Genetics, Evolution and the Creationist Conspiracy

Part I: Genetics

I have been told by many that the theory of evolution is, in fact, a great Darwinist lie perpetrated to erode the moral fiber of mankind by making him nothing more than an animal. Into this conspiracy every scientist who stakes their reputation or career on evolution is lumped along with Social Darwinists and dictators.

To those who see this conspiracy and connect these dots scientists all seem to be feeding into an ultimate plot straight of the mind of Ultron, titular villain of the latest Avengers movie. That is the tired old Georgia Guide Stone plot to depopulate the world so that only the fittest survive and humanity can evolve toward some new, perhaps transhumanist, Eden.



But where many see the negative and dark impacts of evolution I see the positive impacts it has not just on scientific advancement and knowledge but also on explaining our interconnection and need for nature and indeed our oneness with the great living system of Earth itself.

Most of those who beg to have evolution proven to them have no intention of listening once the evidence is presented, they merely wish to have long protracted debates where their arousal grows out of an undeserved sense of possessing superior knowledge over the pathetic sheep who've swallowed evolution hook, line and sinker. They revel in their own blind incredulity and stupefyingly powerful naivete and sometimes even in the willful desire to misrepresent or misunderstand evolution at even a middle school level.

As a former creationist myself I am no stranger to this sort of smug attitude and at one point could have caught myself doing much the same thing, raising questions about evolution that were then answered but letting my eyes glaze over and not a drop of information get in when that information was provided only to preserve my ability to say, “Well that doesn't prove ANYTHING!”

With all that out of the way I want to talk about the knock-down end-the-debate evidence for evolution and touch upon the many forms of evidence that exist all around us everyday that people love to ignore or take for granted. I want to say that I'm not here to hold anyone's hand and lead them to the evidence, if you want you can go on Google Scholar, or on University websites, and either read the work of the scientists or even contact them yourselves.

What is the end all be all evidence for the interrelatedness of life on planet Earth? Why its the very material that allows evolution to occur in the first place – DNA - genes. Even creationists, at this point, admit that genetic variation and genetic change do occur in some form. Most of them hide behind terms like adaptation and microevolution as if those aren't just pseudonyms of the same thing they claim not to believe in – evolution.

Now some creationists will just shrug off the genetic evidence. They will look at the massive percentage of DNA we share with chimps and say, “well, common design indicates a common designer” as if God was lazy and created two organisms, one that was almost in his image and one that was fully in his image. This begs the question are chimps just made in the blurry image of God?

And in what way does this explain the totally alien organisms we find living in the depths on top of hydrothermal vents or in deeper darker places? While we do indeed share some of our DNA even with them surely the same argument cannot be made. Some organisms, in the end, share more in common with us in the way they look, the way they behave and their DNA. To say that this doesn't suggest that we share a common ancestor is absurd and shows a complete ignorance of how DNA works.



To show how open and shut a case this actually is all we have to do is look at two areas where even the most hard-nosed and willfully ignorant creationists agree that DNA is applicable – paternity tests and DNA evidence in crimes.

We have become so good at looking at DNA that we convict people on the basis of whether their specific DNA was at a crime scene. Even more telling is that we are so confident in these results that we don't just convict people, we RELEASE people long held to be criminals who we now, because of DNA, KNOW did not commit the crime in question. I have never in my experience debating with creationists, talking to them or reading their complaints and arguments, seen them question the criminal justice system's reliance on DNA evidence.

Generally people accept the reliability of DNA to such a degree that they are okay seeing people previously convicted of murder by a jury of their peers BEYOND a reasonable doubt RELEASED into the general population of the world. And the best part is when most of us hear those stories in the news we feel SYMPATHY, even a bit of righteous indignation, that the system would lock up innocent people on the basis of obviously inferior evidence because we understand how accurate DNA testing has become.

In a similar vein I haven't heard anyone complaining that DNA testing is not sufficient in determining who the father is in the case of paternity tests. Yet the same DNA that tells us who we are related to also tells us what other species we are closely related to genetically. There can be no confusion about what this means, it's obvious, we are RELATED, as in we share a common ancestor, with every other living thing on the planet Earth. Even if you want to say that gods or aliens intervened at some point the DNA proves that we all share a common ancestor, that we are all product of reproduction, that evolution is a scientific fact.

