Question from Wilson:
I am not an expert in biology just warning you, so feel free to enlighten me!
Correct me if I am wrong but evolutionists believe that life originated from a soup filled with amino acids or something along those lines. But there are a whole range of complex and simple microorganisms each with precise roles and functions almost like a program? And correct me again if I am wrong, now the cells function in a certain way due to a specific set of instructions in their DNA…how do you explain the exact precise instruction that each one of these different microorganisms have without there being an intelligent creator…finally I am also wondering how a bunch of amino acids decided to come together to make a microorganism and how that tiny cell decided itself that it needs to reproduce and how the heck microorganisms turn into a fish without a creator and if you’re gonna use time as an answer then what is the probability of such an event occurring for even a simple cell?
(Just as a lot of atheists find the idea of God absurd I find Evolution completely absurd)
Answer by SmartLX:
I’m not an expert in biology either, but a little research in response to things like this can teach you a lot, and I’ve been at it for a few years now. I’m still learning of course; while I write these answers I’ve usually got multiple other tabs open for reference material.
Before I go into details, the same logical problem applies here as to the last question I answered: the argument from ignorance. That’s not an insult, it’s the proper name for a specific fallacy where because you personally don’t know how something could happen, you assume it didn’t. Even if I had no answers for any of these, we would not be justified in jumping to the conclusion of a god until any other possibilities were not just dismissed but actually ruled out (or at the very least, actual probabilities were assigned to them).
I’ll try to address each of your points, but each of my points may not correspond to just one of yours or to the order of yours.
– There are multiple hypotheses about the origin of life from non-life (abiogenesis), and the “primordial soup” idea is one of the classic front-runners. Here’s a list of the current ones.
– Amino acids could occur naturally, as was demonstrated in the 50s, but a lot of different amino acids and other materials had to come together in just the right way to make the first simple proteins and genes. That’s a big factor reducing the probability that it would happen. However, there are three factors of a comparable scale which raised the probability: the sheer amount of material being constantly shoved against itself by natural forces, the huge number of different combinations that could have had the same effect, and finally the vast amount of time you mention – by current estimates, about one billion years from the formation of the Earth to the emergence of the first life form.
– The first life had DNA, or an equivalent like RNA, with one simple instruction: “Use the material around you to make another of yourself.” This was not an intelligent command, it was just something its physical makeup drove it to do, like a pinwheel spinning in the wind because of its shape. If it was in an environment full of the same material of which it was made, then this was straightforward: break evenly in two, then have each half absorb its own weight in raw material, then repeat. This is how microorganisms still do it today.
– Once life existed and was able to reproduce, it began to diversify. Slight imperfections in the self-copying process produced different offspring, and some of those differences were carried forward to the next generation. Whichever differences made it easier to survive and procreate, the creatures with those features tended to grow in number relative to the others. At some point a set of single-celled organisms joined together and shared their genetic material; the experiment was successful, and the first multicellular life came about. (Perhaps it had occurred before, but in the wrong conditions, and everything that tried it died.) At a certain point, small amounts of calcium became part of the essential material in the “body”, forming rigid structures; this helped with self-defense, and the viability of bones was established. Every tiny change that came about had to compete with other changes and come out on top, so every change that persisted had to have some benefit (or at least not be a hindrance), and thus a number of useful features began to accumulate. It’s been so long now that living things and their genes seem to be made of nothing but useful features, though some superseded components (like the appendix) have yet to be eliminated entirely.
I recommend reading at least a couple of books on evolution, just so you can know what the theory actually says before deciding whether it’s so unlikely. Your Inner Fish by Neil Shubin is about to be accompanied by a TV show. Richard Dawkins’ early book The Blind Watchmaker is a great primer, and has little or none of his recent anti-religious material that puts believers off him. Just don’t restrict yourself only to books on evolution by creationists and/or Intelligent Design proponents, because all they do is claim that various things are impossible when at worst we just don’t know how they happen – and sometimes when we actually do know.
