More evolution

You might have noticed I get really pissed off by anti-science bullshit, so any time I hear someone say mean things about evolution I get a bit worked up. Paul Phillips has a pretty good evolution discussion going on over on his blog. I responded to this post.

I figure for most of the people who would see my post here and then go check his out, I'm already preaching to the choir. But for anyone who reads this and thinks evolution is wrong and that Intelligent Design should be taught in schools as an alternative to evolution, I suspect you might be enough of a sheep to believe him just because he's rich and quasi-famous.

It has been pointed out that my belief in evolution is just the other side of someone else's belief in Intelligent Design. Or that my belief in science is just like someone's belief in the Bible. What makes my belief better than theirs? It is a fair point in many ways, which is what Paul discussed.

So, here are my beliefs:

• I believe that objective truths exist.
• I believe that the better we understand these truths, the better our lives can be, and thus we should pursue truth whenever possible.
• I believe that most people share my first 2 beliefs, but for various reasons don't know the best way reach truths. Many just want to be told what the truth is.
  
• I believe that sound reasoning and the scientific process are the best way we have to discover truths.
• I believe that the pursuit of truth by the scientific process has value in and of itself, even if the search is unsuccessful.
• I believe that too often in this pursuit we let our vision be clouded by forces like religion, politics, greed, and fear. This can undermine popular acceptance of good science, like evolutionary sciences, which slows the pace of advances in such fields.
  

It was the process of evolution that crafted us as creatures who tend towards religion and politics, and who often act based on greed and fear. These traits made us more likely to survive and reproduce in our environment as we evolved, but in our modern environment they impede us from fully understanding the mechanism that allowed them to have such power in the first place. Sweet irony.