There are so many ways in which evolution could be falsified and yet every single discovery made in biology only vindicates it further and the advancements and discoveries we've made in genetics are the single biggest and most obvious piece of evidence.

But of course it's all a conspiracy right? They're just saying that there's evidence of evolution in the genetics, there's no real concrete proof that that's true. I mean, sure we look like apes and behave like apes and sure the fossil record suggests we came from apes but that DNA stuff which confirms all that as evidence that we really did evolve from apes is just a conspiracy!

If only there were some evidence of the basic principle of evolution working that was not part of the modern science conspiracy. Something older than the scientific conspiracy, something way before Darwin was even around...

Human beings have been cultivating crops for thousands and thousands of years, long before modern science was invented, [snipped] And even without the genetic evidence or the full understanding human beings figured out a way to change an organism to better suit their needs. It was actually rather simple, they discovered that if you bred a plant with a certain trait you could get more of a plant like it. So let's say you have plant X, some of the crop you've just harvested have a bitter taste, others have less bitter taste. So if you spit out and don't plant the seeds of the bitter but do plant the less bitter plants, and you continue to do this the final product is less bitter tasting.

This method is called artificial selection and I'll talk about that in the next post:

Part II: Artificial and Natural Selection (Continued from Above)

Creationists can deny the genetic evidence if they like, even though many happily admit that tigers are cats and wolves are dogs they seem reticent to acknowledge that human beings are related to apes.

Evidence for evolution is all around us every time we go to a farmer's market or a grocery store. That beef you're eating - it didn't come from a dairy cow, it came from a cow specifically bred to produce more and better tasting meat. That broccoli you're eating, well its actually derived from a wild type of cabbage that was selected into - Cabbage, Brussels Sprouts, Cauliflower, and more. That's right, all three of those vegetables, some of which you may have dreaded as a child, are cultivated from the SAME species.

Every grain, every vegetable and every fruit you eat is the product of thousands of years of selection pressure altering its genes to make it into something different.

Corn is a great example of artificial selection. Native Americans caused corn to diverge into hundreds of different varieties and today corn is in almost every food item we consume (for better or worse). The evolution of corn isn't a conspiracy is it? And the change in corn was drastic, especially in how large the ears are compared to their ancient counter-part – all that change in only a few thousand years, think what nature could do with MILLIONS of years!



That same force, selection pressure, works in the wild and that is how the blind-watchmaker of evolution functions. Let's take an example, a hypothetical species of bird that live in a temperate climate. Well let's also say there's a little Ice Age that hits and winters get bad, suddenly the birds with the warmest thickest plumage are able to reproduce while slowly those born with thinner feathers die out. It's a pretty simple concept, the new population of birds is now equipped to handle the cold weather. Let's say the food they used to eat grows scarce so a group of them begin roaming to find better sustenance, now that population is off in another part of the world that is slightly different. The two populations will change independently and, depending on what sort of pressures arise in their given environments, may eventually diverge into different species altogether.

The difference between microevolutionary changes and macroevolutionary changes is 1) time and 2) what kind of selection pressure is being applied. For example sharks have found quite an evolutionary niche and haven't changed much in basic for for millions of years BUT at one time we know massive sharks like Megalodon would have been able to survive in our oceans, today however no sharks that large are alive (the largest extant shark known is the Whale Shark). So if selection pressure is relatively light we might not see many large changes but if the environment changes quite quickly or a population is severely isolated changes can occur in a much shorter period of time and seem much more drastic in nature.

Dogs, of course, are another great example as they are a subspecies of wolves that we created by exploiting evolution to produce dozens and dozens of different breeds and varieties.

But, the creationists say, that's not really the evolution they want hard evidence of. They are forced to accept that evolution can work with dogs on small scales because at the end dogs are still dogs. What they really want is a dog becoming something totally different from itself. But that's not what evolution is or presents as plausible. What they are asking for is a red-herring, a great big fallacious misleading piece of evidence that couldn't possibly exist if evolution were true.

