Collected Social and Political Essays, an Essay fanfic

The Third Side of the Evolution/Creationism Debate
27. August 2005

I recently was talking to a friend of mine, another aerospace engineer, about a bothersome email he had received from his friend. It concerned the all too controversial topic of evolution: whether this “illegitimate hypothesis” should be taught in high schools, and if the principals of intelligent design or its harsher brother, creationism, should be taught instead.

My friend, Robert, had apparently been debating the subject with his friend, Tim, for some time, and had finally gotten frustrated over the entire thing. He was not going to change his opinions based on Tim’s evidence, nor could he come up with any of his own that would convince Tim. He showed me Tim’s email after the topic had somehow came up in conversation, perhaps hoping that I had some magical argument that would clear up the whole murky issue.

I do not. However, I do have some opinions of a type that you don’t normally hear on the news or read in the paper. But first for a bit of background, I think, so you can understand where I am coming from.

I’m an aerospace engineer with a minor in astrophysics and a strong interest in geology. My two sisters are biologists. I’ve always loved science, and science has always been a common topic of conversation in my family, at least as it relates to current events. And I believe in evolution.

I am also a practicing Catholic who plays flute in her church choir. I went to a Catholic high school in the US state of Wisconsin and learned my basics of science, including biology, there. I attended religious education lessons from preschool up through high school. And I believe that God created and sustains the universe and everything in it, including Man.

“Contradictory!” Robert’s friend Tim would yell at this, I’m certain. But I argue that it isn’t. Charles Darwin himself was a deist, an opinion that did not change after his journeys on the Beagle. And I have had, in my own life, a better example of a scientific man who had combined his beliefs in God and evolution and distilled them into a single, logical, philosophically-sound way of life. That man was my ninth-grade biology teacher, Mr. Spriggs, and it is his basic concept that I’d like to present here. It seems to me now, as it did the day he mentioned it in class, a simple, clear, respectable view, and it troubles me that I’ve never seen anything like it in print.

On that day, Mr. Spriggs concluded his lecture on the scientific principles of evolution, and then added something to the effect of: “I suspect you’re wondering how this fits in with your religion classes, and Adam and Eve and God creating the universe in seven days, right? Well, I don’t know about Adam and Eve, but I just think it’s my job to tell you that there’s no reason to think that evolution means God didn’t create the world. I, personally, believe that God created the world and the universe, and that he uses evolution as his tool to change it.”

So simple a statement. So clear. And if you could have heard his voice, you would have understood that he, as a believer in both scientific evolution and God, meant it entirely. Mr. Spriggs wasn’t one of those deep, profound professors you hear about and he certainly was no theologian, but he was a good teacher and a good person. And I think he had the right idea. If you believe that God is watching over the Universe and making things “right” as He sees fit, then you must accept (or, at least, hope!) that he has some ultimate plan for changing it. He needs a way to make His changes, though, and I see no reason not to accept evolution as his “tool” (or, if you prefer, one of his tools) for doing so. Why couldn’t God, in His infinite wisdom, have set up a slow (to us) process to change the Universe?

When Robert and I were discussing Tim’s email and this concept, we hit upon a concept that I don’t think he had ever considered before. Robert, you see, is one of those people who were raised as Christians, but never really had much to do with any church except on Christmas and Easter. He’s pretty much given up on the whole God thing by now, which I imagine makes it very hard for him to see eye-to-eye with his friend Tim on anything. I think it’s also the reason he had never considered the concept that I consider the main issue of the entire evolution/creationism debate. It’s a matter of the difference between the fundamentals of science and the fundamentals of religion. I don’t mean any specific religion, either, mind you. Perhaps it’s better to think of it as a difference in mindset. The author Robert M Pirsig speaks rather eloquently about this difference in mindsets in his book “Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance” (which, by the way, has nothing to do with either evolution or motorcycles), but I’ll ramble along through my version of it here anyhow, as it relates to evolution.

Science aims to answer the question “How does it work?”. For example: “How fast does light travel?” “How did the Milky Way form?” “How did Man evolve from apes?” Etcetera. Science is the study of HOW things work, from very small things like quarks to very large things like universes. It also answers the questions of “What does it look like?” and “How will it react if...?”, but those are really just descriptions and extrapolations off the initial question of “How does it work?”. The ultimate goal of science to is be able to know the initial state of everything in the universe and to be able to perfectly predict where everything will be at any other time. This is a very useful goal if you’re sailing a boat and want to avoid crashing into the pier, but it’s not a whole lot of use if you want to write a book or compose a piece of music. “How does it work?” cannot answer all questions.

