Consequences of Opposing Evolution
MSNBC interviews astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson:
Since evolution is an organizing principle of biology that allows you to understand phenomena, there are people who resist it.
Now the way I see it, that level of resistance is not fundamentally different from the resistance that prevailed when Copernicus and Galileo demonstrated that Earth goes around the sun and not vice versa. We didn’t have Newtonian gravity back then. You couldn’t predict, with high precision, the clockwork solar system. That would have been a new word back then: “solar system,” implying that the sun is at the center of things. Back then, you had religious types arguing this, saying that it was against scripture, against God, against God’s way, God’s will.
[H]istory has shown that some theistically based belief systems have been able to adapt to the prevailing discoveries of science. Those that don’t will be left behind. And if you’re left behind, you become disenfranchised from the forces that control emerging economies.
We’re in the 21st century. The emerging economies are going to be scientifically and technologically driven. We’re not agrarian anymore.
What were the consequences in the mid-1800s of saying you didn’t believe Darwin? There weren’t any, really. But today, with biotech companies, there is no understanding of biology without the theory of evolution. And so if you say, ‘I don’t believe the theory of evolution, I think we were all specially created,’ you must understand the consequences of it to your own employability.
Now if you don’t want to become a scientist, then maybe it doesn’t matter. Fine. There are plenty of professions that do not involve scientists. But as I said, the emergent economies are going to be scientifically and technologically driven, with biotech front and center. If you’re coming in saying that there was Adam and Eve, you’re not going to get past the front door. Because they can’t use your knowledge base to invent the next vaccine, the next medicine, the next cure for cancer. That knowledge base does not track into discoveries we know are awaiting us in the halls of biotech firms.
Tyson doesn't think that the resistance to evolutionary theory will hold out for too long:
[W]hat is your measure of this resistance? Is it most of the world? No, it’s not most of the world that’s resisting this. It’s a small subset of the world. One might even say the holdouts. But they need to understand that their counterparts in the past were no less passionate about their objection to a scientific discovery as people objecting to the sun going around the earth or vice versa.
They were no less passionate in the invention of the microscope, the discovery of germs: that when you got sick, it wasn’t because God made you sick, it was because you exposed yourself to these microorganisms. And I can hand you these microorganisms and you’ll come down with all these symptoms. That discovery removed God from many equations that people had going in their head for why you got sick.
There’s a famous statement about venereal disease… when penicillin was demonstrated to cure venereal disease, there was some bishop who at the time said that this medicine was the work of the devil, because it allows you to fornicate and not face God’s punishment. And you still see a little bit of that with the AIDS virus. But by and large, people are not thinking that germs are handed off by supernatural powers.
So I think it’s a matter of time. There’s an old saying about the evolution of every great truth: First, people say they don’t believe it; then, they say it contradicts the Bible; and third, they say they’ve known it all along.
So just give them a little more time. They might warm up to it.
I'm not as optimistic as Tyson on whether people will eventually embrace evolutionary biology rather than creationism, but he does make some valid points here about how scientific ideas in the past have been opposed for religious reasons and, today, are accepted by everyone. Many are unaware of the degree of resistance that has been mounted in the past by religious conservatives against so many scientific advances or discoveries.
Tyson's comments about the importance of evolutionary theory are, however, the most important aspect of his interview. Creationists like to pretend that evolution was just made up by a bunch of atheists in order to make it easier to deny God and, therefore, nothing of scientific value will be lost by eliminating it.
They couldn't be more wrong. They display an abysmal understanding of science, the scientific method, the history of science, and of biology itself. That's only to be expected because none of it truly matters to them — they promote creationism and deny evolution for purely religious reasons, not out of any commitment to science, reason, or reality.
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Comments
I find it interesting that you can yourself, in what is worded like a factual artical, can display such abysmal understanding of Creationism and its science.
I agree that there are Christian creationists that blurt out learned frazes with no understanding of them but that is also true for a lot of the evolutionists. But Creationism is largely based on the same scientific method as Evolution. It just has a different starting point and is setting out with a different hypothesis at the base, and therefore is reaching different conclusion than the evolution hypothesis.
I find it interesting that you can yourself, in what is worded like a factual criticism, make serious charges without trying in any way to support your accusations. If you think that this piece exhibits a lack of understanding of creationism, then have the decency and maturity to show how and why.
on top of that, i would like to know the “scientific method” that you used to figure out creationism. was it something like: what created the universe? Oh! it says in the bible that god did it. problem solved, now let me go voice my opinion to people that studied for decades that i know more than them about the subject.