Evolution, as we established, is what tells us we are interrelated and as we are interrelated no species ever gives birth to something completely different from itself. Evolution isn't gene splicing two species together like the Crocoduck nor is it leveling up your Pikachu until it learns thunderbolt and then applying a thunderstone (although this is a good idea for all Pokemon trainers to do).



Creationists dishonestly play games with what evolution is for numerous reasons, often times this is because they are making a concerted, if sometimes unwitting, attempt at misunderstanding it. When I was a creationist I would glance over and never fully absorb any material posted by evolution proponents either walking a pretend middle ground where I wasn't convinced of either evolution or creation or going full R-word and asserting things like the co-existence of mankind and dinosaurs being proved by sightings of Mokele Mbembe and the Ica Stones of Peru. And the reason was simple, I was taught to reject evolution and I had every incentive, as a teenager, to do so, after all what teenage boy brainwashed into a Bible believing creationist doesn't want to think that one day he may discover a dinosaur still swimming around in Loch Ness and ride on its back into a Museum to turn science on its head?



Evolution doesn't say that things turn into vastly different things in one big leap but rather in incremental – generation by generation – changes that occur. Creationists already acknowledge that these changes occur but refuse to see that they are acknowledging evolution as a fact of biology while simultaneously rejecting their own fictional strawman of what evolution entails. This is why we have phrases like “Molecules to man” evolution being touted by folks like Ken Ham because they honestly think you can skip 4 billion years of incremental changes. It'd be like if I said scientists claim mountain ranges begin with just a few boulders and then just magically appear.

Do you geologists really expect me to believe that millions of years of small tectonic shifts can create a mountain range? Well yes, yes they do, because people with a basic understanding of continental drift, plate tectonics and geology in general understand, at least on a simple level, how mountain ranges can form over the course of thousands or millions of years.

In this regard creationists remind me of a kid sitting in class simply gainsaying whatever the teacher says and asking the teacher to “prove it!”. While by no means am I arguing that science or scientific consensus and authority is infallible (of course it isn't its a human endeavor) it does smack of willful ignorance to have something explained to you so many times and still refuse to comprehend it on a grade school level. When I was a creationist my worse “sin” was not even bothering to know anything about evolution and my second was not even bothering to think that creationist sources might be lying to me about the claims of evolution (along with their own claims).

Case in point – Dating techniques, which I'll touch briefly upon next.

a reply to: Titen-Sxull

Asking creationists to give up creationism and accept evolution is asking them to voluntarily do a quite painful, emotionally, thing. I suppose it would be equivalent to asking you to give up science. Just imagine a situation in which you were asked to do that. You have intellectual capital invested in it, but also strong emotional connections. So, please do not think they are fools, or just act to be abusive. Their beliefs may be at the core of their feelings. Gently, gently, gently, show an easy way to get through withdrawal. If you could find that, instead of coming up with more brilliantly reasoned arguments, you might make a real change. You might even win a prize for best science writing of the year. You are a top-notch writer, good at science, now add psychology.

Part III – Dating Techniques (Continued from Above)

One of the misunderstandings I had and one I see repeated to this day by creationists is that Carbon Dating can't be used to date dinosaur fossils because it gives unreliable dates. Well I have good news for Creationists, Carbon Dating is not used to date dinosaur fossils. The decay rate of Carbon 14 can only be reliably used to date materials that go back about 50,000 years. Carbon 14 also has trouble dating marine organic material with any degree of accuracy and so isn't used on ocean fossils or ocean life. These limitations are well known and documented within the scientific community.

Carbon dating has never been used to date the Age of the Earth as I have had creationists tell me. Rather there are other techniques for this and, through the use of multiple techniques being cross-referenced with each other we can get a remarkably accurate age of the Earth. Scientists are not relying on one type of dating method, they are not getting their first result and just running with it, that's not how science works. Science does not work by simply assuming their work is accurate and moving on to the next mystery.

