Assuming evolution is discovered to be junk science, would you believe in God?

Great Debates
101

You offer some strange analogies. :confused:

How does running into a wall provide evidence for the existence of atoms? If anything, it is evidence against their existence. And your light-hearted example of falling off a cliff does nothing to demonstrate Newtonian universal gravitation let alone relativistic gravity. Nor does it provide an inverse-square law or a value for the gravitational constant. And, if I know nothing about gravity, all it shows is what happens if I fall off a cliff.

The average person does not “observe” evolution. It might be obvious now, but it took some extended and unusual trips by Wallace and by Darwin to formulate the basics of natural selection, and it took a lot of research in geology, physics, and genetics to provide the additional support.

Yes, evolution is a fact. Proponents of Intelligent Design accept the fact of evolution but they introduce a supernatural element that takes precedence over genetic drift and natural selection. A slightly more meaningful question for this thread could be: If genetic drift and natural selection were found to be wrong, would you believe in God? There would still be no connection with a belief in God and there would still be the same objections raised in this thread but at least the topic would be a bit more focused.

I think that some people in this thread are arguing in a way that is similar to how some Christians justify the existence of God: The Bible says so. Okay, but why believe the Bible? Because God wrote it. How do you know? Because the Bible says that is inspired by God. Uh, what do you mean by “God”? Well, let’s take a look at what the Bible says …

Anyone who accepts the fundamental principles of modern science must accept the basic conclusions of modern science. Evolution through natural selection is one of those basic conclusions. If it is wrong, then there is something fundamentally wrong with modern science. Which is exactly what some Christians say. To argue that natural selection must be right because … because it is … is like saying that God must exist because it is obvious that God exists. And, not only is it obvious that God exists, there are many, many people who agree that God exists.

Evolution (specifically, speciation through genetic drift and natural selection) is not obvious. Neither are geocentrism, universal gravitation, relativity, or quantum mechanics. There are plenty of reasons for doubting their validity. But, there are more reasons for accepting them as true. Within the model of modern science, it makes sense to accept them as being true, so I accept them. But, there are alternative models that make sense to some people. Not to me.

102

I have believe in God without evolution being junk science and without relying on “Design Theory.” The acceptance of evolution (and it is as factual as plate tectonics or atomic theory) is no barrier to believing in God.

103

A lot of people on this message board act as if the inability to prove God’s existence is conclusive proof that he doesn’t exist. So even if presented with overwhyelming proof of his exsistence, they will choose to believe ANY other conceivealbe explanation rather than teh existence of God. They have a faith as strong as the pope’s, they just believe something else.

104

Not this again. Let’s at least stay on the topic of evolution without branching off into yet another ‘is atheism a religion’ debate.

105

[QUOTE=Der Trihs]
Nitpick: With the right equipment (a magnetic trap, a laser and a telescope mirror IIRC), you actually can see atoms - and electrons too. The scientist who first set up that experiment mentioned that he did it in part because he was always told when he was a student that you can’t ever see atoms or electrons - so he built something to let him do just that, and even gave the atoms and electrons pet names.
[/QUOTE]

Sorry, I meant with the naked eye, since that seemed to be the level of requirement to be met. We can see evolution in viral species, and we can see the DNA evidence too, with the right equipment, but you can’t see it just by looking at it with your eyes alone. I was using ‘observe’ in a more empirical sense…intellectually you know that once you catch a virus you can’t catch that one again, yet you can get a cold every year, or the flu every year because the strains mutate.

-XT

106

My old Anthropolgy professor taught us that evolution is indeed no longer a theory but that the name has stuck. I suppose it’s along the lines of AIDS no longer being a “syndrome,” but rather an identifiable disease.

107

No, people that “believe” in evolution have something that religious people do not - they have genuine evidence. Evolution is not like believing in God. Evolution is like believing in pigeons.

Here’s an interesting fact about the relative credibility of science and religion. When religious people want to gain support for their religious beliefs, they claim they’re scientific. And when religious people want to discredit science, they claim it’s just like a religious belief.

108

No. It’s just that “God” is just that extreme a claim. It’s one of the craziest, most extreme, most blatantly fictional ideas ever created. There is no conceivable “proof” so overwhelming that there aren’t a multitude of better explanations.

109

No, the passage I put in italics above has never come remotely close to happening. Therefore your conclusion is false.

110

Riiiiight.

Tell you what, Sparky. You present me with “overwhyelming proof of his exsistence”, and then get back to me me and see if I still reject the existence of God.

111

Suppose gravity suddenly reversed itself, and we all flew off the planet into space. In the moments before our component atoms flew apart, would you believe that this proved that the US should never have gone off the gold standard?

That is to say, what on earth does evolution have to do with the existence of (any) God? Evolution somehow being disproved would not only not prove God, it wouldn’t even imply anything about God.

It’s only a subset of adherents of some religions who have set up a perceived conflict between their interpretation of a text that says nothing about evolution and the current scientific model of evolution, which they have not read, do not understand, and misrepresent. It is at best a tempest in a teapot.

112

The believers hate that Darwin cost them a favorite trump card, and many of them have never gotten over it. They want to go back to the days when they could just say “If there’s no God, then where did we come from, huh? Huh?!”

113

Look, we know that natural selection happens, we know that genetic drift happens.

What you really mean to say is, “Suppose we found that genetic drift and natural selection were not enough to explain the diversity of life on Earth?”.

We know that evolution–meaning “descent with modification” occurs. How does it occur? Natural selection is the main explanation.

However, THIS IS NOT DOGMA. Lots of scientist believe that there are other mechanisms to evolution, and gallons of ink have been spilled arguing over these other mechanisms. So if someone in the future shows that some unknown mechanism is more important than Natural Selection, that doesn’t have any implications for Theism, unless this unknown mechanism is necessarily theistic.

