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Feedback Compilation
Selected reader letters and TalkOrigins responses from June 2002.
After spending a while in your site (highly recommended, btw), I can't help feeling a sense of cognitive dissonance.
Is it just me, or is exolution through natural selection the only scientific theory to suffer such ill-informed attack? What if people objected to (for example) general relativity or quantum electrodynamics?
After all, both relativity and quantum theory challenge our long-held views on the structure and behaviour of the universe, but I'm not aware of any pressure groups trying to remove them from the curriculum.
...but if anyone *does* know, I will go and hide in the corner with a dunce hat on ;-)
I've spent quite a while 'lurking' on talk.origins (terminal shyness), but it seems that the 'evolutionists' (what an expression! do people who accept general relativity get called 'relativists'?) not only provide evidence and logic to back up their argument, but manage to conduct themselves with dignity, courtesy and good humour.
In contrast, I've noticed that the creationist arguments seem to fall into a certain number of categories:
-- Ad hominem attacks -- Strawmen -- Tortured logic -- Quoting out of context -- Special pleading
...and finally... it pains me to say this as I do not like citicising people - it seems that Creationist arguments are fundamentally dishonest.
I didn't like writing that but I feel I had to. I do not pretend to the same level of expertise as the regular t.o. contributors, but they have always impressed me with their use of logic, reason, (cited) evidence and good humour. On the creationist side I have seen little but childish abuse.
There, that's got it off my chest!
Best wishes for the future
Jamie Gaffney
You'll see the occasional clumsy swipe at physics from the creationists. But it is usually produced by a "minor player" without serious formal training in the field -- and it would not be taken seriously by the few creationists with real physics backgrounds. See, for example: "A Call For Reformation in Modern Science" by Charles W. Lucas, Jr. (Proceedings of the 1986 International Conference on Creationism, vol. 1, pp. 83-87). Lucas' abstract reads in part:
[...] the scientific community has claimed credibility for many new theories comprising much of modern science that can not logically qualify as science. These theories include the theory of relativity, the theory of quantum mechanics, the Dirac Theory of the atom [...]
In my opinion, a paper of the quality of that one would not pass scientific peer review. However, far too many creationists appear willing to overlook shoddy work as long as the result supports their cause. (In the long run, I think it does their cause more harm than good.)
The feedback was from a Mr. Borger, who seemed to imply in his post that he was a member of the Science faculty at Sydney University (a prestigous center for higher learning in this country).
I wish to make clear that Mr. Borger is not now and never has been a member of the science faculty at the University of Sydney.
In fact I rather question the description he uses for himself as a "Molecular Biologist".
Just wanted to set the record straight.
The main conclusion of " The Earth's Magnetic Field is Still Losing Energy" is stated in the title, namely that the total energy of the field appears to be decreasing. Maybe he is right. But his conclusion, that the Earth's magnetic field is young, does not necessarily follow from that observation.
Let's assume that Humphreys is right, and the total energy in the field has decreased, and is decreasing even as we speak. So, how does one decide what the field was doing, before there were any IGRF data to analyze? The data themselves don't carry any information along those lines, so one must adopt a model which will answer the question. Humphreys has adopted his own model, and has assumed that the Earth is young, and that the field has decayed constantly at the same rate. Hence, the argument that the data show a young field and/or Earth cannot be true. Only the model can be depended upon to do that (which is of course true whether one believes the Earth to be "young" ot "old").
The evolutionary competition will hold that the energy fluctuates with time, sometimes going up, and sometimes going down, depending on the details of how magnetic fields are generated in the deep Earth. Such a model is every bit as compatible with the data, and with Humphreys' own conclusion that the total energy is on the decrease, as is his own model. The data cannot discriminate between them.
So we look elsewhere, to see if there is a way to discriminate. We have a dynamo theory in place, which explains in detail how the Earth's magnetic field is generated. Humphreys does not criticize, or even mention standard dynamo theory in his latest paper (at least not that I saw). But that standard theory is quite good at generating Earth type magnetic fields from first principles, and it also generates physically realistic models for magnetic field reversals (as far as I know, Humphreys does not dispute the fact of field reversals, only the time scale involved).
