“Some evidence, however, doesn’t stand a chance against a compelling narrative.”
Kathryn J. Edin
According to Genesis 2:7, God made the first person, Adam “out of the dust of the ground” and later made Eve out of Adam's rib. There is an oft repeated story in Jewish folklore about a young, precocious Jewish boy who asked his yeshiva Rabbi, “Where did Cain’s wife come from?” Rather than answer the question, the Rabbi sharply rapped the young boy’s knuckles while explaining that people much more intelligent than he were wise enough not to ask such a stupid question! Apparently, the only possible answer would invoke the taboo of incest.
Every sexually-reproducing mammal (including humans) ever born received two sets of genetic material, one from their “father” and one from their “mother.” From this fundamental biological scientific fact, there are only two conclusions to be drawn from the story of Adam and Eve: It is either a metaphor or the authors were ignorant. Creationists are fond of asking the question, “If humans descended from monkeys, why are monkeys still in existence?” Their question (if sincere) reflects a stunning level of ignorance about the theory of evolution.
A species is defined as a group of organisms that have reproductive integrity, meaning that they can only mate and produce viable offspring with members of their kind. For example, dogs and cats are distinct species and cannot cross-bred. Speciation is the process that permits the formation of new species through the long process of evolution. No child is an exact copy of their parents, but a combination of genetic material from both. They in fact receive two full genomes, one from their father’s sperm and another from their mother’s egg. Both genomes have been copied numerous time during the life of the parents in one of the most high-fidelity replicating systems known to exist. However, occasionally a copying “error” is made resulting in a mutation that is transferred to the offspring via sexual reproduction. Most mutations are fatal, some are neutral, and very few others confer some survival advantage (usually slight) to the offspring.
All specie populations contain variations which are the raw material of evolutionary change. If any of the variants (subspecies) enjoy a sufficient survival advantage in its environment (also subject to change), it may over time come to dominate that population (gene pool). At some point in time, the two separate populations may reach a stage (usually due to physical separation) where they can no longer interbreed and produce viable offspring. It is at this time that the variant becomes a new species. The original species from which the new species descended may continue as a viable species or more likely will become extinct. Regardless of the fate of the original species, the new species can never again engage in cross-lineage mating with its "mother" species. This should free creationists from any concern that a monkey might suddenly insert itself into their personal family tree during their next birthing event.
The above summary of speciation, the evolutionary process by which a new species can arise should be treated only as an “appetizer” before a full-course meal at the table of Darwin. Recommendations are provided at the end of this essay for the benefit of those interested in a fuller and deeper exploration into this vital subject. Jonathan Swift’s words, “When a true genius appears in the world, you may know him by this sign, that the dunces are all in confederacy against him” foreshadowed the fate of Charles Darwin by over one-hundred years. Even today, one-hundred and fifty years after the publication of the Origin of the Species, the dunces are still all in “confederacy against him.”
Unable to sustain any arguments based on facts against Darwin’s actual theory of evolution, the creationists resort to attacking a caricature of their own making. For example, Darwin never said that man descending from monkeys, but that man descending from a common ancestor with the chimpanzee or bonobos. Molecular biology and the sequencing of the human (and chimpanzee genome) demonstrates this fact above beyond all reasonable doubt. This line of attack is not only completely fallacious, but is also stale and outdated. It was first employed in the year 1860 on the occasion of the famous Oxford evolution debate between Thomas Henry Huxley and Bishop Samuel Wilberforce in which Wilberforce asked Huxley whether it was through his grandfather or his grandmother that he descended from a monkey. Huxley replied “that he would not be ashamed to have a monkey for his ancestor, but he would be ashamed to be connected with a man who used his great gifts to obscure the truth.” The “monkey argument” was employed again in 1925 in the Scopes Monkey Trial where William Jennings Bryan argued for the prosecution while Clarence Darrow served as the defense attorney for John Scopes who was on trial for teaching evolution in a state-funded Tennessee high school. Even today right-wing religious fundamentalist are fond of saying that if you teach children that they descended from apes, they are more likely to behave like one.
Religionists have struggled to gain acceptance for creationism as a viable and scientific alternative to Darwin’s theory of evolution. At first they appealed to the courts in an attempt to force the teaching of creationism as an alternative to evolution. After the courts repeatedly ruled that creationism was a religious belief and not science and therefore could not be taught in public schools, they repackaged it and called it Intelligent Design. In 2005 the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled that Intelligent Design was creationism renamed, and was a religious belief and not a science. Religionists have not given up and are now attempting to gain politically what the courts refused to grant. Unfortunately what is essentially an issue of the separation of church and state has created an anti-science movement within the ranks of conservatives.
