Transcript Chapter 21 Culture, Religion and Evolution

Chapter 21
Culture, Religion and Evolution
Figure CO: Water drops
© silver-john/ShutterStock, Inc.
Overview
• The theory of evolution impacted
on a very specific aspect of
human culture — systems of
religious belief
• Darwin’s wife, Emma, and many
of her contemporaries perceived
challenges to the concept of their
Deity
• The conflict between science and
religion continues today
Overview
• Evolution by Natural Selection should be
viewed in the context of a wider scientific,
political and economic revolution
• Opposition to the facts and mechanisms of
evolution from religious fundamentalists has
been called Creationism, Creation Science and
Intelligent Design
• Opposition to the conclusions of science has
been a minority position throughout the 20th
century
Bases of Religious Belief
• Religion is an attempt to deal with aspects of
human experience that can neither be
controlled nor understood
• Concepts of God(s), the soul, the relation of
man to the God(s), and the explanations of
the origin of the universe, the earth, life and
man are generally intermingled in religious
thought and traditions
• Religious developments in different cultures
provides clues to the evolution of religion
itself; an aspect of human sociobiology
RELIGION AS A WAY OF
KNOWING
What is the nature of the universe?
What can I know about the universe?
How do I conduct myself in the universe?
SCIENCE AS A WAY OF KNOWING
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
The Universe Is Understandable.
The Universe Is a Vast Single System In Which the Basic Rules Are
Everywhere the Same.
Scientific Ideas Are Subject To Change.
Scientific Knowledge Is Durable.
Science Cannot Provide Complete Answers to All Questions.
Scientific ideas are developed by particular ways of observing,
thinking, experimenting, and validating.
Observations/Data ➔ Hypotheses ➔ Hypothesis
Testing ➔ Models ➔ Laws ➔ Theories
The Choice: Religion or Science?
Are the phenomena of the material world to be understood
and explained by supernatural or natural causes?
Figure 01: Swarm of desert locust
© FAO/Giampiero Diana
Science and Religion
• In Western European and other
technologically advanced
cultures, nonliving phenomena
generally have been considered
more amenable to scientific
analyses than matters that touch
on life itself, and on human life in
particular
• However, the physical sciences
also met opposition from
organized religion
The Question of Design
• The first significant cracks in the theological armor of
continued divine intervention in nature arose
through the discoveries by Copernicus, Galileo and
Kepler of natural laws regulating the motion of the
solar system
The Heliocentric Universe
Copernicus 1473-1543
Tycho Brahe 1546-1601
Galileo 1564-1642
• The early European astronomers whose
data and calculations eventually overthrew
the Geocentric Universe faced serious
opposition, suppression and condemnation
from the Catholic Church
Planetary Motion
Kepler’s three Laws of Planetary Motion were not
accepted immediately by his contemporaries,
including Galileo and Descartes
Figure 02A: Portrait of Johannes Kepler
(1571-1630)
Courtesy of National Library of Medicine
Figure 02B: Historical illustration of Kepler's planetary system model
© Photos.com
Isaac Newton (1642-1727)
• In the next generation, religious
opposition to astronomy declined
• Newton discovered the Law of
Universal Gravitation
• Proved Kepler’s three Laws of
Planetary Motion
• Calculated the an Earth-sized sphere
would require 50,000 years to cool to
Heliocentric Universe? Yea.
its present temperature
Ancient Earth? Nay.
• As a pious Christian, Newton felt
obliged to reject his own calculations
Ancient Earth
Georges-Louis Leclerc,
Comte de Buffon (1707-1788)
• Buffon calculated that the
age of the earth was 75,000
years, basing his figures on
the cooling rate of iron
• The Sorbonne (Paris Faculty
of Theology) forced him to
issue a retraction
Sir Charles Lyell (1797-1875)
Lyell initially thought the
age of the earth was of
hundreds of thousands
of years, eventually of
millions of years
Science and Culture
Figure B02: Chinese
magnetic compass
© sgame/ShutterStock, Inc.
Figure B01: Fireworks over palaces in China
© iBird/ShutterStock, Inc.