Another misconception is that strata are used to date rocks and rocks to date the strata and this is circular logic. This simplistic statement is absolutely wrong. For one thing geology has a growing body of knowledge of when, where and how certain strata and certain kinds of rock or soil layer can form and can use them as reference points. And with the variety of dating techniques at their disposal they can cross-reference their findings. Taking a fossil or rock and dating it with radio-metric dating and comparing that to where it is in the strata is not circular, for one thing it often involves multiple techniques and, of course, involves actual scientific testing (so it isn't a logical argument). It's rather like saying that the use of both an MRI and an X-Ray machine to figure out what's wrong with you is circular.

Part IV Thermodynamics and Order out of Chaos

Often times creationists will marvel at the idea that such order as living systems could result out of the purposeless chaos of a random Universe. But of course this presupposes that human ideas of order and chaos have any relevance being brought into the discussion. Similarly the idea that it's all random is not at all accurate. Things behave in certain ways and we describe the ways things interact in our Universe as the “laws” of physics. These are observational, descriptive, not the sort of laws that are written by a legislature and while randomness may enter into certain areas on a quantum level human beings have become fairly good at describing and predicting macroscopic interactions.

Evolution, similarly, is not random, it works via selection and what traits are selected for is all a product of what the environment is doing which is further driven by other natural forces – not random but in a deterministic way. If it was random causation would go out the window and reality would be unintelligible.

The other part of this is that of entropy, or the idea that everything is going toward an inevitable chaotic state, everything is winding down toward decay and disorder. Without bringing in too much cosmology to what is a post about biology I fail to see why the energy the sun is pouring out and the geothermal energy of our lava-filled planet is not enough to spark life. Even the gravitational spin of the earth creates energy as it moves, creates water currents and the moon's gravity and earth's spin drive ocean tides. We get energy all of these ways, underwater turbines, windmills, solar panels and we even harness the powers of atoms themselves. To suggest that eventual entropy suggests that everything must be falling apart NOW is to misunderstand the 2nd Law of Thermodynamics and basic physics and cosmology.

Thermodynamics states that CLOSED systems, that is systems where new energy isn't being introduced, tend toward entropy, and scientists know and acknowledge this. Many of you are familiar with the idea that the sun will eventually run out of fuel, creationists seem to be suggesting that the fuel the sun is using to create energy should be rapidly decaying, running out and be incapable of producing enough energy for the chemical processes of life to take place. If they were correct about entropy photosynthesis and metabolizing food would ALSO violate the laws of physics.

Part V: Conclusion, Conspiracy and Controversy (continued from above)

The point of all this is not to talk any avid creationists out of their beliefs, obviously, but merely to move those who are actually willing to reconsider toward giving evolution a fair-shake. I did my share of fence sitting after I grew out of my Biblically motivated Old Earth creationism and started to wonder whether evolution or creation had any merit. The fact is that most creationist arguments are based on misleading red-herrings, misrepresentations of science of misunderstandings of science and most, if not all, attack evolution without offering the slightest physical evidence for any alternative.

The biological reality of evolution need not even be in opposition to the idea of God and there are plenty of people who find a compatibility between their faith and their scientific understanding of the world and life.

While creationists remain a minority around the world that has not stopped the more zealous and politically motivated among them to try to accrue political influence and power and push their anti-science views into schools. The sincere believers among them may see this move as a good one, one step closer to their, often theocratic, goal of getting God back into schools and seeing the moral fiber of America restored.

It seems that some of them think that mankind's rightful place in nature is that of a specially created and specially selected (by God) creature meant to have complete dominion over the Earth. So teaching children that we are a part of nature and are animals is seen as a negative thing for those who believe that their children should be , “in the world but not OF the world”. They see evolution as a dangerous cult that will inevitably lead to genocide and other forms of Social Darwinism.

Meanwhile the science they malign has used knowledge of biology to fight diseases, develop newer and better medications, develop better more effective vaccines and extend the human lifespan even further. We are rapidly approaching a future where the blind will see, the lame will walk, and amputees will all be healed not by the hand of any God but by the advancements of the same scientists they accuse of being participants in an anti-human pro-genocide conspiracy.

So what is the real conspiracy here? Is it those who ignore science, misrepresent it and malign it while refusing to understand it or those who push it to its boundaries to further our understanding of nature and our place in it?

