I don't know!

Is it really such a difficult thing to say? I say it all the time. I have an issue with believing that something is true if I have no verifiable evidence on which to base that belief. Somehow it just doesn’t sit well with me. I guess I have a fear of being called gullible or something, but it seems to me that believing or saying that something is true just because someone else said so, is how innocent people get themselves into trouble.

But this need for evidence I have burns especially bright for any theory or hypotheses that seeks to explain my existence or to provide a reason for it, and there are two things that try to do this. One is an hypotheses, one is a theory. As you can see, they are very different things.

The hypotheses is God. In this hypotheses, it is postulated that a thinking, caring God of some kind is the ultimate creator, who created the universe and everything in it, as it is, in all it’s complexity. This hypotheses has enjoyed a very long and sordid history and at times has included such claims and ideas as the sun revolving around the earth, the planets being ordered in crystal spheres, that a vacuum cannot exist because God fills every space, and many others besides. Many of these ideas are ridiculed today by even the most ardent followers of the God hypotheses, and that is as it should be. Discoveries have been made after all, that leave no doubt that some of those claims have absolutely no grounding in any evidentiary fact, so continuing to believe them to be true, now that we can freely observe that they are not, is no longer an option.

The God hypotheses however, still enjoys it’s extremes; from those who believe that the earth is less than 10,000 years old, to those who believe that the geological time scale of billions of years only helps to show God’s majesty and wonder. It also enjoys a vociferous movement formed from both extremes that believe that the complexity we find in the cosmos, on earth and in particular in biology, proves the existence of a creator or designer beyond doubt. And of course, there are some followers of the God hypotheses, few though they be, that disagree with this idea. In this respect it is just like any other form of academia.

But no matter which position is taken on God, this hypotheses tries to explain the reason for my existence in terms of me having a spirit or soul that has an eternal existence after the death of my physical body, spent in one of two places, rejoicing or suffering, depending on the choices I make during this life. It even goes so far as to call me unworthy, which is a question I find interesting. How do I attain something I’m unworthy of? Oh I see, through Jesus...

Anyway, I call this one an hypotheses because there is very little, if any evidence to support it. The bigger part of the body of evidence that exists for this hypotheses consists of a collection of very old books called “The Bible”. The individual books themselves were written at various times throughout history, with the earliest dating to around 650 - 635bce, the latest to about 96 - 120ce and they contain very little evidence that’s actually testable or verifiable. As a consequence of that lack (and my being unworthy), I find it very difficult to believe that this hypotheses has any merit at all.

The theory I spoke of is this thing called The Theory of Evolution. It doesn’t seek to explain exactly what might happen (or not) after our physical bodies cease to function as living, breathing, cognisant entities. It doesn’t even seek to explain about how life actually got kick started in the very first instance, but it does seek to explain, using a process called “Natural Selection”, how life came to be how it is today and why we are the way we are.

Basically, the theory of evolution says that anything can happen; that is that genetic mutation occurs in a random manner. Some mutations are good and aid an organism in survival, others are bad and do not. Natural selection ensures that only the good or workable mutations survive by ensuring that the bad ones die. It’s a very simple and elegant process, if seeming to be a little cruel.

That doesn’t mean to say that things don’t go wrong. In fact if things didn’t go wrong, evolution probably wouldn’t occur very often. It’s things like the introduction of a new competitor for a preferred food source, the introduction of a new predator, population pressure, etc, that cause evolution. When an organism senses pressure to adapt or die, it generally adapts. Syphilis is a good example. What, to a native American was a childhood disease consisting of a mild and fairly short lived skin irritation, became a deadly STD in Europe within a decade or two of Columbus bringing it back. That happened simply because syphilis could not survive on the surface of the skin in the European climate. So what did it do? It adapted and evolved so that it could survive in warmer, darker and damper areas of the body. Natural selection then ensured that in Europe at least, the skin infection version of the disease died out. It’s still the same organism though. So close to the original in fact, that if you’ve had the skin infection, you will be immune to the STD.

We know all this because scientists have applied some imagination and a lot of thought to the matter and verifiable evidence has been provided that proves the claim. The entire process of evolution, from the very beginning until now can also be easily explained in these terms.

