Darwinian Myths and Evolutionary Theology

I've only read a small portion of Origin of Species. It was mandatory reading that a professor printed off in mass to educate myself and my fellow students. As I recall I made it through 2-3 pages. The next thing I remember is waking up face down in the article that was then serving as a sponge for a large quantity of saliva. Thus, I failed at becoming a Darwin scholar. It does not seem that this rules me among a minority. My experience is that a great deal of scientists, even geneticists, have fallen short of reading the boring and generally inaccurate prose that made Darwin a legend.

One of the greatest myths resulting from Darwin is the idea of survival of the fittest. Before I proceed I'll make it clear that I fully believe in evolution. Obviously, if you've read much of anything I've ever written, I don't hold much room for Creationism. Still, I agree with many contemporary thinkers that for all its claims of objectivity, science is just as guilty of mythic, indeed religiously dogmatic, thought as any other culture. Survival of the fittest is perhaps one of the best examples I can point out. The big problem is with the concept of fitness. Darwin was certainly on to something in noting that it is survivors that pass on their genes, and determine the make-up of their progeny. But, the problem is that these survivors are not always more fit than all the others.

There is an enormous variety of "fitness" levels in nature. When we think of fitness we tend to assume this means the big and the strong. But that's not always true. In fact nature tends to select against "the big". In the grand scope of things, it is quite rare for bigness to be an advantage. More often than not it works against one's favor. Nor is strength as it's typically depicted really give one an advantage. Large muscles and stature simply burn more calories, and demand more consumption and make one a bigger target for 'nature' to take down.

Anyone who has spent much time around horses can tell you that they are some of the sickliest animals in all of creation. The vet bills for owning a horse are staggering. We should keep this in mind when we depict professional athletes as the inheritors of the earth: it only takes one bout of flu to make them as vulnerable as everyone else. In our society athletes are paid ridiculous wages because the perpetuate the delusion that they are the fittest specimens which we should all aspire to be. But, nature does not fit into (scientific) dogmas. Nature does select, but rarely does it do so based on who is bigger, faster and stronger.

A lot of the time, natural selection proceeds by blind luck. Were the citizens of Pompeii less fit than those of Rome? If a lion is struck by lightning is it sensible to assume it was less fit than meerkat hiding below the ground? If the meerkat's burrow collapses on top of it because a rhino tramples on top of it should we assume nature voted against him? These are ridiculous questions. These are circumstances that have minuscule relationships to the idea of "fitness".

My biology professor used to put it this way, "Nature does not select the fittest, only the fit enough. Nature shows no preference for those making an A+, it only expects that you make a D."

Statistically speaking it is the D's and C's that actually fair the best in nature. This is simply because there are more of them. Nature will, more often than not, respect the bell curve. There are far more numbers in the middle, and these numbers tend to like reproducing every bit as much as those pulling an A+. Often, they like reproducing even more. The cataclysmic situations where nature raises the bar, such that only the top of the class makes it on, are sparse. Meanwhile, she continues killing off the top of the class with the rest of it at a flat rate.

I mentioned my fascination with bacteria/viruses before. This is another tie in. It would seem that one of the biggest driving forces for evolution is adaptation to adverse microorganisms. Thus, nature cares much less about muscle mass than the functionality of one's immune system. This should serve as food for thought for those who don't think the poor should be provided with adequate health care. Dr. Paul Farmer has pointed out that we rich Westerners are culturing our own demise by leaving the masses living in favellas and barrios around the world where new diseases will specifically evolve to kill humans. The poor will be the first to die of it, and the first to be born immune to it. The privileged will be the ones whose numbers are less favorable. Statistically speaking we won't stand a chance. Thus, we might ought to add a beatitude, "Blessed are the poor for they will inherit the earth." This should be taken literally, and not spiritualized. Sow economic inequality, reap pandemic.

"Survival of the fittest" is a perversion of Darwin's ideas. It is a myth that speaks more of capitalism than of reality. It is what we want to believe, so we don't have to change. We want to believe that we have what we have, because we deserve it; because we are the fit ones. We want to believe that we are the strong who have survived, that our genes are the superior ones. We want Darwin to confirm our greediness, and we've forced axioms from his mouth. In fact, his ideas have told us the opposite. The mediocre survive with the fit. The mediocre are often more fit than the strong.