The Human Body: The Amazing Multitudinous Dichotomy
Question from Robert:
Message: To whom it may concern: How can you explain the amazing complexity of human beings? The average human body has between 75 to 100 trillion cells. If no God, how could trillions of cells, which have no brain, collect themselves together and then change into all the highly specialized cells of the human body?
Also it takes a man and woman to create a baby. Therefore, a male and female body would have had to evolve at exactly the same time~! And a hermaphroditic human being still poses the same problem. The male and female parts would have needed to evolve — AT THE SAME EXACT TIME~! That is absolutely impossible.
Answer by SmartLX:
Didn’t actually go looking for answers to these, did you? You immediately took them to be ideal rhetorical blunt objects to beat any “Darwinist” into silence. The second one isn’t even a question, and you claim it’s impossible; this is not the language of someone who genuinely wants to know. Even if there were no answers to either one, to assume that there is no possible explanation without actually ruling any out is an argument from ignorance. Thing is, there are quite reasonable answers to each.
Today there are plenty of living things with no brain, and they assemble themselves just fine. Even the creatures with brains must start their self-assembly before the brain is formed, so brains have little or nothing to do with it. One cell automatically divides into two, then four, then eight and so on, held together with membranes. The DNA contained in each and shared by all contains the necessary information to allow each of these “stem cells” to metamorphose into a skin cell, a brain cell, a liver cell or whatever is needed. The cells can send biochemical signals to each other, so for example a cell is informed that there are enough lung cells for the moment and it becomes a bone cell instead. Once enough of an organ has come together, it reflexively begins its specific function: the brain manipulates electrical energy, the kidneys process liquids, the bones produce blood cells.
As for why there are so many cells in a body, there are many factors that limit the size of a living thing but for us none of them really kick in until the trillions. There’s enough food to feed them, they’re light enough not to collapse under their own weight, they’re strong enough not to break apart without significant force. There are obvious advantages of having so many of them together, too: they can defend themselves against similarly large threats, huge numbers of cells can be cut away or killed while the rest survive, they can reproduce fast enough to replace short-lived cells like skin cells. Once early single-celled organisms first fused together and shared their DNA about one billion years ago, there was nothing to stop them from amassing more and more cells per organism for all that time. Exponential growth has led to the huge conglomerates that are modern plants and animals.
In the same fashion that cells differentiate into many different types, the human body as a whole is triggered by its chromosomes to specialise as one of two types, male or female. (Sometimes this goes wrong: the body gets mixed signals and you get intersex babies, or hermaphrodites.) In our evolutionary history this would have started as a much less pronounced difference between two groups in the one microscopic species. Importantly, they remained part of the same species because they exchanged genetic material directly, perhaps by simply pushing it through their cell walls. It immediately conferred an advantage in terms of survival and procreation because the DNA of every new offspring was a recombination of two sets instead of a clone of just one. More new combinations, more mutations and overall faster evolution. (This effect has been observed directly in adjacent populations of small fish, some of which reproduce heterosexually and some unisexually. The ones who have sex with each other build immunity to new diseases in fewer generations.) Once that was happening, the differences within the species were free to develop further, and a similar distinction was already present in every other species that descended from it.
Picking various amazing things about the body (or our planet, or the universe) and claiming they’re unachievable without a god is a terrible way to logically arrive at the necessity of a god, partly because of the argument from ignorance but mostly because there’s usually been a lot of work done to determine the method and it’s liable to be plonked in front of you. This approach is however an excellent way to reassure believers, who are less likely to research a claim that supports their beliefs, that they are justified in their faith. Consider the possibility that this is the spirit in which these ideas were conveyed to you, because they just plain don’t work on atheists.
Why are atheists so mean?
