We Were Never Really Being Taught Evolution Anyway

The National Council of Educational Research and Training (NCERT) was recently in the news for the ‘exclusion’ of Darwinian Evolution from the NCERT textbooks. This obviously isn’t true because all that has happened is that it has been shifted from Class 10 to Class 11. However, the main issue isn’t that it has moved up a grade — it is that India has never really taiught Darwinian evolution the right way.

First and foremost, Darwin’s parinama sidhanth, or Axiom of Evolution is the fundamental basis of how life came to be on our planet. As per Darwin, nature organically selected traits in animals according to their availability to pass on their genes to the next generation, creating the immense multitude of animals that we know today. The camel’s humps, the elephant’s trunk, the orca’s intelligence, and the opposable thumb are all carefully selected traits that got passed on, generation after generation, that helped their previous generation reproduce in the first place.

So why is this particular issue so contentious? To understand why Darwinian Evolution can be somewhat unsettling to certain groups of people, we have to look at it not just from the scientific point of view, but also from a sociopolitical point of view.

Several Islamic countries and even states of America that come under the ‘Bible Belt’ do not teach evolution in schools. In general, Abrahamics have a big problem with evolution because it fundamentally, categorically, irrefutably proves that there is no creator and there is no God.

All three major religions in the world, Christianity, Islam, and Hinduism, believe in the concept of a creator. While Hindus do have a metaphorical allegory for evolution through the 10 Avatars (or rebirths) of Vishnu, the faith system does not throw the entire concept of creationism completely. However, the Abrahamic religions are built on the fundamental belief that God created everything in the known universe and that He ( because, of course, it’s a man) created man in his image.

Now, glossing over all the ridiculous stories of God’s messenger flying to heaven on a horse, and the parting of the sea and turning water into wine, the primary problem people have with Darwinian evolution is that it does not give space for God to create anything. If natural selection led to the human becoming sentient by pure dumb luck, what happens to God? What is the point of (mind you) His existence?

Interestingly, 2 out of 3 Indians on average agree with the general scientific consensus that Darwinian evolution is true, with states like Delhi and Maharashtra having an agreement rate of nearly 4 out of 5, and this is as recent as 2018. So, if that’s the case, why did I say that we haven’t been teaching evolution the right way in India when a large part of the country agrees with it?

It has to do with the fact that we discuss it only on a surface level. We are oblivious to the sociopolitical implication it can have.

The reason why there is resistance to Darwinian evolution in the first place is that it opens your eyes to the absolute certainty that God does not exist. There are people who try to work around it by saying that ‘it was God that guided evolution’ and that it was all (obviously) HIS ‘intelligent design’. I could pull up lots of examples to debunk God Guided Evolution, but I think two should suffice. I’ll start things off with the eye.

The human eye provides stereoscopic vision — the phenomenon by which we are able to perceive depth. This gives us the advantage of judging how far away something is, which is an evolutionary advantage that all predatory animals have. There are several other advantages of the human eye, like how it can help us detect and conceptualize the concept of colour and the innumerable ramifications of that — but what I really want to talk about is the disadvantage of the eye in general. If you look at your eyes, they need to be lubricated constantly and need to be protected from dust particles which is done through the process of blinking. Scientifically, we know that this is because of our evolutionary relationship with fish — we all started off as life forms in the early ocean. Initially starting off as just a light spot in single-celled organisms, it slowly evolved over millions of years to reach the level of sophistication it has today. It is such a complex set of mechanisms that even Charles Darwin himself said that it is hard to believe that it evolved organically — but it did, because evolution never goes backwards. We still have eyes that require water for its operation even after so many years of evolution simply because of the accumulated genetic memory of each and every part of the eye being useful in its own way. If humans really were created by ‘God’ in “HIS image” why didn’t he create eyes that didn’t require water at all for its operation?

It’s sort of suspicious that the all-seeing, all-knowing, omniscient omnipotent creator of everything in the universe seemed to forget about one of the most important aspects of sensory input for the human body. This extends to other parts of your body too. Check out the video below:

Animals aren’t exactly spared either. If God Guided Evolution was really the reason for the multitudes of species available, HE has a lot of explaining to do with these animals.

Let’s give HIM the benefit of the doubt, shall we? Let’s just say that the creator overlooked that somehow. Well, this next one kicks this idea way out of the park.

According to science, the universe as we know it began around 13.7 billion years ago, give or take 200 million years accounting for error (hey, scientists are only human), shortly after which the Milky Way galaxy formed. However, our solar system, our cosmic neighbourhood, only formed 4.5 billion years ago, a difference of 9.3 billion years. Now, if the universe was created for human beings as Abrahamic religion says so, why would it take 9 billion years for the solar system, another 4 billion years for the Earth to form, and so many more years for the sudden introduction of Adam and Eve? Doesn’t make much sense does it? There is hard evidence for the scientific data FYI, it doesn’t come out of “theories” or “hypotheses”, these are axioms, which takes me to the final part of the segment — the actual way to teach evolution.

The first and foremost thing we have to do is stop calling it ‘Darwin’s Theory of Evolution’ and replace it with either ‘Darwin’s Axiom of Evolution’ or ‘Darwinian Evolution’. Evolution is not just a theory anymore, we have mountains of evidence proving the same, from transitional fossils to preserved DNA to actual live animals that have survived throughout these years to be alive today — all of them have a part to play in this. Evolution is not just a theory anymore: it is a truth of life that led to the creation of life on this planet, and we should never shy away from teaching it, especially to young minds. The goal of science is to raise students’ curiosity towards the universe around them so that they can ask questions, debate several theories in the free market of ideas, and come out as rational free thinkers capable of applying the scientific method to every walk of their life. Evolution is the primary step towards that, to question the institution of religion and unquestioning belief, because that is what drives mobs and tribalistic tendencies in societies. Start them off young, teach them the similarities between apes and humans, slowly teach them in due course that every plant, every animal, every microbe that lives inside and outside their body, all the fungi that grow on the abandoned sidewalks — all come from natural selection and the preferential selection of traits that made them survive.

I guess you could say that there is also a philosophical angle to evolution as well — to strive for achievement, to work hard in order to stay in the game, to be the fittest to survive. Of course, a twisted adaptation of Darwinian Evolution was said to have been responsible for Hitler’s racial purity nonsense, but there is substantial proof to show that the scientists associated with the Nazi Party rejected Darwinian Evolution altogether. I mean they were good at engineering, sure, but fell flat everywhere else. As for what inspired Hitler, that’s a story for another time.

Now, for believers, this may seem like a dead end when it comes to their belief systems — or maybe not. What you choose to believe is totally up to you. You don’t have to lose your civilizational roots to not believe in God. Sometimes, culture is more important than God itself, especially when you’re the last civilization left.