A Wendel Berry quote I love goes like this, "Rats and roaches live by competition under the laws of supply and demand, it is the privilege of human beings to live under the laws of justice and mercy." Only in light of evolutionary insights, I would replace "privilege" with "imperative".

The Universe Within

Neuroscience is a burgeoning field. It is exploding with new knowledge and facts that are explaining things that have puzzled humans for centuries. It is also a field that in many ways seems to be charging headlong into conflict with religion, philosophy, and any number of other fields that had sought havens of safety beyond the reach of scientific inquiry. As is the tendency with most branches of knowledge, neuroscience is quickly being taken up ideologically to argue on behalf of whoever can manage to manipulate the data better than everyone else. And, like other branches of science, extremes are typically overblown in the public arena such that ethics slips quietly out of the purview of most. Yet, I find the interface of religion and neuroscience to be one of the most potent and interesting syntheses arising in our world.

The statistics of the human brain are staggering.
- Our brains contain up to 30 billion neurons.
- Each neuron can form up to 10,000 connections (synapses) with other neurons.
- This means that the average human brain can contain up to 300 trillion connections.

All the vastness of the universe that we can witness on a moonless, clear night is nothing in complexity compared with just one milliliter of brain tissue.

Typically, I have an aversion for math, but 300 trillion is a number that I'll listen to. The crazy thing is that these connections are plastic. They are constantly rearranging, repaving, and creatively engaging in new ways. Every experience we have rearranges hundreds of thousands of these synapses, creating memories and new patterns of energy within our heads.

This is what I think of now when I hear talk of the soul or spirit. Each of us represents a unique organization of matter in space, and this matter gives an infinitely unique, indeed unrepeatable, pattern of energy. At any given moment our brains are an energetic pattern that will never be repeated in the history of the universe. It's as though our minds are an electro-chemical fingerprint of unfathomable intricacy.

This is what I think of when the Christian/atheist animosity that rehashes old arguments over materialism vs. spirituality: Our brains are certainly matter, and science as the study of matter can come to understand them, explain them, and even manipulate them. But, this loses sight of the fact that matter is spiritual; unequivocally there is mystery that will remain. There are mental phenomena that will evade adequate scientific description, but that can still be experienced by human persons. They may be partially explainable, but only partially. Explanations are reductions. Yet, I find it to be unassailable to claim that we are material. To change a person's brain is to change the person, yet as we all change (often drastically) over the course of our lives, I find it hard to believe that there is some core essence to each of us that has eternal qualities.

I've stated previously that I don't think we are eternal. If we have a soul, then it is fleeting just as we are. Ultimately (as quasi-New Age as this will sound), I believe that God is the energy of the Universe: we are created in his image, in that we are energy too. When I think about it, I think what I just said is ridiculous, and perhaps that's why it's true. There is no way to talk about God. Mystics have said so for millennia, and I trust that they know better than me. Yet, I'll speak anyway. In some way I don't understand, God is present in the energy of the universe, much as my mind is present in the energy that enlivens my neurons. Faith tells me that he is eternal, and science tells me that I am not. So, I place my hope in him for grace: for an eternity that is not mine, and that the unique moment that "I" am, would be worthy of his memory.

Distance

I'm generally amazed at the paradox of time: the fact that it can drag by painfully slow, but that in hindsight it always gives the appearance of having slipped by quickly and stealthily. I count my days by quizzes, exams, projects, and commitments. I tend to think of every day, or week, as something to get through, and feel no slight pain in doing so. I try to keep focused during lectures on topics that I don't understand because they are phrased in grammar that is awkward. The language by which it is delivered to me seems to grow inorganically out of Excel spreadsheets . . . the words seem confined to individual cells that serve only as fodder for algorithms and charts. They don't speak to me. Everything is blank of emotion and purpose.

I want pictures that don't fit into rows and columns.


