3.24: Anti-evolution arguments

The theory of evolution has been controversial since its introduction largely because it deals with issues of human origins and behaviors, our place in the Universe, life and its meaning. Its implications can be disconcerting, but many observations support the fact that all organisms on Earth are the product of evolutionary processes and these processes are consistent with what we know about how matter and energy behave. As we characterize the genomes of diverse organisms, we see evidence for these interrelationships, observations that non-scientific (theological) models would never have predicted and do not explain. That evolutionary mechanisms have generated the diversity of life and that all known organisms found on Earth share a common ancestor is as well-established as the atomic structure of matter, the movement of Earth around the Sun, and the solar system around the Milky Way galaxy. The implications of evolutionary processes remain controversial, but not the fact of evolution. We would argue that religions and other belief systems that deny the evolutionary relationships between organisms, and the role of evolutionary mechanisms in shaping organisms, including humans, run the risk of making themselves look ridiculous, at least in terms of data-based (scientific) discussions.^[171] On the other hand science (and evolution theory) have little to say on how we should behave, what it means to be moral, basically a good person, or why being an excessively selfish, unfeeling, narcissist person is bad.

Scientific knowledge is a body of knowledge of varying degrees of certainty-some most unsure, some nearly sure, but none absolutely certain … Now we scientists are used to this, and we take it for granted that it is perfectly consistent to be unsure, that it is possible to live and not know. - Richard Feynman.

...it is always advisable to perceive clearly our ignorance.
– Charles Darwin

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