After losing touch for a great while, a good childhood friend challenged my views on evolution. After much reflection and research a few astounding conclusions were reached. Firstly, I realized how little I actually knew about the science behind evolution. This is probably the result of not being particularly interested in the subject of biology in general throughout my school and college years. From what I recall, I only took about three courses throughout my entire life on the subject. Thinking back to life science class in middle school, I vaguely recalled the enzymes used to break down starches. I have a fuzzy memory of learning something about inheritance and the phylogenetic tree in my high school biology class. Needing to take a biology course as part of my core curriculum in college, I took human biology, and again have no specific recollection of anything. The information that was presented, forced me to question my confidence in the subject. So being one to seek truth on my own, I set out on a quest to find answers. One of the initial things I realized, as a testament to my initial ignorance, is that I didn't even know what a scientific theory truly was.
This leads to my second astonishment. Upon actually researching the subject, I indeed did find overwhelming evidence for Evolution and common descent. Before taking the time to read on the subject, I wasn't aware of the progress that had been made. I began my journey with the assumption of it being unproven. Remarkably fast though, by reading the resources available, I was convinced at the sheer volume and quality of evidences from multiple independent sources.
Childhood Memories
I was a remarkably curious child and was always asking questions. While I don't recall the exact question that was asked in this instance, I remember my father taking out the World Book Year Book and flipping to an article on the work of a Dr. Leakey. His work featured in that years year book detailed extensive fossil findings in Africa. It was truly astonishing to learn and actually see that human beings are part of the tree of life, classified as Homo sapiens. Sapiens is Latin for wise or rational, and homo means man (in Greek homo means same.) Furthermore, it turns out we are decedents of upright walking primates. In addition, certain modern primates are extremely closely related and all primates are at least cousins, though quite a few times removed.
Being lucky enough to have a relative in the biological sciences growing up, I was showered with books like The Pandas Thumb. Honestly I wasn't too keen on the details, but I read and took these ideas for granted. After all, it seemed so obvious to me. It never crossed my mind that anyone would doubt what I saw to be sound reasoning and good reading material. Of course, at that age I didn't have the appreciation for strong evidence that is irrefutable. Things were read, and assimilated.
Other than these few books, and a couple of biology classes in my lifetime is all my biology education consisted of. I took these ideas for granted, just like other scientific fields on understanding, like physics or chemistry. The thought never crossed my mind that there would be anything controversial about them.
My Ideas Challenged
Fast forwarding into my twenties after losing and regaining touch with a good friend of mine. My friend had recently converted to faith, and we drifted onto the topic of evolution. Turns out we had some points of disagreement, but I had come to this discussion completely uninformed and unprepared. Honestly, I had never heard any of the objections he presented, and he pointed me to a web site to refer to.
When I got home and checked the site, the author of the materials seemed to present some very interesting arguments. Because of my relative lack of background, I didn't have the necessary resources to assess the truth of this individuals claims. This is when I set out to find answers. Within a few moments I stumbled upon Talk Origins. Turns out they had a huge collection of claims made by critics of evolution, where they presented evidence, provided sound reasoning and debunked them. Not only were the claims of the author that was referred to me listed on the site, but also hundreds of other ones too. This gave me an opportunity to look at the devil's advocate angle. I've always believed that being forthright about the claims of your opponents and providing well reasoned, evidence based, plain language responses to debunk them demonstrates intellectual integrity.
Learning came fast and hard, when I realized that I didn't even know what a scientific theory was. Most people are under the impression that a theory is an unproven idea. But in a scientific context, I means a description. Take gravity for example. The is the phenomenon, or force, of gravity; then there is the Theory of Gravitation that mathematically describes how the force acts on things. Gravity is a force, and it factually exists. You might not believe in gravity, but when you jump off a building, it believes in you--hitting the ground at terminal velocity. The same is true for electromagnetism; there is the force itself--a fact--and the description or theory that describes how the force works.
I realized at this point that the author of the website making these claims was criticizing Evolution based on the fact that it was "just a theory." The author seems to imply that theories like Evolution aren't legitimate. Gravity is "just a theory" as well by that definition. Of course it is quite an observable fact. We can also observe that organisms change over time, and that is a fact (specifically the fact of Evolution.) The description of how and why they change is the Theory of Evolution.
Reading the evidences for Evolution on the site, complete with references, images, examples, and sound reasoning convinced me that Evolution is a better description of what we know than I ever thought before. I learned how there is even powerful molecular evidence now, which is about as strong a proof as you get because it allows gene similarity to be numerically quantified. One of the problems with Evolution is classifying organisms
phylogenetically. Based solely on morphology, elements of subjectivity are introduced into the classification. Thanks to these modern methods using molecular, genomic and protienomic evidence, there is now an objective normalizer to the subjective qualities of morphology.
