, not deistic, and certainly not theistic.

‘God does not play dice’ should be translated as ‘Randomness does not lie at the heart of all things.’ ‘Did God have a choice in creating the Universe?’ means ‘Could the universe have begun in any other way?’ Einstein was using ‘God’ in a purely metaphorical, poetic sense. So is Stephen Hawking, and so are most of those physicists who occasionally slip into the language of religious metaphor.

It is fashionable to wax apocalyptic about the threat to humanity posed by the AIDS virus, “mad cow” disease, and many others, but I think a case can be made that faith is one of the world’s great evils, comparable to the smallpox virus but harder to eradicate.

Faith, being belief that isn’t based on evidence, is the principal vice of any religion. And who, looking at Northern Ireland or the Middle East, can be confident that the brain virus of faith is not exceedingly dangerous? One of the stories told to the young Muslim sui-

14 _200 Million Years Warm Blooded Mammals

“In order to build a boat large enough to hold two of every species or creature on Earth as well as the food required would have without a doubt caused the Ark to be so heavy, it would have undoubtedly sunk.’”.”

_150 Million Years Birds

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cide bombers is that martyrdom is the quickest way to heaven — and not just heaven but a special part of heaven where they will receive their special reward of 72 virgin brides. It occurs to me that our best hope may be to provide a kind of “spiritual arms control”: send in specially trained theologians to deescalate the going rate in virgins.

Given the dangers of faith — and considering the accomplishments of reason and observation in the activity called science — I find it ironic that, whenever I lecture publicly, there always seems to be someone who comes forward and says, “Of course, your science is just a religion like ours.

Fundamentally, science just comes down to faith, doesn’t it?”

Well, science is not religion and it doesn’t just come down to faith.

Although it has many of religion’s virtues, it has none of its vices. Science is based upon verifiable evidence.

Religious faith not only lacks evidence, its independence from evidence is its pride and joy, shouted from the rooftops. Why else would Christians wax critical of doubting Thomas? The other apostles are held up to us as exemplars of virtue because faith was enough for them. Doubting Thomas, on the other hand, required evidence. Perhaps he should be the patron saint of scientists.

One reason I receive the comment

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about science being a religion is because I believe in the fact of evolution.

I even believe in it with passionate conviction. To some, this may superficially look like faith. But the evidence that makes me believe in evolution is not only overwhelmingly strong; it is freely available to anyone who takes the trouble to read up on it. Anyone can study the same evidence that I have and presumably come to the same conclusion. But if you have a belief that is based solely on faith, I can’t examine your reasons. You can retreat behind the private wall of faith where I can’t reach you.

Now in practice, of course, individual scientists do sometimes slip back into the vice of faith, and a few may believe so single-mindedly in a favorite theory that they occasionally falsify evidence.

However, the fact that this sometimes happens doesn’t alter the principle that, when they do so, they do it with shame and not with pride. The method of science is so designed that it usually finds them out in the end.

Science is actually one of the most moral, one of the most honest disciplines around — because science would completely collapse if it weren’t for a scrupulous adherence to honesty in the reporting of evidence. (As James Randi has pointed out, this is one reason why scientists are so often fooled by paranormal tricksters and why

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the debunking role is better played by professional conjurors; scientists just don’t anticipate deliberate dishonesty as well.) There are other professions (no need to mention lawyers specifically) in which falsifying evidence or at least twisting it is precisely what people are paid for and get brownie points for doing.

Science, then, is free of the main vice of religion, which is faith. But, as I pointed out, science does have some of religion’s virtues. Religion may aspire to provide its followers with various benefits — among them explanation, consolation, and uplift. Science, too, has something to offer in these areas.

Humans have a great hunger for explanation. It may be one of the main reasons why humanity so universally has religion, since religions do aspire to provide explanations. We come to our individual consciousness in a mysterious universe and long to understand it.

Most religions offer a cosmology and a biology, a theory of life, a theory of origins, and reasons for existence. In doing so, they demonstrate that religion is, in a sense, science; it’s just bad science. Don’t fall for the argument that religion and science operate on separate dimensions and are concerned with quite separate sorts of questions.

Religions have historically always attempted to answer the questions that properly belong to science. Thus

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religions should not be allowed now to retreat away from the ground upon which they have traditionally attempted to fight. They do offer both a cosmology and a biology; however, in both cases it is false.

