Here is the video. I don't blame you if you want to slap him.
First, I want to confess something. I was a young Earth creationist. Yep, I used to believe that God poofed the world into existence over the course of 6 days 6,000 years ago. I believed that the Bible was practically a history book. All that was back when I was a fundamentalist Christian. So that means that had I watched this video 4 years ago, I would have believed EVERYTHING that this guy said. Now, I've gotten much better, and my mind is a lot more rational, so now when I first watched this video, I couldn't get past the first 30 seconds without wanting to scream.
Watching this video was quite sad considering how self-assured this Joshua is. He seems to truly believe that his rhetorical arguments can destroy decades of scientific research on the well-proven phenomenon that is evolution. It's really quite pathetic when you analyze his arguments for what they really are. Nothing that he says is original or thought provoking. It's basically a messy conglomeration of Kent Hovind talking points, fundamental misunderstandings of scientific terminology, and plainly ignorant assertions. But my creationist friend who shared this video thinks that Joshua is an excellent debater, and apparently so do the people who liked her post. This tells me that no matter how invariably absurd creationist arguments are, some devoted believer is going to share them like they've found undisputed proof that thousands of biologists, naturalists, and physicists don't know what they're talking about (maybe it's the other way around?). Now, I feel an obligation to debunk everything Joshua is spewing.
And before we begin, we must define evolution because without knowing what it is, I cannot easily defend it. I believe that the reason so many people do not believe in evolution is because they do not know what it is, and therefore, they don't understand it. Evolution is the change in inherited characteristics of biological species over successive generations. The theory of evolution explains how life on earth has modified itself from single-celled organisms billions of years ago to the mind boggling diversity of life we see today.
Joshua starts by claiming that evolution is not a science because it cannot fit within "the parameters of parentheses" (what?) of science because it's "never been observed". Well, it's not like a phenomenon has to be directly observed in order to be considered plausible. In astronomy, black holes are not directly observable because they absorb all incoming light, but astronomers have inferred that they exist due to observing the powerful beams of x-ray light and matter that they emit.
But that's rather beside the point, evolution has been observed--countless times. It may not be a video of dinosaurs evolving into birds that Joshua and other creationists seem to demand, but smaller examples of micro-evolution have been observed. For example, let's look at the peppered moths from Britain. Before the industrial revolution, most peppered moths were white with black speckles which camouflaged them well against the lichen-covered trees. But during the 19th century, the resulting pollution of the industrial revolution killed those lichens which exposed the dark tree bark underneath. Now, light peppered moths were easily predated by birds, and dark moths, which were a genetic rarity before, could hide much better against the tree bark than the light moths. As a result, the moth population became increasingly darker as the dark moths survived and produced more offspring. By the end of the 19th century, 98% of the moth population was dark. Now what does this mean? It shows that over time, over many generations, the moth population underwent a change in the frequency of inherited characteristics (their color). In other words, evolution occurred. Admittedly, it's not the grand scale evolution that creationists often attack, but it's a good starting point from which to understand evolution. Joshua cannot deny that evolution has been observed when, as I detailed here, it has. And that's just one example. You can find countless more on any search engine.
After this, Joshua states (in a very whiny tone) that evolution is just a "theory". This was where I wanted to scream. Again and again, people like Joshua misunderstand what a theory is. In colloquial use, a theory is an unproved idea that someone has about something. In scientific use, a theory is "a hypothesis or group of hypotheses that have been supported with repeated testing". Theories are very useful for explaining existing phenomena, which is why we also have a theory of gravity. Do creationists argue that gravity hasn't been proven? So we call evolution a theory not because scientists haven't proven it, but rather because scientists have proven it. I seriously feel that a different word has to be used for the colloquial use of theory because it's dragging the meaning of scientific theory through the mud.
Joshua then expresses his incredulity at the idea that out of "some accidental cosmic bang" came "one cell" from which all life springs. Well, that's not actually evolution. That's a separate process called "Abiogenesis". Whereas evolution explains how life has diversified, abiogenesis explains how life began. From what I know, scientists haven't conclusively proven abiogenesis but even if it didn't happen, and god did poof life into existence, that doesn't mean evolution is false. Mentioning abiogenesis was just irrelevant, and I'm not an expert on abiogenesis, but I'm pretty sure that a single cell coming from the big bang is not an accurate summary of it.
