I took my time writing and re-writing this article. I wanted to get my message across and I wanted to get it across not only clearly but as patient and kind as possible. Like Justice Antonin Scalia once said, “I attack ideas, I don’t attack people.” I take that quote extremely seriously as there are few people in modern American history that I disagree with more on just about any other issue that Antonin Scalia. If I falter in my goal, it was not intentional, I’m new to this and I’m trying. With that in mind I’d like to discuss something I recently read that disappointed me, it’s a topic I’ve tackled several times in articles over the years but it nonetheless seems to be a real sticking point in our culture. That is biological evolution.
Evolution through the process of natural selection is a scientific theory that describes the origins for the variety of life we have on Earth. Now the word many use to attack this sound principle is “theory” and I can understand the confusion as most who use that word actually mean “hypothesis.” In popular nomenclature the word “theory” means an idea or expressed opinion, yet that is not the actual definition of the word when used by scientists. A scientific theory is much farther down the line of investigation than a simple idea, in order to arrive at a theory a researcher(s) must have made many observations to their original idea or hypothesis confirming its reality. The story of how we developed the Theory of Biological Evolution through Natural Selection is well known so I will not recount it here, but it is worth your time to investigate further. I recommend reading Charles Darwin’s book “On the Origins of Species” for more information.
What I’d like to focus on is my utter lack of understandings as to why people publicly try to convince others to not believe in science. I am an advocate of individual freedoms, I firmly believe each and every human should be afforded the right to believe whatever they wish, no matter how ridiculous the belief. But when a person publicly states their opinion on a tested and wonderfully helpful scientific truth hiding under the guise of sincere belief, I get understandably miffed.
If you’re going to publicly attempt to discredit a scientific theory such as evolution, then I take issue with it. It’s one thing to hold those views personally and privately but to use a very public platform to try to discredit a theory that is the foundation of biology, and the medicine you so freely benefit from, without offering a shred of testable evidence yourself, then you are holding us all back. Carl Sagan said “We live in a society exquisitely dependent on science and technology, in which hardly anyone knows anything about science and technology.” Your words should be considered more carefully and it pains me that someone who has great reach would make such uniformed statements without regard to evidence and truth nor the consequences they may have.
Evolution may be a tough pill to swallow but the theory is sound and its predictions are easily viewable in the world around you. Your inability to grasp the intricacies of genetic variance over thousands and millions of years is not an argument against its validity. Nor does your unwillingness to accept the complicated mathematical observations of The Big Bang Theory lend any evidence to proving it false. The Universe is under no obligation to make any sense to you. It is very easy to fall for the fallacy of comfortable belief in which we see something difficult to understand and knowingly ignore it in order to feel secure in a much simpler belief. As a society we must not let this continue, I implore each of us to be willing to accept the reality of the cosmos.
I will state this once again for emphasis, I take no issue with anyone’s personal beliefs, but when they outwardly attack an observable truth that benefits the entire species, I must speak up. “So the universe is not quite as you thought it was. You’d better rearrange your beliefs then. Because you certainly can’t rearrange the universe.”— Issac Asimov
Scientific theory is not guesswork
NEW NATHANIEL WOODWARD