Darwin’s Transparent Box

I just finished reading Darwin’s Black Box, the Intelligent Design manifesto by Michael Behe.  Along with Phillip Johnson’s Darwin on Trial, this is the must-read book for anyone who rejects the evidence for evolution and wants to put on a shroud of pseudo-legitimacy.  (If you’ve also read Ann Coulter’s book Godless, it’s clear where she gets her nonsense.)

Behe’s the biochemist who came up with the term “irreducibly complex” to describe biological systems.  His claim is a slightly updated version of the old creationist canard of personal incredulity:  “This [insert whatever structure you want] is just too complex and/or beautiful to have arisen by natural causes, so an intelligent being must have designed it.”  You could also say it like this:  “Since I personally can’t think of a way this might have developed through Darwinian selection, I”m going to claim that it isn’t possible.”

The problem here is that Behe’s examples (bacterial flagella, cilia, the immune system, the blood clotting cascade) have been shown to be wrong.  Simpler (that’s “reduced in complexity,” for Mr. Behe) versions are found elsewhere.  For anyone interested in the science behind these examples, I would suggest Kenneth Miller’s book Finding Darwin’s God.  Miller is the biologist who testified, along with Behe, at the Dover, Pennsylvania trial over creationism in public schools.

Of course, it’s not just that Behe’s examples are wrong, it’s the fundamental idea behind trying to hold up such examples.  He has a good point that evolutionary scientists should be actively formulating theories for how these biological systems originated (and they are), and science welcomes all challenges (in fact it thrives on being challenged).  But Behe has concluded that nature screams out “intelligent design” while ignoring the fact that it simply doesn’t exist.

One of the most common arguments against intelligent design is the imperfection, waste, and vestigial structures in living organisms (junk DNA, pelvic bones on snakes, backwards wiring in the vertebrate eye, etc.).  Behe’s answer to things like this is twofold.  First, he says that maybe these inefficient structures really have a purpose we haven’t figured out yet.  Yeah, maybe.  Maybe there’s a designed purpose for wisdom teeth, hemorrhoids, and DNA that doesn’t code for any protein. Maybe there are also microscopic fairies that live in our mitochondria.  This is the courtroom equivalent of trying to introduce reasonable doubt by saying an invisible alien committed the crime.  Without any evidence backing it up, without a theory, without even a guess, it’s inconsequential.

Second, Behe accuses scientists who bring up this argument (like Miller and Richard Dawkins) of making assumptions about the mind of a designer.  A designer isn’t under any obligation to make us perfect, Behe argues, and we can’t know why he made us this way or that way.  Not only is this argument non-scientific (it can’t be tested), but it smacks of the same old religious hocus pocus: You just have to trust what God did even if you’ll never understand He did it.

Behe makes perfectly clear his delusion by using the following analogy.  He says that if a photocopier that has made ten perfect copies suddenly makes one copy that has smudges on it, that’s not a reason to assume the photocopier was developed by gradual Darwinian steps.

Nice try.  But a more appropriate analogy would be if the photocopier had a completely useless circuit or gear inside it.  A circuit or gear that does nothing, and indeed looks like a usable part from an earlier, less sophisticated model of photocopier.  Machines designed by intelligence never have things like that; living machines designed by natural selection do.

Typical Creationist Pseudoscience, Part Five

I’ve heard a lot of foolishness from creationists who try their usual tactic of either misrepresenting science or demoting to their level of faith-based opinion.  Recently, however, I heard a great one:  Science is based on direct observation, and since no one was around to witness evolution, it can only be speculation.  (What a shock that this person would be a Christian who rejects evolution.)

First of all, the assertion that science is always based on direct observation is utterly absurd.  Because of chaff on TV like CSI, Americans know much more about forensic science than they did a decade ago.  There’s not always direct observation (i.e., a witness) of a crime, but using the evidence found at the scene, timelines, data crunching, and so forth, the events of the crime can be pieced together.  That’s science, and no direct observation is required.  Similarly, no one’s ever actually witnessed a neutron star, or a black hole, or, for that matter, an individual proton in the nucleus of an atom.  By this creationist rationale, I suppose the atomic theory of matter should be only speculation.

Secondly, the hypocrisy in a stance like this is stunning.  No one was around to witness the supposed dialogue between Eve and a talking snake, or a magic flood, or even God creating everything ex nihilo.  But not only are the Christians willing to accept these things as factual, they can’t even present any supporting evidence!  The historical evidence that evolution happened includes vestigial limbs and organs, transitional fossils, genetic similarities, the sequential nature of the fossil record, and structures in modern organisms that are clear improvements upon those of previous organisms.

