FreeThinkingAtheist.com

 I took a class on Anthropology last year. It ended up being a very rewarding class. One thing I remember from it was the island of Madagascar, and how it had so many species that are unique to it. The instructor asked the class “don’t you wander how this is possible?” As an Atheist, I already knew the answer was clearly evolution. I knew exactly where she was going to take her lecture. We now know that continental plates exist and shift. We now know that Madagascar was once a part of the African continent that broke off many millions of years ago. And no so mysteriously, there are so many totally different wildlife that are unique only to Madagascar. Well, evolution states that if you isolate a species and let mutation and natural selection do its job, that over millions of years, the species there will naturally evolve. So how does this go up against Creation? 

This is something that Darwin apparently wandered himself. In fact, he devoted two whole chapters on the subject in Origin of Species, except his voyage was to the Galapagos Islands. Darwin happened to stumble upon multiple species of birds that were previously unknown, that could only be found on the islands. However, the majority of the plants and animals found on the harshly volcanic islands bear a resemblance to the ones found on the tropical American continent. The environmental conditions do however closely resemble the conditions found on Cape Verde Islands that are 400 miles west of Africa. Here is a very similar environment to the Galapagos, with completely different flora and fauna. In fact, the species on Cape Verde bear a resemblance to what could be found on the African continent. 

And so Darwin asked: Why would a Creator place two completely different creative stamps, one African and one American, on species that live in nearly identical environments and fill similar ecological niches? He argued that Creationist theory ought to predict that such island species would either be identical or closely allied based on the similar environments that they are supposedly designed to be adapted to. Australia also falls under this category and even the Americas themselves. Before European colonization of the Americas, the New World and Old World had so many distinct species of their own. Even down to primates… 

The Americas had New World monkeys, which are the small little ones with tails that live primarily in trees. Where as the European/Asian/African Old World, only have Old World monkeys: Apes, Orangutans, and Chimps. All with no tails and all lived primarily on the ground. How is it that two sides of the world that have such similar environments (tropical, volcanic, desert, plains, arctic) but have so different plants and animals? How is that isolated places like Australia, the Galapagos, and the Cape Verde Islands can have such unique species. Why, this is something that Creation fails to explain and that only Evolution can explain.

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Darwin’s predictions about human evolution have been tested by the recovery of evidence showing that the living world was articulated buy evolution. Humans were part of the process. There is a lot more to learn about how that happened. The ultimate cause(s) are currently intractable, but there’s already plenty of evidence to show that evolution did happen and that we humans are among its products. 

There are now tens of thousands of hominid fossils in museums around the world supporting our current knowledge of human evolution. The pattern that emerges from this vast body of hard evidence is consistent across thousands of investigations. All models, all myths involving the singular, instantaneous creation of modern humans fail in the face of this evidence. 

And none of these myths have predicted what we have so far learned from the recovery and analysis of fossil evidence as well as from the biochemical and anatomical similarities and differences that characterize living things. 

Today, evolution is the bedrock of biology, from medicine to molecules, from AIDS to Zebras. A denial of evolution, however motivated, is a denial of evidence, a retreat from reason to ignorance.

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“Anthropologists have long known that every culture has a traditional story about how people were created. There are Babylonian, Hindu, Cherokee, Yoruba, Maori, Norse, Mayan, and dozens of other myths. Our Western biblical origin stories are rooted in the pastoral societies of the Middle East and have been retold for centuries. Literal interpretation of the biblical account holds that humans remained basically unchanged after they were created. This interpretation was tested with the discovery of the Herto man (155,000 year old fossilized human discovered near a tropical African lake). Here was someone whose anatomy linked him to earlier fossils that were not human.”

- Tim D. White, Human Evolution: The Evidence

     The fossilized Herto man is just another piece of evidence in the evolution timeline that shows that Earth has been home to life for billions of years, not just 5,000 years. I think it is important what Tim White said about every culture having a traditional story about how people were created. The story of Creation just happens to be the most standardized story in Western Culture. People just take Christianity as the truth, just because it's to common. When really, if you just step back and take a Anthropological look at religion as a whole, you will see that Christiantiy is just another religion is a sea of religions. You will see that these stories of the supernatural and where our beginnings are rooted are abundant in cultures, and greatly differ and go far back into time. Where as all these cultural religions just tell stories and calls them truth, science actually seeks the real truth and nothing more. I can't comprehend how somebody can dare say "I don't believe in evolution", I mean come on, what do you think science is out to get you, out to fool everyone? Science seeks only the truth, if something fails in their scientific method, it is discarded, unlike religion.. where if something fails to modern thought, the story ironically "evolves" to fit modern day thinking.

Such is the Bible.

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    It seems to be that fossil dating is commonly misunderstood, despite the fact that science and evolution are actually taught in school (I cannot imagine what it would be like with Intelligent Design taught in school… like the Dark Ages I'd imagine). Maybe it's that creationists refuse to accept evolution, and refuse to learn about it. It seems that many of them read only about their side of the story (a.k.a. the Bible) but don't read about what's on the other side of the fence. They will ask things like "How do you know something is 1 million years old if you don't know anybody who is that old?"

    Carbon-14 dating is based on radioactive decay. The air, plants, and all livings animals (including humans) all have the same constant ratio of standard Carbon-12 to Carbon-14 at any given time, while they are alive. Since Carbon-14 is radioactive, over time it will decay into nothing. It's the ration between the constant Carbon-12, and the decaying Carbon-14, that we can tell its age from. Since the half-life of Carbon-14 is 5,700 years, there will only be half the amount of that particular sample in every 5,700-year cycle. The ratio of carbon-12 to carbon-14 at the moment of death is the same as every other living thing, but the carbon-14 decays and is not replaced. And when you look at the ratio of standard carbon-12 to carbon-14 in the sample, it is possible to determine the age (within 60,000 years) of anything that was once living. precisely. Because the half-life of carbon-14 is 5,700 years, 60,000 years IS about as accurate it can get. However, the principle of carbon-14 dating applies to other isotopes as well, that all have their own ranges, both short and long. 

    Potassium-40 is another radioactive element that is commonly found in living beings and has a half-life of 1.3 billion years. Other radioisotopes for radioactive dating are Uranium -235 (half-life = 704 million years), Uranium -238 (half-life = 4.5 billion years), Thorium-232 (half-life = 14 billion years) and Rubidium-87 (half-life = 49 billion years). So clearly, an age can be precisely determined for just about anything. This method cannot be used on fossils however, since they lack the radioactive isotopes used in the dating process. To determine a fossil's age, igneous layers (volcanic rock) beneath the fossil (predating the fossil) and above it (representing a time after the dinosaur's existence) are dated, resulting in a time-range for the dinosaur's life. Thus, dinosaurs are dated with respect to volcanic eruptions.

I find it strange when one argues relentlessly against dating methods, despite the mounting evidence, yet they can read "There was a great flood" out of the Bible, and immediately believe it, with no evidence what so ever.

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Scientists announced today new evidence supporting the theory that the infant universe expanded from subatomic to astronomical size in a fraction of a second after its birth.

The new findings brings humanity closer to answering one of its oldest questions, that of where we come from, Greene said.

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