I would say that Humphreys' new paper changes little, if anything. We are still unable to distinguish, from these observd data alone, between a "young" or "old" magnetic field. Humphreys still has not produced a model dynamo that is as detailed, or as powerful, as the standard theory. In short, Neither Humphreys, nor anyone else, has yet come up with any good reason for throwing out the theory we have, in favor of the theory they have. He still has to come up with a better explanation than the standard.
What other creature wants to know where he came from? Personally I think those who equate evolution with atheism are refusing the gift of reason. I think God expects more of us. But that's just me, I guess.
You have a fine site with easy to understand explanations.
I've been running into a gaggle (my term for a group) of creationists on the X-Files Message Board lately, and this site has given me lots of useful information to present to counter their arguments. Keep up the good work. Thanks.
Sincerely,
Eileen Flanagan New York City
I saw something last week on PBS that rendered me completely speechless. PBS has been running a series about evolution, and one of the parts was called "What About God?" or something along those lines. In it, they showed creationist rallies, where people all band together and come up with excuses to not believe what science is telling them. I'm sure you're all familiar with this sort of thing. They sing songs about how science is all wrong, spew half-truths and whole lies and tell their children to tell their science teachers how wrong evolution is. Some man named Ken Ham (I think; maybe it was Kevin) was giving the "lecture", and these people were just eating it up. Despite the fact that I've debated with a few creationists, that moment was the first time I actually realized the extent of people's blind following. I could not believe what I was hearing and seeing. Then I heard that there are people who home-school their kids so they don't have to be exposed to evolution science. Is anything being done to ensure that children *are* taught real science? I know that there are on-going debates and court cases about the prevention of evolution being taught, but is anyone doing anything to ensure that science is being taught as it should be?
Once again, I would like to applaud this site's contributors and creators. This is a fine resource...thank you very much for creating it!
To access the talk.origins newsgroup, try clicking on this link. If that doesn't work, you can access it through a Web-based newsserver, such as Google Groups.
The section of the PBS Evolution series you were watching was indeed titled "What About God?" The person depicted was Ken Ham, who is the founder of an organization called Answers in Genesis. AiG's American headquarters is located in Florence, Kentucky, near Cincinnati, Ohio.
There are a number of groups committed to upholding the teaching of quality science in the United States. Some of them, such as Kansas Citizens for Science, can be found in our list of links to other sites. The National Center for Science Education is the national clearinghouse for such efforts, and if you have further interest in promoting quality science education, I'd suggest you begin there.
Question: How did we evolve from apes if there are still TONS of them on Earth?? --oh yah and i know all the real evidence for creation and they don't lie...YOU do! And if i get on here and this question isn't answered....i know that you don't know the question and know you can't answer it ya little sissy.
The "lies" and "hoaxes" you refer to are, of course, available for everyone to see at public libraries. They are well indexed and referenced in a variety of ways, and thousands of librarians all over the world are ready to help you find them. There are even organizations such as Earthwatch and UREP that encourage interested laypeople to join scientific expeditions themselves, see how the research is done, and join in the actual work. Few other fields go to so much effort to make their "lies" (other people call it "evidence") so public.
I'm sure you can think of several diverse reasons why some feedback questions go unanswered, so there is no need to address that part of your message.
One last question for you to think about: How could the King James Version of the Bible be translated from the Vulgate if there are still new copies of the Vulgate around?
1. How accurate/reliable are the chapters regarding the theory of evolution in Ian Stewart / David Cohen / Terry Pratchett book The Science of Discworld? How would you rate the book in general, regarding the various disciplines of science and philosophy?
2. How is it possible to be an atheistic creationst? A fairly aggressive Finnish creationist known as 'TJT2' has advanced the idea that the ToE is rejected not only by Christians, but also by Hindus, Muslims (these are obvious) and atheists! The latter is quite baffling. Of course, if one considers Hoyle & Wikramasinghe and other panspermia advocates as atheistic creationists, it holds true, but I would like to know if the experienced Talk.Origins crew has encountered sincere atheists who also are creationists.
P.S. Ed Conrad doesn't count for the latter. I don't know what in the world he's pushing, but it sure ain't atheism.
The stuff about Roundworld, though, is pretty good, although they do report as scientific consensus some ideas that are far from certainly accepted (such as the idea that having a big Moon is what caused us to have a liveable atmosphere) and they tend to use a notion of evolution known as "gradism", which briefly supposes that evolution tends to generate new grades of organisation (a view I am not comfortable with myself).
