American Pie: If God Created Dinosaurs – Why?
…What, for example, was God’s thinking when He/She came up with dinosaurs, those outlandish beasts that could only have been designed by someone in the throes of a bad LSD trip? Were they an experiment that went wrong, or simply a playful gambit? The same question could be asked about the giraffe, the duck-billed platypus, the octopus, the whale the kangaroo and the mastodon, etc. It seems to me that intelligent design should produce creations of either beauty or utility, and preferably combine the two…
With powerfully persuasive words John Merchant takes the side of evolution in the seemingly endless debate between the Creationists and the Evolutionists in the USA.
I’m not a philosopher, or a scholar of any sort, but that doesn’t stop me from pondering the unponderable. Itchy little questions that I can’t scratch irritate my mind, keep me awake at night, and distract me during the day. Among them, the seemingly endless debate between the Creationists and the Evolutionists in the USA provides me with an enduring source of topics on which to dwell.
For a while everything goes quiet, and then once more the opposing sides are back in court, fighting over the most recent action by a school system to either ban a book or a subject, or insist on the inclusion of one in a curriculum. The fact that this year is Charles Darwin’s bicentennial hasn’t helped to settle things down either. Let me say at this point that I’m an evolutionist, and can see no justification for believing otherwise – the body of scientific evidence in its favor is overwhelming.
Every aspect of the early history of the world, as revealed by thoughtful scientific research, rebuts the idea that God, or a God, created the world and the universe. I know it’s not kosher to question the motivation or rationality of a deity, but the bizarre history of our globe is impossible to interpret satisfactorily in terms of “intelligent design,” which is the Creationist’s current buzz phrase.
What, for example, was God’s thinking when He/She came up with dinosaurs, those outlandish beasts that could only have been designed by someone in the throes of a bad LSD trip? Were they an experiment that went wrong, or simply a playful gambit? The same question could be asked about the giraffe, the duck-billed platypus, the octopus, the whale the kangaroo and the mastodon, etc. It seems to me that intelligent design should produce creations of either beauty or utility, and preferably combine the two.
I realize that I’m addressing my remarks to the world as seen through the eyes of humankind, and that the dinosaurs, etc. probably thought they were the cat’s pajamas of all creation. If mankind represents the pinnacle of God’s handiwork, isn’t it logical that the world’s other creatures should be referenced in some way to homo sapiens? It seems to me that a goodly number of the world’s critters are designed to bring about the demise of “God’s finest work.”
And that brings me to yet another puzzlement. Why apparently did it take so many tries before God came up with what could be called the Biblical human being? It seems that every year the paleontologists discover another version that didn’t quite make it. The chimpanzee was a real long shot, save for a few genes. Bozo was just one anomaly in a procession of other hominids over a period of 5 million years. (If you’re already bored you can skip the next paragraph without penalty.)
My trusty on-line encyclopedia lists them as follows: Ardipithicus ramidus 5 to 4 million years ago, Australopithecus anamensis 4.2 to 3.9 million years ago, Australopithecus afarensis 4 to 2.7 million years ago, Australopithecus africanus 3 to 2 million years ago, Australopithecus robustus 2.2 to 1.6 million years ago, Homo habilis 2.2 to 1.6 million years ago, Homo erectus 2.0 to 0.4 million years ago, Homo sapiens archaic 400 to 200 thousand years ago, Homo sapiens neandertalensis 200 to 30 thousand years ago, Homo sapiens sapiens 200 thousand years ago to present. Whew!
The stars in this parade of aspirants vying for the title of Adam and Eve in the “Africa’s Got Talent” contest, are clearly Lucy, a.k.a Australopthicus afarensis, who walked upright, albeit with bad posture, but had arms down to her ankles and a pea brain: then the next contestant worthy of mention was Homo habilis, who’s claim to fame was being the first do-it-yourselfer, and even made his own tools: then comes our nearest and dearest, good old Homo sapiens neandertalensis, the butt of everyone’s jokes, even today. There’s even a current US television commercial featuring a couple of tennis playing Neanderthals. God almost got it right that time, but seriously miss-calculated body hair, and fell short of the Greco-Roman features.
It’s clear from the chronology that Homo sapiens neandertalensis and our immediate ancestors coexisted for a while, but apparently never crossed the line and cohabited. Now that would have made the tabloids, or perhaps the tablets! Given that we are a racially discriminating species, one has to wonder what the Homo sapiens sapiens’ reaction might have been when the first Neanderthal family moved into the neighborhood, and the price of caves plummeted.
If the Creationists are right, then it’s likely from the foregoing that God still may not be content with His/Her most recent creation, and nor should He/She be, given the way we’ve turned out. So, noting that the longevity of His/Her other attempts declined from around a million years for the first model, to only one hundred and seventy thousand in the case of the Neanderthals, Homo sapiens sapiens is probably due for replacement any day.
Apparently there is already evidence that the, so called, “Sixth Extinction,” is under way, and the consensus among biologists is that if the present trend continues, by the end of this century as many as half the earth’s species will be gone. If so, then Homo sapiens sapiens could be among them. One thing’s for sure, when Homo sapiens sapiens mark II debuts, the prize will be a tarnished and much abused Garden of Eden.
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