You Don’t Believe In Evolution? I Have SO Many Questions
Life on Earth, our only home, must unite— at least on the fundamentals
Evolution isn’t true? My first question, despite the urge, is:
“Huh?”
Many life forms on Earth disagree
Despite the natural tendency to want to ask you “Are you crazy?” I went with “Huh?”
I feel I must make “Are you crazy?” only my second question, and even then, I want to soften it somehow so it does not make you defensive. If it’s not too late, already.
It is important that listeners are not defensive, and also important that believers in evolution are not judgmental, even though that is a natural impulse. That which is as obvious as air to most of us, is not so obvious to many, many people.
Some of us were fortunate to be raised with knowledge of how the natural world works. We learned how incredibly wondrous, and intricate it is; how amazingly connected and shared among all life forms that it is. How without agency, and without design, (that we can have knowledge of) it changed over time.
However, despite this, we confuse the issue when people assume evolution means “it all happened by accident.” Or if they think, “It cannot all be for no reason.” We also have heard variations of this thought that are along the lines of “Then, there is no meaning. No rhyme or reason.”
These interpretations came from the idea that an occasional accidental mutation in the genetic programming happens over millions of replications, that is, there are random “accidents” in the Universe.
Does this suggest that there is no meaning. No God?
What we know has limits
Some people “know” there is a creator. Some seem certain that there is not. Some, do not know.
I think I am in this category, which is hard, but realistic.
People do need meaning, and it’s wonderful — either way — that evolution allows us the freedom that we can create meaning about existence.
Are you crazy? We hear it from people on both sides of the argument, as though life itself does not need collaboration to thrive.
We have, as social animals, the need to ask one another: “Are you crazy?” Primarily, this is to confirm tribal affiliation, in-group, or out-group.
This thought is there, because, as mentioned, we have millions of thoughts and most of them are reinforced over time. Some of these persistent thoughts are along the lines of confirming what we see in evidence.
Objective reality is worth examination.
We have fossils of many tons of life-forms from long before humanity. We have geology. We have astronomy. We have anthropology, biology, and zoology. We have fossils, too, of many kinds of human beings from different time periods. We have artwork, and artifacts, and tools, and more.
On the other hand, human beings are also strongly reinforced in beliefs that they experience with their body, mind, and soul. As many of these are transformational, they have an extra influential impact on the person’s mind.
It is the most powerful kind of experience.
When I have the impulse to ask, “Are you crazy” it is because, I too, have had a kind of spiritual, transformational experience of having seen the miracles of nature — and evolution — with my own body, mind, and soul.
(That said, please don’t ask me what a soul is, or if all organisms have one, because I am pretty sure that no one can say with any certainty.)
Our “are you crazy” questions have everything to do with incomprehension of what other people cannot perceive — or what they can — and how very different our interpretations are.
I think trees exist because I live in them, eat their fruits, write on them, and share DNA with them. I can see how animal species, unlike plants, have even closer bilateral symmetry. Or, radial symmetry. Why the same blueprint with so many variations for a vast myriad of species?
Yet, I do not need to see a Denisovan, or Neanderthal, to trust that many, many, smart people study their bones, tools, geographical range, and so on, to learn they are our closest hominid cousins. They are of the same species, in fact.
My many questions, then, lead me to wonder, how do you see our Neanderthal cousins? How do you explain our shared DNA with everything from apples to Newton? How do you interpret cave art from 60,000 years ago? When mammals left the oceans for dry land and then some returned, how do you believe they did this without subtle changes over time to morphology? How do you explain that even now, we are all driven by our environment to adapt? When a pandemic virus evolves, what do you call that variational adaptation, if not evolution?
Belonging to one world matters, now
There are many hundreds of thousands of questions, but for a moment, I wish to go to the more metaphysical ones.
If we are not all creations of shared DNA, how do we belong to Earth? How are we made in “God’s image,” if not in our shared thread of being that connects us? When scriptures say:
“Let US make man in OUR own image,” if it does not refer to Nature, then, what else could God be referring too? When we are moved to express love or sorrow, by art, music, or poetry how do we know of this universality? When we see an animal, or even a forest landscape, suffer, why are we moved to great emotion if this has “nothing” to do with us?
Asking if you are crazy happens because all these concerns of soul, and being human (human “being”) are involved in evolution. Cooperation and love between systems and networks is so obvious for nature to operate at all, that it becomes confusing that human beings and all our life support system are somehow seen as separate.
But who created life?
A lot of deniers of evolution say “Who created life?” How this question is different from Who created the Creation, (or God) is lost on me. The prime mover question, is essentially, what about before the first cause? If there is an eternal, non-changing entity, how to explain the persistent pace of change (and fickleness,) itself, and the evolution of the universe, itself?
Star birth, formation, death?
Please enlighten me as to how the eternal God is different than an eternal, and/or cyclic, multiverse?
However we examine it, we belong here and now, for the foreseeable future.
And with our planet in peril we need our belonging more than ever before.
The illogic of a partisan Creator
Finally, logically, if there is a creator who separates the chosen, from the non-chosen, the sheep from the goats, or the living plants and animals from the “special” ones, how on Earth is that supposed to work toward heaven on Earth?
Doesn’t saying “You’re in,” to some, and “You’re out,” to others set up an automatic conflict? Demonstrably, this leads to inevitable holy wars, racism, sexism, and speciesism, that sets the world up to fail itself.
Hint: it has never worked so far.
If benevolent, our Creator would be against it entirely.
I do understand that this idea, at least the “chosen” part suggests there must be a Creator who decides. Yet, in an earth that finds equilibrium, life — through cooperative networks, it also works. If we had only competition, we would all kill each other too fast to survive one another.
Yes, I know every species goes extinct, but some go with our amplified drives, and some do not. All exist due to inter-connected, symbiotic systems of water, air, weather, temperatures, and living organisms.
Any creator is aware of this, if there is a Creator.
If there is not a creator, we still have the same inter-woven, natural dependencies. The rules are consistent throughout the universe, except at the atomic level (which we are still very clueless about).
Our belonging to one another, and to our world, then, seems obvious. There are billions of spiritual people who believe in evolution, and billions who do not. They are missing out.
If we learned at the very least to embrace truth as truth is revealed, we are better off — in our compassion for one another, and for the world.
