The Gospel according to Saint Charles

Monday 23 March 2009 - Filed under Life Outside Work

No, not Sir Charles Kingsford-Smith, but the other Charles. Before I get to the Good News, here I reflect on my two favourite guest stars again:

Mulder: [Picks up phone in car] Mulder.
Scully: [Worried] Mulder, where have you been? I’ve been trying to reach you all day.
Mulder: My apartment complex is being fumigated so I thought I’d get away for the weekend. I came up to Massachusetts.
Scully: Visiting your mother?
Mulder: No, just, uh, sittin’ and thinkin’… [Hesitantly] Widespread accounts of unidentified coloured lights hovering in the skies were reported in this area last night… Look, Scully, I know it’s such an inclination but did you ever look up into the night sky and feel certain that not only was something up there but it was looking on you at that exact same moment, just as curious about you as you are about it?
Scully: Mulder, I think the only thing more fortuitous than the emergence of life on this planet is that through purely random laws of biological evolution, an intelligence as complex as ours ever emanated from it… The very idea of intelligent alien life is not only astronomically improbable but at its most basic level downright anti-Darwinian.
Mulder: Scully, what are you wearing? [Scully chuckles] I understand what you’re saying but… I just need to keep looking.
Scully: Well, don’t look too hard. You might not like what you find.

(From “War of the Coprophages”, The X-Files 3×12, 1996)

First of all, I am not citing this as a twentieth-century version of the dialogue between Simplicio and Salviati. Neither is this about intelligent alien life. But I do think that this TV show conversation between a spooky guy and a scientist sums up the “science” of life rather enchantingly.

Only 39 percent of Americans believe in evolution – what the?!?
Not too long ago was the two-hundredth anniversary of Charles Darwin’s birth. It was quite timely, then, that Gallup did a survey on what people – as in Americans – thought about the theory of evolution. I don’t know what the result would have been in other countries, but the American figures were certainly interesting: less than 4 in 10 believed in evolution. How could this be? Are the Americans not getting the same science education as the rest of the world?

Master of Science for Creationism
Maybe they aren’t – at least in some states. I mean, America is the only Western nation I know of to have ignited a juridical debate over whether to teach Creationism and evolution side by side in schools. What’s more, a Texas-based college, The Institute for Creation Research (ICR), may soon be able to lawfully confer students with Master of Science degrees. Of course, as soon as the news broke out, it brought about a backlash of intolerance from scientifically enlightened individuals and their brothers.

Vantage point
Some people obviously view the Master of Science for Creationism degree as a preamble to Ph.D. in Astrology and Alchemy; while others in America, many of which I am sure belong to the 61 percent of the survey respondents who did not say they believed in evolution, would prefer to go the other way and question the science that powers the theory of evolution. As I opined before, my view is strongly inclined towards the latter.

Divinity in disguise
Once again, I reiterate that the seemingly democratic logic of linking Creationism and evolution to religion and science, respectively, is flawed. In fact, I find the theory of evolution to be highly religious at the core. As nicely summed up by Special Agent Dana Scully F.B.I., “fortuitousness,” “pure randomness,” and the odds of astronomical calibre are what evolution ultimately boils down to. People, especially schoolchildren, are instructed to take that as the rational basis of this branch of science. That’s fine, but you’d have to admit that hiding behind incomprehensible numbers is really another name for human incomprehension itself. In other words, something causeless overcame the incomprehensibly small probability over an incomprehensibly huge amount of time, to evolve into “an intelligence as complex as ours.”

Huge numbers do do justice
All that took only 4.5 billion years to unfold. Honestly? How about letting that evolve into 4.5 billion raised to the power of 4.5 billion – That will make it sound astronomically more rational as far as probabilities are concerned. Never mind that it took the inhabitants of Earth less than 100 years to get to the point where they have to find ways of saving the planet from global warming and other self-inflicted catastrophes. What a tragic, sudden end to natural selection and “an intelligence as complex as ours” that would be. I’m thinking, if only humans had another two million years at our disposal, we just might manage to evolve into something capable of adapting to life after global warming.

Hear the Good News
Evolutionary scientists should work on an argument on why the theory of evolution should not be labelled a religion. No wonder many religious scholars and leaders (such as the Pope) find evolution to be “consistent” with their faith. Of course, the teachings of the Church of Darwinism come with subtle differences such as:

• There is no creator per se.
• Therefore, no one can hold anyone accountable for what they do and believe in.
• Therefore, there is no condemnation.

Whoever reaches that scientific understanding of the Truth truly deserves a Master’s degree in Theology for Evolutionary Faith.

2009-03-23  »  JK