Where’s the historical evidence fo rthe Great Flood?  Do Christians realize that there’s not enough water on the planet to cover earth’s higher elevations?  That a wooden ship of the Ark’s size is impossible?  That if the world was covered with water, the water vapor content of the air would be so high that Noah, his family, and the animlas woul dhave literally drowned by breathing?  Where’s the historical evidence for man being created?  Why haven’t geneticists found a bottleneck that would indicate every living human on earth today is descended from a single pair in the Garden of Eden?

Of course, at this point some creationists would say that it is only science that has to prove itself with evidence.  Faith, religion, magic, astrology – whatever – all get a special pass. Scientific matters have to be backed up with solid evidence, but questions about the most important issues of mankind can be discussed with what can only be described as opinion.  It’s amazing.  The creationists get to turn off the rules of logic, but they demand that their opponents stick to them.  That seems like a very convenient way to make sure that your idea can never be proven wrong or even challenged.

And yet, these are the same people who think creationism is the equal of a scientific idea like evolution, the same people who want “equal time” for a creation story in science classrooms.  What’s wrong with presenting another side, they ask?  Isn’t that fair?  Shouldn’t we treat every viewpoint as equal and let people make up their minds?

Those who want every viewpoint to be equal are those who have no evidence for their viewpoint.  Present whatever ideas you want, inculcate your kids with fairy tales, preach your hypocritical nonsense to the uninformed, but don’t try to pawn it off as science.  Retain at least an iota of intellectual legitimacy and call it what it is: blind faith.

Evolution Irrationality

It’s difficult to imagine that in this day and age, with information so readily available, and with so many exquisite examples that continue to be uncovered, some evolution-denying Christians are still out there blithely saying, “Where are the transitional fossils?”

Even the most diehard anti-evolutionist out there has heard of Archaeopteryx and Australopithecus afarensis (Lucy).  They may not have heard of Acanthostega (a tetrapod with gills) or Tiktaalik (a fish with precursor elbow, shoulder, and finger joints) or Abulocetus natans (a transitional form between land mammals and whales) or Pikaia (an ancestor of early vertebrates).  They also may not know that in the fossil record, they earliest known tetrapods (four-limbed walking creatures) still had tail fins like fish, or that the earliest known limbs look like modified fins, or that the earliest known jaws look like modified gill arches.  They could be unaware of the dozens of fossils showing a clear evolutionary history of the elephant, each successively more like modern elephants.  they might not know our evolutionary past is stamped on our bodies in the form of duplicated genes and junk DNA, the appendix, the empty and useless yolk sac all human embryos develop, our faulty spines and knees, wisdom teeth, and even the wonderful gift of hemorrhoids.

Okay, I’m straying a bit from transitional fossils.  The problem is not that they don’t exist – the creationists can go look at all of them.  I’ve just named a few fairly well-known examples.  Despite the gaps in the fossil record, there are still plenty of clear-cut examples, examples so beautifully and obviously showing evolutionary change that the only real opposition is from fundamentalists.  The problem is that these fundamentalists simply don’t accept these examples as transitional.  They ask for traditional fossils, but when they’re presented, they say, “That’s just a separate species or a dead end.”  Of course, they have no evidentiary basis for such a claim.

But fair enough.  I challenge these people to put their money where their mouths are.  What exactly would qualify as a transitional fossil to you?  How do you define transitional?  Can you name on clear example of something that would convince you that possibly there was evolutionary change?  If you can’t answer these questions, you have no business even speaking about this subject in rational discourse.

If you can, let’s hear it.  Creatures like Acanthostega walked around on four legs yet still had gills.  The oldest amphibians in the fossil record still look a lot like fish, while the later ones look much more like modern amphibians.  If this is not transitional, what exactly would transitions between aquatic creatures and tetrapods look like?

Creationist Nonsense, Part One

Lately I’ve noticed a pretty big error in thinking that creationists use often.  It’s called the Either-Or Fallacy.  For creationists it usually goes something like this: “If I can prove evolution wrong, then obviously creationism is correct, and therefore God is real.”

Of course, “proving evolution wrong” is their first mistake.  Most of them don’t even make an honest effort to do that.  They just say that the evidence for evolution isn’t compelling in their opinion, and go from there.  For their information, scientists can provide them with a host of experiments that would unequivocally prove evolution wrong (such as finding an anachronistic fossil).