Peter wrote us this week and he has a few questions about atheists…
Dear Ask the Atheist,
1. What is the most common reason for atheists being so, and saying that God can’t exist? I’m not trying to sound ignorant, but coming from a Catholic school and having a friend who is struggling with whether he is atheist or not, I don’t really know.2. Why do so many atheists take the opportunity to rip on Christianity? Not to evangelize, but as a Catholic I believe that God loves the sinner, even atheists. But it appears from the ones I’ve talked to that they are surprised that I’m a creationist, am not actively fighting homosexuality (I am against it, but more personal than religious), and in short not a bigot.3. Going from 2. They’re also fond of ripping on Christianity, and say there’s no point in following anything in the Bible. Even if there is no Heaven or Hell, it doesn’t hurt for the Bible to have guiding factors. The Golden Rule is cited even secularly in public school systems, and almost all of the laws of civilized societies can be traced back somehow to the Bible. If this is so, then why do they say that everything as a whole is flawed?I’m not trying to generalize atheists; I just would like to get a better understanding of this out of curiosity and to be a better friend to mine. If it is possible, I also would like to email a writer questions from my theology class as a sort of social experiment.Thank you in advance,Peter
Hi Peter, thanks for the questions. These questions have been answered here before, so if my answer doesn’t help you enough, feel free to use the search function. You’ll find more thoughts there.
First, an atheist is just a person without a belief in a god. Some atheists may make the claim that a god can’t exist, some may not, either way the only thing one atheist has to have in common with another is a lack of belief in a god or gods. That’s it. Anything else is just that persons opinion.
Whats the most common reason people become atheists? Simple. The lack of objective evidence for a god. It’s been my experience that most people who become atheist start with an inconsistency in their religious belief. For some it may be a historical claim or philosophical claim or a supernatural claim, whichever it is they usually find a problem that they realize can’t be dismissed off hand. For myself it was learning to be more objective and realizing that religion was highly subjective. Whichever way a person leaves their faith is their own journey. Each one is different.
Why do so many atheists take the opportunity to rip on Christianity? Well I can’t speak for all atheists, but I think it’s the same reason people rip on any belief system that harms others. To you, your religious belief probably centers around your personal salvation and the love of your god. You probably tend to dismiss all of the ugly parts of your religion like slavery, racism, women and children as property, sexual repression, child abuse, and worst of all, the concept that another can pay for the things that you have done wrong. Have you given up everything to follow Jesus? Do you still eat shrimp? Do you cut your hair? Do you wear clothes of different fibers? These are all things that your bible says are bad, yet you probably don’t follow them do you? I don’t point this out to say that you’re a hypocrite or anything like that. I point it out because you also see where you don’t agree with your religion, and yet you and millions of other believers ignore all of the bad things about it. The difference is between you and others is that some people no longer wish to ignore the bad things. These people most often become atheists. Sometimes these atheists speak out against what they consider to be harmful to others. They don’t want others to be hurt they way they were or fall into the same illogical ways of thinking that they fell into. Some are hurt so bad that they become angry with their past belief system and lash out against those who perpetuate it. Some atheists get past that stage, some do not.
Keep in mind, the difference between a militant atheist and a militant theists is broad. The worst a militant atheist will do is write a post in a forum or make a video. The worst a militant theist does is take away your rights or kill you.
Lastly, yes the bible does teach some good things. However none of it is unique to the bible. The golden rule you talk about is better known as the “social contract” and exists in any society with more then one person in it. Just because a religion has some good points to it doesn’t make it okay to tell someone who they can or can not love, or who they should kill, or how other people should live their lives. If the KKK did charity work would you consider them a good organization or would you still judge them on the merits of their teachings? If a group of child molesters taught that everyone should love each other would you praise them? Just because your religion may have some good things to teach in it says nothing to the truth of their claims.
I hope that answers your questions. Feel free to continue the discussion in the comment section below, and as always, thanks for asking.
Three Ducks In A Row
Question from Bryson:
1. Based on Mendel’s work, only genes, not physical acquired traits are passed to the next generation. Now, based on that, what mechanism in nature creates new genetic codes to build an improved animal? None that I know of. none that Richard Dawkins himself can think of as when asked he had no answer. So there would be no inheritable variations for natural selection to choose from. Now I know that some evolutionists have mutation as the answer. But mutation only damages DNA, it doesn’t produce new information and as proved by scientists, there’s no beneficial mutations in existence.
