Time for another rant that no one will ever read.

The focus of this year's post:

The Creationism vs Evolution Debate

For some time now, I've been seeing and hearing about a great battle going on in the "great" scientific, political, educational, and religious arenas, Creationism vs Evolution. It's been in the news, on the internet, turned into the basis for films, joked about, and otherwise thrown about. It shown to be a pressing issue in today's world. It is also shown to be something where you must take one side or the other on. Very rarely does anyone speak of any middle ground, unless it's in a comment on a story taking one side or the other. In the several years in which I have paid any attention at all to the "Science vs. Religion" battle, I have found only one article saying "Hey, maybe these two things can work together." However, this middle-ground-ism makes very little press because (I'm assuming) editors like the controversy, and merging the two would cut off an entire debate.

I think of myself as firmly entrenched in this middle ground. I am a fairly scientific person. I am also a Lutheran. I really don't see why there is any debate, and I believe that I could argue either side rather well. What really bugs me, however, are all the articles that say how "Believers in religion are ignorant fools who don't know anything." Now, of course, I realize this to be a simple Ad Hominem, and to be verifiably false. There are countless scientists that are also very religious men (or women). On the other side of the debate, you have those who follow the bible to the letter and claim that anyone who doesn't believe in it are heretics. However, there are several things wrong with this, including, but not limited to, the fact that:

A) Some people who believe in this don't follow the bible to the letter either, and are therefore heretics,

B) Some of the people who follow this line of thought haven't even read the whole bible, and therefore are not aware of all the laws therein, and

C) There are a multitude of other religions, denominations, and sects that say the same thing, and (at least the more radical) followers of each of these religions have a tendency to get violent with other religions.

I'm sorry if the above arguments seem a little lopsided, I just put down the first things that popped into my head. Moving on, I would like to issue a challenge. Science, or at least true science, is generally acceptive of being proven wrong. When a hypothesis comes along, it is thoroughly tested. If it proves to be sound, it can become a scientific law. However, no matter how many times it is proven to be true, it only takes one test to be false to question the veracity of the law. This is because it is generally accepted that even if something would appear to be true most of the time, it does not necessarily mean that it is true all of the time. Therefore, you cannot prove any scientific "fact" to be totally true, 100% of the time. However, the inverse is also true. Just because something doesn't normally happen, doesn't mean that it can't happen. As for the challenge, pick a story from the bible, koran, talmud, or any other religious text you want, any story at all, and prove without a shadow of a doubt that it is false, that it can't happen, never has happened, and can never happen. Take your time…

Keep trying…

Go on…

I'll wait…

Well? Any luck? I thought not. I won't blame you if you didn't even try. It would be totally impossible to prove that anything is impossible at all times, in all places, and in all circumstances. I'm not saying that this proves or disproves anything, but I would like to say one more thing on this train of thought: if you were writing down the history of something, would you focus on the normal, everyday, mundane occurrences, or would you write down the strange, the fantastical, the out-of-the-ordinary things? Now, what if this history wasn't written down until hundreds of years after it occurred, being passed down by word of mouth from generation to generation before being recorded in a physical form? Which parts of the story would survive? How much will the stories change between the eyewitness account and the fireside story told by the great great great grandson of the eyewitness? What sort of changes will occur in transcribing, let alone translating, the text? While the basis of the story may still be there, the details may be skewed, or missing all together.

This leads me to my final point. Radical supporters of evolution denounce creationism because it says in the Bible that humans were made from dust, even though fossil evidence shows that species changed gradually over time. Does the bible say that some omnipotent being just popped humans, fully formed, on the Earth? While some people claim this, this is merely a literal reading of an imprecise translation of a centuries old tale. While most translations say that the creation happened over several "days", the question arises "Is the modern meaning of day the meaning that was meant here?" While it could have originally referred to a day as a 24 hour period, it could also mean (by our modern definition) a billion years. While the Bible says that man was made from dust, is this again just an error in translation, trying to fit one word from one language into another language that does not have a word with the same meaning? What is the literal meaning of dust? Webster-Miriam Dictionary says that dust is "fine, dry powder consisting of tiny particles of earth or waste matter." Tiny particles. Are humans not made of "Tiny particles"? Today, we would call such "tiny particles" atoms. So is the Bible not correct in this assumption? It does not say anywhere that humans were not made fully formed as humans, it only says that they were "made from dust," or in more current terms, from atoms.

I do believe that I have ranted for quite long enough. While I would love to continue this conversation, I feel that if I were to continue I would forget my original thought process (as indeed I have already done) and go off on wild tangents, leading nowhere. So I shall now bid thee farewell, and remind you to keep an open mind while pondering about…

LIFE

THE UNIVERSE

AND EVERYTHING