But the main point here is their creation of a false dichotomy: Either evolution is true, or creationism is true.  When someone alludes to this point, I always ask them, “How do you know?  Why can’t there be a third possibility that none of us has considered yet?”

As a friend of mine has said, the Either-Or Fallacy reveals its absurdity if you apply it to simple situations.  It’s like the creationists claim that there is only an apple or an orange in a box, and when they reach their hand in and don’t find an apple, they assume that it contains an orange.  In reality, it could contain a watermelon, or a paper clip, or a pogo stick, or nothing. 

Not only is this illogical, it’s an evasion.  If the creationists wish for their “theory” to be taken seriously, they they should provide some evidence for it.  Your position stands or falls on the evidence, period.  Even if an opposing viewpoint is weak, it doesn’t necessarily say anything about your viewpoint.  Do you hear scientists trotting out this nonsense?  What if they only argument scientists could provide for evolution was: “The evidence for God creating life is inconclusive; therefore some mysterious law – let’s call it ‘natural selection’ – must be responsible for everything.”

Give me a freaking break.  To all of you creationists out there:  You can’t win by default.  You can’t prove a Creator exists by (futilely) trying to poke holes in evolution.  Try coming up with some actual evidence for your viewpoint like everyone who’s intellectually honest has to do.

And furthermore, saying evolution is wrong and therefore creationism is right is illogical enough; don’t pile on the foolishness by then leaping to the conclusion of an all-powerful deity, and even to Abraham’s God.

Let’s be clear: I’m not saying you creationists are automatically wrong.  I’m saying that this particular reason for believing as you do is illogical.  It’s a faulty method of arriving at a conclusion, especially one so important.  But hey, I’m not blaming you or calling you ignorant – maybe you just don’t have any other option.  When you have no evidence for your position, you have to come up with something.

Humanists Spoiling Christmas

The other night on The O’Reilly Factor, he had the president of a humanist organization that had paid for a Washington DC billboard ad.  It said: “Why Believe in a god?  Just Be Good for Goodness Sake” and displayed a picture of Santa Claus.  Though O’Reilly had no problem with the second part of the message, he accused the guy of being provocative on purpose to try to insult Christians “just in time for Christmas.”

Okay, fine: The ad is definitely provocative, and I’m sure the humanist organization knew that it would be.  So what?  It’s hardly insulting to ask a profound question like, “Why believe in a god?”  The whole point of the humanist view is that you don’t need a deity (and definitely not organized religion) to be a good moral person.  How can they express that point without asking a tough question like that?

People, this is without a doubt one of the most important questions in existence, one of the fundamental aspects of our lives.  A question like this has so many different layers and cuts across so many lines.  It’s central to what it means to be a human being.  And we’re not supposed to ask it for fear of insulting someone who believes?

What a joke.  I’m so tired of hearing this position that “my faith deserves special respect.”  I’m sorry, but it doesn’t.  This is America.  Your faith gets no special treatment whatsoever.  All you get is the right to worship however you wan – but that means you have to live alongside others who disagree, and even others who think your faith is wrong, ridiculous, or even immoral.

The point of the ad’s “provocative” question was that being moral because God wants you to is kind of an oxymoron.  Morality is not obedience.  You should be moral because it’s the right thing to do, not because God tells you it’s the right thing to do.  Me, I’m a bit callous.  I would put it another way that I’m sure would be incredibly insulting to some, but that I think is completely valid: “Why should I worship a god who kills babies and sanctions rape?”

I’m not trying to insult Christians with a question like that; it’s the truth.  It’s right there in the Old Testament.  I’d like an answer.  The old standby of “those things are okay if God does them” is – in my view – pathetically inadequate.

In my experience, most religious people are quite proud to admit why they believe in their god.  If you can’t even answer a basic question like that about your faith, perhaps the problem is yours.  Maybe Christians should stop being insulted by a provocative question like “Why believe in a god?” and instead try to answer it.

Typical Creationist Pseudoscience, Part Four

It’s amusing when Christians use their very ordinary and cliched tactic of trying to debunk science.  Rather than provide any evidence for their belief, rather than try to elevate it to some sort of rational legitimacy, their tactic is to attempt to lower a scientific theory to their level (which is to say, faith and opinion).  You see it all the time:  They say evolution is “only” a theory and that creationism should be taught alongside it as an equally viable theory.