Joshua also can't believe that over years and years, we "mysteriously" developed all our characteristics and traits because we "willed" it. Wait, what? Does he even have the slightest understanding of what evolution is? Only someone completely ignorant of evolution's mechanics would think that it works through "magic". It would take me more than a while to explain how evolution works so here you go. Also, if he doesn't believe in evolution because it's too "mysterious" and "magical", doesn't that also apply to the Genesis story in the bible? I mean, there's a damn talking snake! What's not magical about that?
Increasingly displaying his total scientific illiteracy, Joshua cites "the law of thermodynamics" which states that "Chaos cannot create order". Whoa! Hold on! Doesn't he mean the second law of thermodynamics? That's not even what the law says! The second law of thermodynamics states that "the entropy (disorder) in a closed system does not decrease". Where does he get his interpretation from? I'm pretty sure that even most creationists don't paraphrase the law that badly. If you don't know why he brought this up, basically, many creationists argue that since disorder increases in a closed system, evolution cannot occur since organisms becomingly increasing complex would contradict the second law of thermodynamics. That's a poor arguments for many reasons which I won't detail here, but I will mention that entropy, which Joshua alludes to as "chaos", is very strictly defined within physics, and it's often bastardized by creationists. Here's an introduction to what it is, and from what I've heard so far, I know for a fact Joshua has no clue what it is.
Joshua then points to various physical phenomena ranging from the sun and the moon to the seasons in an attempt to prove that the world "works like a clock" *and this shows that the universe has order, and somehow this means that evolution is false because order cannot come from chaos? I'm seriously confused by what he's trying to say here. He says that these orderly phenomena could not come from an accident because it defies science. I've never heard of any scientific law or discovery that suggests that. When I first heard this argument, I dismissed it as plain stupid, but it's interesting because when I try to analyze it, it makes even less sense! I'm gonna move on because my brain feels wasted now.
Joshua pulls out a straw man argument where he compares evolution to a tornado roaming through a junkyard and assembling a shiny Lamborghini by chance. And that's not how evolution works at all. No evolutionist says that life randomly evolved to be what it is today. What happens is that environmental conditions favor some traits in a species over others, and the organisms with those traits survive and reproduce more often than those lacking the advantageous traits, so the species , over generations, gradually acquires those characteristics. That's how natural selection works which is a crucial part of evolution. Not a random process at all.
One particularly naive statement that Joshua says in the video is that the world is "perfect" and must have been designed for the existence of life.Yeah, I suppose with hurricanes, epidemics, parasites, volcanic eruptions, and sunburns, one couldn't ask for a more perfect world than that. And who says that world was created through an accident? Not scientists!
Joshua makes his last point by appealing to etymology where he breaks down the word "Universe" to uni=one and verse=statement, therefore the universe is one spoken statement. Well, that's not even correct because verse comes from the Latin "Versus" which means turned so I guess the universe is something turned to a whole. Silly.
Joshua finishes by calling people to share his video, like, comment, and the usual. He seems to have this goal of eventually getting creationism to be taught in schools. Hell, no. When it comes to science, American students are seriously lagging behind internationally, along with math and reading. Introducing creationism to schools will only make matters worse by promoting unfounded religious propaganda. The heart of science is critical thinking supported by empirical thinking, and creationism has none of that. You want to know something? My friends who liked and shared Joshua's video have only recently graduated high school. Science education has failed them. How do I know about peppered moths? Because I learned about it in high school, in my biology class. If we want students to be scientifically literate and critical thinking workers, we should do our best to educate them by teaching evolution and science, and not creationism.
Nice job, Amilkar. Unfortunately, the only people who will read this with an open mind already agree with you.
ReplyDeleteWhen I was in 5th grade, I was like Joshua, confused by what I was learning in my science and religion classes. (Yes, it was a Catholic school teaching evolution as science.) When challenged on the apparent discrepancies, my science teacher kept it simple. She contended that only God could devise and comprehend the wonders that humans need science to understand. On the issue of 6 days vs millions of years, "God is great and vast beyond anything we can imagine, and one day for God is naturally thousands of years for humans." I never again worried about the issue.
Of course, my concept of God is different than Joshua's. Mine is not a white-bearded, white male entity, nor any kind of entity, sitting around plotting and planning and getting caught up in human affairs. NOT a judge. Not a scorekeeper nor a score settler. Just everything, that's all.