American Pie: In The Beginning - What?
"In the last 12 months I have gone through two bouts of knee surgery, one major, the other less so, and the experience has taught me a lot about knees. I have X Rays, MRI’s and even photographs of the inside of my left knee, taken by a miraculous, intelligently designed micro camera. Let me say that if I had been the boss of the “intelligent” designer who was responsible for knees, I would have fired him – or her. You never saw such a Rube Goldberg contraption...''
In this well-argued article John Merchant, shunning both the Evolutionist and Creationist camps, suggests that mutation caused by irradiation has played a part in the development of the world and its inhabitants.
They’re at it again. The Evolutionist and Creationist stew pot is starting to bubble and steam once more. Just as you think the two camps have agreed to live and let live, a new bunch of combatants realizes that there are whole careers to be made out of this debate about whether the world and its inhabitants was created by an omnipotent God, or is just a quirk of nature. Not that it’s much of a debate.
Even President George Bush, long noted for his clarity of vision and intellect, has weighed in with another of his gems, “Both sides ought to be properly taught,” which sounds vaguely like a quotation from the King and I song about racial prejudice. To make matters worse, this time around, another ingredient was added to the pot – Intelligent Design. Give me a break!
In the last 12 months I have gone through two bouts of knee surgery, one major, the other less so, and the experience has taught me a lot about knees. I have X Rays, MRI’s and even photographs of the inside of my left knee, taken by a miraculous, intelligently designed micro camera. Let me say that if I had been the boss of the “intelligent” designer who was responsible for knees, I would have fired him – or her. You never saw such a Rube Goldberg contraption.
Much of the conflict being generated by the opposing doctrines is the result of one or the other being taught, or not being allowed to be taught in U.S. schools. America is desperately short of scientists, and of students considering science as a career. It’s a shameful fact that too large a proportion of cutting edge science in this country is carried out by non-citizens. The constraints now placed on immigration by the Patriot Act threaten to cut off the supply of foreign scientists completely.
So how can young students be persuaded to consider a scientific career when there’s all this mumbo jumbo going on. There’s even a group of “scientists” who see no conflict between science and Creation. I don’t much care which version people choose to believe. Whatever makes them feel comfortable is fine by me, but don’t just fling the creation theory at me with only the, I suspect, deliberately obscure biblical version to back it up. At least most of the scientists are working at supporting their theories with testable research.
Not only do I find it impossible to accept the Creation theory, but I also find it hard to believe that evolution alone got us from Lucy to where we are now. How is Creationism or Intelligent Design going to explain the Neanderthals? Did the “Creator” or the “Intelligent Designer” miscalculate, and then have to redesign homo sapiens several thousand years later? If so, it must have been one of the greatest “Ooh er’s” in the earth’s history.
It seems to me that mutation doesn’t get enough credit in this whole process. Other than man-made radiation, the world is probably more radioactively quiescent now than at any time in its history. The sun has simmered down a bit, and the earth’s natural radiation must be less than it was millennia ago. Even so, solar flares and radon gas are still affecting our lives.
Genetic research is revealing multitudes of genes in the chain that seem to have no real purpose. So isn’t it at least possible that mutation, caused by irradiation, has played a large part in who we are today, and also the flora and fauna around us? It seems a perfectly reasonable explanation for all the genetic branching that we know has occurred over time. Organisms such as clams and oysters that have remained largely unchanged through the millennia, were shielded from much of the radiation by their watery habitat.
There will always be those who want to deny inevitable truth, even when incontrovertible evidence is staring them in the face. After all, it took a good long time for many people to accept that the earth isn’t flat, and that the sun doesn’t revolve around it, and some people still don’t. As Conan Doyle famously had Sherlock Holmes say, “ Watson, once the possible and probable have been eliminated, what remains must be the truth, however improbable.”
In the end, the old story about the farmer and the village cleric just about sums up the way I feel. The cleric, out on his daily walk around the village lanes, spotted the farmer reviewing his crops. “My! My! farmer, what wonders mankind and the Creator have wrought together,” says the cleric as he views the fields of ripening grain. “Well perhaps you’re right pastor, but you should have seen the sorry state of these fields when the Creator had them to himself,” replies the farmer.
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