This position is born of pure ignorance in what a scientific theory is.  The next time a creationist tells you evolution is “only” a theory, ask them if the germ theory of disease is “only” a theory, or the atomic theory for matter, or the theory of relativity.

Lately I’ve heard that quantum theory – even though it has produced lasers and television – requires faith or “belief” in it because it is incomplete and has unanswered questions.  Here’s what one of these typical Christians says: “It’s as incomplete as you say Christianity is, and yet you have faith in [it].”

First of all, I’ve never claimed that Christianity is incomplete.  It’s not a scientific theory.  It’s a belief based on knowledge gained from authority and revelation.  I’m not saying Christianity is automatically wrong; what I’m saying is that to place it on the same level as a testable science like quantum theory is absurd.

Secondly, I don’t have faith in quantum theory.  It’s not necessary; lasers work whether you believe in them or not.  Here’s a Mirriam-Webster definition of the word “faith” that is appropriate to the context we’re talking about: “Firm belief for something for which there is no proof.”  We have proof that quantum theory works.  We experience that proof every day.  The fact that it has unanswered questions does not invalidate the proof that television is real.  Similarly, there are plenty of unanswered questions in astrophysics and cosmology (black holes, quasars, dark matter, etc.) but that doesn’t mean we should demote the standard model of the universe to “faith.”

Thirdly – and this is the most important part – a scientific theory is provisional.  If aspects of quantum theory turn out to be wrong, even if we have to throw the whole thing out and start over from scratch, then that’s what we’ll do.  Scientists follow the evidence.  Scientists know that they may be wrong, that gaining knowledge is a tentative process filled with mistakes and false starts.  That’s how it works.  In contrast, no only are most Christians completely closed off to the idea that they may be wrong, they have no method for even testing whether they’re right or wrong!  And they call scientists arrogant?  It sounds to me like Christians are the ones “professing themselves to be wise.”

Christianity is not incomplete; that would imply that some part of it has been shown to be factual.  It’s nothing but a personal belief.  An opinion.  Claiming that it’s incomplete like quantum theory would be a gross insult to quantum theory, which has actual evidence to back it up.  Where’s the evidence for Christianity?  I ask this of Christians all the time, and the only thing I ever hear is some variation of this: “Millions of people have personally felt it.”  Somehow, in the creationist mind, this is regarded as evidence.  Suppose Richard Dawkins wrote a book claiming that evolution is real because millions of people believe in it, that millions of people have felt some mystical connection to all living things on earth?  How hard would all of you Christians laugh at something like that?  How frustrated would you be, trying to talk sense into him?  Welcome to our world.

Evolution IQ

In a continuing quest to point out that most people who reject evolution (an even some who accept it) have no idea what they’re rejecting (or accepting), I’ve compiled a few points that should sound familiar.

1. Evolution is a random process.
2. Humans evolved from chimpanzees.
3. A giraffe evolved a long neck because its ancestors stretched to reach food.
4. A transitional species like Archaeopteryx was a creature in the process of evolving from one species to another.
5. Natural selection creates individual components of an eye and saves them up until the whole eye can be assembled.

Those five statements are extremely common and well-understood notions about evolution.  They are in the minds and on the tongues of many, many people, whether they reject or accept the evidence for the theory.  Each one of those statements is also utterly false.

1. Evolution is not a random process.  The tiny genetic mutations it uses are random, but the process that saves them and weeds out others (natural selection) is the exact opposite of random.  Note the word “selection.”  Advantageous genes are selected simply because the animals with them survive and pass them on.  Natural selection is mindless and lacks a goal, but that’s not the same as saying it’s random.
2. It’s safe to say that no modern species evolved from any other modern species.  Humans and chimps share a common ape-like ancestor from several million years ago that was neither human nor ape.
3. Genes cannot know or care what a creature does in its life, such as stretching its neck repeatedly.  That’s called Lamarckism, and it’s impossible.  A giraffe has a long neck because longer-necked giraffes survived and mated while shorter-necked ones did not.
4. No species is ever “in the process” of changing into another species.  That would require foresight and a plan, which natural selection – by definition – lacks.  Transitional species existed because they survived in their environments. 
5. Again, this myth would require foresight and planning.  Natural selection constructs slightly more complex versions of things like eyes.  Those versions are all useful in the creature in some way.

These aren’t my opinions, and they’re not my interpretation of how evolution works.  They’re certainly not original ideas that I came up with; they’re simply facts rehashed from my study of the subject.  All of them are quite clear and quite well-established in the scientific community, and they can be read in a thousand places from dozens of different experts in the field.  There should be absolutely no reason why these misconceptions should ever be voiced by any educated person.  I’m definitely not holding my breath, though.

