The bit-heads behind Mozilla, Firefox, and related software sometimes feature off-topic blog posts at planet.mozilla.org, an aggregator of Mozilla-related blogs. Today, Gervase Markham replies to a post by Ian Hixie pertaining to evolution. Hixie maintains that evolution is a fact, while Gervase proposes that it’s a matter of faith (that macro-evolution is, at any rate).

Gervase’s tactic is common among those disinclined to believe in evolution, and it can be pretty easily swept aside. Talk Origins points out that evolution doesn’t require faith because it is based on observable phenomena (and further, I would add, phenomena that can be observed by anybody and everybody, unlike a personal relationship with the deity of your choice). In short, because we can review the fossil record and draw conclusions from relationships among creatures that emerge therefrom, we are using evidence rather than faith — and rather than a reliance upon old texts — to support hypotheses.

A general criterion for whether or not something can be classified as science is that it is falsifiable. And it is true enough that evolution as a whole can’t be falsified (because it can’t be reproduced — it’s one big long phenomenon that we have no way of duplicating on so large a scale). But conclusions within the theory can be falsified, and it seems pretty clear to me that there’s a scientific process based on observation rather than just an “I believe this” process going on. So nice try, Gerv, but it really doesn’t fly. There’s a big difference between “hey, look at the similarities and slight differences among these fossils sitting here in front of us and compare them to modern animals of type X” and “I believe Jesus will come back in three weeks because I had a dream about horsemen and beasts with horns and boy doesn’t it make me feel nice to think about heaven.”

Every once in a while, I get a chance to meet up with one of my old professors, and he’s kind enough to review what poems I’ve managed to write since we last visited. When I was still in school, I had dreams of maintaining contact with some of my fellow writing students, of one day having my letters with some of these future laureates bound into collections and archived in university libraries as literary commodities. I had hoped to maintain at least basic contact and possibly to trade poems for review from time to time whether or not the more lofty aspiration worked out. As it turns out, I’ve kept up with none of my partners in pens. Oh, there were a few letters near the beginning, and I recently thought I might rekindle a correspondence with one of the friends who had gone on to edit a magazine I had submitted some poems to. But by and large, my literary trajectory has been flat: I have neither produced much decent work nor managed to browbeat my favored classmates into staying in touch. Everyday life keeps me from thinking about this very often, but from time to time, I feel something like sorrow and profound disappointment at having essentially given up that part of my life.*

There are scattered nice moments, though, as when I got my packet of poems back from my former professor yesterday inked with many positive comments. Naturally, there were revision suggestions on all the poems, and some of them came off as duds (though he didn’t say as much), but several of them that I felt ok about he thought were pretty good. So while the urge to write is often dead or at any rate weaker than the urge to put food on my table and clothes on my baby, maybe all the talent’s not completely gone, and maybe every once in a while, I can shave some of the edge off my disappointment.

*This is not to say that I’m not happy with my life as it’s unfolded. It’s more like saying that while I chose the turkey, I sure would have liked to have had some ham as well.