Consolation is harder for science to provide. Unlike religion, science cannot offer the bereaved a glorious reunion with their loved ones in the hereafter.

Those wronged on this earth cannot, on a scientific view, anticipate a sweet comeuppance for their tormentors in a life to come. It could be argued that, if the idea of an afterlife is an illusion (as I believe it is), the consolation it offers is hollow. But that’s not necessarily so; a false belief can be just as comforting as a true one, provided the believer never discovers its falsity. But if consolation comes that cheap, science can weigh in with other cheap palliatives, such as pain-killing drugs, whose comfort may or may not be illusory, but they do work.

Uplift, however, is where science really comes into its own. All the great religions have a place for awe, for ecstatic transport at the wonder and beauty of creation. And it’s exactly this feeling of spine-shivering, breathcatching awe — almost worship — this flooding of the chest with ecstatic wonder, that modern science can provide. And it does so beyond the wildest dreams of saints and mystics.

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% OF THOSE WITH POST-GRADUATE DEGREES BELIEVE IN THE THEORY OF EVOLUTION

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CAN YOU TELL ME WITH WHICH SCIENTIFIC THEORY CHARLES DARWIN IS ASSOCIATED?

55% 34% 10% 1% Evolution, Natural Selection, etc (Correct Responses)

Incorrect Response

Unsure/Don’t Know

No Answer

sociated with evolution, such as natural selection) when asked with which theory they associate Darwin. Again, as would be expected, correct identification of Darwin with his scientific theory is highly related to education. Correct identification zooms from only 31% among those with no more than a high school education all the way to 86% among those with postgraduate educations. Americans who seldom or never attend church are slightly, but not overwhelmingly, more likely to correctly identify Darwin with this theory than are those who attend more often.

Only about one-third of Americans today believe the Bible is absolutely accurate and that it should be taken literally word for word. The rest either

feel that the Bible is the inspired word of God, but not literally so, or that it is a book of ancient fables, legends, and history as recorded by man.

Americans’ views on the Bible have not changed materially over the past 16 years. Since 1991, the percentage saying the Bible is the actual, literal word of God has remained in a relatively narrow range between 27% and 35% across this time period, with the average being 31%.

Actual word of God, to be taken literally.

Inspired by the word of God.

Ancient legends, recorded by man.

31%

47%

19%

Before respondents in the current poll were asked about their belief in evolution, they were tested to see whether they could correctly associate evolution with Darwin. The results show that 55% of Americans can correctly name evolution (or another term closely asWHAT IS THE BIBLE?

Darwin’s theory

has been at the forefront of religious debate since he published On the Origin of Species 150 years ago. Even to this day, highly religious individuals claim that the theory of evolution contradicts the story of creation as outlined in the book of Genesis in the Bible.

Thus, it comes as no surprise to find that there is a strong relationship between church attendance in the current data. Those who attend church most often are the least likely to say they believe in evolution.

and belief in evolution

18 _65 Million Years Non-Avian Dinosaurs Died Out

The fact that the supernatural has no place in our explanations, in our understanding of so much about the universe and life, doesn’t diminish the awe. Quite the contrary. The merest glance through a microscope at the brain of an ant or through a telescope at a long-ago galaxy of a billion worlds is enough to render poky and parochial the very psalms of praise.

Now, as I say, when it is put to me that science or some particular part of science, like evolutionary theory, is just a religion like any other, I usually deny it with indignation. But I’ve begun to wonder whether perhaps that’s the wrong tactic. Perhaps the right tactic is to accept the charge gratefully and demand equal time for science in religious education classes. And the more I think about it, the more I realize that an excellent case could be made for this. So I want to talk a little bit about religious education and the place that science might play in it.

I do feel very strongly about the way children are brought up. I’m not entirely familiar with the way things are in the United States, and what I say may have more relevance to the United Kingdom, where there is state-obliged, legally-enforced religious instruction for all children. That’s unconstitutional in the United States, but I presume that children are nevertheless given religious instruction in whatever

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particular religion their parents deem suitable.

Which brings me to my point about mental child abuse. In a 1995 issue of the Independent, one of London’s leading newspapers, there was a photograph of a rather sweet and touching scene. It was Christmas time, and the picture showed three children dressed up as the three wise men for a nativity play. The accompanying story described one child as a Muslim, one as a Hindu, and one as a Christian. The supposedly sweet and touching point of the story was that they were all taking part in this Nativity play.

