My Cousin, The Monkey
After watching the Dawkins' documentary, that I mentioned in my latest blog entry, I started thinking a bit more about why some people have such a problem with acknowledging the theory of Evolution. Dawkins said that the crazy Evangelist featured in the short introductory clip had shouted at him: “Don't call my people animals" and concludes that it results from the fact that they don't believe in evolution.
To most of us it is mind boggling that people can flat out refuse evolution, because it contradicts their religious texts. Not only is there tons of scientific research backing the theory up, but it also simply makes sense if you are a little aware of the world around you. Just watch people around you and their off springs. You will see that the children inherit various things from their parents such as looks, brain power, diseases etc. Anyone that has been around animals has probably seen this a bit clearer. For example, how the weaker animals tend to go extinct and how you can grow stronger animals if you breed together two strong animals. These simple facts should make everyone see that there might be something to the whole natural selection theory. At least that you should take a closer look before flat out rejecting it.
I do not understand the fear some people have that we are really just animals. What is so bad about that? Shouldn't be really just be proud that we have evolved this much, that are bodies are that advanced, and that our brain powers has enabled us to do all the things we have done. That we have gotten this far just means that our heritage line is strong.
Sure I can understand that it is a bit weird thinking that our ancestors were some prehistoric breed of monkeys. Probably because of the mental image we get when we think about monkeys. I at least picture a monkey sitting in a tree with a banana and either scratching its head or its butt. Or the picture of a monkey beating its chest shouting: me Tarsan, you Jane... or maybe I am mixing things a bit here:-).
To be honest, we women sometimes think of men in the same terms as we think about monkeys. Haven't we all at least met one guy that repeatedly scratches its crotch or butt in public? Or met somebody that smells worse than the monkeys in the zoo. I sure have meet few of those. A lot of us have relatives we would happily replace with a cute monkey:-). No, but on a serious note, there is nobody asking us to look at monkeys as our equals, but just acknowledging that they are extremely distant relatives and that we have evolved far beyond them. Is it really that bad?
Distant relative resting?
It has to said that there is one positive angle to the fact that people question evolution. This means that scientists will keep on gathering data, learn more, and will discover flaws in their theory. It wouldn't be good if we just settled in and took everything as cold hard facts and lived happily ever after. If we never question things we will never learn anything new.
If only this way of critical thinking could be applied to various parts of religion too without anyone getting offended and starting to shout the words blasphemy or racism which we hear so often these days if somebody dares to question anything about religion?
God and his magic evolution wand
In the last year, I have developed my own view on the Creation vs Evolution: if there is a God, I think he (or she, substitute as preferred) created and controls the world through evolution!
Just think about it; God had to create all the plants, fish, insects, birds, mammals and on top of it, humans. To do everything from scratch over and over would be a lot of work. Humans are said to be the image of Him, and we know that humans by default are lazy - at least most of us. Therefore, I reserve my right to imagine God not overdoing things if there is a perfectly reasonable shortcut.
So, He created the simplest organisms, saw that they were functioning, then just poked with his wand of mutation and it formed a new organism. For every creature needed to be done, just a few tweaks here and there, and the self-breeding mechanism made sure new organisms spawn all the time. If one creature didn't work out well, it would be easy to remove it and try again.
As far as I know, even to this day, scientists don't know *why* evolution happens, only that it does. They have tried to recreate the environment thought existed at Earth five billion years ago, and to some extent have managed to get DNA and perhaps a single-cell life, I believe. Apart from a lot of time, perhaps something more is required to make that life evolve.
I think chimpanzees are said to be 99% DNA compatible with humans, but it is the last percentage that makes all the difference. Perhaps both would be 99% compatible with the prehistoric ancestor too, since surely all animals (and plants) have evolved something in the last few million years.
Go(o)d
I think it is great that more people set focus on recognising evolution AND having faith. What colours so many debattes are the extreem views, and I also get scared when seeing and hearing some religious people talk.
It will only make the distance between groups of people bigger and that is a sad thought indeed!
It is also scary to think of the aditude against having a religion if this is the only side that will show. I hope in some way, some day, there will be a change. What religion, philosophy or what you choose to embrase will be accepted as beeing a personal choise. It might be naive to think people will stop pushing their belife on others or make wars over it... but hey, I have faith (in the long run on this issue) =)
The differance is actually 98,5% (from my psych book;o) ) and between two humans we are acually 99,9% alike =) Just to get a thought about what 0,1% actually will represent...
Susann
Extremes are scary!
It would be nice if everyone could step back a little and not just be critical towards others but also themselves. I don't have a lot of faith in anything but I still hold onto a little bit of faith that critical thinking can save the world from these extremes because those scare me too.
I think after seeing these interesting statistics that I need to start reading up on these things more. Interesting!
The Administrator
I think that is a very good attitude. Adapt religion to what we have discovered so far. We cannot disprove God's non existance as much as we cannot prove his existance. There are things in the evolution theory that are still unknown and other that could be wrong. Picturing God as having the assisting hand n these could be the way to go until we discover more.
Btw. I thought your point that God must have been lazy since we humans are lazy and we are supposed to be created in his image interesting:-). Never thought about that one before. I am at least lazy all the time and couldn't have been bothered creating everything from scratch.
Having a view like that should make evolutionists and creationists, if you can call them that, be able to coexists in harmony. Or maybe both sides are too stubborn to give in a little...
Free will and hippie chimpanzees
Certainly, we have the free will as well, and those who have a very strong faith could argue that the lazy attribute of humans is due to our free will (we choose to be lazy) rather than His image.
To me, a god would be more important to have someone to pray to, trust in everyday life and perhaps take care of my afterlife, than the issue how things came to happen. I saw some anonymous comments on your blog a few days ago about respecting eachother's views. I'm afraid more religious people question other religious people working with science than other scientists question them for being religious. It is like the scientists have enough work to try to prove things, and can't waste energy on disregarding non-believers in science, while many religions are worked out (although different interpretations still occur) and those believers have more spare time to cricitize non-believers and competitors to their religion.
On the topic of chimpanzees, I just read about the friendly bonobo chimpanzees in Kongo, hunted for meat despite the local population knows how endangered it is: from 100,000 apes twenty years ago to about 5,000 today. :-( The bonobo is also known as hippie chimpanzee, and is known to greet eachother with their genitalia (!) and rather than start a fight, they appear to solve the argument with a bit of sex. *cough* I wonder if those properties makes it 0.1% more or less alike humans? ;-)
back on my treadmill
Scientists question other scientists in religious terms. I mean really. Scientists hold views which they describe as religious views. In IT development, this is particularly common - "Frames are bad for the Web", "XML is too complicated for users", "cross-domain script access is a bad idea"...
And they question religious people on the basis of their religion, using that as an ad hominem attack on their statements rather than addressing an issue straight on. But then, other religious people do this too.
Luckily, a lot of people just don't get so upset, and are prepared to deal with people in a reasonably tolerant way. The bad news is that this can allow extremism to grow, because people are tolerant of it for a little too long.
...
We live and we learn.
LOL! Yes, that is a good point:-).
I have to agree that if there is a God he is probably more caught up with doing good things than worry whether we believe that he created us. If it really matters that we blindly believe in him rather than we try to be good people, well then he isn't worth much. Believing in a God is good in theory but as with so many other things in life, it isn't always that straight forward in real life. But we live and we learn, that is life.