The only danger in telling our children that they are also animals is if we also teach our children that animals are worthless soulless flesh given to us by a higher power to do with as we see fit. Those who are cruel toward animals and refuse to see our interrelatedness to them might have their morality turned upside when they find out that they are part of a larger system, that they are not separate from the animal kingdom or immune to the drawbacks of our long and arduous evolution.

I left Christianity behind in 2007, it took two long years of avoidance before I was able to give evolution a fair shake and truly look at the evolution vs creation debate honestly wanting to find the truth. What do we have on the evolution side – fossils, artificial selection, natural selection, observed instances of one species evolving into another both in the lab and in the wild and the nail in the coffin for creation – the DNA evidence. And never, not once, have we ever found the fingerprints of anything supernatural, of anything miraculous, of anything more than complex chemistry diversifying into the beautiful web of life that we are all a part of.

That isn't to say a God of some kind didn't get it all started or nudge it in some way its only to say that denying evolution is like denying gravity or the spherical nature of the Earth. Sure not every creationist is as crazy as the people who think the moon is a hologram where Nazis used to live but their avoidance of reality and the body of evidence for evolution is second to none. They are the ones fighting to reeducate our children with unscientific nonsense that will leave a generation ignorant of the beauty of the natural world.

Accepting evolution has allowed me to better understand how fragile and precious life is on both an individual scale and a larger one. I am the culmination of every fit survivor that came before me, not just survivors of wars or conflicts or political upheavals or diseases but of all manner of natural disasters as well. There is nothing to fear from acknowledging and accepting evolution.

a reply to: Titen-Sxull

Every time this argument comes up it seems as though someone wants to convince others that it has to be one way or the other.

We are created, we evolve and we most likely have genetics in common with many species, including those that we consider to be alien, the building blocks of life are scattered throughout the entire Universe and the creation is the same for all, while evolution is determined by many factors.

a reply to: soulpowertothendegree

I don't mind if people want to believe in both, if they can find a way to reconcile the two that's fine. It's the people pushing an anti-science conspiracy who refuse to wrap their head around such a fundamental idea on even a basic level that are the target of my "bashing" here.

If someone is on the fence and wants to find a way to keep their faith but also support science and accept evolution than more power to them. I've known a few Christians who I can agree to disagree with on the God question and still team up with when people start ragging on how evil and false evolution and science in general are.

a reply to: Titen-Sxull

What an awesome thread and your blog rocks, as well. I've expanded on these points to many biblical literalists and it always comes back to that Futurama clip where you provide mountains of evidence and logic yet all it takes is one tiny unturnable stone for them to keep themselves completely shut out from the possibility.

What I don't understand is why more Christians do not embrace the idea of creation origin followed by science-backed evolution (like SoulPower mentioned). The have to understand they cannot keep this up forever as evidence will eventually reach a point where they will have to accept it. If the Church hasn't adopted some sort of soft-sell of evolution by that point, it will decimate their membership. However, if most Christians accepted the basic ideas of evolution, groundbreaking proof wouldn't rattle them at all.

Personally, I believe in the possibility of intelligent design in the sense that the gods knew what to expect. When you are not limited by time/space and you want to create the world we see now, it wouldn't be that improbable to simply set the machine in motion and watch it all unfold more or less as you expected. I also believe that random mutations that spark the beginnings of a new species might not be so random after all. If Christians adapted a similar mindset to their own religion, there wouldn't be any debates.

It is Creation which allows for any evolution to take place...

Let's see nothing evolve into anything...

that would not even be evolution, that would be creation...

evolution as a start of things is therefore laughable...

Figure it out...

a reply to: Cuervo

Thank you Cuervo.

It seems so much easier to accept evolution and just believe that there may be some unseen supernatural competent, perhaps one that functions entirely within the bounds of nature but exists beyond it. While such things can never be fully proven by science because of methodological naturalism at least you get the best of both worlds, a deity or supernatural force that intervenes and creates but does so in a way that agrees with current science.