2. Also the Cambridge discovery. The oldest fossils ever found on earth, showing different species of the same “family” suddenly appearing at the same time with no links connecting them. Everyone says evolution is proven fact, when in actuality, evidence is extremely rare, and highly inconclusive at best.
3. Also, when scientists tried, they found that even on paper, you can’t take a cell below 200 genes. And in 06, they concluded in reality, it actually is impossible to go below 397 genes. A cell needs a certain amount of things to live. Scientist call this the minimal gene concept. Well…to find the origin of life you would have to go down to 0 and build up.
What is the atheist response to this?
Answer by SmartLX:
Three very old creationist canards. The word is appropriate because it defines them as unfounded, and slightly funny because it’s also the French word for a duck. I’ve numbered them for reference.
1. Gene duplication, transposable element protein domestication, lateral gene transfer, gene fusion/fission, de novo gene origination, and probably more. Several of these happen during mutation. The Lenski E.coli experiment, despite what Conservapedia has claimed, is a pretty clear-cut example of a positive mutation directly observed. Richard Dawkins wasn’t dumbstruck because he didn’t have an answer, he was furious because the nature of the question made him realise a pair of creationists were in his home under false pretenses. Here’s his explanation of the event. Even if you don’t believe his account, in the same piece he gives a complete answer to the question, and it stands on its own merits.
2. Fossils are rare to begin with, but when you go all the way back to when animals didn’t have skeletons or hard shells of any kind, there are hardly any at all. I’m not familiar with the specific “discovery” you refer to (link to it if you like), but that’s generally why fossils appear to start off already diversified. It hardly matters when we share more than half our genome with all animals and even certain plants, indicating a common ancestry.
3.The “minimal gene set” is a few hundred proteins, not genes, and it was easier for them to come together when they did than it would be now. Naturally occurring amino acids were all over the world and throughout the sea, and there was no other life to consume them or otherwise interfere. The chances of the specific protein set coming together were tiny, but this was more than balanced out by the vast amount of space, materials and time the chemicals had to get it right, and also the number of different possible combinations that would have had the same effect. And of course it only had to happen once.
The Universe and Everything
Question from Bryson:
So based on scientific evidence the universe at one time began to exist right? Explained by What we call the big bang theory. Another law is whatever begins to exist has a cause right? As in there’s something that begins to exist, there’s a cause for it, it existing being the effect. So if a universe existed, logically there’s a cause. Since the universe hasn’t existed yet, there’s no time/space/energy. Which leads to the conclusion that the cause of this “big bang” has to be something outside the laws of time/space/matter.
Well since only two things fall under this category, one would be a divine entity, the other an abstract object like the number 1 or something. My question is how would something abstract be a cause? I know Stephen Hawking said something along the lines of because of the laws of the gravity, there is no need for a creator because that proves the universe will create itself from nothing. But, of course, after thinking about it, if the universe hasn’t existed yet, that would mean the laws don’t exist yet. Plus, while the laws of gravity are describe gravity, it has no creative power. If put 1 dollar in the bank, and then next week 2 dollars, I can logically and mathematically explain why I now have $3. But, if I put 1 dollar in the bank and depend on mathematics to increase it, I would never have more than $1.
I know some people have even talked about something to do with a multiverse, but of course that doesn’t disprove god either because logically with a being capable of creating one universe, why would he not be able to create more if it wished.
Answer by SmartLX:
The good old cosmological argument. This argument falls at the first hurdle, but drags on and knocks over all the others regardless.
– No, scientific evidence has not established that the universe began to exist. It has established that it was once concentrated at or near a single point, then expanded outwards. The evidence says nothing about whether the matter and energy in that point was created at that instant or it got there from somewhere else.
