Do you believe in Evolution?

Last weekend was a series of coincidences. I was talking to a friend about people who are agnostic or atheist but still go to temples, and we ended up talking about God, Life, the Universe, Evolution, and everything. The same evening, we went to a "discussion" at the Vedic Society meeting on "God Exists? - from a scientific perspective". Truth be told, I only went because I would get an opportunity to meet new people, eat Indian food, and bash a few heads, and not necessarily in that order. But it ended up as a heavily moderated and steered discussion aimed at converting, not just atheists into theists, but into Hindus.

Of course I was inwardly indignant that the objective of those people was rather to proselytize than to hold an intellectual and objective conference, but it was that much harder because of the narrow-mindedness I encountered in some people there. I don't want to go into the details of the evening because it's not worth your time, so I'll cut to the chase.

The slide in question depicted some neolithic hand tools, and how we accept that they were, indeed, tools made by Man rather than natural rock formations happening by chance. And then it showed the biological complexity of a DNA strand, and asked how we can accept that it happened by "chance" - as evolution, by Darwinian description, is the survival of the fittest derived by random mutation and natural selection over thousands of generations. In other words, the Hand of God behind the creation of the blueprints of life is inescapably conspicuous.

I furrowed my brow and pointed out that the complex DNA structure didn't happen overnight but over millions, perhaps billions of years of Evolution. The DNA structure of various organisms were not created by God but rather, can be explained by Evolution; the question, then, is how do you explain Evolution itself?

With that I surprised myself - here I was, questioning the fact that natural selection is the hand behind evolution, after all those biology classes and years of scientific training. I was so stunned at myself that I was speechless for a moment.

And then I was rendered doubly speechless by the moderator, who promptly questioned the occurence of evolution itself, and asked how I knew that Life originated by chance from a primal soup of semi-organic matter and developed by itself over millions of years into something as complicated as Man. Did I know how many holes in the theory have been conveniently swept under the rug by scientists? How do I know for sure that God did not create humans, but they were rather evolved from apes?

Don't get me wrong, I was not silent from the force of his argument but rather by its stupidity. How could there possibly be a guy who did not believe in Evolution? What kind of a moron thinks that God put in Man on the planet as-is, rather than evolve from apes? The paleontological evidence for Evolution is overwhelming, and the evolution of many species can be traced quite far back!

While I bemoaned the fact that religion can blind us to obvious conclusions of science, I was soon hit by yet another coincidence. I was reading Contact by Carl Sagan, and in the book, Ellie has several conversations with priests who believe that the transmission from outer space was from God (or the Devil!) rather than an alien civilization. And yet again, they end up discussing the origin of Life and the Universe and all that. And - get this - the priests believe 100% in the Bible and that God created Adam and Eve from scratch. And apparently so do 75% of USA's population.

Then it struck me. It's true. Most of the Christians believe that God created Man directly. Which means they do not believe in Evolution. The same goes for several other religions, though I'm quite sure that Hinduism makes no such claims - even though a significant percentage of Hindus are of the same belief.

That single fact alone reinforces my belief that people, in general, are idiots. And that of all solutions for making the world a better place, education is the best. Only then, if every one around you goes and jumps off a cliff, you will stop to ask, "Why should I also do it?"

I will postpone judgement on our good pal Darwin because I am unqualified to draw conclusions on the question of whether chance mutation and natural selection together constitute the driving force behind evolution, or whether there is some deeper issue to unravel. I'm confident that hundreds of years of research by qualified scientists is more likely to be correct than some sudden gnaw of doubt in my mind brought out by the religious maniacs, but I can't help but feel that in some measure, they've achieved thier objective even on one as well-informed and scientific-tempered as I.

Cheers,
Prashanth.