Typical Creationist Pseudo-Science, Part III

In Mr. Incredible’s ongoing quest to show that he knows more about my positions that I do myself, he has accused me of denying that God exists.  Here is a quote: “So this has nothing to do with what you want us to believe is intelligence, empiricism, logic, nor reason.  It has to do with the fact that you want to be able to persuade yourself that, through your own arrogant power, you can avoid and ignore a Power and Judgement greater than yourself.”

I don’t know how many different ways I can say this Mr. Incredible: I am perfectly open to the possibility that a higher power exists.  I await only evidence, and so far the only “evidence” you’ve pointed out is the personal experience of millions of Christians.  If that is to be our standard of evidence, how about the personal experience of millions of Muslims, or Jews, or Buddhists, or atheists?  My only “arrogance” is that I hold every claim – whether it is a claim of ghosts, God, evolution, or the Big Bang - to the same standard of evidence.

But since you don’t believe me, I must be lying or deluding myself.  I can’t argue with an intellect as powerful as yours, so I’ll try to concentrate on more impersonal subjects.

You asked, “What kind of science leaves input out?”  Well, no science that I know of.  All the fields of science are constantly awash with new ideas, new theories, young graduate students challenging the status quo, and old curmudgeonly academics being forced to defend their positions to upstarts.  This is why science works; this is why it produces results.  This is why we have vaccines, cell phones, space probes, and longer life spans (to give a few examples).

What your problem seems to be is that science leaves out the input of millions of Christians who swear that they’ve felt God, witnessed His actions, etc.  Actually, science doesn’t leave it out.  You can find a great many books and articles written by scientists about personal experience, faith, the power of belief, and the science of belief.  (As an example, I would recommend one such book, How We Believe, by Michael Shermer – he was once a Christian and is now the editor of Skeptic magazine.)  The issue of these personal testimonies have been repeatedly addressed by science.

But there is a good reason why personal testimony is not treated as empirical evidence: It’s unreliable.  Surely you can’t deny that in the vast majority of cases, claims of angel sightings, miracles, faith healing, and so on, have turned out to be simple fraud, delusion, or misinterpretation.  People are heavily biased and influenced by what they want to believe, what comforts them, what frightens them, and what they are led to believe by authority and social pressure.  The recent hyped-up scare about “recovered” memories of sexual abuse that landed innocent people in prison is one poignant example of just how unreliable people’s perceptions are.

Science also practices what it preaches, so to speak.  No one in the scientific community – and I mean no one – takes personal experience as evidence of a theory.  No one accepts evolution, the Big Bang, or quantum theory because “millions of people testify to it.”  Such a person would be laughed out of academia.  The cases for these theories are built on observable, testable, and measurable empirical data, not on personal testimonies or revealed knowledge.

Furthermore, a scientific theory can be proven wrong.  Evolution, for example, would be proven wrong if just one single anachronistic fossil were found.  Just one horse in the strata of the trilobites, or a hominid fossil in with the dinosaurs.  The entire theory would come crashing down, and scientists freely admit it.  Falsifiability is the hallmark of science.

If your positions is scientific and not merely based on faith, Mr. Incredible, answer me this:  How could it be proven wrong?  Even hypothetically – how could it possibly be shown that all those personal testimonies are erroneous?

Typical Creationist Pseudo-Science, Part II

In asking for any evidence that points to the Christian God’s existence, Mr. Incredible has returned with what I think is personal testimony of millions of people throughout history, only he presents these testimonies as “experiments.”  Here are several quotes:

“They did what God told them to do, plugged in His principles, turned on the switch and they found that it works.”

“…those who have done the experiment and found that what God says is true have observed the results, not merely opined.”

“You don’t accept the witness testimony of those who have done the experiment, inputted the things God told them to input, switched the Power on and found that it lights up.  I can’t help you if you want to be uncooperative.”

“Witnesses have found that, through experiment – observation of the results from the cooperative action of inputs – what God says is true.  They have observed His promises performed, manifested, distilled from the spiritual merely cuz [sic] they asked, in faith that He is able and willing to perform what He promised.  I have observed this time and time again, and I testify of [sic] it.”