And of course, when Theists talk about “evolution”, they are typically conflating several related but distinct ideas:

The origin of the universe
The origin of the Solar System and Earth
The origin of life on Earth
The common descent of all life on Earth
The mechanisms whereby life on Earth adapts and changes
The origin of the human species

If you believe in a literal interpretation of Genesis, all of these ideas seem the same, they are just rejections of God’s word.

But we can easily imagine that one of the above could have a non-naturalistic explanation, and yet the others have naturalistic explanations. So we can imagine discovering that humans were created and designed by some intelligent entity for unknown reasons, and yet all other life on Earth evolved and originated naturally, the Earth is 4 billion years old, and the universe “just happened”. Or, we could imagine discovering that the universe couldn’t have “just happened”, that there was some extranatural explanation for the creation of the universe, that the universe was itself designed somehow–and yet, our explanations for how the solar system and Earth formed, and how life arose and evolved remain unchanged.

This is why the hypothetical “Imagine evolution is disproven tomorrow, then what?” is misasked, because we don’t know what the OP was really trying to get at. Natural selection? Some uncaused first cause? Proof that the Earth is 6000 years old?

Some of these “disproofs” will have various sorts of theistic implications. But there’s a big difference between a deistic/pantheistic first cause along the lines of Olaf Stapleton’s “Star Maker” and the creator God YHWH presented in Genesis 1 and 2.

114

How have you determined what I really mean to say? :dubious: Your question is different from mine and I considered it before writing what I wrote. I wanted to stick more closely to the question in the thread title and maintain the idea that science could be fundamentally wrong, not just incomplete. Although scientists accept that their knowledge is incomplete, few would say that ideas accepted by the mainstream scientific community are wrong, but some “anti-evolutionists” maintain that they are. And, I said that my question was only “slightly more meaningful”.

Not sure whether your use of UPPER CASE is meant to be ironic. Comes across a bit like Nixon’s “I am not a crook”.
Perhaps science is not dogma but I’ve encountered several dogmatic scientists.

Which is why I phrased my question the way I did.

115

You could spend a while looking at fruit flies and doing experiments like these.

I’ve heard of other experiments using fruit flies and lowering the (controlled) temperature which led within observable timeframes to changes in average body size in the population.

Is that the sort of thing you mean by observing?

As an aside: one could argue that you can’t actually see a galaxy – you can see some lights in the sky. How do you know they’re a galaxy? Or stars? Or not painted on the celestial spheres? Or not pinpricks in the firmament?

116

The OP’s initial question is a bit incoherent.

What would it mean for evolution to be disproven? There’s only two scenarios I can imagine:

  1. Huge caches of new fossils are discovered showing that every species currently alive really has been around as long as our fossil record supports. Species have gone extinct, but no new ones have appears. Small scale (ie observable) changes through genetic mechanisms occur, but there is no speciation. In this scenario, no, I would still not believe in God. I’d still assume there’s a natural process at work, but it would obviously look very different from current assumptions. I’d also be very curious why there’s so much evidence to the contrary.

  2. Overwhelming evidence comes to light suggesting “intelligent design” of life. IE, we find the words “Hi! I did this!” written in giant letters made of an unknown substance buried thousands of miles in the earth. And it’s determined that a copyright notice is embedded in all DNA strands. And a millenia-old stele is found in Olduvai Gorge with instructions for turning apes into homo sapiens. In this scenario, the actual balance of evidence would shift from pure evolution to ID. In this case, I, and most science-minded folks, would agree that a “creator hypothesis” fits the data best. I still wouldn’t assume it’s the “God” of any particular mythology, althought I’d certainly take a new interest in mythology as possibly holding clues about the creator race(s?).

Both of these scenarios seem silly. If you have one that seems a little more…viable, feel free to submit.

117

Not exactly. Evolution is a “theory,” it’s just that “theory” has a technical scientific meaning that isn’t apparent to most folks.

In a proper scientific discourse, there’s no real concept of a “fact” except as informal shorthand. There are “theories” supported by current “evidence.”

The theory most in line with current evidence is assumed to be true, but it is critical to science that any theory may be “disproven” by contradictory evidence at any time.

The problem with the anti-evolutionary crowd is that, generally speaking, they don’t understand what it would take to disprove it at this point – there’s so much evidence from so many angles, it would take really fundamental, shocking discoveries to disprove. The two scenarios I posted above are, quite honestly, the only onse I can imagine that would disprove the current evidence.

118

Not only that, but neither would be enough. We’ve still seen evolution in the lab, we’ve simulated it on computers;, we’ve made programs that evolve, we’ve even “designed” machinery partially using evolutionary techniques. You’d have to somehow disprove all that too. As I said upthread, evolution is a straightforward consequence of reproduction with variation. The only way I can see to disprove that would be to show that “God” intervenes in every act of reproduction, as well as every computer simulation and genetic algorithm in order to stop evolution from happening, then inserts his own work which is carefully designed to look just like the result of evolution.

119

Well, my scenarios wouldn’t disprove “evolution” as a theory, they’d lend evidentiary support against the evolutionary explanation for where people done come from. Which is, of course, a stupidly narrow definition, but I think we all know that’s pretty much the only part most anti-evolution people care about.

Specifically, scenario #1 would undermine almost all significant evidence for speciation-by-evolution. It wouldn’t undermine the concept of evolution, and, in fact, wouldn’t disprove speciation-by-evolution. It would just undermine existing evidence; one could argue it would still be the best-fit hypothesis.

Scenario #2 wouldn’t impact evolution as a concept whatsoever. It would merely offer major evidenciary support for an alternate theory.

120

Cats are not dogs, but I’ve seen cats doggedly pursue their prey. Do you actually think cheap word games are the way to go?