Information Technology Dark Side

Believe it or not, this post is eventually a book review.

The Presumption
There is a strange logical commonality between those who deny the feasibility of creationism and those who deny the validity of the science of evolution. I say it’s strange because the two factions couldn’t be more at odds with each other – they are locked in a fierce battle for the textbooks and science classes of American children. Millions of dollars are being spent in this battle. Lawsuits are filed and tried. And yet, at the heart of the conflict is a shared belief, a belief that is the whole reason for all this ridiculous hullabaloo that is wasting money and passion. What’s the belief?

If Moses is right then Darwin is wrong, and vice versa.

If Darwin is right then Moses is wrong. And if Moses is wrong then Darwin is right. That’s what they believe, and it’s why they fight.

It’s also why both sides are wrong, and why I say the whole fight is a shameless display of abject ignorance of both depictions of the origins of man.

I suppose I should explain that, but…

First, a Story
The six year-old me was standing in line at a Safeway with his mother, who was pregnant with her sixth child. While waiting for their teenaged cashier to work her way through all the mothers ahead of them, I began to ponder the mysteries of life and loudly posed a question to my mom.

“Where do babies come from?” I asked. More than one head turned to watch the response.

My mother was, and is, unflappable and frank. She could care less if a thousand people were watching – she would tell her kids the truth. This is how the truth went when I was six:

“Sometimes, when Mom and Dad kiss, Dad’s pee-pee goes inside her and puts a kind of seed in her tummy. That seed combines with an egg that Mom’s body has already made, and together they slowly grow into a baby.”

This was incredible news to me, and I just had to see it. Yes, the six-year old me badly wanted to see a baby get made. So, I devised a plan to witness the baby making event.

My mom and dad kissed in the same place every night – at the bottom of the stairs right when he came home from work. They would kiss for a long time and my dad would say nice things to my mom, grossing all four older boys out.

That night I sat at the top of the stairs and waited for my dad to come home. It was a perfect vantage point – I would be able to see everything. Dad came home, they smooched at the bottom of the stairs, but… my dream of witnessing procreation were spoiled. Nothing happened. I watched. Nothing came sneaking out of the bottom of my dad’s pants leg and then back up my mom’s dress.

I realized then that it was impossible. Nobody was that well endowed.

The Point
Did my mother lie to me? Did she misunderstand how babies are made? Was her depiction of procreation inaccurate?

Certainly not. Instead, it was simply appropriate for what I could, and should, understand about procreation as a curious six year old boy. It wasn’t a users guide, and it certainly wasn’t a scientific treatise.

Years later, when I found out the rest of the story, I didn’t conclude that my mother was a liar or an idiot. I simply filled in the gaps and realized she had wisely left out a big chunk of the story: sex.

This is how I think of Genesis – as a simple explanation for a lesser intelligence that was meant to be sufficient but not detailed. I would suggest that reading the first two books of the Bible gives you an understanding of the origins of life and man that is adequate but probably not complete. Further, I think some of the missing pieces can come through science, but not all of them have yet been uncovered. Perhaps we’ve gotten to candles, nighties, and bedrooms, but the rest of the picture is still a mystery. Viewing evolution and creation as competitors in a zero sum game only delays your understanding and creates unnecessary conflict.

Fortunately, a smarter guy than me thinks similarly. Welcome to the book review part of the program.

The popular understanding of Genesis is totally wrong, on both sides of the fight
Let me sum up popular creationism: God made the earth and all the stuff on it in six days, culminating in the creation of man. This popular notion is not a very accurate one and is not supported by anything but cursory examinations of a few pages in the Bible.

I’m not going to belabor this point, or the next, because Gerald Schroeder, PhD, wrote a whole book about it. Let me just say this much: if you compare what contemporaries of Jesus wrote about Genesis to what we think Genesis means today, you discover that we have evolved far beyond the original intent, whatever it was.

The popular understanding of Evolution is totally wrong, on both sides of the fight
Here’s what the average dude on the street things evolution means, whether they believe in it or not: Over millions and millions of years tiny little changes added up and added up until you got dudes and dudettes who could read, write, build computers, and argue about politics. All of this via a route through whales, monkeys, and ugly Geico haters.

This idea, that our evolution was slow and gradual, is not supported by the fossil record or by modern biology. Sorry. Instead, there is considerable evidence that evolution often happens incredibly rapidly, with major changes coming in single digit generations rather than over millenia.

The general public have many similar misconceptions about modern scientific theory that Schroeder points out in this very readable book and reconciles with ancient interpretations of the book of Genesis.

The big point
Genesis and the Big Bang, by Gerald Schroeder, makes a very interesting case that the fight between Moses and Darwin (and Hawking and Einstein and science in general) isn’t a fight at all. And he should know – he’s a Jewish scholar and physicist.

So, if you’re offended by the notion of evolution because of your religious beliefs, or vice versa, then I suggest you read Schroeder’s book. Even if you remain unconvinced, perhaps you will come away with a better appreciation for the other side, whichever side you happen to be on.

Stumble it!