I stumbled across an article today on my Facebook feed called “22 Messages From Creations to People Who Believe In Evolution” and was inspired to write a response. To view the full post on Buzz Feed you can click here. Below are the questions and my responses….
1) Bill Nye, are you influencing the minds of children in a positive way?
Of course. Teaching them to thing rationally and reason. To question what they are told is the truth. To demand evidence. To think critically about the observable world.
2) Are you scared of a divine creator?
As most people explain, the evidence just doesn’t point to a Divine Creator. Just because you have followed the evidence to a different conclusion doesn’t make you scared of celestial beings. But I imagine i would be a little scared to learn that the natural laws I put my trust in when making conclusions about the world around me were actually just at the whim of some being in the sky playing out a game with my lives and the lives of the cosmos.
3) Is it completely illogical that the earth was created mature? I.E. trees created with rings, Adam created as an adult…
Yes it IS completely illogical. The reason being is that there is no evidence to support your claim…and plenty of evidence to support the exact opposite. Instead of using the evidence all around you to develop testable hypotheses, you have insisted on developing explanations to support an untestable theory and then presenting it as fact.
4) Does not the second law of thermodynamics disprove Evolution?
No because Earth is not a closed system…We get matter from comets and meteorites, and energy from the Sun. NEXT!
5) How do you explain a sunset if their is no God?
Is that a real question….fuck me, NEXT!
6) If the Big Bang Theory is true and taught as science along with evolution, Why do the laws of thermodynamics debunk said theories?
See 4 Above…Idiots! or use this to help http://curious.astro.cornell.edu/question.php?number=441
7) What about Noetics?
Noetics is a secular, New-age way of saying god or consciousness. It is a philosophy not a science, therefore it fits in great with religious nut-bags who make up untestable claims and call them facts about the universe.
8) Where do you derive objective meaning in life?
This is actually my favorite question. As an atheist and believer in evolution, I derive meaning many ways. I love my wife, i strive to discover new things about the universe, I find meaning in everyday joys such as laughter and even a good cry. I Also find joy in seeing the successes and shared happiness of my family and friends. I love the idea we are flying through the universe and millions of miles and hour on a tiny little rock, yet the Earth can seem so big sometimes. I think by coming up with ways to keep our lives going after death, we de-value the time we are actually going to get. Instead of spending a lifetime working towards your afterlife, I would like to spend my lifetime living.
9) If God did not create everything, how did the first single-celled organism originate? By Chance?
There are many people who have posited theories about this. One is the primordial soup, which has been famously and some say, successfully attempted in a laboratory. See the Miller-Urey experiment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miller%E2%80%93Urey_experiment. There is also an idea which i am even more fond of, but doesn’t really answer the question at hand. It is known as Panspermia…the idea that life exists throughout the Cosmos and is “distributed” by floating bodies such as comets, meteors, asteroids and planets slamming and bumping into one another. The problem with Panspermia is it doesn’t address how life began, just how it began on Earth. Notice that never once did i say I know what happened, in fact we are not very close to understanding the moment of life. The problem with Creation is that it states it “knows” the answer without any testable evidence.
10) I Believe in the Big Bang Theory…God said it and Bang it happened?
I believe in the big bang theory and am an Atheist….is that a question? I think what you’re trying to say is that you have reconciled your religious believes with what you can observe in the natural world. Or one might call this, the God of the gaps, where everything we discover in Science is true, but everything we can’t prove or don’t understand is God. Let me just point out that every second that “GAP” gets smaller and smaller.
11) Why do evolutionists/secularists/humanists/non-God believing people reject the idea of their being a creator God but embrace the concept of intelligent design from aliens or other extra-terrestrial sources.
Because the idea of intelligent design from aliens and other beings is a testable hypothesis. “Hypothetically”, you could visit the planet and ask them, or if they are extinct discover evidence of “life-making”. A “creator god” is not a testable theory, and therefore is not Science. On the other hand, I think most scientists don’t necessarily “embrace” this idea, it has just been used as another hypothesis for how life could have originated.
12) There is no inbetween, the only one found has been Lucy and there only a few pieces of the hundreds necessary for an “official proof”.
Wrong, wrong, wrong…..the fossil record it actually quite compelling. There is Australopithecines, Homo Habilis, Homo Erectus, Java Man, Peking Man, Neandertals, Toumai, Ardi, Kanapoi Hominid, Lucy, The First Family, Taung Child, Mrs Ples…..get my point. Please study this for yourself http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/homs/specimen.html
13) Does Metamorphosis help support evolution?
