Okay, this is going to be a very controversial article.  I will offend some people and I will delight some people.  Realize this is opinion, and it is mine.  Take it.  Leave it.  Flame me.  Laud me.  Whatever you wish.

I just read most of an article about, well I am not sure what it’s about.  It started off talking about the dumbing down of America, which I believe is a sad, but albeit true notion.  This nation is getting way too complacent and easily-controlled.

But the article began to stray into odd territory, which is why I stopped reading.  One phrase stuck with me, however.  The author defined faith as “knowledge that comes from personal experience.”  Does anyone else have a huge problem with this definition?

I certainly do.  Faith is the exact opposite.  It isn’t knowledge at all, but a belief.  And it doesn’t come from personal experience but rather from the complete lack of it.  Faith is the belief in something to the exclusion of observed evidence.

Let’s look at evolution versus creation as an example.  Those that believe in the creation story (I won’t say “myth” because I truly don’t know; I wasn’t alive back then) believe so out of faith.  And that isn’t because they personally observed creation in process.  Quite the contrary.  Creationists have not witnessed creation in action and have thus chosen to believe in it out of faith.

Most people see evolution, on the other hand, as science.  But I see it as faith, just as much as creationism.  And here’s why.

Science is and has always been based on “controls.”  It’s not called “The Scientific Method” for nothing, you know.  If anyone isn’t aware of what I am talking about, a “control” is a set of circumstances that provide a known result.  Most plants need light to live and grow.  So, to test that “theory” you must get two plants, place one in a well-lit area and the other in a dark area.  Treat both plants exactly the same otherwise.  You already know that the plant that is getting light will live and grow (as long as it is treated properly otherwise).  So, that’s your control.  Then you conduct the experiment and note the differences in the two plants.  Whatever differences arise can be said to be caused by the difference in light.  That’s science.

So, where is the science in evolution?  Where is the control?

The truth is, there is none.  The theories of evolution change with time, which would cause any sane, thinking person to realize that we don’t have all the evidence yet, nor do we have anything to compare it to.  The only real way to look at an item and say, “that is 60 million years old” is for a 60-million-year-old person to say that they indeed remember seeing it back then.  Anything short of that is speculation.

Essentially what happens in much of this is there will be an object.  They (meaning the scientists) will stick the object in a machine which will beep and bonk and return some numbers.  They then say that the numbers mean that the object is x years old.

Later, someone else will come up with a good reason why the object cannot possibly be x years old, so everyone says, “oh, those numbers must mean that the object is y years old.”  And then everything changes.

I am not going to deny or debate the veracity of the observed phenomena in the study of evolution.  There are some fascinating ideas and discoveries.  But to me, there are several ideas that make evolution stick out as near pseudo-science in my mind.  Here are some of my thoughts.

First, there is no control.  The methods for categorizing and dating objects is being defined and redefined by the nature of what the observers are expecting to find.  That sets up a perfect tautology.  And since we cannot compare our findings to absolute knowns, then how can we really come to the truth by setting observations based upon other observations?

Second, creationism, the antithesis to evolution, is based on something that pretty much trumps everything: God.  Most humans believe in a higher being, a deity, that is omnipotent or nearly so.  Omnipotent is a heavy word.  Omni means all, potent means powerful, so omnipotent is all-powerful.  That means there isn’t anything God can’t do.  How can you debunk that?  Answer: you can’t.

Third, evolution is based upon randomness.  The theory, as I understand it, is that random mutations and alterations happen, some good, some bad.  The bad ones essentially cause death or sterility in one form or faction and then those changes do not persist to future generations.  That makes a good deal of sense, until you take a math class.  Randomness is complete enthalpy.  That means it can go in any direction.  So the nature of the changes over time can be anything, and if the idea is that every species on the planet has a common single-celled ancestor, then the results should be completely sparse.  Yet humans have 2 legs and 2 arms, but our arachnid cousins have 8 legs and no arms.  If having 8 legs isn’t a deathly alteration in the genetic code, why aren’t there 8-legged humans?

Okay, maybe that’s a bit outlandish, but the point I am making is that evolution’s theory is that mutations and changes are random, but the bad ones die off affording a central tendency.  Well, if that’s the case, then why is it okay to have wings (since birds and bats and bees have all survived those genetic alterations), but it’s not okay for some species of, say, dogs to have wings?  I would bet that a winged dog would not die off so easily.  All in all, the point is that random is random, and the species we observe on the planet today are anything but random.  Diverse, yes, but not random.  Once Will Wright’s forthcoming sim “Spore” comes out, we will see some truly random species.

