Thoughts on macroevolution

First, let me say I believe in evolution in the same way I believe that our solar system’s planets orbit the sun. I know it happens, I don’t fully understand how it works, people far wiser than me are still figuring out how it happens, and neither the evolutionary process nor the celestial spheres care whether I “believe” or not.

Last week, I was extraordinarily disappointed with Rose-Hulman. I thought the academic integrity of this fine institution was going to be sullied by playing host to a pseudoscientific huckster. I allowed my passion to control me, and was ready to write a cruel, venomous letter to deride both the organizers of this event and Rose-Hulman. But, after what I saw this Wednesday, my Rose pride has increased.

This is not to say that I found the speaker’s claims valid. His entire approach was inherently flawed. The hidden agenda of Dr. Stephen Flink’s “scientific” talk was to encourage the acceptance of Creationism, yet Creationism and the scientific method are mutually exclusive; either you observe the evidence and attempt to form the most reasonable conclusion, or you form a conclusion and desperately try to find scraps of evidence (while ignoring the ever increasing amount of conflicting data). In his presentation he mentioned that all people have bias and that scientists are biased towards evolution. But that disregards science’s most important attribute: No matter how cherished or popular a theory is, once evidence is presented that contradicts that theory, the theory is either revised or discarded. Especially if a theory is cherished; if I were a scientist I would certainly strive to disprove evolution. You think Darwin is famous? Imagine how famous the scientist would be that could undeniably debunk his theory of natural selection! But while there’s discussion in the scientific community about minute details of evolution, the overall theory is sound. We humans have indeed evolved to be unintentionally biased, and Dr. Flink (who is a medical doctor and not an evolutionary scientist) is certainly not free from this regrettable human error. He is a Young Earth Creationist and thus set about to find proof for this already formed conclusion. But, as Professor Coppinger, Assistant Professor of Applied Biology, demonstrated with his applause-winning rebuttal to the claim that bacterial flagellum are irreducibly complex, Dr. Flink’s evidence is not faultless. I hardly have room here to pontificate about how evolution does not break the Second Law of Thermodynamics, or point out the flaws with the argument from irreducible complexity, but Dr. Flink’s arguments have already been addressed at http://www.talkorigins.org.

Returning to the lecture itself, it was apparently Dr. Flink that suggested he speak here, and his slides are from a place called “Anchors Away Ministries”- a quick search reveals them to be a Christian creationist group. It may be he hopes to add credibility to his bogus claims by citing the fact that he gave a lecture at this prominent school. It is for this reason that what anger I have left is not directed towards Rose, but rather towards those that would deceptively try to push their religious agenda. I am proud of Rose and its students. I know that we are a rather conservative place, and the number of fundamentalist Christians is higher than one might expect at a non-denominational engineering school, and I’m sure plenty of them showed up to visit this self-invited speaker, but the number of rational skeptics that turned up was impressive. As I sat there, checking off illogical claims on a creationism/intelligent design bingo board that one of my fellow Computer Science and Software Engineering sophomores randomized, I couldn’t help but be satisfied with the fact that so many of my peers are also passionate about evolution. Dr. Flink did get one fact very correct: where you stand on this does say a lot about you. I’m glad that this country’s future engineers will be rational individuals that are able to examine the evidence and discard those claims which are clearly nonsense.