Does evolution kill off god?

Yes and No

• The majority of religious people have come to terms with evolution.
• A tiny minority of scientists are religious.

Intelligent Design - god creeps in by the back door

The USA is legally a secular state and the teaching of religion in state schools is prohibited.

For that reason creationists and right-wing Christians have invented the concept of Intelligent Design which they claim is not religious but "scientific".

However:

• Intelligent Design implies a designer;
• a designer implies a creator;
• a creator implies a god
• a god is the basis of a religion;
• Intelligent Design is creationism.
• teaching Intelligent Design is teaching religion;

The proponents of Intelligent Design want it taught alongside evolutionary science and geology. They want equal weight given to both interpretations.

At the moment English state schools do not teach Intelligent Design alongside science - though it does appear increasingly in RE lessons.

Private Christian schools are free to teach Intelligent Design - and many of them do

Some state-sponsored (93% of set-up costs from the tax payer and 100% of running costs from the tax payer) faith schools in England are run by these people and we are in danger of going the same way as the laughable but dangerous fruit-cakes who run education in the bible belt of the USA. Sadly we have a government that sees nothing wrong with this. No surprising when we have a High Church (effectively Catholic) Prime Minster and an Opus Dei Catholic Education Secretary.

Creationists

All religious people are "creationists" in the sense that they believe that the Universe was created by a god or gods.

However, the extremist Christian creationists are characterised by an absolute belief in the teleological argument (see the Philosophy page) and that:

• Genesis is a true, accurate and complete description of how the world began;
• the world was created at around 7:15pm on October 22nd, 4004 B.C (they step back through the "X begat Y" list to get there);
• the earth and everything on it came into being at that time - including fossils which were deposited by the flood;
• man was created in his current form - not a result of evolutionary development;
• dinosaurs roamed the garden of Eden alongside Adam and Eve;
• the geological interpretation of the earth's age is wrong;
• carbon dating is wrong;
• evolution is a theory that does not stand up.

Evolution in the very short term

Here are two simple things that show evolution happening now - in front of our eyes.

• Doctors are advised to be cautious in prescribing antibiotics because bacteria have evolved that are immune to specific anti-biotics - or even thrive on them.
• Farmers have to continuously change the pesticides they use on their crops because insects and pests evolve to become immune to specific pesticides.
• This is evolution in the very short term. In a few generations, bacteria or pests can become immune to the methods we develop to control them.
• This is not evolution based on randomness. This is simply the survival of the most resistant bacteria and pests which then pass on their genes to the next generation which is even more resistant. In a year or two, and after a few generations, totally different bacteria and pests have evolved.

Scientists and creationism

By "scientist" in this context we mean someone with genuine (non-religious) academic qualifications and involved in academic research at a genuine (non-religious) University and who has published papers in genuine (non-religious) scientific journals.

Two bold statements:

• There are many scientists who accept both evolution and religion;
• There are no scientists who are fundamental creationists (as defined above.)

So, fundamental creationism of the "intelligent design" variety, has absolutely no scientific following at all.

Correct us if we are wrong - name the scientist, name the university, cite the published papers.

US National Academy of Science (NSA)

The NAS publishes a book on this topic: "Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences".

The blurb states:

Institute of Creationist Research (ICR)

One quotation from an exhibit at their creationist museum should be sufficient to understand the "scientific" basis for their beliefs:

The museum claims that all fossils resulted from the great flood. Since marine fossils are found in limestone at the top of Mount Everest, almost six miles high, we wonder where all the water came from and where it went afterwards?

The impact of Darwin's theories

At the time Darwin published his theories the impact was enormous.

The Christian church was still reeling from the impact of geological discoveries which had estimated the earth to be vastly older than the 6,000 years currently believed.

Geological time now meant that natural selection via beneficial mutations had more than enough time to take place.

It was the apparent randomness of evolution, and the fact that things evolved from the simple to the more complex with no interference from any external "higher" intelligence, that shook the religious establishment.

Does evolution shake belief in god?

Undoubtedly - both in the past and now.

Once the processes of evolution were understood and accepted it was not possible to take the words of Genesis as literal history.

However....