What is not sweet and touching is that these children were all four years old. How can you possibly describe a child of four as a Muslim or a Christian or a Hindu or a Jew? Would you talk about a four-year-old economic monetarist? Would you talk about a four-year-old neo-isolationist or a four-year-old liberal Republican? There are opinions about the cosmos and the world that children, once grown, will presumably be in a position to evaluate for themselves. Religion is the one field in our culture about which it is absolutely accepted, without question — without even noticing how bizarre it is — that parents have a total and absolute say in what their children are going to be, how their children are going to be raised, what opinions their

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children are going to have about the cosmos, about life, about existence. Do you see what I mean about mental child abuse?

Looking now at the various things that religious education might be expected to accomplish, one of its aims could be to encourage children to reflect upon the deep questions of existence, to invite them to rise above the humdrum preoccupations of ordinary life and think sub specie aeternitatis.

Science can offer a vision of life and the universe which, as I’ve already remarked, for humbling poetic inspiration far outclasses any of the mutually contradictory faiths and disappointingly recent traditions of the world’s religions.

For example, how could children in religious education classes fail to be inspired if we could get across to them some inkling of the age of the universe?

Suppose that, at the moment of Christ’s death, the news of it had started traveling at the maximum possible speed around the universe outwards from the earth. How far would the terrible tidings have traveled by now? Following the theory of special relativity, the answer is that the news could not, under any circumstances whatever, have reached more that one-fiftieth of the way across one galaxy — not one- thousandth of the way to

19 _7 Million Years Gorillas

our nearest neighboring galaxy in the 100-million-galaxy-strong universe. The universe at large couldn’t possibly be anything other than indifferent to Christ, his birth, his passion, and his death. Even such momentous news as the origin of life on Earth could have traveled only across our little local cluster of galaxies. Yet so ancient was that event on our earthly time-scale that, if you span its age with your open arms, the whole of human history, the whole of human culture, would fall in the dust from your fingertip at a single stroke of a nail file.

The argument from design, an important part of the history of religion, wouldn’t be ignored in my religious education classes, needless to say. The children would look at the spellbinding wonders of the living kingdoms and would consider Darwinism alongside the creationist alternatives and make up their own minds. I think the children would have no difficulty in making up their minds the right way if presented with the evidence. What worries me is not the question of equal time but that, as far as I can see, children in the United Kingdom and the United States are essentially given no time with evolution yet are taught creationism (whether at school, in church, or at home).

It would also be interesting to teach more than one theory of creation. The

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dominant one in this culture happens to be the Jewish creation myth, which is taken over from the Babylonian creation myth. There are, of course, lots and lots of others, and perhaps they should all be given equal time (except that wouldn’t leave much time for studying anything else). I understand that there are Hindus who believe that the world was created in a cosmic butter churn and Nigerian peoples who believe that the world was created by God from the excrement of ants. Surely these stories have as much right to equal time as the Judeo-Christian myth of Adam and Eve. So much for Genesis; now let’s move on to the prophets. Halley’s Comet will return without fail in the year 2062.

Biblical or Delphic prophecies don’t begin to aspire to such accuracy; astrologers and Nostradamians dare not commit themselves to factual prognostications but, rather, disguise their charlatanry in a smokescreen of vagueness. When comets have appeared in the past, they’ve often been taken as portents of disaster.

Astrology has played an important part in various religious traditions, including Hinduism. The three wise men I mentioned earlier were said to have been led to the cradle of Jesus by a star. We might ask the children by what physical route do they imagine the alleged stellar influence on human

_2.5 Million Years Genus Homo Appeared

affairs could travel.

Incidentally, there was a shocking program on the BBC radio around Christmas 1995 featuring an astronomer, a bishop, and a journalist who were sent off on an assignment to retrace the steps of the three wise men.

Well, you could understand the participation of the bishop and the journalist (who happened to be a religious writer), but the astronomer was a supposedly respectable astronomy writer, and yet she went along with this! All along the route, she talked about the portents of when Saturn and Jupiter were in the ascendant up Uranus or whatever it was. She doesn’t actually believe in astrology, but one of the problems is that our culture has been taught to become tolerant of it, vaguely amused by it — so much so that even scientific people who don’t believe in astrology sort of think it’s a bit of harmless fun. I take astrology very seriously indeed: I think it’s deeply pernicious because it undermines rationality, and I should like to see campaigns against it.