So here we have a theory. It is a theory because it seeks to explain itself by providing tangible evidence. I don’t need to make any gargantuan leaps of faith and simply believe it because Charles Darwin or Richard Dawkins said so. No, I can take their claims and test them. I can go out in the field and dig up the remains of a primitive life form then look at it’s modern counterpart and see with my own eyes what changes have occurred over time. I can see, if I’m inclined to look, that the complexity of life I see around me came about quite naturally and by necessity. In short, I can satisfy myself that what we have here is a workable solution and a theory that has merit. Some may ask; “Don’t you think it’s a little unrealistic that all this has come about by chance?” to which I will answer “Yes, indeed I do.” There is no chance at all involved with evolution. You either make the right decision or you die, there is no middle ground and it is no accident that you live or die by your decision.

Another thing about this theory is that it makes no allusions to anything other than the physical world in which we live. What happens after our bodies cease to function is that we cease to be as individuals, and our bodies become fertiliser that helps nourish the next generation. So it seems that our sole purpose for being here and being as we are, is to procreate. Personally, I happen to think that the continuance of the species is a rather noble cause. Good enough to die for even… Eventually.

The very best thing about this theory however, is that it's a theory. It’s a theory that belongs to the scientific world, which of course is why it tries to explain the world in scientific terms. But being a theory means that it might also be completely wrong. That is as it should be, simply because it’s a theory. But in order to prove a theory as untenable, you need to have another, more tenable theory to replace it. As yet, no such theory exists.

Those that say that the God hypotheses is the real alternative, I think, are mistaken. God to me is a philosophical position, and to try and use a philosophical position to explain the world in scientific terms is pure folly.

Theology, which some might call the science of the God hypotheses, pretty much boils down to a human analysis of various stories, which in turn were written by humans, using no particular formula for that analysis. In these stories things often happen that seem highly improbable (and largely impossible) when the laws of physics are applied, yet we are extolled to “believe” that they are true. The words themselves are all that’s offered as proof, so how can I believe them when the very words themselves beggar belief?

There’s one other thing that really bugs me about the God hypotheses. There’s a book to tell you all about it, yet it seems that almost every single sentence in it needs interpretation. Theologians, preachers and laymen alike will quite often read you a passage of perfectly good English, only to tell you “Now what that really means is this...” and go on to say something completely different. It’s baffling. It seems to me sometimes that what christian theology really seeks to ask is this: “What if all the words that are written in the bible actually mean something else entirely?”

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From The Pulpit

In this series I intend to post speeches, or snippets of speeches that I’ve found that were never intended to be sermons but nevertheless, turned out that way.

First, a little bit of background about our speaker…

Clinton Richard Dawkins, ethologist, evolutionary biologist, writer and holder of the Charles Simonyi Chair for the Public Understanding of Science at Oxford University.

He was born on March 26, 1941 in Nairobi, Kenya and moved to England with his parents at age 8.

Education, Positions and Degrees
1954-1959 Oundle School
1959-1962 Balliol College, University of Oxford
1962-1966 Research Student, Oxford University (D.Phil., 1966)
1965-1967 Research Assistant to Professor N.Tinbergen FRS
1967-1969 Assistant Professor of Zoology, University of California, Berkeley
1969-1970 Senior Research Officer, Department of Zoology, Oxford
1970-1990 University Lecturer in Zoology, and Fellow of New College, Oxford
1989 D.Sc. (Oxford)
1990-1995 Ad hominem Reader in Zoology, University of Oxford
1995- Charles Simonyi Professor of the Public Understanding of Science,
University of Oxford, and Professorial Fellow of New College

This speech was given at TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) and was titled “The Design Of Life”. I’m not sure what they were expecting, but what they got was a brilliant sermon on the virtues of atheism. In it, he explains why it is he’s so adamant about his disbelief, among other things.

It’s a 30 minute clip but is well worth the watch, so you’ll need a bit of time. Download it as an MP4 here and view it at your leisure, or grab a cuppa, hit play and enjoy…

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