But as I said in my post there's a lot of brainwashing afoot and a lot of paranoid conspiracy thinking where they have to keep the bad vibes of evolutionary theory out or else the "enemy" might gain a foothold in their mind. Someone in a thread on ATS said that Christianity vs. Evolution is a battle of two religions and I know a lot creationists like that idea but whereas the Bible and God were driven home for me on day 1 I can think of so few instances where anyone pushed evolution.

Even in 9th grade biology as a programmed robot for creationism I raised my hand and brought up biogenesis and creation to the teacher who calmly replied that, "the supernatural is not testable so it isn't science, would you want to test God?" Something to that effect. It was a subject handled delicately because teachers know that parents and other Christian sources are training kids to be disbelieving disruptive puppets of their anti-science views.

If people get something good out of their religion fine as long as they aren't hurting anyone - but denying science and teaching kids to completely blindly distrust and misunderstand it is also harmful.

a reply to: 5StarOracle

Can you give me an example of nothing?

Nothing is a concept, it doesn't describe a real state of affairs. As far as we can tell at no point was there was ever simply NOTHING and as far as we know such a state is not even possible.

But my post has nothing to do with the origin of the cosmos or the direct origin of life - figure that out.

a reply to: Titen-Sxull

Long as you can admit nothing didn't evolve into the universe you go about your merry way...

So evolution is just a process allowed for by Creation...

originally posted by: 5StarOracle
It is Creation which allows for any evolution to take place...

Let's see nothing evolve into anything...

that would not even be evolution, that would be creation...

evolution as a start of things is therefore laughable...

Figure it out...

Evolution isn't and has never been about where everything came from. So making that kind of argument is what is laughable. Evolution is about how living things change over time. Cosmology is about the beginning of the Universe.

a reply to: Titen-Sxull

I'll explain your PM in a word: balance, that's the answer you are looking for, the object in the universe is always perfect balance.

a reply to: mOjOm

So how does anything evolve from nothing?

If nothing in the universe is eternal or perpetual and all things in the universe have an origin and end then you need creation...

I don't care what name it has something else was needed to kickstart it that is creation...

if evolution was the deciding factor and not creation allowing for it well then your corn could evolve into an ape and then a man I suppose...

originally posted by: 5StarOracle

So how does anything evolve from nothing?

If nothing in the universe is eternal or perpetual and all things in the universe have an origin and end then you need creation...

I don't care what name it has something else was needed to kickstart it that is creation...

if evolution was the deciding factor and not creation allowing for it well then your corn could evolve into an ape and then a man I suppose...

Who said everything came from nothing in the first place???

I'm pretty sure someone already said that a true state of "Nothing" has never existed, so why do you persist with that question???

Well, if something else was needed to kickstart the universe then obviously there wasn't nothing now was there??

Why don't you try opening up a book, or doing some research for once??? We've gone through all this before at length and I don't intent on doing it yet again with you. You persist with the same circular questioning and refuse to take in any new information so what's the point???

a reply to: mOjOm

I'd just ignore him.

Seems like an early attempt to derail the thread into territory that has nothing to do with it.

a reply to: mOjOm

if there was no origin for the universe why would there be an end of all things in it?

that argument is you running around in circles unwilling to see the truth of things, evolution is bound by creation or the sciences and laws Which creation is governed by...

there is no evolution without creation that's the bottom line you guys can suppose all you want, you ain't saying anything new and not proving a damn thing either...

creation was needed for evolution to begin its that easy...

so Creation and Evolution are both real and intertwined its just creation was needed first...

the only things that are constant are energy and mass and they were introduced into this "closed system"
This little bubble called the universe...

if they were always here so would everything else that is have always been here only we know that's not true,the universe is expanding from its origin see...

More evidence of creation...

because we are in a closed system something can exist beyond said closed system and therefore be beyond it all and therefore logically be the creator...

a reply to: Titen-Sxull

I'm sorry...

POST REMOVED BY STAFF

... What?

originally posted by: Titen-Sxull
a reply to: mOjOm

I'd just ignore him.

Seems like an early attempt to derail the thread into territory that has nothing to do with it.

Ignore him talking about creation?

Of course that seems logical...

Despite your 5 post diatribe against creationists and the thread titled "the creation conspiracy", yes it is best you ignore the people you've just attacked.

Then you can all pat each other on the back.