The origins of life discussion is not bad, although it, too, is incomplete (hey, this is a popular work; what can you ask for?). However, I thoroughly recommend the chapter "The Descent of Darwin". Also I particularly like the dialogue on pages 240-241 about how the best achievement that the dinosaurs had was to not die for 100 million years:
'Not dying out is some kind of achievement, is it?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'Best kind there is, sir.' [Rincewind]
As to atheistic antievolutionism (which is not quite the same as creationism - the absence of evolutionism is not ipso facto creationism), this is an old view - at least back to the French enlightenment. It is equivalent to the idea of Aristotle that the world is static and without beginning. But less generally, when people say they reject the "theory of Evolution" it usually means that they reject the idea of evolution by natural selection, not common descent. I am not aware of a single thinker who rejects common descent for any reason other than a religious one.
Whatever Ed Conrad is pushing, I'm fairly sure it is not relevant to theism or atheism...
But even using the simplistic view of information that creationists use, it takes no effort to show that the "mutations can't add information" argument is utter hogwash. Consider a population of identical, asexually-reproducing organisms with the following genetic code:
ATTGTCAAG
We know that one possible mutation is for a section of the genome to be duplicated. So let's say that one of the organisms in the population has an offspring with a duplication mutation, like so:
ATTGTCAAGAAGAAG
This organism then reproduces. Its offspring has another mutation, one that substitutes several bases for their complements (T for A, C for G):
ATTGTCAAGATCTTG
That offspring reproduces. Now instead of one population of organisms with genome ATTGTCAAG, we have three:
The creationist argument that "mutations can't add information" is simply wrong.
Here is an alternative view of science (one of several alternatives). A scientist has a question about something. He (or she) considers several alternative possible answers (hypotheses). He tries to figure out how each hypothesis might imply a prediction that he could test by seeking new data. He collects data that would test the various predictions, and checks how well those data fit with the predictions of each hypothesis. When he has found data consistent with one hypothesis but not with a second hypothesis, he concludes that the first hypothesis is better supported by evidence. He publishes his data and conclusions in a scientific journal. This is the paradigm used by astronomers who can’t do experiments with stars, and the paradigm used by evolutionists who can’t go back in time.
Let’s look at your examples and see what evolution predicts and what the data are. Does evolution or creation predict that an insect exposed to a pesticide should turn into a different species? Neither model makes this prediction, so that fact that pesticides don’t lead to new insect species is consistent with both evolution and creation (i.e., this is not a prediction that distinguishes the two hypotheses). Does evolution predict that because we have “amazing abilities” we should be able to duplicate the evolution of a monkey by laboratory experiments? It does not, since evolution is supposed to act over millions of years, and regardless of our abilities we can’t do experiments that take that long.
Does evolution hypothesize that humans evolved from monkey species living today? It does not. It hypothesizes that modern monkey species and humans both evolved from a common ancestral population that lived millions of years ago and split into two separate populations, one of which evolved into modern monkeys and one of which evolved into humans. Does this model predict that there should be no modern monkeys? It does not, though many creationists mistakenly confuse the common ancestral animals (which are all dead) with monkeys alive today simply because the common ancestral species probably looked more like a modern monkey than like a human.
So you have discussed some “predictions” that don’t really follow from evolution or that don’t distinguish evolution from creation.
But the hypothesis of evolution does make some predictions that are different from expectations of the creation model, and testing these predictions can help scientists distinguish which model is better supported by the evidence. One evolutionary prediction is that we should find fossils of extinct species that have some characteristics of monkeys and some characteristics of humans, and those intermediate fossils should be from geologic layers that were laid down after the presumed common ancestor of humans and monkeys. Such fossils have been found. They don’t prove evolution, but they are consistent with the evolutionary prediction. See Fossil Hominids: The Evidence for Human Evolution Another prediction of evolution is that useless DNA mutations or virus insertions that altered the DNA of common ancestors of humans and monkeys should have been inherited by both humans and modern monkeys. Such shared mutations have been found. They don’t prove evolution but they are consistent with the evolutionary prediction. See Plagiarized Errors and Molecular Genetics Another Argument in the Evolution-Creation Controversy. The creation model makes neither of these predictions, so these sorts of data favor the evolution model. A nice list of evolution predictions and evidence that tests them is found at 29+ Evidences for Macroevolution: The Scientific Case for Common Descent. All of these WebPages include references to the original scientific journal articles so you can check for yourself how strong the evidence is.
