For the past few days, I’ve been reading Richard Dawkins’
book, The Magic of Reality.
It’s an illustrated book meant for a younger – or less scientifically savvy –
audience, subtitled: How We Know What’s
Really True. At first I was afraid that if I read this book, I would be
admitting my own scientific ignorance. After all, I’m a smart person; I have a
Master’s Degree. But I’m not a science expert, so I quickly put my pride aside
and dove into what has [so far] proven to be a truly eye opening experience.
I think most people (like me) already have a vague
understanding of the evolutionary process. But unless someone really takes the
time to study any major field of science, they will always be somewhat
flummoxed by the complexity that is evolution.
According to Wikipedia, Evolution is “the change in
the inherited characteristics of biological populations over successive
generations. Evolutionary processes give rise to diversity at every level of
biological organization, including species, individual organisms and molecules
such as DNA and proteins.” In a nutshell, every bit of life on Earth descended
from a universal ancestor that lived roughly 3.8 billion years ago, slowly
evolving into each living species that exists today. Most people in the world
accept the theory of evolution as the basis for how the world came into being.
The Christian community, however – especially fundamentalist Christians – has rejected the scientific evidence that supports evolution,
and has instead adopted a literalist view of the bible to explain how life on
Earth began. This literalist view is the Christian concept of ‘creationism’.
Creationism is the belief that the universe
and all its living organisms originate from specific acts of divine creation.
This belief often coincides with a literal reading of the biblical Book of
Genesis and a rejection of scientific Evolution. Specifically, “Young Earth
Creationism” encourages the belief that ‘god’ created the Earth within the last
ten thousand years.
While sensible people – religious or non-religious –
understand why theories of
creationism are in fact ridiculous, those who were brought up to believe that
Noah actually saved two of each species from a powerful flood and that
dinosaurs existed side by side with human beings tend to rationalize their
beliefs by quoting the bible. But their methods are actually far from rational
because even if there was an all powerful ‘god’ somewhere in the universe, it’s
highly unlikely that s/he would have been able to write such an elaborate
series of stories ‘documenting’ his/her experiences as ruler of the world.
In my next post, I will explore some of the principles promoted
by the Institute for Creation Research, followed by a series of evolutionary
responses that can be found in Dawkins’ book.
Thanks for reading.
Heather
a.k.a. The Pretty Little Atheist
