Who Am Us, Anyway, Part Tres

I've been speaking of religion versus science for a bit now. Especially as it comes down to religion. Now it's time to speak of evolution specifically.

A quick definition of terms here. Evolution is descent with modification by means of selection-- Darwin's original thesis. Darwin postulated a means by which traits can be inherited. (Darwin did not have the benefit of Mendel's work at the time.) Selection is the mechanism by which organisms can compete against one another with reproductive success as the goal. 

So: you have your mother's eyes and your father's hair. She was nearsighted so you're going to be at a disadvantage without spectacles. He lost his hair later in life but that's probably not going to mean much in fathering your children. 

No problem yet. 

Where Darwin grappled with demons was when he neglected to leave humans out of the equation."Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin." 

People didn't take kindly to that. Earth kicked out of the center of the universe. Solar system kicked out of the center of all things. Man kicked out of the special category in the creation of life. 

In the human tradition of arrogance that demands that we be on center stage in the face of all evidence to the contrary, facts are dismissed, evidence discarded, tiny face saving definitions abound, women are stolen and cattle raped. It's enough for Mel Brooks to make a movie.  

In this last article on the subject of human evolution, I'm going to make the following statements and back them up. Then, I will have said everything on the subject I care to save for what makes good stories. 

Evolution is diametrically opposed to many religions but not in the way you think. 

Denying the role of evolution in how animals, including ourselves, are built, how we behave, how life itself operates is nothing short of blasphemous. I am an atheist-- a subject for another blog, I suppose. But even a blind man can smell hypocrisy when the wind blows. So, I'm putting my two cents in.  

1. Evolution is diametrically opposed to many religions but not in the way you think. 

Most religions have an element of fate and submission implicit in their construction. Christianity is based on submitting to the will of God. In western religions, chance is seen as the Hand of God. Eastern religions are more open to different ideas but even there, fate is something that must be accepted. 

Evolution measures everything in terms of reproductive success. If you're the best playwright in London and have no kids, from the point of evolution you've wasted your time. If you're a doctor and saved thousands of children and had a single child, your genes now have to compete with all of those thousands of children you saved. 

This is one view of evolution-- the "Nature, red in tooth and claw" approach. This presumes that only predator/prey relationships can be effective in evolution. 

But what makes human beings human? I submit that our fundamental adaptation, the one mechanism that we do better than any other vertebrate is our ability to cooperate with one another. Speech is a means to this goal. Often, reproduction itself is used as a means to secure cooperation-- consider the way families married out to enhance the nobility. (See sexual selection.) 

A more universal view of evolution is the success of any reproductive strategy-- cooperation included. Human society (including, I think, religion) is a product of evolution. 

Well, it's been at least a hundred thousand years since food and survival skills solely drove human reproductive success. The proper competitive milieu for evolving cooperation is within the human group. Just because the basics of survival are taken care of didn't mean that competition for reproductive success goes away. It just meant that the tokens of reproductive success were different. The success of the group often means the results of the hunt or gathering must be shared. The status of the best hunter or gatherer might be enough to insure reproductive success but status could be accrued in other ways. The best singer, the best story teller, or other "less productive" accomplishments can also spell reproductive success. 

Therefore, at some point in the human past, additional human skills beyond those that directly brought in food and protected the group became important. In recent years, they've transcended the original goals. We program computers to get our steak instead of going out there and hunting it directly. 

One universal truth of evolution is that the current organism is the result of many events, encounters and decisions of its parent organisms. We are what our parents made us. 

Given human evolution has for a long time been driven by choices and decisions as much as by chance and circumstance. My parents met in Eastern New Mexico and had me in Southern California. Choice had a great deal to do with it. Evolution works with the organism as it is. Humans aren't flatworms and the selection pressures on humans are not the same as on flatworms. 

Therefore, we are not the result of the supernatural decisions but the plans,  hopes, dreams and aspirations of those who came before us. This is not rhetoric. Anybody reading Gilgamesh will understand that Sumerians were driven by the same needs and hopes we are driven by today. Gilgamesh was written by humans for humans. The ochre dyes and flowers left in Cro-Magnon graves were left by human beings. Not jellyfish or fruit flies. 

Human beings are our ancestors, with all their foibles, idiosyncrasies, good and evil. Some reproductive success was achieved by rape and oppression and they are, therefore, still with us. Some reproductive success was achieved by kindness and song and they are, therefore, still with us. 

We came from ourselves. Where we are going is defined by ourselves. 

 Now, contrast this with any religion you can name. The closest analogs are those religions driven by reincarnation and karma. Humans are born bearing the stamp of their previous lives and die creating the stamp of the next. But the Wheel of Creation was not created by human beings. It is a fact of creation-- we did not make the decisions that created the process but our decisions perpetuate it. It's an interesting metaphorical parallel to evolution but, I submit, by not allowing human beings a central role in creating the process by which it operates, it is submission in disguise. 

 Western religions are more explicit. You must submit to the Will of God. He is responsible for your creation. He is responsible for the events in your life. Devils are introduced to make the believer stray from the true path. Evolution says, simply, you're here because of the decisions made by your ancestors and random chance. Nothing more. It says, also, that you have the same capability as your ancestors for shaping your destiny and the destiny of your children. Further, it says that if you do so you will be granted better success with your offspring. God, Godhead or Karma need not apply.  

2. Denying the role of evolution in how animals, including ourselves, are built, how we behave, how life itself operates is nothing short of blasphemous. 

In religions, the supernatural power of God or Godhead is infinite and without compare. In western religions, God is beyond time and nothing is beyond God. 

Therefore, the actual time of world creation is moot. It could have happened six thousand years ago, six billion years ago or six seconds ago. There's no proof that the universe, whole and entire, was not created the last moment I blinked. To suggest otherwise is to limit the power of God to our own understanding-- something we cannot do without presuming the knowledge of God for ourselves. 

Regardless of when creation occurred, or if it occurred, what did occur results in the world that is before us. Ducks and dragonflies, whales and water spiders, volcanoes and vultures. 

To deny the model of evolution as a representation of how life operates today is without merit. Even the most ardent creationists will admit that, dividing evolution into microevolution, the change of traits over time and macroevolution, the rise and fall of species. Microevolution occurs. Macroevolution didn't. Bacteria and fruit flies exhibit microevolution. Macroevolution implies human descent and is therefore forbidden. 

However, there is also no mistaking what science tells us of our history. All mammals have essentially the same bone structures. Some bones in the mammal are embryologically derived from reptiles. The DNA homology studies have sure found relationships between animal and plant groups. By and large, these relationships are borne out by the fossil record. The relationships are real. It's the origin of those relationships that is in question. 

Given God had a set of infinite choices about how he might have created the universe, he chose what we have. We don't know why. We don't know when. But we do know what because that's right in front of us. 

Therefore, he chose these relationships. He might have chosen them for our instruction-- we don't know that. There's nothing in the holy books to suggest it. He might have chosen them because, for reasons we cannot know, they were the best choice. 

Regardless, God built the world in the way He thought was best. And, embedded in that world, is a pattern of life that suggests evolution. That, in fact, in the absence of God, could not have occurred any other way. I submit that for the believer this is an important idea. If God created the world as if evolution had occurred he must have intended it. Therefore, for us to deny something that He created intentionally is to presume God-like knowledge for ourselves. 

Presuming God is, at least in Western religions, blasphemy.