– There are two modern perspectives on matter and energy. According to the classical laws of conservation, they may be converted into each other but they are never created or destroyed. Since they exist now, this would imply that they have always existed and didn’t need a creator. On the other hand, according to quantum mechanics matter can emerge spontaneously in certain circumstances as long as the same amount of antimatter does too, because the total amount of positive energy stays the same. Again no creator is needed, so neither way supports the supposed necessity of a creator.
– If the Big Bang was caused by something outside of our universe’s space and time, it doesn’t make the cause timeless or spaceless. It might be a natural entity with its own spacetime and energy, say, another universe.
– We have never unambiguously observed a divine entity, so it is pure assertion to say it can exist outside of space and time. We have only observed the “abstract” (mathematics, logic, etc.) within the confines of a physical universe as it affects the objects in that universe, so we don’t know whether the abstract can exist without the material either. Regardless, you pose a false dilemma because there is at least a third choice: an object in a different system of spacetime. And the whole thing is moot until the necessity of a cause is established.
– No, the possibility of a multiverse doesn’t disprove the existence of a god, but nothing does. A god is a possibility in a multiverse as well as in a single universe. There’s just no good reason to think it’s real, let alone necessary.
Evolution and the Holocaust
Question from James:
Hey thanks for reading this. If evolution is survival of the fittest then why was Hitler considered evil? If he could overcome the Jews then Germans must be better then Jews. In fact racism shouldn’t be a bad thing if you truly believe your race is better. Also why does it matter is animals go extinct? I get cows and animals we use, but who cares about obscure fish and bugs?
Answer by SmartLX:
Your initial question about Hitler is like asking, “If the atomic number of boron is 5, why did two different actors play Darrin on Bewitched?” The first part is true and so is the second, but the two are unrelated.
Evolution is an explanation of what has happened, over the entire history of life on earth, to change it from a single population of similar single-celled organisms to the vast complexity and diversity we see today. “Survival of the fittest” is still an apt simplification, because at all times those organisms which are more fit for survival and procreation are the ones that pass on the most genes. Some kill members of their own species to get along, some don’t have to. Even Darwin thought it was pretty brutal, writing that “nature is red in tooth and claw,” but human morality is difficult or impossible to apply to non-human animals. They’re just doing what their instincts tell them.
Evil on the other hand is a label we apply to actions and people who go against our morals and ethics. Hitler’s genocide violates the morality of such a huge majority of us that society as a whole can label him evil without fear of being challenged. That the act was intended to benefit Hitler’s chosen race does not make it good or ambiguous just because this sounds vaguely evolutionary, because there is no morality to evolution. Evolution is just what happened, take it or leave it, and our morals as applied to Hitler come from other sources.
The Holocaust comparison fails on other levels. Here are two.
– Despite the claims of Nazi propaganda which tried to dehumanise the Jews, the Holocaust boils down to a single species attacking itself en masse, which isn’t good for any population. So does any act of ethnic cleansing, which is why racism is unsupportable by evolutionary theory. If anything the Holocaust could be seen as an act of “social Darwinism“, which borrows the terminology of evolution but has little in common with it.
– The six million Jews were murdered in an act of artificial selection, not natural selection. Evolution has no will and no goals, but Hitler decided those Jews should die. This deliberate culling has far more in common with techniques that have been used in animal breeding for centuries, long before Darwin.
Moving on, we actually don’t care very much about fish and bugs, do we? The former we catch live, kill painfully and eat with relish, and the latter we crush on our forearms without a second thought. Fish and insects are alien to us, so it’s hard to empathise with them – especially the insects, as we can’t really look them in the eyes. Once you get to mammals like cows and pigs, we’re still happy to eat them but we start to care whether they are treated humanely on the farm and in the abbatoir. We perceive cats, dogs, apes and monkeys as so like us in behaviour and attitude that most of us wouldn’t even consider killing one, let alone eating it. This empathy is where we get the urge to protect animals and treat them well, rather than some platitude about them all being “God’s creatures”, but there is a sliding scale of how strongly it applies.
