Creation vs. Evolution: My Story

I’ve been awfully agitated by the news lately – sparked by recent interest in Turkana Boy, one of the oldest hominid fossils recovered to date – thought to be about 1.6 million years old. Turkana Boy is an example of Homo erectus considered by most paleontologists to be an ancestral species to modern Homo sapiens. Of course when you have a limited number of fossil specimens of any given species, you have to infer a lot of things. There is a margin for error in this, but not so great as to diminish the concept of evolution.

African evangelical Christians have lately been quoted as saying that they are NOT descended from the Turkana Boy. And indeed that is true. This fossil specimen has been aged at anywhere between 8 and 12 years. It is unlikely that he was sexually active or that the alleles of all his genes are what spawned modern humanity. It is, however, quite likely that we are descended from H. erectus.

We know how genetic data gets passed on from one generation to the next. No scientist, even those who claim a creationist bent, argues that. So there really is an Adam and Eve for Homo sapiens but chances are, we’ll never find them, at least not genealogically. We can find them genetically, though.

But that’s another story.

Today, I’d like to make it personal. I plan to be cremated even though that would be culturally incorrect. It’s more of an environmental statement. So it’s unlikely that I will become fossilized. But, we can imagine a scenario that in 5 years or so, due to rising sea level from global warming, I come face to face with a mud slide, burying me alive, and eventually causing me to become lithified. Let’s say, several centuries from now, some paleontologist digs up my skull.

Here’s what he’d see:
Pointy at both ends – I have a pin head and tiny feet for my height and girth. He won’t find my feet, but looking at my skull, he might surmise that he was looking at a child rather than a middle-aged woman.
Look ma, no cavities – I’m 40 years old, and I’ve never had a cavity. Again, the paleontologist might think that this is a child’s head. If there are other fossil skulls from the same time period to compare me with, he might think that fillings are the remnant of some decorative or religious ritual that I didn’t participate in or just that I hadn’t come-of-age.
No wisdom teeth – weird, huh? Not because they’ve been pulled, but never had ‘em, never will. I’m looking more and more child-like, eh?
Big nose – all the better to smell you with, my dear. The cartilage won’t be preserved, but the opening will be there. Also, if he does a cast of my brain, he might discover that my olfactory lobe is unusually large. I don’t know if it really is – I assume it might be as I have an extremely acute sense of smell. It might be that my olfactory lobe is big because I have a big nose. Or, my nose might be big so I can make use of my big olfactory lobe.
So we know that my fossil remains might give a misrepresentation of who I really was. Now let’s look at me being a product of evolution or created by God.

I can’t think of any good reason for having a small head. I guess in the case of global warming, it will help me because the surface to volume ratio will help me keep cool in the face of rising temperatures. If God gave me a small head, He might have done so knowing that I can buy children’s hats which are cheaper than adult hats. He might have believed that I would be a worthy person who would benefit from spending less money on hats. On the other hand, if He made everyone with small heads, haberdashers and milliners would be faced with losing money – using less materials and labour to produce smaller headwear. Overall, this impacts more people negatively than my positive small-head experience, so I do not think that God created my pin head.

I know I don’t have any cavities because I had fluoride drops in my orange juice when I was little, and my parents didn’t let me eat a lot of candy or sweet cereal. But there are a lot of kids who had mean parents like that, and they still have cavities. So maybe God decided I’m worthy, and I shouldn’t have cavities so that I can save money on dentists’ bills and enjoy the warm feeling I get when a dental hygienist tells me I have beautiful teeth. Or, maybe I’ve inherited strong teeth from generations of heavy-enameled humans and this is a trait that has been passed on through the increased reproductive success a person with strong teeth enjoys because they look good, and they can eat a wider variety of foods (and even open the odd beer bottle with their teeth).

The lack of wisdom teeth saves me time and money the same way the lack of cavities does. As with the poor milliner, think of all the dentists that would suffer if everyone lacked wisdom teeth and cavities. What God would want that. I have a small jaw to go along with my pin head, so it kind of makes sense that I don’t have wisdom teeth – there’s no room at all. But a lot of what we have in our bodies does NOT make sense. So you never know. IF it’s a genetic trait and IF I’ve passed it on to my children and IF they survive the mudslide to reproduce and their children also don’t have wisdom teeth, the paleontologist might think I was in fact the first example of a wisdom-toothless ancestor, because it’s entirely possible that the allele for wisdom teeth could disappear altogether by the time he’s digging me up.