Religion, on the other hand, tries to answer the question “Why is it like this?”. Such as: “Why is there sin in the world?” “Why do people die?” “Why does Man exist at all?” Religion is the study of WHY things work. It studies a world that we often cannot see or touch, but one which we must believe in. Religion is an amorphous subject at best, since it often asks what is “right” or “wrong”, rather than what is measurably “true” or “false”. It relies upon the shaky structure of belief – faith – to hold it upright. The ultimate goal of religion is to understand how to live life in a perfect manner, usually in accordance with the wishes of some sort of God or gods. Religious conviction can be a wonder with which to comfort a friend in pain, a confidence to bolster yourself with in times of trouble. But it simply doesn’t help you to count out proper change at a cash register or to fly an airplane around the globe. “Why is it like this?” cannot answer all questions.

So, if common sense tells us that neither science nor religion can answer all questions alone, then what else is left except to accept that the Universe can only be described in full by a combination of the two studies? And I would argue that the birth and development of Man as a species is one of those tricky subjects where a certain amount of overlap between religion and science is needed for full understanding. After all, an ideal knowledge of science could tell us when Man first appeared on the Earth and how he got there. An ideal knowledge of religion could tell us why he had been placed there and what the goals of his existence were. The combination would be total understanding.

Unfortunately, life is rarely so simple as to provide us with such ultimate knowledge. Neither science nor religion are at states we can safely call “ideal” – a statement proven simply by the fact that scientists are still arguing about science and theologians are still arguing about religion. Clearly, we don’t know everything. This imperfect understanding in both areas causes trouble in various ways.

In simple terms, the main trouble comes down to making mistakes. The scientific kind of mistake are best understood: one day the scientific community says the answer is 3.2, the next day, it’s 3.1. Why? Because someone made a mistake and then corrected it. Perhaps you have done the experiment in high school physics where you drop a ball and film its motion as it falls, in order to determine a value for the gravitational acceleration of the Earth. How is it that on both occasions I’ve seen this simple test performed, I heard results ranging from 5 to 15, when the commonly accepted value is 9.81 meters per second squared? Probably it’s because the students (being generally lazy and uninterested, and working with ancient equipment) made a variety of mistakes. In physics class, you shrug and chalk it down to the old lab-time favorite: “human and measurement error”. In the real world, you write a paper about it, and don’t realize you did anything wrong until months later, when a colleague asks you about it. Or perhaps you never realize it’s wrong at all, because no one else notices either.

In religion, mistakes are often even more difficult to catch. It took the Catholic church several hundred years to un-excommunicate Galileo, after all, and that concerned a fairly well-behaved matter. When defining what is “right” versus “wrong”, how can you define “right”? How can you prove what God is or is not, what He does or does not do, until you get a chance to ask Him yourself? All of this means that “right” is often defined as “what most people believe”, and “wrong” accordingly. Which, come to think of it, is not all that different from science, except that scientists are also supposed to provide some form of physical evidence to support their claims. Imagine a theologian knocking on heaven’s doors and asking God, “Excuse me, sir, could you just sign off on this religious theory of mine, please? I have to show it to my superiors next week and could really use the endorsement.” No. Alas, the religious community has it tough in that regard.

The difficulty surrounding the evolution/creationism debate is that neither side has truly perfect evidence supporting their claims. There aren’t too many people who argue that the Sun goes around the Earth anymore, because we’ve got telescopes and have sent out probes to look. But evolution... All the evidence is buried in rocks and sediment and is millions or billions of years old! We can all look at a dinosaur skeleton and say, “Nope, there aren’t any more of those around!”, but does that mean anything more than that a strange beast died out before any caveman could write down that they’d seen it? The evolutionist says, “Yes. If you study its fossils and compare them to the fossil record, you’ll find that this creature is related to modern birds. I wonder how closely related they actually are...” The creationist says, “No. All it means is that God created this creature and then chose for it to die out. I wonder why He did that...”

I say that, perhaps, both are right. Why is it so hard to believe that God created that dinosaur, watched its kind start to evolve into a bird, and then allowed the older breed to go extinct? What’s wrong with that theory? Is that not evolution as Darwin intended it?

Ah, but the fringes of both the creationist and evolution sides revolt! “Your dating methods are nonsense!” yell the creationists. “They’ve worked on those other fossils,” retort the evolutionists, “and see here, where the arm bones are just like a falcon’s wing.” The problem is that there have been cases found – odd, mysterious cases – where the scientists are left confused and questioning. Cases where things don’t seem to line up and make sense. The creationists jump on these cases, insisting that their confusion is proof that the theory of evolution is a failure. The scientists, whether fanatic fringe-evolutionists or more mainstream ones – are forced into a defensive stance, as no one wants their life’s work ridiculed. They become too embroiled in proving that their case is not proof of creationism to wonder if it should be teaching them something about evolutionary theories instead.