That wasn’t really your point though. If you want an evolutionary rationale of why we should prevent obscure species from going extinct, animals that wipe out other animals or plants completely usually do themselves a terrible disservice in terms of survival. They deprive themselves of a food source, or a crucial nutrient is lost which leaves them susceptible to disease, or they allow a new poisonous species to flourish, or they put themselves at war with some other animal that was dependent on the late species. All of the above might apply to us, but additionally human science and medicine might have all sorts of uses for species of any type. Finally, although we can’t muster much empathy for alien-like species while they suck our blood or whatever, the fact that they’re just trying to survive too does engender a broad sense of solidarity with all living things.
What good amid these, O me, O life?
Hannah brings up a question that I hear asked by those who have been deconverted from their life of religion…
Name: Hannah
Message: OK, so I suspect you’re right and I hate it. I’ve never exactly believed in god although I have felt a sense of something greater, some sort of karma, and that I have a soul. Now I am told science disproves anything that isn’t material and I can’t bear it. The only things keeping me going through life are that my self-develoment and learning to cope with difficulties means something – which apparently it doesn’t – and that I would meet a certain person after this life one day. Which si also apparently not true. So now all the joy and interest in anything in life has gone for me. Apparently I am here to breed – well, I don’t want children. So what point do I have? I’m not big or important, and I won’t be remembered, all I had was myself and trying to accept certain lessons which would make me stronger for – whatever reincarnation follows – and apparently that doesn’t matter. What am I meant to do? There’s no point to me making all this effort and expending this energy learning things only for myself because it doesn’t matter. I might as well sleep and drink all day. Either option is completely equal in value.
How and why do you even bother to wake up every day? Sincere question. Although perhaps you are just stronger and better people. Should I assume I simply don’t matter as I am weak, and either way it makes no difference as intelligence and individuality is just a cruel quirk of accident rather than each individual meaning something and having some base essence which is, in fact, them, and is worthwhile and eternal and worth developing as it will retain?
I cannot tell you how much I loathe my atheist (ex) friends who have given me these things. They have destroyed my sense of self and my sense of worth and I can’t understand why they bother with life.
This is an excellent question Hannah and thank you for writing. You see, I was at one time exactly where you are now. I had left my faith and felt that I had nothing to cling on to in this world. What was the point if there is no after life? Why do good if there’s no reward? How could I justify personal development if my life was so finite? I struggled with these problems for a while, and when I thought all was lost, the answer came to me. I was reading one of my favorite poets, Walt Whitman and I came upon a poem of his that I had read before, but right at that moment, it struck a chord in me that has carried with me ever since. Here it is…..
O Me! O Life!
BY WALT WHITMAN
Oh me! Oh life! of the questions of these recurring,Of the endless trains of the faithless, of cities fill’d with the foolish,Of myself forever reproaching myself, (for who more foolish than I, and who more faithless?)Of eyes that vainly crave the light, of the objects mean, of the struggle ever renew’d,Of the poor results of all, of the plodding and sordid crowds I see around me,Of the empty and useless years of the rest, with the rest me intertwined,The question, O me! so sad, recurring—What good amid these, O me, O life?Answer.That you are here—that life exists and identity,That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.
I’ve memorized this poem, and I love reciting it to those who will listen because I think it’s a powerful message. “What good amid these, O me, O life?” is something that I think we all ask ourselves, especially those who have left their faith and don’t know how to approach a life without a religion or a belief in a god telling them how to behave and act. One of the scariest parts of letting go of ones faith is the freedom that comes with it. A lot of people don’t know how to deal with it, and in fact a common argument against atheism is that people don’t know how to give their life meaning so it’s better to believe the lie of heaven then to give meaning to your own life. I couldn’t disagree more.