One version of the creation model includes the notion that all animal species were created within one week and lived simultaneously. This model would be supported if remains of humans (and other modern species) were found in the same geologic layers as the remains of dinosaurs or trilobites; but such remains are found only in very different layers. This evidence doesn’t disprove the creation model, but it does massively contradict it. Creationists who try to explain away this contradiction use a variety of vague ad hoc theories (“hydrodynamic sorting” or “selective escape” from floods) that they have never tried to validate by testing how animal remains sink or float, or by studying what happens to different species of animals in floods.
It would be nice to see proof - like monkeys evolving into humans over millions of years - but we can’t get such proof, so we rely on the scientific, if indirect, approach of testing predictions that follow from competing hypotheses. We are left with a body of published scientific evidence that supports (not proves) evolution, and a body of evidence that contradicts several creationist models.
You are mistaken, misinformed, or simply ignoring the fundamental belief of Christianity when you say that to be christian is to believe everything that is in the bible. To be christian is to believe in a premise set forth by the new testament that Jesus was God's son, he lived without sin, died as a sacrifice, and rose from the dead. That is all that it means when a person says he or she is christian. Depending on which sect you were raised in, you might add in more, but the one unifying belief to all christian churches is that one.
You are absolutely correct when you say that the bible was written by men. It was written by men to teach people about God, the world, and themselves. If you've ever attended a university, you know that every professor has a different way of explaining the same concept. That is why there are contradictions throughout the bible. It was written by lots of different people with many different perspectives on two different religions (first Judaism and later Christianity).
If you want to focus on Genesis, though, I don't need to argue with you, both sides have argued that do death. I just want you to think about one question. Imagine yourself 7,000 years ago living with a tribe of nomadic people. You had an idea, a dream, a vision (whatever you want to call it) of evolution. You make observations (just like Darwin did) and it seems to make sense, but all you have a limited knowledge of the world, no knowledge of microbes, and no reference for a timeframe in which all of this happened. You know it must have been a long time because nobody you know remembers the animals being different, but your language only has numbers to go up to 100,000. How would you explain evolution to your contempories? I challenge you to think about that. I think that based on only the knowledge they had to work with back then, you would end up with something a lot like the story in genesis. First there was nothing, life came out of the sea, onto land, and eventually into the air and asexual reproduction came before sexual.
>Dear Mr. Keuning,
Thank you for contacting the Institute for Creation Research. I have read your email and understand that you seek an answer to the following question:
Q 1: The tract, "Have you been Brainwashed?" by Dr. Duane Gish contains numerous errors. Why is ICR still selling it?
A 1: Thank you for bringing this to our attention. We have compared your statements to those contained in our current revised booklet Copyright @ 1986 Revised 1994, Published by Gospel Tract Distributory and they differ in each case except where we disagree with your statements as mentioned herein.
Please advise as to the Publisher (was it Master Books?), the Copyright date, and revision date so that we can determine the cause of this misunderstanding.
In regard to the Plimer tape, the Cambrian explosion does consist of highly complex forms of life. Proof of this is found in a new video offered by ICR called "Unlocking the Mystery of Life." Billions of highly complex animals...trilobites, brachiopods, corals, worms, jellyfish, etc...just suddenly appear, with no signs of gradual development from lower forms.
Watch the video, and then let us have your opinion on the above statement! Our on-line store is located at www.icr.org.
Thank you again for your interest.
In the Creator's Service,
John G. Arend, B.S. (Geology), M.S. (Science Education), M. Div. Public Information Services Director ICR<
Jason
(Also, changes from flat to spherical earth and from geocentricity to heliocentricity are not fickleness in science but more an adoption of it. And spericity of the earth has been the dominant belief since the ancient Greeks.)
All that aside, I agree that persistent beliefs deserve serious evalutation. Such an evaluation has begun in David E. Jones' book An Instinct For Dragons. Jones notes the consistency of common human belief in dragons and makes a case that it originated as a result of predation on our ancestors by snakes, large cats, and birds of prey. Other researchers are looking for a basis for belief in God; for example in Why God Won't Go Away: Brain Science and the Biology of Belief by Newberg, D'Aquili, and Rause; and The "God" Part of the Brain by Matthew Alper. The field is still young, but expect more from it in the future.