• Our Hall textbook reminds us that
Chinese science and technology
paralleled and many times preceded
the discoveries in the West
• We could find similarities for
scientific advancement in the Arabian
and Indian cultures
Table T01: Inventions and discoveries in China
Science and Religion
Carl von Linné = Carolus Linnaeus
(1707—1778)
• Swedish biologist
established binominal
nomenclature system
for naming organisms”
(genus + species)
• Linnaeus was a Biblical
creationist who initially
abided by and promoted
the view that species do
not change
“God created, Linnaeus organized”
William Paley (1743-1805)
Paley’s Natural Theology; or, Evidences of the Existence and Attributes
of the Deity (1802) was a major influence on the young Charles Darwin
Charles Darwin and Society
• Darwin’s theory of evolution had a profound
impact virtually all spheres of human society
and culture
• Darwin’s world view overturned a variety of
religious, cultural and scientific concepts
– All life is interconnected by descent from common
ancestors
– Species change through time
– Man is an integral part of the natural world
– Etc.
Darwin Made A Monkey Out of Us
Darwinism and Religion
• The stressful relationship between evolution and
religion stemmed as much from the recognition
that evolutionary concepts were not impregnable
as from vulnerability of religion
• Darwin was painfully aware of this and pointed
out at least two discoveries that could refute his
theory:
– an inversion of the evolutionary sequence such as
evidence of humans in the Paleozoic or Mesozoic Eras
– finding the same species in two separated
geographical locations when their presence was not
caused by migration between these areas
– Neither these, nor any other lines of evidence to
refute evolution have been discovered!
Darwin and Religion
• “The old argument of design in
nature, as given by Paley, which
formerly seemed to me so
conclusive, falls, now that the law
of natural selection has been
discovered. We can no longer
argue that, for instance, the
beautiful hinge of a bivalve shell
must have been made by an
intelligent being, like the hinge of
a door by a man” (Autobiography)
• The death of Darwin's
daughter, Annie in 1852
pushed the doubting
Darwin away from the
idea of a beneficent God
The film THE CREATION (2009) is a very
good account of Charles and Emma’s
struggles with these issues; it is based
on Randal Keynes's biography of
Darwin titled Annie's Box
The Debate at the British Association meeting, Saturday,
June 30, 1860 at the Oxford University Museum
Wilberforce’s famous jibe at Huxley (as to whether H. was descended from an ape on his mother's side or his father's side)
was probably unplanned, and certainly unwise. Huxley's reply to the effect that he would rather be descended from an ape
than a man who misused his great talents to suppress debate—the exact wording is not certain—was widely recounted in
pamphlets and a spoof play
Huxley’s Version
of the Event
• “If, then, said I, the question is put to me
would I rather have a miserable ape for a
grandfather, or a man highly endowed by
nature and possessed of great means and
influence, and yet who employs these
faculties and that influence for the mere
purpose of introducing ridicule into a grave
scientific discussion, I unhesitatingly affirm my
preference for the ape.”
– From a letter to his friend, Frederick Dyster, a few months later
The Origin of Man?
Descended from apes?
When the wife of the Bishop of
Worcester heard Huxley had
announced that man was
descended from apes:
“Descended from apes! My
dear let us hope that it is not
true, but if it is, let us pray it will
not become generally known.”
Darwin Addressed ID in
The Origin of Species
• In the chapter “Difficulties on Theory” is a
section on “Organs of Extreme Perfection”
• Darwin asked, and answered satisfactorily for
his time, the question, posed in modern terms
by creationists/ID proponents as “How can
natural selection, by sorting random changes
in the genome, produce elaborate and
integrated traits like the vertebrate eye?”
Various Animals With Different Types of
giant
flatworm
Camera-Type Eyes clam
polychaete
eye of giant clam
squid and fish
jumping spider
octopus
chambered nautilus
Variation in Mollusc Eyes
flatworm
polychaete
nautilus
squid and fish
ID Is Nothing New
No Designer Genes?
• For evolutionary theory, the essential
challenge that religion poses has always been,
“How from the disorder of random variability
can nature achieve the beauty of adaptation
without intelligent intervention?”
• Darwin’s fundamental contribution was to
answer this question by means of a
mechanism that no one had thoroughly
explored before: natural selection
Scope’s Trial, Dayton, TN - 1925
“Your honor, I feel that I have been convicted of violating an
unjust statute. I will continue in the future, as I have in the
past, to oppose this law in any way I can. Any other action
would be in violation of my ideal of academic freedom — that
is, to teach the truth as guaranteed in our constitution, of
personal and religious freedom. I think the fine is unjust.”