The first question that comes to my mind is this, Mr. Incredible: What about the millions of people who have “done the experiment” and found something else?  That is, the people (like me) who were once Christians and eventually came to see it differently?  There are more non-Christians in the world than Christians – what about all of them?  What about discerning adults who have looked at the major religions and chosen a different one?  Doesn’t the witness testimony of all these people count for anything, or do you only listen to testimony from those who affirm your position?

What about all of the testimony of your fellow Christians?  Catholics, Protestants, Lutherans, Baptists, Methodists, Jehovah’s Witnesses – millions of Christians who can testify to different “truths.”  Are all of them simply wrong?  They claim the same testimonial evidence and monopoly on the truth that you do.  How are us skeptics to know how to separate the two?  Explain to me why your claim – which so far seems identical to all of theirs – should be taken more seriously.

Secondly, you repeatedly mention that many people – including yourself – have observed this time and time again.  Fair enough.  But you have not yet given one example.  Give me one.  Just a single incident where you observed one of “His promises performed.”  Otherwise, how can I – as someone who has not yet observed what you have – be certain of what you really experienced?

Thirdly, I will quote David Hume: “No testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish.”  In other words, are you so certain that what you observed was an act of God, or does it have a much more parsimonious explanation?

Fourthly, if we are to take seriously the testimony of Christians who have felt God’s effects, then why should we not take seriously the testimony of those who have felt the effects of astrology?  After all, plenty of people have done what astrology told them to do, plugged in its principles, and found that it works.  This is undeniable: You can find the sworn testimony of literally millions of people who can tell you that astrological predictions are real and that they have observed them coming true in their lives.

Honestly, I fail to understand how the two cases are different.  Please explain.

Typical Creationist Pseudo-Science

Here is Mr. Incredible’s position: Evolution can’t bridge the gap between 1) nothing and something, 2) something and life, and 3) life and humanity (self-conscious and free will).  I haven’t yet heard him expound any further; he simply asserts these things as facts and claims there is no evidence of any such connections.

Number 1: This is a matter for physics and cosmology, not evolutionary biology.  Further, it is based on the false premise that there is any “gap” to begin with.  Perhaps there has always been “something,” in which case there was never “nothing.”  Perhaps, as modern physics has argued, the net energy in the universe is actually zero, in which case “nothing” came from “nothing.”

Number 2:  This is certainly an incomplete and ongoing area of evolutionary theory, but there isevidence of a “bridge” between something and life.  Organic compounds such as amino acids form with ease out of inorganic matter.  Simple protein molecules have been observed making trail-and-error “decisions” on enzymes.  Even nonliving crystals have a rudimentary form of “hereditary.”  We’ve come a ling way since Urey-Miller.

Number 3: Chimpanzees are self-conscious and have free will.  They recognize themselves in a mirror, make individual decisions, have individual personalities, form individual bonds, have an innate sense of fairness, make plans, get jealous and envious, create tools, plot deceptions, and mourn their dead.

Mr. Incredible also said: “We still don’t know how matter is produced.”

Who ever said that matter is being produced?  From the laws of thermodynamics, we know quite the opposite: that matter and energy are neither created nor destroyed.  If you’re speaking of ultimate beginnings, as in how something came from nothing, I refer you to the point I made above:  How do you know there was ever nothing?  How do you know that the matter and energy present in the universe haven’t always been there?  If you want to delve deeper into the cosmological argument, how do you know there must be a First Cause?

One more point: Mr. Incredible keeps accusing me of hypocrisy, saying that I have “faith” in something like quantum mechanics (which is incomplete and begs many questions), and yet I reject Christianity.  He even stated that I accept quantum mechanics because a lot of people say it’s real.

Mr. Incredible, quantum theory has given us lasers, TVs, and supermarket scanners.  It has produced empirical results; that’s why I say it has scientific value.  No faith is required.  I don’t understand why you continue to make this fallacious argument.  Do you believe that quantum theory has not produced these things?  Or are you saying that because it’s incomplete, we should throw the whole thing out as merely faith?

There are plenty of theories in science that are incomplete.  In fact, a fundamental tenet of science is that it’s alwaystreated as “incomplete,” or provisional.  Only faith is irrefutable.  Science would never make such an arrogant claim.  The standard model of cosmology is far from complete, but that doesn’t invalidate the evidence for black holes and dark matter.  The theory of evolution has unanswered questions, but that doesn’t invalidate evidence such as the fossil record, vestigial organs, and homogeny.

In the same vein, of course quantum mechanics is unfinished, but if the theory has led to such achievements, do you not think it’s unreasonable to say that this is evidence of its merit?