What Walt Whitman is trying to say in his poem is that life, not just your life, but everyone’s life, is a small part of the bigger story of humanity. That the meaning that you give your life will become a part of humanities great story, and that you have the opportunity to impact the story with your own verse. It might be a small verse, or it might be a big verse, that’s up to you to decide. Think about that for a minute. The size of the verse you contribute is up to you. There’s no god that has already decided your verse. There’s no fate to which you are destined. The verse that you contribute, the meaning of your life, is whatever you want it to be. There’s more power in that truth then in any god belief out there.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not trying to suggest that this poem is the answer to your problems. What I’m saying is that if you’re looking for something to inspire your life, there is a lot of wisdom and beauty out there to be inspired by. If you want your life to matter, then make it matter. It’s really up to you.
Lastly, your question seemed to have a lot of futility towards life in it. If you’re feeling depressed or anxious about the way your life is going, then you might want to consider seeing a therapist. Sometimes it’s easy to get stuck in a rut in our thinking and a good trained professional can help you figure out a new path to your life. Just a thought.
Thanks for the email, and I hoped my reply helped. As always, feel free to comment below.
Ham vs Nye: Whoever Wins, Who Really Wins?
Question from Jordan:
Hello ATA.
I was wondering how you felt about the upcoming Ham/Nye debate. From what I can tell, most atheists are not happy about the debate. They claim that an atheist should never debate a creationist because there is nothing to debate—evolutionary thinking has already won. They claim that the act of simply debating gives the creationist credibility.
I think it is obvious that this atheistic claim sounds like an excuse. If creationism is so flawed, it should be simple for an atheist to dominate in a debate. Yet creationists keep asking, and many atheists keep refusing. It is as if the atheist is thinking, “I’d rather have people THINK I’m a coward, than for people to KNOW that I’m wrong.” The fact that Bill Nye is willing to debate, shows he is confident in what he believes.
From my experience (as a creationist) on this site, you all seem happy to debate someone on the issue. Are you excited about the upcoming debate (like myself and most other creationists)? Do you see this as a chance for the idea of creationism to be buried, or are you upset with Bill Nye like Dawkins and the many others like him?
Answer by SmartLX:
Whether evolution is or isn’t a fact (it is) is not the reason these atheists don’t want Nye to debate Ham. A debate depends very little on whether one side or the other is objectively correct. It’s the ultimate exercise in rhetoric, where even if you don’t convince a single person you can still be ahead on rhetorical “points” at the end of the debate and thus “win” it.
The mass refusal of evolutionary biologists and other scientists to debate creationists is a relatively new thing. Debates like these went on all the time in the 80s and 90s, which is how people like Duane Gish became famous for doing them. Richard Dawkins even did one at Oxford, when creationism actually had a chance at being taught there. The concerted refusal was later instituted, by Dawkins and other major figures, because of the observed effects of these earlier debates.
– If the audience consisted mostly of creationists or at least devout Christians, as will certainly be the case in the Ham/Nye debate, the debate sounded like a victory for the creationist no matter what was said.
– There are a multitude of creationist “refutations” of evolution (all in the pattern of “evolution can’t explain X, therefore God”) dozens of which can be rattled off in a matter of minutes. Even if there’s a perfectly good evolutionary explanation for each one it takes a lot longer to explain, so some points will necessarily go unanswered and that’s a terrible thing to happen in a debate. The late Duane Gish would throw out as many claims as he could right at the end of a debate, knowing most of them would stand unchallenged purely for reasons of time. To this day, it’s known as the Gish Gallop.
– Even if the creationist was soundly and undeniably defeated, he (I’d say “or she” but most or all of the prominent ones were men) would be invited by other creationists to speaking engagements and radio shows where he could make the same points again, alone and undisputed, as if the debate had never happened. According to Ray Comfort, the main goal of any evangelist is to spread the message, regardless of context; God supposedly does the rest of the work, or doesn’t. When he talks about his televised debate with the Rational Response Squad, the important thing wasn’t that he adequately defended the Gospel but rather that he reached the audience of Nightline. (Also see his book, You Can Lead An Atheist To Evidence But You Can’t Make Him Think.) Any embarrassments during a debate can be buried under a subsequent succession of appearances with sympathetic hosts and audiences, where the combative “evolutionist” can be demonised.