To answer your second question, when molten rock (magma or lava) cools, the type of rock which is produced depends on two main factors: the chemical makeup of the molten rock, and the speed with which the rock cools. Granite and rhyolite have essentially the same chemical composition, but are made up of crystals of different sizes. The larger crystals of a granite are the result when a body of magma cools very slowly below the surface. A more fine-grained rhyolite results when the magma cools rapidly at or near the surface. When a granite is melted and allowed to cool rapidly, a rhyolite will result.
Say, how did you type that message without any fingers, O Undifferentiated & Unfertilized Gamete?
A creationist with whom I am debating claims that your FAQ is flawed because it includes the "false" claim that there are thousands of transitional fossils. He also claim your FAQ contradicts itself by stating in reference to Gould that transitionals are "relatively rare", and later stating that there are "several" superb examples.
I am hoping that you will respond by either clarifying why these statements do not contradict one another or by conceding that they do and updating the FAQ. Especially, I would hope that you will either support the claim of "thousands" of transitional fossils or change the language to reflect the facts that can be explicitly supported.
Thank you in advance for your help with this matter.
Jerry Smith
Kathleen Hunt's Transitional Vertebrate Fossils FAQ lists over three hundred transitional fossils in the vertebrates alone, and it is far from a complete list of vertebrate transitionals. She notes that one of the reasons why transitionals are little know is that, to paleontologists, they are so prosaic that they are not worth devoting a lot of time and effort to.
Some of the transitions seen in the fossil record are gradual transitions between species or genera. Each of these involves several different fossils and so adds greatly to the number of transitional fossils. In the case of hyenids alone, there are hundreds of fossil specimens linking over a hundred species.
The fossil record for some marine groups, especially those with hard parts such as molluscs and diatoms, is even better than the record for vertebrates. Again, gradual transitions composed of many distinct fossils are not uncommon. With microfossils, the number of fossil specimens in a transition can easily get into the millions. Kenneth Miller, in Finding Darwin's God pp. 44-45, tells of a continuous record of the diatom Rhizosolenia spanning almost two million years and including a speciation event. A smooth transition between foraminifera genera is described in A Smooth Fossil Transition: Orbulina, a foram. And of course, marine fossils are even less glamorous than vertebrate fossils, so they get even less popular attention.
We know what fact is...and I can conlude that Theory must not be a fact.(and it does not have to be wrong, either). You say lots of evidence founds supporting evolution. Then why is it still a "THEORY" but not a "FACT"? I will be glad if you send your answer to my e-mail address.
Bye the way, I know what Theory means, and I have no religion but I believe in a God because it seems much more logical rather than "believing in" Evolution. And one thing more, if somebody proofs evolution in a perfect, reasonable way I am readdy to accept it. I am a person who wants to learn facts.
Thanks you very much, I am looking forward for your reply.
Bayram Boyraz Bilkent University Computer Science Department
As for short period comets, the evidence is certainly compatible with the theory that there exist populations of objects which replace old used up comets with fresh new comets (the Kuiper belt and the Oort cloud). The creationist argument relies on the absolute non-existence of any such populations, a claim very hard to reconcile with observations which imply to the contrary.
I find it interesting that Creationists talk about their "Theory of Creation" as if it's the only one. Christians aren't the only ones to come up with a creation myth. Every religion has a creation myth, since curiousity about where we came from is one of the reasons why religions exist, so have they ever tried to determine whether the Christian creation theory is more logical than those of other religions? In the end, they can't, because all creation myths are based on faith and ancient wild guesses from people who originally thought the world was flat, so therefore there is no logic.
Evolution science has proven the existence of evolution from so many angles that that only ignorance and sheer denial keeps the need for such a web page necessary. Unfortunately it appears that this site will be open for a long time.
I have to comments on the new article by Mike Dunford with the title ''A Reply to "Talk.Origins: Deception by Omission" ''.
