# Do you need more faith to believe in evolution than in intelligent design? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [June 17, 2004, 8:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836 "2004-06-17T08:05:19Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 26
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 1:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/501 "2004-07-05T01:29:04Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > I still feel that an element of faith or belief is involved in accepting evolution, since it has not been (and cannot be) proven, and since we have to infer what happened way back when from the less than overwhelming evidence that exists. It’s strong, but it’s not conclusive. This seems rather an odd thing to say. Do you consider the evidence lacking in quantity, or quality? ---
**Author:** ![bodswood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e68b1a/32.png) [@bodswood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bodswood)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/502 "2004-07-05T01:40:53Z")
Again, this has been discussed already, but the major sticking point for me is common descent. Just how every creature that has ever lived has evolved from a single progenitor makes my mind boggle. It’s even been keeping me up nights. Perhaps I have just been evolved with a mind that is easily boggled. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/503 "2004-07-05T01:42:00Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > I still feel that an element of faith or belief is involved in accepting evolution, since it has not been (and cannot be) proven, and since we have to infer what happened way back when from the less than overwhelming evidence that exists. You’re still missing the point entirely. For one thing, nothing can be conclusively “proven” using the scientific method. Science develops theories that best explain the existing evidence. We are no more certain that viruses and bacteria cause diseases, or that atoms make up molecules that build up to the matter we see than we are that fish with legs waddled out of the primordial soup, but all of those theories best explain the existing evidence, and stand up to repeated attempts to falsify the predictions that they make. A similar “leap of faith” is required to “believe” that the mass of the earth lends it the gravitational force that holds you to this terra firma. It is possible that our bones are magnetic, and we stick to the earth because the molten core of the earth projects a magical bone-magnet field that keeps us from flying into space. But you “choose” to “believe” that a gravitational force of 9.8 m/s[sup]2[/sup] is holding you onto the planet. Do you understand what I’m getting at? You have “faith” that _Streptococcus pneumoniae_ causes pneumonia, and that the earth revolves around the sun. We could get results tomorrow that indicate that the earth is stationary in space, contradicting the notion of heliocentrism. We would analyze the data, and revise our understanding of the universe for a geocentric viewpoint. When we analyze all of the data and generate a model of the situation at hand that that generates testable, falsifiable hypotheses, we accept that as being the best explanation for all of the existing data. There is no blind faith. We would constantly test the model and change it to best reflect current understandings. We only “believe” it is the truth because it completely explains all existing conditions, and makes predictions that can be tested and confirmed. When overwhelming evidence exists for something, the only logical approach is to accept that as the truth. The only element of faith involved is that in which we can never truly know anything for sure. We have faith that the things we hold to be true are. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/504 "2004-07-05T01:48:57Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > Again, this has been discussed already, but the major sticking point for me is common descent. Just how every creature that has ever lived has evolved from a single progenitor makes my mind boggle. It’s even been keeping me up nights. > > Perhaps I have just been evolved with a mind that is easily boggled. What does that have to do with the truth? Can you even begin to comprehend how your computer works? How the switching on and off of millions of microscopic transistors, etched into a piece of silicon, transmitting electrons can translate into nude pictures of Anna Kournikova? Can you fathom what is taking place in your hard disk, where a read head, suspended microns off of a metal disk, can convert a magnetic strip into a one or a zero and hold your tax information? How striking a key can generate an electrical impulse that instantaneously cause the letter ‘m’ to pop up on your screen? I can’t. I don’t believe that my computer works. What about the universe? Can you comprehend that the univers is _infinite_? That there is black nothingness that extends in all directions _forever, without end or time or space?_ What do you think of cosmic theories? ---
**Author:** ![bodswood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e68b1a/32.png) [@bodswood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bodswood)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 1:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/505 "2004-07-05T01:55:06Z")
But, Ilsa, I know that my computer was designed and I don’t find its operation mind boggling. As for the cosmos, that it is infinite would fit perfectly with my idea of God. ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 2:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/506 "2004-07-05T02:04:05Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > Again, this has been discussed already, but the major sticking point for me is common descent. Just how every creature that has ever lived has evolved from a single progenitor makes my mind boggle. It’s even been keeping me up nights. > > Perhaps I have just been evolved with a mind that is easily boggled. The evidence for common descent _is_ pretty overwhelming, I’d say. What closes the deal, in my opinion, is that the more recently-developed methods of investigation (such as DNA analysis, bioregiography), substantially _confirm_ the tree of common descent that had already been derived by other means such as comparative anatomy. There are multiple, corroborative lines of evidence - the only way I can imagine someone NOT finding them overwhelming is if that person was simply _avoiding or ignoring_ them. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 2:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/507 "2004-07-05T02:06:03Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > Again, this has been discussed already, but the major sticking point for me is common descent. Just how every creature that has ever lived has evolved from a single progenitor makes my mind boggle. It’s even been keeping me up nights. There are worse things than having one’s mind boggled. Simple observations of people on a daily basis are enough to do it to me… Do you deny that, without ever having met me, you and I are, at some level, related? Not just in a general sense of “we’re both human” (or “we’re all God’s children”, if you prefer), but in the sense that if we were to trace out our repsective family trees, they would necessarily overlap at some point – that one or more of your ancestors are my ancestors as well. Or that the same is true for every participant in this thread? If you can accept that each and every person you meet every day is a distant relative, how much harder is it to accept that parrots are relatives of crows? Or that rhinos and horses are related? Did you check out the Tree of Life website I posted earlier? You claim common descent doesn’t makes sense, yet it very clearly _does_ make sense to anyone who actually goes out and studies nature. And you still haven’t explained how creationism supposedly does a better job at explaining similarities and differences in organisms without being equally (or more-so) mind-boggling. And [here’s](http://www.palaeos.com/) another site which will either increase or decrease your boggle, depending on the degree to which you study it. Frankly, I cannot fathom all living things _not_ being related. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/508 "2004-07-05T02:08:00Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > Again, this has been discussed already, but the major sticking point for me is common descent. Just how every creature that has ever lived has evolved from a single progenitor makes my mind boggle. It’s even been keeping me up nights. > > Perhaps I have just been evolved with a mind that is easily boggled. To me it would be more mind boggling if the creatures today had come from separately created kinds all having the same chemical as their genetic determinant. ---
**Author:** ![bodswood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e68b1a/32.png) [@bodswood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bodswood)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 2:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/509 "2004-07-05T02:16:42Z")
> [@David Simmons](#): > > To me it would be more mind boggling if the creatures today had come from separately created kinds all having the same chemical as their genetic determinant. But by the same token it seems eminently reasonable that the creator should use the same basic materials. Thanks for the link, Finchie. I’ll take a look. ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 2:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/510 "2004-07-05T02:19:39Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > But by the same token it seems eminently reasonable that the creator should use the same basic materials. Why does that seem reasonable? A Divine Creator is not limited as to which materials he can use or designs he can implement. He is not constrained as we mere mortals are - efficiency is a meaningless concept to such a being. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 2:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/511 "2004-07-05T02:28:55Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > But by the same token it seems eminently reasonable that the creator should use the same basic materials. I don’t want to argue theology because I’m ill equipped, but … It seems to me a wild speculation with no backing in the Bible that the materials used in Gen. 1-20, the waters; Gen. 2-20, the dust; Gen. 2-22, Adam’s rib all contained DNA. ---
**Author:** ![bodswood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e68b1a/32.png) [@bodswood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bodswood)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/512 "2004-07-05T02:30:59Z")
Looking at the natural world, there’s considerable diversity in aesthetic design (some creatures are beautiful, others are grotesque, yet others almost humorous), which speaks of a guiding hand. (Although I appreciate, God may be understood to have been a designer even according to an evolutionary model.) But the fact that the basic building block is common needn’t be taken as a limitation. Ars latet artem. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 3:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/513 "2004-07-05T03:35:07Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > Looking at the natural world, there’s considerable diversity in aesthetic design (some creatures are beautiful, others are grotesque, yet others almost humorous), which speaks of a guiding hand. (Although I appreciate, God may be understood to have been a designer even according to an evolutionary model.) The implied comparison of God with an artist, _i.e._ guiding hand, is poetic but just a misguided flight of fancy. By your own statement, you and I can’t know anything about God, even assuming God’s actual existence. > [@bodswood](#): > > … naughty, naughty! I think the whole point about God is that he is above all of our understanding. DNA is a chemical that anyone with training can separate out from other chemicals, discover its composition and properties. Your God is something that none of us can know, or even guess at, and is a convenient foil for you to call upon and ascribe properties to as needed. If you maintain that DNA being the main genetic determinant isn’t strong evidence for a common origin, which is separte from evolution by the way, then I agree with another poster who said that your claims about being convinceable lack believability. ---
**Author:** ![Ilsa\_Lund](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/a6a055/32.png) [@Ilsa\_Lund](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ilsa_Lund)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 3:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/514 "2004-07-05T03:42:13Z")
Put it this way: what would it take for you to accept evolution outright? ---
**Author:** ![bodswood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/e68b1a/32.png) [@bodswood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bodswood)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 4:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/515 "2004-07-05T04:24:31Z")
David, isn’t evolution ultimately based on the idea of a common origin? For evolutionists, doesn’t DNA imply a common origin and evolution of all living species from pre-existing species? ---
**Author:** ![Darwins\_Finch](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/darwins_finch/32/20304_2.png) [@Darwins\_Finch](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Darwins_Finch)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 5:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/516 "2004-07-05T05:11:04Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > David, isn’t evolution ultimately based on the idea of a common origin? You got that the wrong way 'round, Chief. Common descent is founded first-most on the idea that evolution occurs, and second-most by the fact that it occurs via natural selection (the latter being the contribution by one C. Darwin; the former had been speculated prior to Darwin’s _Origin_). You can read the whole thing [here](http://www.bartleby.com/11/1501.html), but below is a relevant section from the final chapter of Darwin’s _Origin of Species_: > [@](#): > > Throughout whole classes various structures are formed on the same pattern, and at a very early age the embryos closely resemble each other. Therefore I cannot doubt that the theory of