In my collection of paleontology books, there is one little book that stands out, a book that if it had never come into my hands I probably would have taken another route in life: “I HAVE LANDED: THE END OF A BEGINNING IN NATURAL HISTORY” by Stephen Jay Gould, this story is to comment on a topic that has seemed more interesting to me and has generated a great debate in the population.
First, despite my scientific vocation, I am not an agnostic person, much less an atheist, as some have already pointed out to me, fortunately none have been on this platform. I have always thought that the purpose of Religion is to answer any question with the phrase “it is the will of God”, very different from science, which instead has put more questions on humanity than it has been able to solve. So that you understand what I mean, observe the following diagram that I elaborated, starting from a question and how new ones are generated from it:
For its part, there is an erroneous myth about evolution, in which it is stated that this is a lie to question our faith in the deity that created an image and likeness of us. Of course, this sounds absurd considering that Evolution is a fact that is more than proven, like the existence of bacteria and outer space.
How does evolution work?
It is erroneously said: “The human being is descended from the ape”, which is a fallacy of false equivalence; The truth is that humans and apes share the same common ancestor. To better understand what I mean, I invite the reader to make a family tree where his brother is called “Chimpanzee”, his cousin is called “Gorilla”, his second cousin is called “Baboon” and the most distant cousin of his tree is called “Lemur”. All these relatives have a common ancestor, probably their great-great-grandfather, in the trunk of the family tree. Now review the family tree and notice how genetics has made your relatives different: your brother (named Chimpanzee) is just like you but with larger ears, your cousin (named Gorilla) has a larger forehead than yours and is stockier, its second cousin (named Baboon) is smaller and has a different hair color, while its more distant cousin (named Lemur) wouldn’t even dream of you guys being family.
It may not be so simple to understand, but denying evolution brings a serious cost to nature: a couple of centuries ago, it sounded unthinkable that species would become extinct, because under the thinking of the time: What is the point of creating a species so that later it disappears? Nowadays, thanks to the study of paleontology, it is known that extinction is part of the “natural” cycle(1) of species, because just as they disappear, new ones also appear, expanding the family tree.
Note(1): I wrote natural in quotes because many extinctions are anthropogenic rather than natural.
The interpretation of the Bible
It is very difficult to discuss the bible due to how subjective some interpretations of it can be, such is the case of the Book of Genesis where Stephen Jay Gould points out that in the following verse
And God created man to his own image: to the image of God he created him: male and female he created them. (Genesis 1:27)
the creation of man and woman (male and female) is explained, however, in the next chapter of Genesis the creation of Adam and later that of Eve is explicitly narrated, as if they were two different creations; however, throughout the world there are many believers who interpret both creations as a single story. Another example would be the snake that deceived Eve in Eden, because although at no time in Genesis are we told that this snake was Satan, it is almost a fact to associate it with the fallen angel.
An interesting interpretation of the genesis is to assimilate that the six days of creation allude to the six “ages” in which the world was created, because when interpreted in this way, the order present in the book coincides with the “jumps” of the geological record.
Of course, this does not mean that you have been deceived, simply that you have interpreted the biblical stories in one way, just as someone else can interpret them in another, but this does not affect how truly important in the Bible its teachings are: be you an atheist, Christian, or believer of another religion, the teachings of the Bible are written there, and they are what should truly be shared.
Returning to the main theme of the story, and to finish.
Evolution was not invented to challenge faith in religion, nor was it an idea that Charles Darwin came up with just to “bother” the world, this is a fact that is supported by multiple evidences today; I don’t want to send the reader to investigate outside of Medium, so I invite you to head over to my Paleoter profile and take a look at all the stories I’ve written to date, backed up by their respective references to scientific research.
Reference:
— Jay Gould, S. (2002). Acabo de llegar El final de un principio en historia natural. Booket.