And there is the great tragedy of it all. When scientists worry more about how “the public” is going to look at their work than about what their work is actually telling them, they are not doing their jobs well. Because part of science – the really fundamental part – is the ability to question your work, and that of everyone who’s come before you, and to change it if you find new evidence suggesting that something is wrong. Einstein overthrew more “laws” of physics than I can count, but his changes were accepted, probably because they don’t affect the lives or sensitivities of most non-scientists. But evolution affects people in a more personal manner. I have a grandmother who, intelligent and scientifically-interested though she may be, has told me that she “doesn’t like the idea of being a cousin to a monkey.” Now, admittedly, I’m a bit partial to monkeys myself, but I don’t think that that’s truly influencing my disagreement with her on the matter. Still, there’s no arguing that being related, however distantly, to a slug or mosquito is a somewhat displeasing thought. On the other hand, the theologian in me tends to remind me about now: “We are all God’s creatures, aren’t we?” The scientist in me agrees, albeit for totally different reasons.

However irrational it may seem to some, this discomfort is real in many educated people’s minds, and it’s causing trouble for that group of researchers who I will call the “real” scientists. These are the people who may have an opinion on the evolution/creationism issue, but who are willing to challenge it when new evidence is found. Because science is not static. We do not know everything, and some of what we think we know is certain to be wrong. That’s an unhappy fact of the scientific process, but also the most exciting part of a scientist’s professional journey: to boldly know what no man has known before! If a scientist finds a piece of evidence that supports evolution, he should feel duty-bound to study it thoroughly and then report it. Similarly, if he finds evidence that something is funny with a piece of the evolutionary puzzle, he should feel obliged to publish his suspicions professionally. If enough curious pieces are brought together, it may be possible to find a connection between them and then – EUREKA! – scientific progress is made. The entire theory of evolution can then be amended, added to, or in the most extreme case, thrown out entirely.

That’s because part of science is changing your mind when you find proof that you’re wrong. Astronomers are arguing about that today, as it relates to gravity in the far reaches of the galaxy – maybe the gravitational constant isn’t really so constant after all, some are saying. The scientific jury’s still out on that one, but the mere fact that they are questioning a four-hundred-year-old basic tenet of physics is mind-boggling. And eminently correct. The astronomers on both sides of the debate are doing their jobs by questioning the world around them and trying to fit all of its pieces together into one coherent puzzle. Why aren’t the evolutionists?

To be fair, I suspect that many of them are. I suspect that the majority of biologists and paleontologists researching the matter are quietly publishing their findings so that their colleagues can see what they’ve found and learn from it. The trouble is the fringe groups: those who believe so strongly in either evolution or creationism that they are unwilling to welcome facts that oppose their belief. This type of “scientist” (and I use the term loosely and disparagingly here) prefers to make all facts he sees point to his pre-made conclusion, and ignore any that don’t fit. The evolutionists who brush off oddball data that don’t perfectly match Darwin’s theories fit this description. So do the creationists who point to the statistical error in scientific measurements and say, “Well, if you’re not one hundred percent sure of this, then I won’t believe it.” Science just doesn’t work that way. Fringe groups on both sides of the issue are obstructing the “real” scientists by attracting the social weight of the media to a place it shouldn’t be: the science lab. It is important to know what our scientists are doing, yes. But it’s also important to give them the time and breathing space to do their jobs correctly. Scientific progress takes time and patience, which seems to be in short supply on the evolution/creationism front. And fringe-scientist articles, on either side, are headline news. The trick is to remember that logic can be used to “prove” anything, if you talk fast enough. It is both the greatest gift and the curse of science, and it’s being manipulated shamelessly by both sides.

I believe that both science and religion have an important place in this world. I believe that God created this world and that He sustains it, and I think He gave us humans a great gift in the form of intelligence. I consider the ability to understand and study the Universe as one of the greatest parts of this gift, and I find it insulting to think that God would give us such an ability without expecting us to use it as fully as we can. One facet of the gift of intelligence is the ability to question: curiosity. Not to question, therefore, strikes me as highly discourteous to the giver of that gift. And perhaps the finest question to wonder about – and the one which I believes gives most honor to our gift’s giver – is that concerning our own origin. It is a question that we may never be able to answer perfectly, but one which teaches us about ourselves and the place we live in in ways we could not hope to imagine if we refused to stop and ask the dual questions of “Why?” and “How?”. It is a question so large that no one man, no one organization or country or occupation, can ever hope to tackle by itself. The question of evolution/creationism is a question which requires the brainpower and soul-searching of all disciplines, including both the scientific and religious communities.
Neglecting to listen to either side means risking the loss of a critical piece of the puzzle that is Man.

A note to the world’s theologians: If you are offended, look to your own pieces of the puzzle. Let the scientists do their jobs to study HOW life was created and how it is changing.

A note to the world’s scientists: If you are offended, look to your own pieces of the puzzle. Let the theologians do their jobs to study WHY life was created and if it should change.

A note to the world’s curious observers: If you are offended, be patient. Watch what is being debated on both fronts, but with an understanding that both sides are probably part wrong and part right. Consider that the topic of the beginning and progression of life is not a war fought between scientists and theologians – it is simply a puzzle with two different types of pieces, all of which are needed for complete understanding.