Mankind has evolved since then...

10 points to the geek who figures out where the title of my post came from. This is in response to Christiana's post about a Dean's World post. Whew! The response was getting long, so I decided to post here. Anyway...

Evolution, God, and the education system in one post? And just today I was thinking of posting an essay I wrote in a class called "Relgion and Science: Friends of Foes?" about some of my own views. Though, after this, I may save that for another day. I've already talked briefly about my own beliefs. Here's more.

A lot of the things you learned in school, particularly early on, were exaggerations, oversimplications, and sometimes not even true (think "put a comma at each natural pause" - lies!). This is a consequence of trying to cram a lot of information into a small amount of time, trying not to confuse the students with too much information or too much uncertainty, and not encouraging critical thought in the classroom. All scientific theories are taught as facts in the classroom because it's too complicated to say "This is the theory of gravity. Here is the evidence. Now here is the evidence that gravity might not be the whole story (can't find graviton particle, the need for dark matter and dark energy to explain why we don't see behaviours we expect based on our understanding of gravity, etc.)." Evolution is not as chock full of evidence in its favor as gravity, obviously. But when people say something is "just a theory", they forget (or don't know) that in the scientific community, a theory holds much more weight than what the average person thinks of as a theory. It is something that has been tested and scrutinized. What the average person calls a theory is, in the scientific world, a hypothesis - unproven conjecture.

Part of evolution's problem is that the scientists doing the public cheerleading are poisoning the debate with their own non-scientific beliefs. By saying that evolution disproves God, they shut down true, constructive debate on the issue. Evolution is a scientific theory that must be held up for scrutiny. Scientists who say anyone who would question it is a fool or worse have commited the closest thing to a sin that science will recognize, turning a scientific theory into an article of faith.

My experience on the creationist side is that it is merely an arguement against evolution. And if evolution isn't true, they say, it must be God. The existence of God being a non-falsifiable article of faith, it is not a scientific theory. Evolution is not perfect, but it is the best we have until the scientists willing to question it beat something better out of all the data. Belief in God in conjunction with evolution (or another theory) is fine so long as you recognize that it is faith, not science. The same goes for belief in God's non-existance. Believe all you want that the physical world is all there is and that science is the only path to truth, but recognize that that belief is also an article of faith.