Fourth, for us, as flawed beings, to claim that we have evolution all figured out is extremely narcissistic, in my opinion.  Here is a species that cannot figure out and eliminate war.  We cannot figure out why we get fat and then how to reverse it reliably.  We cannot determine the nature of our planet and our effect on its climate, much less control it.  We cannot feed our entire species, or clothe, or protect them from, of all things, ourselves.  We cannot cure all disease and we cannot define love.  So how can we be so arrogant as to think we are well on our way to understanding the nature of life itself?  It’s like taking a newborn child who can barely communicate that it is hungry and throwing it a book on cosmology and expecting that it is well on its way to understanding the nature of the cosmos, black holes, wormholes, and time travel.  It’s ludicrous to think that we as a species have figured out so much when there is obviously so much more to figure out.

Was is Socrates that claimed that the beginning of wisdom lies in realizing that you know nothing?

Yeah, sounds like something he would say.  But the point is that the more we, as a human community, stand up and say, “we know what evolution is as everything about it,” the more I am certain that we do not.

Another way of looking at this is to look at how scientists have viewed various phenomena in the past.  There was actually a time when the foremost minds on the planet placed some food in a box and the box in a closet and then concluded that the food turned into mice because that’s what was in the box a few days later and the food was gone.  Add to that the notion that the earth is flat, that the sun revolves around the earth, and many other such travesties of thinking, and the only conclusion is that it is vastly easy to understand that no matter how smart we get, we don’t have all the answers.  Try explaining an MP3 player to Benjamin Franklin; even he, one of the keenest intellects of the time, might brand it as magic.

There is another famous philisophical viewpoint that we, as thinkers, should get comfortable with: Pascal’s Wager.  Essentially, the basis of the Wager is that there are two possibilities: there is a God, there isn’t a God.  There are two ways to handle this idea: believe in God, don’t believe in God.  This forms a 2-by-2 grid.  In two of these squares, you are correct: either you believe in an extant God, or you don’t believe in a God that doesn’t exist.  But the other two squares are where this all comes to light.  If you believe in God and there isn’t one, then you haven’t lost anything.  But if you don’t believe in God and He (or She) exists, then you’re in a netherworld of hurt.  So, the safer bet is to simply believe.

I will take it several steps further, however.  In my travels, it seems to me that people with a belief in a higher being and in an afterlife are happier people.  They are nicer people.  A lot of people have pondered what they would do if today were their last day to live and they knew it.  Most people attend thoughts of selfish acts, things that would benefit only themselves.  After all, if there is no tomorrow, might as well live for the moment.

But people who have a firm belief that their actions on this plane of existence affect their lives in the next realm tend to be much more generous with their time and love.

Don’t get me wrong.  I am not advocating that you all run out and bring “religiosity to the fuzzy-wuzzies or some such.”  I just would love to see the world practice the benevolent religion and beliefs that they preach.

Moving on.  There is another matter circling the globe that I find needs attending: global warming.  I am here to tell you that I absolutely do not have a firm stance on this issue.  I have read articles on both sides of the fence and there is compelling evidence that says that the planet is, on average, warming.  Some people debate this with some likewise compelling evidence.  My personal conclusion is that we cannot simply say what is what, but we must continue to revise our estimates, patch our methods, and continue to observe as much as possible to try to find what the control actually is and then make our comparisons against it.  In the end, I fear, as I do about evolution, that we simply are not keen enough to understand the full complexity of this planet’s biology.

Again, I fear we humans are overstepping not only our own understanding of the universe around us, but also our own importance.  Again, I look to math and numbers to try to grasp the complexity of it all.  By that I mean that this planet we call home is far greater, far more vast, than anything we as humans can really fully wrap our minds around.

For instance, think of a slight summer breeze.  Now try to conceive the amount of energy in that breeze.  You may be tempted to think of it in terms of windmills and such and think that it’s not that much.  But windmills catch very tiny amounts of the energy in the breeze.  No, take your mind further.  Take the amount of energy that the windmill catches and multiply it by the entire volume of air that is moving.