First, an additional comment on the author from trueorigins, J.A.Fernandez. I cite from the first papagraph of his essay:
''Although TO states that it is a "forum for discussion"- presumably unbiased-much evidence testifies to the contrary. I've been observing the TO site from the sidelines for quite some time [...]'' This paragraph strongly suggest that J. A. Fernandez made the same blunder as many others - he confused the Usenet discussion group with the TO archive! (note in the first sentence 'forum for discussion' and in the second only 'site'; this also becomes quite clear in the following where he only adresses the archive) This means that he is simply attacking a straw man, if willful or not is beyond my knowledge.
Second, Mike Dunford states (concerning the citations of Fernandez from Frequently Asked Questions and Their Answers): ''In all seven cases, Fernandez omits the links to the in-depth responses. Nowhere does he ever indicate that an omission has been made [...]'' This is not totally correct. Before discussing the FAQ, Fernandez writes: ''On February 13, 2002 this site had 24 questions, with brief answers and links to "relevant files." '' So he does admit that there _are_ links, which makes his omission of them even more dishonest in my opinion - although a reader with an open mind (if there are some on the trueorigin site) perphaps would bother to check if there are links because of this short note of Fernandez about them.
I would appreciate if my comments would lead to some minor changes in Mike Dunfords article.
Regards,
Sven Feuerbacher
Yours sincerely, Richard Milton
The assumption that change in the size of the genome is linear with time is wrong. There are a variety of genetic changes which result in an increased genome size, ranging from insertions of one to a few bases through duplication of entire chromosomes to complete duplication of the entire genome through polyploidy. These are discrete events that do not necessarily come evenly spaced in time.
Wesley
"Mud" is closer to "slime" than to "slim," yes?
It seems that this is not the purpose of your web site. It seems to try to disclaim creationism, not provide a fair forum. No offense. I have a friend who is a Christian. I am told that 2 peter 2, 1-3 says: "that in the last days false teachers will introduce destructive lies among the people. Their purpose is to bring God's truth into disrepute and to exploit believers by telling them made-up and imagined stories." This prophecy, it seems, is coming true. I don't find that enough evidence supports evolution. No, I'm not completely ignorant. :o But NUMEROUS other prophecies from this bible have apparently come true and the book has a ton of evidence going for it. I have heard of many books disclaiming evolution. When I look for a site trying to help me find evidence for it, there are many sites that shoot me down again. I would like some irrefutable evidence that completely disclaims creationism. Your site doesn't seem to disclaim it. I haven't seen anyone do that. It's weird. Thank you for your time. A.T.
You can access talk.origins, at the least, through Google Groups.
Part of your answer is that there is no reason why God may not have had a guiding hand behind evolution. You later say that until there is a test to separate chance and God this interpretation is valid within evolution.
This answer appears to suggest that God may have DIRECTED evolution. Furthermore you state above this section that "evolution cannot say exactly why common descent chose the paths that it did". This appears to grant God a possible role in choosing evolutionary paths.
I strongly disagree with this.
My understanding is that the theory of evolution as it pertains to the origin of species is an attempt to explain speciation in terms of forces within the natural world. That is why Darwin spoke of NATURAL selection of variants within a population. He of course didn't know the origin of variation within a population but he assumed it to be natural, not supernatural. We have confirmed his assumption since we now know that it is caused by DNA sequence differences which are in turn caused by the segregation of gene alleles, recombination, DNA replication errors, transposons etc, i.e. processes that fall within the realm of physics. Thus evolution as defined by Darwin and modern biology excludes any guiding hand, or interventionist God except perhaps in setting the laws of physics in the first place and I don't think is the interpretation you are proposing. I would argue therefor that the concept of evolution, as biologists understand it is mutually exclusive to God having a guiding hand in our origins. Furthermore, since natural causes appear sufficient to account for species origins I do not see why any supernatural factor need be introduced as an alternative.
Instead of stating that until scientists can distinguish acts of God from chance, God is valid within evolution, it should be said that "with every addition to the vast pile of evidence supporting evolution, the chance that a God has had any say becomes more and more remote".
Cheers, Marcus Heisler. (postdoc and Caltech)
Darwin did not exclude intervention by God, so much as making it unexplanatory. In his discussion with Asa Gray, who did argue for God's providential intervention, Darwin pointed out that trying to make predictions about evolution on the basis of a concept of God was unnecessary and prone to error. But there is scope for those who wish to to include a role for God.
We do not intend to imply that God directed evolution in ways which can be distinguished from chance or ordinary natural process. However, there is no reason to suggest on scientific grounds that God was not involved, either.