John T. Scopes
Figure 03: Scopes trial: William Jennings Bryan for
the state; Clarence Darrow for the defense
© Smithsonian Institution Archives, SIA2007-0124
Creationism and Intelligent Design
• Fundamentalist religious groups
reject evolution as an explanation
• “God created humankind in its
present form almost 10,000 years
ago”
– 1982 – 44% American respondents
agreed
"MONKEY BILL" ENACTED IN TENNESSEE: Governor Bill Haslam
allowed Tennessee's House Bill 368 to become law without his
– 1999 – 47%
signature on April 10, 2012, according to the Memphis
Commercial Appeal (April 10, 2012). The law encourages
– 2012 – 46%
teachers to present the "scientific strengths and scientific
weaknesses" of topics that arouse "debate and disputation"
– 2014 – 42%
such as "biological evolution, the chemical origins of life, global
warming, and human cloning.”
Creationism and Intelligent Design
• The level of support for creationism rose from
24% amongst those who seldom or never
attended church, to 50% amongst those
attending monthly, and 70% amongst those
attending weekly
• People may attend church regularly for a sense of
community, social support and spiritual
satisfaction
• But it is sad if this turns them against scientific
knowledge
Creationism and Intelligent Design
• By the end of the 1960s, anti-evolution laws
were either repealed or declared
unconstitutional
• Nevertheless, today only 90 minutes out of
each teaching year is devoted to evolution in
the average high school in the United States
• Some Judeo-Christian groups continue to
reject evolutionary explanations for biological
events
Knoxville World’s Fair - 1982
• After viewing an exhibit on the
early history of Islam and the
founding of Mecca by
Abraham/Ibrahim of the Old
Testament, I inquired of one of
the young Saudi Pavillion
guides, if Islam also claimed the
tradition of Adam and Eve
• In response to his “yes,” I then
asked how Muslims view the
Theory of Evolution
• He replied, “You mean that
theory that Freud said man
evolved from donkeys? No, we
don’t believe in that!”
Creationism and Intelligent Design
• “Intelligent design” is latter-day creationism
• Intelligent design relies on supernatural
explanations rather than natural causes -- it is
not science
• “Teaching controversies” and “teaching strengths
and weaknesses of theories” are just the next
step in the creationist/ID legal/legislative battle
Religious arguments have explanatory
power with respect to belief systems,
but they are not scientific explanations
Kansas State Board of Education
On August 11, 1999, the Kansas State Board of Education voted 6-4 in favor of science
education standards that contain no mention of biological macroevolution, the age of the
Earth, or the origin and early development of the universe; a newly elected Board
reversed this decision in 2001
Complex Structures Are Neither Irreducibly Complex Nor Are
Their Components of No Value Until the Complex Structure
Evolves
• Proponents of Intelligent Design often assert
that component parts of a complex structure,
where molecule, cell, or tissue, could not be
preserved by natural selection while the
complex structure has not yet come into being
• Wrong!
• Let’s look at more examples: the lens proteins
of the eye and the Eukaryotic flagellum
Gene Co-option in
the Crystallins of Animal Eyes
This phylogeny indicates ancestral relationships based on similarities in the
families of proteins which make up the clear lens of the vertebrate eye
Each crystallin protein can be shown to have been derived from a protein that
had a separate function, often a function entirely unrelated to vision
Eukaryotic Flagella
Nine doublets plus a central pair of
microtubules ↑
Another example of stages in the
complexity of a complicated structure
Follow up on the more complicated story of
the evolved prokaryotic flagellum at YouTube
Flagellum
of eel sperm:
no central pair
Natural Selection
Does Not Produce Perfect Organisms
1.
2.
Organisms are limited by historical constraints (descent with
modification)
Adaptations are often compromises
- structures, processes, behaviors are reworked to adapt to new needs
3.
Not all evolution is adaptive
- genetic drift; alleles become fixed in small populations
- sexual selection produces features that may reduce survival potential
4.
Selection can only edit variations that exist
- these variations may not produce ideal, or even efficient phenotypes
- new alleles are not formed by mutation on demand or in anticipation
of new selective demands
The Dover, Pennsylvania, Case
•
(AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)
•
•
•
Megan Kitzmiller, Dover Area High School
senior and daughter of Tammy Kitzmiller, holds
a sign supporting the Dover Citizens Actively
Reviewing Educational Strategies (Dover
C.A.R.E.S.) to cars pulling into the Dover
Township Community Center polling place in
Dover, Pa., on election day, Tuesday, Nov. 8,
2005
The Dover Area School Board incumbents were
defending a board policy adopted in October
2004 requiring ninth-graders to hear about
'intelligent design'before learning about
evolution in biology class
Eight Dover families, including Tammy
Kitzmiller, sued the school district, alleging that
the policy violates the constitutional separation
of church and state
The eight school board members lost their reelection
The Dover, Pennsylvania, Case
NOVA
Federal Judge John E. Jones III’s
decision included: “ID is not science.