It is not necessary to understand all the complexities of Darwin’s theory of evolution to appreciate the fallaciousness and the absurdity of the creationists’ argument. They claim that God created all living things on earth at one time approximately 10,000 years ago and they remain unchanged ever since. They base this claim not on any scientific evidence, but on the creation story told in the book of Genesis. Genesis actually presents two versions of the creation, one in chapter one and another in chapter two, and they disagree with each other as regards the order of creation.
The theory of evolution, descent with modification according to natural selection explains how all living things evolved from one or more original life forms beginning over three billion years ago. Creationism maintains that all life was created at one time by a supernatural deity 10,000 years ago and has remained unchanged in the intervening years. Given the fact that evolution requires billions of years to accumulate small changes to account for all living things, a young earth is at the heart of creationism. Fortunately, the idea of a 10,000 year old earth is easily disproved by the sciences of geology, chemistry, and physics.
Leonardo da Vinci realized in the fifteenth century that maps of the world were only a snapshot of its geography taken at just one instant in time and were not static. He noticed that the coasts of eastern South America matched perfectly with the western coast of Africa indicating to him that they were once joined together in the past. In 1912 the German geologist and meteorologist Alfred Wegener discovered an explanation he called continental drift. All the continents rest on giant plates floating on a river of molten iron under the surface of the earth, and are in fact moving. The idea of continental drift was controversial beyond belief and was not accepted until the 1950s. Today the model of plate tectonics is accepted science along with the fact that the continents are moving away from each other at the rate of just less than one inch per year (the same rate that human fingernails grow). Continental drift has also been confirmed by satellite technology.
The distance from North America to Europe is 4,911 miles, and they are moving apart at the rate of approximately one inch a year. And since they were once joined together at one time in the past, it is child’s play to show that a 10,000 year old earth is preposterous. It takes over 60,000 years for the continents to move one mile. If the earth was only 10,000 years old, Europe would be visible from New York City today. Other evidence of the continents slowly moving apart is the fact that Plymouth Rock is located fifty feet further west than where it was when the Pilgrims landed in 1620.
Scientists have determined by a number of technologies that the earth is 4.57 billion years old. The magnitude of error of a 10,000 year old earth is equivalent of measuring the distance from New York City to San Francisco to be less than ten yards. The creationists’ argument highlights one of the many dangers of fundamentalism. In order to reconcile their religious beliefs with science, creationists must undermine people’s confidence in science and education, which of course is vital to the survival of the human species. It should be remembered that the idea of reading any Sacred book (including the Bible) literally is only one-hundred years old. In fact Saint Jerome (editor of the most widely used Bible) suggested a literal interpretation for the illiterate masses and an allegorical one for more advanced minds. But as Carl Sagan remarked, “You can't convince a believer of anything; for their belief is not based on evidence, it's based on a deep seated need to believe.”
Paul MacCready calculated that 10,000 years ago the human population plus their livestock and pets constituted less than 1% of the terrestrial vertebrate biomass on the planet earth, and that it has increased to 98% today. Without quibbling over his calculations, it is quite evident that by almost any metric, the human species has been a very successful. Tuft professor and distinguished philosopher, Daniel Dennett makes an interesting and important corollary observation. Modern humans have not changed that much organically in the last 10,000 years! We have the same brain and the same genome (DNA) as our distant ancestors. Dennett attributes our success over the past 10,000 years to our ability to acquire, accumulate, and use “tools for thinking.” Man’s survival as a species rests on this one rather simple concept and our challenge is to educate our children on how to think and not what to think. Superstition and supernaturalism are the sworn enemies of reason and should be opposed by all educated people, or in the words of Albert Einstein, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity; and I am not sure about the universe. But that might just be me being stupid.”
Sources
1. Intuition Pumps and other Tools for Thinking (2013) by Daniel Dennett
2. Darwin’s Ghost (1999) by Steve Jones
3. Genome (1999) by Matt Ridley
4. Darwin’s Dangerous Idea (1995) by Daniel Dennett
5. Darwin’s Origin of the Species (2006) by Janet Brown
6. Darwin’s Sacred Cause (2009) by Adrian Desmond
7. Creation: How Science is Reinventing Life Itself (2013) by Adam Rutherford
8. Living with Darwin (2007) by Richard Kitchner
9. The Reluctant Mr. Darwin (2006) by David Quammen
10. The Blind Watchmaker (1996) by Richard Dawkins