descent with modification embraces all the members of the same great class or kingdom. I believe that animals are descended from at most only four or five progenitors, and plants from an equal or lesser number. > > Analogy would lead me one step farther, namely, to the belief that all animals and plants are descended from some one prototype. But analogy may be a deceitful guide. Nevertheless all living things have much in common, in their chemical composition, their cellular structure, their laws of growth, and their liability to injurious influences. We see this even in so trifling a fact as that the same poison often similarly affects plants and animals; or that the poison secreted by the gallfly produces monstrous growths on the wild rose or oak-tree. With all organic beings excepting perhaps some of the very lowest, sexual production seems to be essentially similar. With all, as far as is at present known the germinal vesicle is the same; so that all organisms start from a common origin. If we look even to the two main divisions—namely, to the animal and vegetable kingdoms—certain low forms are so far intermediate in character that naturalists have disputed to which kingdom they should be referred. As Professor Asa Gray has remarked, “The spores and other reproductive bodies of many of the lower algae may claim to have first a characteristically animal, and then an unequivocally vegetable existence.” Therefore, on the principle of natural selection with divergence of character, it does not seem incredible that, from such low and intermediate form, both animals and plants may have been developed; and, if we admit this, we must likewise admit that all the organic beings which have ever lived on this earth may be descended from some one primordial form. But this inference is chiefly grounded on analogy and it is immaterial whether or not it be accepted. No doubt it is possible, as Mr. G. H. Lewes has urged, that at the first commencement of life many different forms were evolved; but if so we may conclude that only a very few have left modified descendants. For, as I have recently remarked in regard to the members of each great kingdom, such as the Vertebrata, Articulata, &c., we have distinct evidence in their embryological homologous and rudimentary structures that within each kingdom all the members are descended from a single progenitor. Darwin is, of course, pointing out that whether life arose as a single form or many is irrelevant, as there would necessarily be but a few (or only one) to actually leave progeny. He closes with the following eloquent paragraph: > [@](#): > > It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with Reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life and from use and disuse: a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less-improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved. Again, noting that life may well have evolved from one or even a few forms. Common descent is an expected outcome of evolution via natural selection, not a requirement, or the basis, for it. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 5:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/517 "2004-07-05T05:19:19Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > David, isn’t evolution ultimately based on the idea of a common origin? > > For evolutionists, doesn’t DNA imply a common origin and evolution of all living species from pre-existing species? I already answered this a ways back. From the evidence we are descended commonly, but it is not a requirement for evolution. Say we discovered that there were 10 separate origins of life. Would you accept (not believe in) evolution then? This wouldn’t affect my acceptance of evolution one bit. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 5:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/518 "2004-07-05T05:22:54Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > But the fact that the basic building block is common needn’t be taken as a limitation. Ars latet artem. Just as important as the common building block are the common mistakes. We and all mammals have a blind spot in our eye. Squids don’t. Does god love squids more than us? We and chimps share a mutation that prevents us from synthesizing vitamin C that other primates have. Is god in cahoots with the orange juice cartel? Why would god leave mistakes in that only make sense in terms of evolution? Ever worry that when you meet your maker he is going to dope slap you and say, “Schmuck! How much more obvious could I make it?” ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 5:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/519 "2004-07-05T05:28:57Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > But, Ilsa, I know that my computer was designed and I don’t find its operation mind boggling. As for the cosmos, that it is infinite would fit perfectly with my idea of God. I’m a computer designer and have a PhD in computer architecture, and computers are a lot less designed than you think. Architectures evolve, get selected by the market place, and kind of mutate when someone has a good idea. There has been no “designer” saying to use x86 as the basic design - almost everyone in the field knew it was inferior to the Motorola design, and just won because IBM bought it for the first PC. In companies that design PCs there are people in charge, but no one, no one, understands the whole thing to any level of depth. When you are testing first silicon you find a number of unpleasant surprises. When I was working at Intel it would have been nice to spend one hour a week with each of the subgroups doing parts of one design. However, that would have taken forty hours a week, leaving my other forty hours of work to do my real job. No, descent with modification and natural selection is useful for understanding lots of things in the non-biological world. ---
**Author:** ![David\_Simmons](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/9de053/32.png) [@David\_Simmons](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/David_Simmons)\ **Post date:** [July 5, 2004, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836/520 "2004-07-05T05:35:03Z")
> [@bodswood](#): > > David, isn’t evolution ultimately based on the idea of a common origin? Well, for the umpteenth time, evolution is the adaptation of organisms to different or changing environments. > [@](#): > > For evolutionists, doesn’t DNA imply a common origin and evolution of all living species from pre-existing species? I don’t think a common origin is required. As others have pointed out, organisms adapt to changing conditions and this is happening right now at a time when there are thousands (millions?) of species. As to all species arising from pre-existing species. Yes but … other branches of science strongly indicate that the universe and the Earth have not always existed. So there must have been a first living thing of some sort. How that came about is still unknown so you are free to ascribe it to anything you want. However not all such ascribing can be described as science. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836.md?page=25) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/do-you-need-more-faith-to-believe-in-evolution-than-in-intelligent-design/250836.md?page=27)