We find that ID fails on three
different levels, any one of which is
sufficient to preclude a
determination that ID is science.
They are: (1) ID violates the
centuries-old ground rules of science
by invoking and permitting
supernatural causation; (2) the
argument of irreducible complexity,
central to ID, employs the same
flawed and illogical contrived
dualism that doomed creation
science in the 1980s; and (3) ID's
negative attacks on evolution have
been refuted by the scientific
community.”
The New Devonian Age of Fishes
The Best Book on ID
• Eugenie C. Scott, a physical anthropologist,
former head of the National Center for
Science Education, which defends the
teaching of evolution in high schools
• Scott advised the parents fighting the Dover
school board
• Scott patiently rebuts opponents with logic
and evidence without denigrating those
opponents
• Her book (2004) is both a straightforward
history of the debate and an anthology of
essays written by partisans on each side
• Its greatest strength is to explain the
scientific method, which many invoke but
few describe vividly
• Scott also manages to lay out the
astronomical, chemical, geological and
biological bases of evolutionary theory in
unusually plain English
The Next Best Book on ID
• Twenty years after its original
publication (1986), The Blind
Watchmaker, framed with a new
introduction by the author, refutes
the concept of an intelligent designer
• The “watchmaker” belongs to the
eighteenth-century theologian
William Paley, who argued that just as
a watch is too complicated and
functional to have sprung into
existence by accident, so too must all
living things, with their far greater
complexity, be purposefully designed
• Natural selection—the unconscious,
automatic, blind, yet essentially
nonrandom process Darwin
discovered—is the blind watchmaker
in nature
Scientific Creationism/
Intelligent Design
• Intelligent Design? a special report reprinted
from Natural History magazine
• ID at American Association for the
Advancement of Science
• ID at Committee for the Scientific Investigation
of Claims of the Paranormal
• ID at the Skeptic’s Dictionary
• ID at National Center for Science Education
• ID at Wikipedia Also see Box 21.3, pp. 440-441, for
specific examples of evidence
• ID at Kuro5hin
refuting common creationist claims
Intelligent Design?
Accommodation by
the Catholic Church
• Since the publication of Charles Darwin's On the Origin of
Species in 1859, the attitude of the Catholic Church on the
theory of evolution has slowly adjusted
• For about 100 years, there was no authoritative
pronouncement on the theory of evolution
• By 1950, Pope Pius XII agreed to the academic freedom to
study the scientific implications of evolution, so long as
Catholic dogma is not violated
• In 2014, Pope Francis said “God is not... a magician, but the
Creator who brought everything to life. Evolution in nature
is not inconsistent with the notion of creation, because
evolution requires the creation of beings that evolve.”
Accommodation by
the Catholic Church
• Today, the Church's unofficial position is an example of
theistic evolution, stating that faith and scientific findings
regarding human evolution are not in conflict, though humans
are regarded as a special creation, and that the existence of
God is required to explain both the origin of humans and the
spiritual component of human origins
• Moreover, the Church teaches that the process of evolution is
a planned and purpose driven natural process, actively guided
by God
• At a 2008 meeting of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences Pope
Benedict said, "There is no opposition between faith's
understanding of creation and the evidence of the empirical
sciences."
