9. Evolution and Science Education

Scott Adams (the genius who draws Dilbert cartoons and writes a pretty damn good blog) recently made a post his blog (click here to see it) that concerns how he knows nothing about evolution, but believes it because scientists -- his specific example mentioned microbiologists -- say that it must be true. He basically said that a person who is vehemently opposed to the concept of evolution would make a "crappy microbiologist."

As a religious microbiologist, I was delighted that he mentioned that issue. No reasonable microbiologist can deny the concept of evolution; a plethora of microbiology experiments not only rely on evolution as background information, but also validate the fact that it happens. Even as I type this post, I am sitting in the lab and waiting for the results of such an experiment.

Mutations happen in every species; this is undeniable. Even in humans, every person has unique characteristics that define the difference in their respective genomes. Larger distinctions exist in populations that were isolated from one another for thousands of years, as evidenced by the clear variations in genetic traits between East Asians, South Asians, Africans, Europeans, Australian Aborigines, and Native Americans. When we go a little bit farther back in time and get a little bit broader in the spectrum of life, clear variations exist in genetic traits between chimpanzees, humans, and the various other members of the ape family. The question is, "have we had enough time for our genomes to change from a bacterial genome to a monkey genome?"

Whether or not evolution gave rise to us the way we are today, I can guarantee you (based on experiments that I have performed with my own two hands) that evolution does, as a matter of fact, happen. Maybe the world was made as it is today and evolution started afterwards (although a paleontologist would kick me for saying that), but evolution is happening right now for all scientific purposes.

Typically, the main reason why we care about history is to learn how to handle the future. We only really care about evolution because (notwithstanding the "curiosity" factor) understanding evolution helps us plan future scientific experiments in, among other fields, microbiology. Therefore, whether or not evolution happened in the past, all that really matters is that it's happening now.

Anyway, my point is that for all practical purposes, it shouldn't matter whether evolution happened. We should still learn about it in school because, even if it's not true, it's a great guide for experiments. If you choose not to believe in it, that's fine, but remember that it can explain all physical principles and its validity can be assumed for any study. So, even if you believe that evolution didn't happen, keep in mind when you're planning some form of study that evolution is happening now (take my word for it) and, assuming that recorded history wasn't simply fabricated, has been happening for all of recorded history.

But if you do care about history, then stay tuned...

COMING SOON, TO A BLOG NEAR YOU:
Shan uses a mathematical proof (involving probabilities) to determine whether evolution in history is plausible.