I am a Deist<\/A>. That means that I believe in God whole-heartedly but reject all religious dogma. My beliefs are a combination of certain elements from Hinduism, Sufism, and Buddhism and I try to pray and meditate daily and abide by a belief in karma. During the day I am a Fellow at the Center for the Study of Evolution and the Origin of Life. I study the oldest life on Earth (dating back to ~4 billion years) in order to unlock the secrets of life, how it began, and how it evolved until the present. I am an example of how one can embrace God and still believe at the same time that scientific explanations should always <\/EM>trump religious ones.<\/P>\n Over the last two days Deepak Chopra has been making arguments that basically support “Intelligent Design”<\/A> on the liberal Huffington Post<\/A> blog (which is an excellent website). Such an embarrassing event can occur when you have too many bloggers in one space and can’t keep track of it all. I am not a Deepak Chopra reader. I find his writings too…elementary. I don’t begrudge anyone that does enjoy his writing though. We all have different tastes is all. Chopra however has a lot of people that listen to him and take his words as “gospel.” That is why I was pained greatly to read his post. Here are some “scientific questions” he poses in order to demonstrate an openness to divine intervention:<\/P>\n 1. How does nature take creative leaps? In the fossil record there are repeated gaps that no “missing link” can fill.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n Wrong. It is the rock record that is incomplete. Tectonic activity is continually resurfacing the Earth and destroying the rocks containing fossils. Nature does not take “creative leaps.” The biggest such “leap” occurred around 535 Ma at the Cambrian boundary and over the last 40+ years the “gap” has been slowly filled in with solid fossil evidence showing gradual evolution.<\/P>\n 2. If mutations are random, why does the fossil record demonstrate so many positive mutations — those that lead to new species — and so few negative ones?<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n Because organisms with negative mutations die out sooner making their preservation potential less. Only a tiny<\/STRONG> fraction of dead life survives the fossilization process without being destroyed. That’s why you don’t find dinosaur bones in your backyard.<\/P> 3. How does evolution know where to stop?<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n Evolution never stops. Many prokaryotes (single-celled life) have remained virtually “un-evolved” for close to 3 billion years. This is because they are generalists that are suited for life in extreme environments and because they reproduce asexually which allows for less mutation. Give them an environment extreme enough though and they will either evolve or die. Evolution doesn’t stop at some perfect “design.”<\/P>\n I am going to stop here. Rest assured that I could systematically de-bunk every pseudoscientific point Chopra makes and I don’t even have my Ph.D. yet. Maybe Razib and his pals at GNXP<\/A> want to take a shot at swatting down a few more (although I fear I’d be insulting their intelligence with such an easy task).<\/P>\nAs you can imagine HuffPost readers let him have it in the comments following his post. In fact he had to write a follow-up post<\/A> containing seven more fundamentally flawed arguments:<\/P>\n Yes, its always easy to counter a rational attack with a wave of ones hand and then point to some historical examples of “persecuted ideas,” as if his argument has anything in common with them.<\/P>\n This coincidentally is almost verbatim what IDers say. Also let’s clarify. There is NO SUCH THING as “Intelligent Design.” Years ago the Creationists realized that the word “Creationist” was a conversation stopper. They then repackaged it and came up with a new word that was easier to swallow. Their PR people are brilliant.<\/P>\n There is also some poetry thrown into Chopra’s rebuttal in-case real scientists are still angry with his arguments:<\/P>\n Chopra promises to answer his thirsty minions in his next post which I eagerly await:<\/P>\n A picture is after all worth a thousand words.<\/P>\n If you would like to learn more about the truth then here are some links:<\/P>\n Talk Origins<\/A><\/P>\n Flying Spaghetti Monster<\/A><\/P><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I am a Deist. That means that I believe in God whole-heartedly but reject all religious dogma. My beliefs are a combination of certain elements from Hinduism, Sufism, and Buddhism and I try to pray and meditate daily and abide by a … Continue reading \n
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Reviewing the negative reactions to yesterday’s post<\/STRONG>, I was struck that both “secular humanists” and fundamentalist become extremely emotional<\/STRONG> when the debate on evolution is brought up. However, new ideas are attacked with emotional vehemence some times and then turn out to be right.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
If you are opposing my comments with passionate vehemence, I’d suggest that you are not friendly to the open discussion of evolution, no matter which camp you belong to.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
You and I are such islands, and there is no reason on the face of it why we don’t blow away and disperse in waves of radiating heat the way a rock cools off after a hot day, the same way a star eventually expends its heat and dies.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n
In my next post I will offer a picture of how these questions might be answered.<\/BLOCKQUOTE>\n