Truth to tell, I do not have the numbers.  I really don’t know the answer.  But I can conceive first that the slight turning of a windmill can, say, light a lightbulb.  Then I can conceive that the windmill is only catching the tiniest bit of the breeze.  So a slight breeze could light, perhaps, millions of lightbulbs.  And that’s one tiny breeze.  Check the weather channel and you will see that breezes, although they can light a million or more lightbulbs, are too numerous and insignificant to even mention when talking about weather on a global scale.  Now, figure in hurricanes and tornados, and stronger winds planetwide.  If we could harness all the wind on the planet at any given time for, oh, say a second or so, our energy needs would be met.

Again, I don’t have the numbers, but it is easy to see the significance that just the planet’s natural movement of air has.  In the end, our needs are obviously seen as miniscule in comparison to the planet’s smallest of trifles.  We are but a tiny virus on the planet’s back.  Mother Earth will shake us off and go on her way not even thinking twice about how insignificant we really were.

All of this is intended to get across a single point: that we humans as a species are really nowhere near as important nor as influential as we think we are.  As such, how can we even begin to believe that we are having vast effects on our surroundings?

Is the planet warming?  I believe it is.  Are we to blame?  I don’t know.  Should we do something about it?  I believe we should for two very good reasons: first, that we may just be to blame and we should do what we can to alleviate our culpability (which should answer the question posed in the first place); and second, because reducing emissions have far more beneficial effects than just reducing greenhouse gases.

It has been said that there is no conclusive proof that second hand smoke causes any ill affects.  I say that I don’t care if that’s true or not because I don’t like smelling it, I don’t like it getting into my clothes, and I don’t like the way smoke hurts my eyes and makes it difficult to breathe.  Sure, I may not die from it, but I still don’t like it.

So too are the effects of reducing emissions.  Imagine a sky that is blue over Los Angeles and not just over non-urban areas.  Imagine the other health benefits from being able to breathe cleaner air.  There isn’t anything bad about it.

But again, in the study to reduce emissions, there is no control.  We don’t know what far-reaching effects there may be.  It has been my opinion for some time that the “balance” of peace in the Middle East is based on the uneven distribution of wealth.  There isn’t much middle class in much of the region.  As such, the rich are filthy rich on oil and the poor are miserably poor.  The balance is that the poor don’t rise up and kill the rich because the rich are rich enough to buy weapons and armed guards.  It is a precipitous balance, indeed.

But imagine what would happen if the worlds largest consumer of their product suddenly told them they weren’t going to buy any more.  Barrels of oil would stockpile by the billions.  The influx of cash into the region would drop drastically.  The rich would prey on the poor more and more to maintain their level of wealth.  The relative strength of the rich would decline and the relative anger of the poor would increase.  Eventually those two lines would cross and pandemonium would ensue.

Imagine this: what if all of the major commercial businesses in Manhattan suddenly moved their businesses off-island?  Does anyone think that the city of New York would just fade into obscurity?  Or do you believe, as I do, that as the resources become scarce that there will be more competition for them, which would lead to violence.  I think we would see the entire city become a war zone almost overnight.

So, the point here is that for us to suddenly drop our dependence on foreign oil isn’t necessarily a good thing all around.  There is no control.  We’ve never done such a thing before.  So we really don’t know exactly what would happen and how it would affect the United States and the rest of the world.  We have theories, but that’s all.

So, again, we must retreat to science.  We know how things are today.  That can be our control.  Perhaps we should try to reduce our consumption of foreign oil by 10% over the next 10 years and see what happens.

As well, in the global warming front, perhaps we should truly study the issue.  We need to understand more about it to realize our part in all of it and what we can truly do to affect it.  In fact, we may end up doing more harm than good.  Any study of earth’s ecosystems will see that there is a balance that is maintained.  That balance can easily be upset.  Think overpopulation of species due to the elimination of their predators.  Also think about how forest fires reduce underbrush which allow the forests to flourish.  All around the planet there are evident systems such as this.  Global climate change may very well be a part of it.  We know about ice ages and we couldn’t have possibly caused them, that we know of.  But the ice ages came and they went.  It’s the planet correcting itself, righting the wrongs, cleansing itself.  To me, there is a big idea that we cannot alter this.  And, to me, there is even bigger evidence that perhaps we shouldn’t even try.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 13th, 2007 at 10:28 am and is filed under Opinion.