Metamorphosis would have evolved slowly, with the first having no metamorphosis, then later partial, and then full. Modern insects actually show all 3 levels of metamorphosis. Check out this article for more info. http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/insect-metamorphosis-evolution/
14) If Evolution is a theory (like creation or the Bible) why then is Evolution taught as fact?
Because Evolution is a Scientific Theory. A theory explains scientific observations…THEORIES MUST BE FALSIFIABLE! Science has a different usage of Theory than normal conversation. In science, a theory is not a guess or a hunch, it is a well-supported and well-documented explanation for our observations. Theory is the highest order of scientific statements…it is as close to proven as you can get. http://www.notjustatheory.com/ Creationism and the Bible are not theories, they are made up explanations about a world written at a time when the people who developed them did not understand much about the natural processes of the universe.
15) Because science by definition is a “theory” – not testable, observable nor repeatable, why do you object to creationism or intelligent design being taught in school?
First let’s get this out of the way, a theory as you describe it is not the correct definition (See the above explanation). 2nd, Creationism and Intelligent Design are in all accounts the same theory using different buzz words.
I don’t object to it being taught in school, it should be taught in a religion class or philosophy class. In fact, I have taken that class at Oklahoma State University and found it very rewarding…however it should not be taught as Science, and it should not be taught at any time as an alternative to evolution. This argument that is another theory about the origins of species is simply not true. See the answers to the rest of the questions to support that statement.
16) What mechanism has science discovered that evidences an increase of genetic information seen in any genetic mutation or evolutionary process?
There are much more qualified answers out there than this one, but a mutation called gene duplication when coupled with any other kind of mutation that changes on of the copies properties will increase the amount of information. You can find are many articles out there just ave a brows on Google. basically Gene A = Run / Gene A Gets Duplicated – Run Run / One Copy of the Gene Mutates = Run Walk …TADA
17) What Purpose do you think you are here for if you do not believe in Salvation.
Why do I need a purpose. I have life, why do I need Salvation. I have hope for the future and admiration for the past. I don’t need an afterlife to give the one I do have meaning. I don’t need to be saved from anything…I’m quite content with living each day to the fullest. My purpose comes from my family, my friends, my passions. There IS NO ULTIMATE PURPOSE…only the ones you create for yourself and only the ones that give meaning. To me the ultimate purpose is to love, to be loved, and to share that love with as many people as you can in as many ways as you know possible.
Also, the fact that you need life to have purpose does not change the fact that the evidence supports evolution.
18) Why have we found only 1 “Lucy” when we have found more than 1 of everything else?
See number 12….and also, stop trying to look at each piece of observable evidence in a vacuum. All of the hominid fossils are a collective piece in the puzzle…
19) Can you believe in the big bang without “faith”?
Of course. Because the evidence supports the theory…i don’t “believe” in anything on “faith”, I make a rational assumption based on observation and testable data.
20) How can you look at the world and not believe someone created/thought of it? It’s Amazing!
It is amazing, what’s more amazing to me is that it was all the result of Billions of years of natural processes and circumstance. The fact that we are hear right now arguing this point makes me happy….but it doesn’t call for us to make up stories in order to understand the beauty.
21) Relating to the big bang theory…where did the exploding star come from?
It wasn’t a star, but what is known as an Initial singularity. I am not the best to explain all of this but basically evidence for this is supported in the form of cosmic background radiation and the expansion of the universe first observed by Hubble….http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_singularity
I find this to be another “god of the gaps” theory…just because we don’t have the exact answer doesn’t mean that is God. Your Gaps god get’s smaller with each scientific discovery and I don’t think putting him in the gaps of knowledge is actually the smartest idea for a religious person looking to have their belief system survive.
22) If we came from monkeys, then why are there still monkeys?
First i suppose we are talking about modern chimpanzees and not “monkeys”. In fact it is quite simple. Evolution is not the destruction of one species for the creation on another. Instead, imagine 2 groups of chimps living in separate areas and not exchanging genetic material. They might evolve differently according to surrounding pressures. One of these species might have had to leave the trees when the North-Atlantic current changed the climate of sub-Saharan Africa. The might have found the tall grass of the African plain to be a hindrance when watching for predators and decided to stand up on two legs to see over the top. Over time those who could stand longer might have survived and passed that trait through generations. This group might have discovered new ways of hunting, protecting their families, building tools, using sounds to communicate, eating more red meat and developing their brains, learning to work together and to empathize. Of course this is all “just a theory”.
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I tried my best to answer the questions in a way that my non-qualified brain could….I hope that these answers provide a good enough explanation of why Evolutionists think the way we do about the world around us.
Sincerely,
Johnathan Hepner
random/anthem 
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