God might have given me a big nose because I’m not so worthy, and He wanted me to be less attractive. Or He might have loved me and wanted me to be able to experience more through my sense of smell. A good sense of smell makes total sense evolutionarily. I could smell if there was a gas leak before my house burned down, or if I’ve left the brownies in the oven too long, so I can feed my children and help ensure their reproductive success. There are tremendous benefits to having a big nose (and I’m not just saying that because I feel ugly and unworthy).

So the bottom line is, using both creationist illogic and evolutionary science, we can justify several of the traits found in my skull. We also know that the excavator who digs me up will be able to infer all sorts of incorrect things by looking at these same characteristics. Maybe someday we’ll evolve or be given by God the ability to write a little note with a Sharpie somewhere on our skull so that years later, the field worker will know what we were.

The New (Old) Apathy

It's not the consequences at Kent State in 1970 that make students so unlikely to demonstrate about anything. No, it's that old education act, come back to bite us again. Well, this time, it's doing just what the government might hope. We've dumbed down our youth to simply be able to fill in small circles with number 2 pencils rather than think or, more importantly, question.

The whole point of No Child Left Behind, let's remember, is that students score better (or lose federal funding, which seems counter to the point . . . but I digress, as always). But better than what? What benchmark are we trying to achieve -- the cold war is over, and we don't have to get to the moon first. Our standards are mediocre at best, and we have the notion that everyone can, no, deserves to, go to college. To be sure, schools like Harvard or Princeton or Stamford are still going to get the top tier applicants. But the masses, are going to college as well. That's where the state and community college system comes in. So it's become a truth that anyone can go to college. Once there, these students will take remedial courses to supplement what they didn't learn in middle or high school to fill in the basic skill set. Yet, they still don't know how to think, beyond the basic reasoning needed to do an algebra problem or write an expository essay.

Last fall, just before the midterm elections, I spoke with some of my students in a 100-level course at a state university. I was encouraging them to vote, because I feel it's the most important tool Americans have to affect change or not, as one prefers. I was shocked to learn that most of them had no intention of voting, had not been following politics at all. One girl shrugged and said, it was too much work to learn about the issues. The others agreed.

This is not a phenomenon restricted to my classes or even the university where I work. Nearly every day a student is quoted in print or on the radio, bemoaning the apathy of his or her classmates. Google "student apathy", and you will find countless articles on the subject. Many sources indicate that it is the absence of competition (and reading them I think of the news report on the school system that banned the game of "tag" because the slower children were feeling bad about themselves (that's okay, Freddie, have another Twinkie)) that causes the ennui.

I don't agree. We are so focused on testing students now to see how they rank, that we've run out of time to teach them anything interesting -- to add color to the basic RRR curriculum. Couple that with the fact that we as Americans are constantly being lied to (we're winning the war on terror, did ya know?), and you will have a youth that is culturally bereft and suspicious. The final ingredient in this mess is the ease with which one can get misinformation through the internet. For example, I have read countless "scholarly" articles over the last few weeks that tell me with certainty that there is no scientific evidence for evolution.

This is the ideal set of circumstances for producing individuals who are filled with indifference. And now colleges and universities are brimming with them. Good job, W.

Sectarian Violence; Not Just for Baghdad Anymore

Everybody (except W.) knows that having Americans fighting wars in the Middle East is stupid because of the inherent disagreements between Sunni and Shiite Muslims. From our lofty perch in America, we can look down on the Islamic people of both sects thinking to ourselves how ridiculous and pointless the infighting is.

But we’re no better. Forty years after the fact, civil-rights era murderers are being prosecuted now that law enforcement is no longer so easily influenced by the Ku Klux Klan. That’s great. But in the same 24-hour news reporting period that we hear a story on that, we are also given the news tidbit that the KKK is experiencing a resurgence with not only old cells being revitalized, but new groups springing up in previously untapped ground in the Midwest.

The KKK is just the new arm of spokespeople espousing issues that have already polarized America. Previously, it was the mainstream Religious Right speaking out in areas of government or the media against immigration (read non-white immigration, obviously), gay marriage, abortion, etc. Now the Klan and other hate groups are taking on some of these same topics.

We have a lot to say about Islamic fundamentalists and how their fervor colors their thinking so that they cannot make rational decisions about how to interact with people.

For years now, Americans have been making bad decisions about how to do just that, for the most part also in the throes of religious zeal, but often even more caught up in a capitalist fanaticism. It’s just so close to being out of control now. I wonder if we can stop it before we have our cities torn apart and another country coming in with soldiers to show us how to do it better.