Accommodation by
Protestant Denominations
• The United Methodist Church passed a
resolution in 2008 explicitly denying any
conflict between “cosmological, geological,
and biological evolution” and the church’s
beliefs
• The United Church of Christ sees evolution as
essentially compatible with religion as “a
means to see our faith in a new way”
Accommodation by
Protestant Denominations
• The Episcopal Church has been openly
skeptical of “Intelligent Design” and, in 1982,
the church passed a resolution that embraced
the possibility of God creating the world in
anyway God has chosen to do so and rejecting
“the rigid dogmatism of the ‘Creationist
movement
• Some other Denominations are less
supportive or have some degree of opposition
to biological evolution
Accommodation by Judaism
• Today, most Jewish denominations (the
Reform, Conservative and Modern Orthodox
movements) accept the science of
evolutionary theory and do not see it as
incompatible with traditional Judaism, thus
endorsing the stance of theistic evolution
• As with any major religion, there are minority
sects which disagree
Accommodation by Islam
• The Quran and Sunnah neither confirm nor deny the theory of biological
evolution or the process referred to as natural selection
• A Muslim who accepts evolution or natural selection as a valid scientific
theory must know that the theory is merely an explanation of one of the
many observed patterns in God’s creation
• As for the fossil remains of bipedal apes and the tools and artifacts
associated with those remains, their existence poses no problem for Islamic
teachings
• There is nothing in the Quran and Sunnah that either affirms or denies that
upright, brainy, tool using apes ever existed or evolved from other apelike
ancestors; such animals may very well have existed on Earth before Adam’s
arrival upon it
• All we can draw from the Quran and Sunnah is that even if those animals
once existed, they were not the forefathers of Adam
• More detail at Biological Evolution – An Islamic Perspective
Accommodation by
Buddhism and Hinduism
• No major principles of Buddhism contradict evolution by natural selection and
many Buddhists tacitly accept the theory of evolution
• Questions about the eternity or infinity of the universe at large are counted among
the 14 unanswerable questions which the Buddha maintained were
counterproductive areas of speculation
• Many Buddhists do not think about these kinds of questions as meaningful for the
Buddhist goal of relieving oneself and others from suffering
• One does not need to know the origin of life, nor agree with the Buddha's position
on scientific topics, in order to achieve enlightenment
• More detail at Proto-Buddhism
• Most contemporary God-believing Hindus accept the theory of biological evolution.
• They either regard the scriptural creation myths as allegories and metaphors, or
reconcile these legends with the modern theory of evolution.
• Hinduism may even claim to have discovered Darwinian principles before Darwin!
Deism
• Deism is the belief that reason and observation of the natural
world, without the need for organized religion, can determine
that a supreme being created the universe
• Further the term often implies that this supreme being does
not intervene in human affairs or suspend the natural laws of
the universe
• Deists typically reject supernatural events such as prophecy
and miracles, tending to assert that God (or "The Supreme
Architect") has a plan for the universe that is not to be altered
by intervention in the affairs of human life
• Deists believe in the existence of God without any reliance on
revealed religion, religious authority or holy books
• See Wikipedia’s List of Deists
Deism
Scientists and Religion
• A survey of scientists who are members of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science, conducted by
the Pew Research Center in 2009, found that just over half of
scientists (51%) believe in some form of deity or higher
power; specifically, 33% of scientists say they believe in God,
while 18% believe in a universal spirit or higher power
• Edward Larson, a historian of science then teaching at the
University of Georgia, in a 1996 poll found that 40% of
scientists believed in a personal God, while 45% said they did
not
• Other surveys of scientists have yielded roughly similar
results: 17% said they were atheists; 11% agnostics, and 20%,
of no particular affiliation
Is There Necessarily a Conflict
Between Science and Religion?
• Methodological Naturalism: The only
hypotheses researchers propose are to
account for natural phenomena, and the only
explanations they accept, are hypotheses and
explanations that involve strictly natural
causes
• Ontological Naturalism: The natural world,
the physical material universe, is all there is
• There are scientists in both camps
Further Reading
The Biological Origins of Religion
• Religion is a common feature of human societies
• Therefore, biologists and anthropologists are
beginning to look for the biological underpinnings of
this widespread social behavior
• Early hypotheses emphasize the benefits to tribes of
having a cohesive world view uniting its members
• Group and kin selection are invoked
• Read an interesting essay on the topic by E.O.
Wilson: THE BIOLOGICAL BASIS OF MORALITY
Conclusion
• The theme of our text is that the
scientific evidence for the
occurrence of evolution is now
overwhelming and no educated
person should doubt the fact of
evolution
• There need be no contradiction
whatsoever between believing in
evolution and believing in a God
or creative force behind the
universe
Conclusion
• However, there is plenty of evidence to
contradict the pseudoscientific concept of an
Intelligent Designer
• But the conflict goes on . . .
The cartoon is from a creationist
web site. But would creationists be
just as eager to put gravity, the
periodic table of elements, plate
tectonics, Force = Mass x
Acceleration, DNA is the genetic
material, the heliocentric solar
system on their “false idol?”
Last Words for the Course
• Essential to our understanding of evolution:
– Groups of organisms are bound together by
their common inheritance
– The past (3.5 by) has been long enough for
inherited changes to accumulate
– Discoverable biological processes and natural
relationships among organisms provide the
evidence for the reality of evolution
– Mutation, Natural Selection, Sexual Selection,
Migration, and Random/Neutral effects explain
most changes in gene pools over time
– Thanks to Darwin and Wallace and all their
intellectual descendants!
The Known Universe
Chapter 21
End