Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA by Fairbanks Daniel J

Author:Fairbanks, Daniel J. [Fairbanks, Daniel J.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Prometheus Books
Published: 2009-09-18T00:00:00+00:00

It is nothing short of spectacular that scientists have found so much evidence of evolution in so many diverse places—in fossils entombed in sequential layers of sedimentary rocks, in molecules of DNA, in the mutated forms of thousands of gene products, in the anatomy and physiology of organisms, in the inseparable links between species and their environments. Why, then, is there such vehement opposition to the very idea that life has evolved? Phillip Johnson, a founder of the intelligent design movement, claims that there is an irreconcilable dichotomy between religion and evolution:

The story of salvation by the cross makes no sense against a background of evolutionary naturalism. The evolutionary story is a story of humanity's climb from animal beginnings to rationality, not a story of a fall from perfection. It is a story about recognizing gods as illusions, not a story about recognizing God as the ultimate reality we are always trying to escape. It is a story about learning to rely entirely on human intelligence, not a story of the helplessness of that intelligence in the face of the inescapable fact of sin.

There is no satisfactory way to bring two such fundamentally different stories together, although various bogus intellectual systems offer a superficial compromise to those who are willing to overlook a logical contradiction or two. A clear thinker simply has to go one way or another.1

Under such a presumption, the thinking goes something like this: “If the Bible is literally true and inerrant then evolutionary theory must be false, regardless of the abundant evidence that supports it.” A powerful Christian fundamentalist movement has embraced the dichotomy. Its adherents have organized a strong campaign against evolution from church pulpits, on radio and television broadcasts, in books and pamphlets, over the Internet, and through state legislation and mandates by school boards.

Religious fundamentalists are not the only ones who promote the dichotomy. On the opposite extreme are several well-respected biologists who claim that modern science refutes the existence of God. Perhaps the best known is Richard Dawkins, an Oxford University zoologist, eloquent humanist, and prolific author who has enthusiastically used evolution and natural selection to reason that God does not exist. He is one of the most controversial and quotable evolutionary biologists and, according to the promotional material for a recent book, “the world's most prominent atheist.”2 Although his antireligious views receive the most attention, much of his writing is enlightening and positive. Here's one of my favorite passages:

After sleeping through a hundred million centuries we have finally opened our eyes on a sumptuous planet, sparkling with colour, bountiful with life. Within decades we must close our eyes again. Isn't it a noble, an enlightened way of spending our brief time in the sun, to work at understanding the universe and how we have come to wake up in it? This is how I answer when I am asked—as I am surprisingly often—why I bother to get up in the mornings. To put it the other way round, isn't it sad

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