Besides the above, the claim that creationists gain credibility from debating scientists is a valid one. Credibility among the already devout for not being swayed or cowed by the scientific establishment, and credibility among the neutral for appearing with a qualified professional as an apparent equal, even if he gets trounced. The credibility, however, is secondary to the publicity; Ken Ham may have been mentioned more in mainstream media in the last few weeks than in the previous several years, and far more positively because the news isn’t about the imminent financial failure of his Ark Park project. Speaking of which, the proceeds from DVD sales of this debate will go straight into the coffers of Answers in Genesis and prop up the Park, which all by itself is a reason for non-creationists not to support the event.
To summarise, there are plenty of reasons why Nye should not debate Ham even if it’s assumed that Nye will win. Furthermore, there are plenty of ways for Nye to effectively lose even if he is right and Ham is wrong. On a pragmatic note, the simple fact that creationists everywhere are so eager for this debate to happen (and that Ham set it up in the first place) means that they expect their cause to benefit from it one way or another regardless of the arbitrated outcome (if there’s even a judge), and I don’t think they’re wrong. Nye shows no signs of pulling out, so I guess we’ll see what happens.
Update:
Well, Nye is generally accepted to have won the debate by a mile, but AiG received such a boost in financial support and apparent legitimacy that it is at least claiming that it’s secured the municipal bonds necessary to break ground on the Ark Encounter park. No surprises at all.
The Poorly-Tuned Universe?
Question from Alex:
Hi, this question has the intention to find if there are direct counter-examples of the fine-tuning argument, by this I mean constants that could be adjustable without impeding the emergence of life in the universe; are there such constants?
If the universe was designed by an intelligent creator, we should expect things like the fine-tunings for life we observe, but what if we find there are examples of non-fine tuning? Or have we finally found the evidence for a creator?
Thanks.
Answer by SmartLX:
In Just Six Numbers by Martin Rees, he brings up one direct counter-example: the value of the gravitational constant could vary by up to a factor of 3,000 before it precluded the formation of stars and thus the emergence of life. Some of the other constants would throw out the balance if they changed by themselves, even slightly, but if other constants were also different it could compensate very well. If you consider only the six most well-known constants, and the idea that any of them could be any value positive or negative, that presents an enormous six-dimensional sample space of possibilities which isn’t even close to being exhausted as a source of other viable “settings”.
Even if there were no counter-examples, and every constant had to be exactly what it is for life to emerge, it wouldn’t be evidence for a creator until all other possibilities were eliminated. Contrary to the sample space I’ve described, maybe the nature of the early universe was that each constant could only have been within a small range. Maybe each constant influences the others, such that the current constants are in stable equilibrium for purely physical reasons. Maybe we’re in the one universe out of billions of billions of universes with varying constants where they all came out just right. There are also counter-arguments like the idea that if the universe were actually fine-tuned, such a mind-bogglingly huge percentage of it wouldn’t be empty and/or uninhabitable – it would likely be friendlier or smaller.
To say that the universe supports life is not to say that the universe is fine-tuned for life, because one can happen without a “tuner” and one can’t. Keep an eye out, because many arguments for God based on this idea try to pull that particular switcheroo.
Merry Christmas from atheists. Yeah, we said it.
Non-question from Lukas:
This is not a question but a Christmas wish. I wish you all on this site Ask the Atheist all the people who wrote here if it are believers or atheists a great Christmas Holidays and a Happy New Year 2014. I also want to wish this to all providers of the site Ask the Atheist and thanks for all the answers and keep up the great work.
Cheers,
Lukas.
Answer by SmartLX:
Right back atcha Lukas. Merry Christmas. Rather than losing out to “Happy Holidays”, may the word “Christmas” continue to settle into the secular English lexicon until its religious meaning is all but forgotten, as it is with the days of the week. Happy New Year too.