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.