There had never been an absolute necessity to take Genesis as a literal description of how the world began - it was simply one of the multitude of creation myths that have existed for thousands of years all over the world.

Belief in the literal interpretation of Genesis is not a necessary requirement for belief in god and the church rapidly adapted to this new position.

Where does that leave us?

Many Christians, and others, now quite happily accept:

• that the Earth is billions of year old;
• that the Universal is billions of years old;
• that evolution via natural selection is acceptable;
• that there is probably intelligent life on other planets around other stars.

Let's take the position of an intelligent Christian - not a creationist fruit-cake.

We can work through the proofs/disproofs of god - see the Philosophy page - and we end up with the core of the difference between us:

• our intelligent Christian believes in a creator god;
• our intelligent Christian believes in an immortal soul;
• we see no need to postulate either.

Logic can help

Most people do not understand logic. Logic, reason and human intelligence are not discussed in the bible.

They do not understand that it is up to the person who proposes that the earth rests on the tip of a pin held in space by an invisible hippopotamus to prove it. It is up to those who believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden to prove it.

Logic dictates that anyone making a proposition must prove it.

Secularists do not believe in fairies at the bottom of the garden because they see no necessity to postulate their existence and they see no proof of their existence.

You can only accept the existence of something if you have evidence for its existence.

What about the Big Bang?

The TV has frequent documentaries about the Universe evolving from some "singularity" at time zero when all the energy and mass "came into being".

This is a very outdated view of the Universe - one that is not held by any leading cosmologists.

By looking at the Universe we see that the most common entities within it are black holes. These are formed when stars, or larger quantities of matter, compress down to such a density that even light cannot escape. When the density within a black hole reaches a critical point it explodes throwing matter and energy back out into the Universe.

The most common view of cosmologists is that the Universe, or parts of the Universe, do this - periodically collapsing and exploding - thereby starting the process off all over again.

However...

Many of the god-free feel that the concept of a "beginning" is a logical nonsense.

We have no experience of anything beginning or ending. For example, our bodies are made up of atoms which will survive our deaths to be recycled in the Universe in another form - perhaps in the roots, trunk, branches and leaves of a tree grown on our grave. That tree will eventually die, or be cut down, and those atoms may be converted into paper which will be used to print a book explaining that the Universe is a vast recycling plant with no beginning and no end where atoms (or fundamental sub-particles - let's keep the physicists happy) are neither created nor destroyed but simply converted into other forms over time.

Where did this crazy and illogical idea of "beginning" come from?

As simple as ABC

• The concept of "first cause" is meaningless in a Universe which is continuously expanding, contracting and starting all over again.
• The simplest explanation is that the Universe simply "is". It just "is" - no beginning, no end.
• The complicated explanation is that the Universe was created by something. Presumably that something "is". Presumably that something required no creation and has no beginning and no end.
• If that something (god of course) has no beginning, is and has no end, why bother to postulate it when it is much simpler to ascribe the same attributes to the Universe itself?

However, logic goes out of the window when it comes to faith!

The crux of the matter

Our intelligent Christian will say that he is quite happy to accept evolution and the theories of physicists but something must have kicked it all off and that something is god.

The simplest explanation is always the best - and the god argument is far from simple.

If god is the timeless entity, the only entity without cause, that "caused" the Universe to come into existence then certain questions arise.

• He is timeless and without cause - why propose his existence when you can simply propose that the Universe itself is timeless and without cause?
• He brought the Universe into existence - in what way? What exactly did he create?
• Did he create the matter/energy at the start of some initial Big Bang from which the Universe then evolved or did he create it fully-formed as we see it now?
• If he created it for us, human-kind, why did he create such vastness where the most common entity is a black hole - the evidence of a massive destructive/creative force?

These discussions, about why god did this or that, can go on for hours. It is certainly not simple. Christians often end up with "it is not for us to question the ways of god".

This is a statement of defeat and ignorance. Of course we should question everything and, if we are faced with multiple possible explanations, we should opt for the simplest until that simplest explanation ceases to work. God does not pass this test.

Our core argument remains both philosophical and scientific - there is no necessity to postulate a god to explain the Universe.