A Letter on Evolution: The 'Religion' of Evolution

My growing fascination with the way we use language, and indeed how it changes, is the impetus behind posting this video...and also its message, I admit.

Language is indeed very powerful and yet something which changes frequently. In microscopic steps, it seems sometimes. An entire debate can hinge - as often the evolution debate does - on semantics, on whether people "believe" in evolution.

And yet, this is how scientists are "losing" this "debate". It's really a non-debate, and scientists aren't losing the debate. They're losing the PR battle. Every year - I won't say every day, though this distinction may be accurate - new evidence solidifying the relative truth of evolution is revealed (as much as anything can be "true").

This is the place where the rub happens. Scientists believe - there's that word again - that nothing can be known in an absolute way. It is not belief, as the video suggests, in a blind sort of way. So that's why there is a "debate".

I could, if I had the time and patience and desire, begin to dispute any number of scientific realities and end up turning the tide on them. That may sound arrogant, but it's not. It's a disparity between the way the two camps discuss the issue. I am no more capable than anyone (who is not a scientist) of disproving scientific data, but since I realize that disputing something in today's world creates a "debate", then I am already halfway to the point of converting people to my side.

Creationists/IDers are just the same as the PR folks who work for cigarette companies. They hire (Read: pay) scientists to say that "there is no known link between cigarettes and cancer". And there are people who say that trans fats actually clear arteries, rather than clog them. That Elvis is still alive. That George Bush was responsible for 9/11.

Neil DeGrasse Tyson - On Intelligent Design

Neil DeGrasse Tyson can explain just about everything in easy-to-grasp terms. He's a natural communicator, as well as a brilliant scientist, and unlike plenty of other scientists, his astounding intelligence doesn't come off as smarmy or arrogant, which is a plus, in my book.

Here, Tyson discusses how the Universe is not here for our benefit. Indeed, it's about as hostile to humans as any place could be, give or take. I'm not sure if he goes into talking about the Earth - he talks plenty about the Universe as a whole - but the Earth's lack of habitable space is worth mentioning here.

People always talk about what an amazing fit humans and the Earth are, but they don't think of how little of the planet we are able to inhabit. It's a very small percentage, when discussed on the whole. It's not that being here at all isn't amazing. It is. It truly is, but that's just the point.

Plus, we live on an environmental knife-edge, where it is very likely for the balance to teeter in one direction or the other and cause the extinction of the entire human race, so our collective happiness should rest on the fact that we are here at all and not on just how much we mean to the rest of the Universe. Think about it like this: if the Earth was struck by a meteor the size of, say, Mt. Kilimanjaro, then we'd all be gone and the rest of the Universe would just keep plugging along.