When the religious education class turns to ethics, I don’t think science actually has a lot to say, and I would replace it with rational moral philosophy. Do the children think there are absolute standards of right and wrong?

And if so, where do they come from?

Can you make up good working

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principles of right and wrong, like “do as you would be done by” and “the greatest good for the greatest number” (whatever that is supposed to mean)?

It’s a rewarding question, whatever your personal morality, to ask as an evolutionist where morals come from; by what route has the human brain gained its tendency to have ethics and morals, a feeling of right and wrong?

Should we value human life above all other life? Is there a rigid wall to be built around the species Homo sapiens, or should we talk about whether there are other species which are entitled to our humanistic sympathies? Should we, for example, follow the right-to-life lobby, which is wholly preoccupied with human life, and value the life of a human fetus with the faculties of a worm over the life of a thinking and feeling chimpanzee? What is the basis of this fence that we erect around Homo sapiens — even around a small piece of fetal tissue? (Not a very sound evolutionary idea when you think about it.) When, in our evolutionary descent from our common ancestor with chimpanzees, did the fence suddenly rear itself up?

Well, moving on, then, from morals to last things, to eschatology, we know from the second law of thermodynamics that all complexity, all life, all laughter, all sorrow, is hell bent on leveling itself out into cold nothingness

21 _151 Years Theory of Evolution

in the end. They — and we — can never be more then temporary, local buckings of the great universal slide into the abyss of uniformity. We know that the universe is expanding and will probably expand forever, although it’s possible it may contract again. We know that, whatever happens to the universe, the sun will engulf the earth in about 60 million centuries from now.

Time itself began at a certain moment, and time may end at a certain moment — or it may not. Time may come locally to an end in miniature crunches called black holes. The laws of the universe seem to be true all over the universe. Why is this? Might the laws change in these crunches? To be really speculative, time could begin again with new laws of physics, new physical constants. And it has even been suggested that there could be many universes, each one isolated so completely that, for it, the others don’t exist. Then again, there might be a Darwinian selection among universes.

So science could give a good account of itself in religious education. But it wouldn’t be enough. I believe that some familiarity with the King James version of the Bible is important for anyone wanting to understand the allusions that appear in English literature. Together with the Book of Common Prayer, the Bible gets 58 pages in the Oxford Dictionary of

_87 Years Evolution is scientifically true

_84 Years No religious conflict over evolution

Quotations. Only Shakespeare has more. I do think that not having any kind of biblical education is unfortunate if children want to read English literature and understand the provenance of phrases like “through a glass darkly,” “all flesh is as grass,” “the race is not to the swift,” “crying in the wilderness,” “reaping the whirlwind,” “amid the alien corn,” “Eyeless in Gaza,” “Job’s comforters,” and “the widow’s mite.”

I want to return now to the charge that science is just a faith. The more extreme version of that charge — and one that I often encounter as both a scientist and a rationalist — is an accusation of zealotry and bigotry in scientists themselves as great as that found in religious people. Sometimes there may be a little bit of justice in this accusation; but as zealous bigots, we scientists are mere amateurs at the game. We’re content to argue with those who disagree with us. We don’t kill them.

But I would want to deny even the lesser charge of purely verbal zealotry.

There is a very, very important difference between feeling strongly, even passionately, about something because we have thought about and examined the evidence for it on the one hand, and feeling strongly about something because it has been internally revealed to us, or internally

revealed to somebody else in history and subsequently hallowed by tradition.

There’s all the difference in the world between a belief that one is prepared to defend by quoting evidence and logic and a belief that is supported by nothing more than tradition, authority, or revelation.

It’s a question you may prefer not to be asked. But I’m afraid I have no choice. We find ourselves, this very autumn, three and a half centuries after the intellectual martyrdom of Galileo, caught up in a struggle of ultimate importance, when each one of us must make a commitment. It is time to declare our position.

This is the challenge posed by the New Atheists. We are called upon, we lax agnostics, we noncommittal nonbelievers, we vague deists who would be embarrassed to defend antique absurdities like the Virgin Birth or the notion that Mary rose into heaven without dying, or any other blatant myth; we are called out, we fence-sitters, and told to help exorcise this debilitating curse: the curse of faith. Religion is not only wrong; it’s evil. Now that the battle has been joined, there’s no excuse for shirking.

“I FOUND YOUR EVIDENCE FOR EVOLUTION VERY CONVINCING, BUT I STILL DON’T BELIEVE IT.”