Evolution 101
It still amazes me how little people understand about evolution. Last week a close family friend who happens to be a very successful, very intelligent, high-level business executive said that he, “just doesn’t buy that humans used to be monkeys.” I almost fell off my chair and flung poop at him.
- Photo taken of a sign at the Denver Zoo.
Humans did not evolve from apes, we share a common ancestor. For that matter, all living things share a common ancestor if you go back far enough. By the way, evolution and God are not mutually exclusive. Even the Catholic Church recognizes evolution because, despite its faults, the Catholic Church is well versed scientifically. And, irrespective of your religious views, we do ourselves a disservice as a people to hold “beliefs” on things like evolution without even the basest examination of the facts. One of my favorite scenes in the Borat movie is when Sacha Baron Cohen goes to the evangelical church in the south and the preacher at one point proclaims, “I didn’t evolve out of a monkey. I didn’t used to be a tadpole. I is what I is.” Well, Mr. Preacher Man, you’re right, you is what you is. And for those people in the auditorium that day, all they needed to hear was that he didn’t used to be a monkey or a tadpole and that made evolution bogus. That’s the danger of belief without reason or fact. The crazy dude in the movie, running up and down the aisle “screaming in tongues,” doesn’t even know that you can still believe in God and understand how evolution works.
Now let’s examine what this has to do with parenting. When you teach your kids that evolution is a lie and you don’t even understand evolution yourself, you are doing your kids a disservice and propagating, at the bare minimum, a true disservice to the fundamentals of education. When entire school districts try to remove any mention of evolution from their curriculums, they are propagating a community level of ignorance. Remember, you don’t have to abandon God to understand how the world evolved. The earth is round. The earth revolves around the sun, not vise versa. Our solar system is not even close to being the center of the universe. Thunder is not God bowling. Certain dances don’t make it rain. Male pattern baldness is not a curse I received from that voodoo priestess I bumped into in Jamaica. The earth is not 6,000 years old. You can still believe in God and accept evolution! Sermon over.
This youtube video is very short and very basic on how we relate to apes. The interweb is loaded with as much information on evolution as you can handle. And if you really want to blow your mind, read books like Richard Dawkins’, The Selfish Gene.
This video describes the massive similarities between the genomes for chimps and humans.
*I know I’m better off being funny and only offending people with my dirty talk as opposed to offending people on evolutionary matters—which is the cardinal sin of blogging I suppose—but this country is getting too comfortable being dummies and ignoring education in lieu of reality TV. We need to start criticizing mediocrity and demanding more from each other. OK, now the sermon is over.
Mitch, haven’t written to you in a long time, probably since I moved from Colorado to Albuquerque. But, I am sooo tired of this argument. My wife and her parents are creationists and they preach the living shit out of this stuff. I can’t even have a normal conversation about this around her. I can’t believe that people think the world is 6000 years old and that we lived with dinosaurs. How fucking stupid is that. Now you know why certain countries can use mind control on the dumb and uneducated and get them to blow themselves up. The thing is you can show them ton’s of proof that they are wrong, but for them to admit it, it means their wrong and they are not about to do that. Can you imagine our poor ancestors running around dodging mountains as they were forming, along with the T-Rex on their ass. Anyway, that’s my two cents. Talk to you later.
Thunder isn’t g*d bowling?!
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I don’t know. I remember something silly like that from childhood. Thought it was funny.
I hope you don’t mind if I share this on my FB page…you say it so well!
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I have found myself wordless in conversations about things like this. What the hell do you say after you’ve exhausted all avenues of reasonable thought and they trot out something like : ‘God kept us safe from the dinosaurs! But the government doesn’t want you to know that!’
I usually say (after a looong silence) Bye, Mom.
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‘God kept us safe from the dinosaurs! But the government doesn’t want you to know that!’
That just made me spit milk out of my nose. Classic.
I’m not convinced the willfully ignorant can be converted (hehe), but your argument is a good starting point for those of us for those of us who didn’t realize this was still up for debate with some people.
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Your paragraph on parenting is spot on! And that scene in Borat is hysterical and pretty frightening. Great post, too bad it fall on deaf ears.
I love your article, and will link to it on my blog.
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Hello, I found you through Five Star Friday. Great post! I get frustrated with this too – it’s so hard to know what to say to people sometimes.
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No, no—I’m thinking MORE sermons. And then I will join your church.
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If it’s my church, then can I be god? That would be cool.
No shit. If you’re just hearing about evolution you must live in a cave.
Dude. Get back on your meds.