Several months ago I met a musician, and conversation eventually unearthed the fact that I used to play guitar, and write songs, and do my best impersonation of a musical artist. He asked me why I stopped. . . . I'm never sure how to answer that question. It's not as though I don't have any answers for it; there are plenty. None of these actually suffices to express the real reason though. When I give an answer, it comes in a format of problems that could be solved. But, as with so many other things in life, it's not the individual problems that are the actual cause. Rather it is the strange synthesis of them all at once, at one particular place, experienced in one particular way that determine the course of one's decisions.

I recall in college how deeply I felt the need to express myself. I assume a great deal of this was due to the deep sense of confusion I carried over who I actually was. I think this was the impulse that drove my futile attempt at becoming a musician. I hoped that in expressing myself through music, I might thereafter understand myself. It helped, I think. At least at first. Eventually I was confronted with the difference between musicians and those who play music, or to say it differently, I learned the difference between the music I wanted to hear, and that which I was capable of creating. To really express myself with music, thus required a degree of skill that I was lacking. Self-discovery would demand that I choose a different route.

Somewhere in this epiphany I felt an enormous sense of relief, so I take it to be a good thing.

When I was a nurse, living on my own in the middle of (metaphorical) nowhere I remember regaining a sense of purpose in a particular realization. It's not one that is easy to put into words. The best I can say is that in realizing who we want to be, we must decide to be that person even in the process of becoming such. This was the result of working on a hospital floor, and the experiences I had there. I felt that connecting with people in that setting was not only fulfilling personally, but also useful. Whether coworkers or patients, I realized that much of what goes on in the medical setting was expressive of both who I was and who I wanted to be.

There was no audience clapping at the end of my shifts, no strangers approaching me to get to know the artist. Yet it was more than enough. It was real. I was real. The patients were real. I felt I understood myself perfectly in those moments, and even more that I was helping others in that process of understanding.

It amazes me now that it seems like such a long time ago. It has been over two years since I came back to school, and I've been anything but steadfast in holding to the goals I had in coming back. Yet, I find more and more comfort mixed in with fear as my life has narrowed down to this path. I think, because I realize increasingly that this is me.

So, now as I wander through a barren wasteland of molecular orbitals, accelerations, torque, graphs with trendlines, statistics of electrons that all seem so foreign and impenetrable. I feel far removed from who I am, and want to be. I can see it, though: coming slowly, yet here and so far behind. The humanity missing in this moment will return as my voice.

Notes From Taiwan: The Rundown

Highlights:

- Hiking blindly across a mountain trail that lead to the Taiwanese National Hotel. Google pictures if you want to know why that's so cool. The mountains that run through Taipei are amazing, and make for phenomenal walks.

- Secluded mountain temples.

- Un-Americanized sushi. Took some getting used to, but it's quite good. Quite good.

- A plethora of coffee shops to choose from. I feel I'm not even breaking the surface of what's available.

- Bookstores with splendid selections of philosophy and science books. American bookstores really seem lackluster now.

- Fruit: Mangoes, enormous peaches, guavas . . .

Less Favorably:

- Obnoxious jackass at McDonald's. No idea what he said, but I'm about 90% sure it was derogatory.

- Hour of boredom listening to Alice and company speaking rapid, nostalgic, untranslated Mandarin.

- Ubiquitous humidity, and the sweat that accompanies it.

- The lack of A/C in far too many places . . . though that convicts me of being a rich, privileged American . . . but still.

- Excessive shyness: a disease affecting a countless many.

- Persisting allergies.

- The impression that heterogeneity is valued less here than elsewhere.

Never gets old:

- Sense of independence that comes from knowing my way around a neighborhood.

- Chopsticks.

- Adequate public transportation.

- Friendly locals.

- Better prices: cheap massages, food, cute dresses for Alice, etc.

Love to see:

- Cyclists

- Mountaintop cityscapes.

- Alice feeling at home, having light-hearted chats with her Dad.

- Informed political opinions that don't fall into partisan extremes.

Still scared of:

- Stinky tofu.

- Earthquakes.

- The sirens that make me think there's going to be an earthquake even though the aforementioned siren has nothing to do with said imaginary earthquake, which will remain imaginary.

- Grilled squid on a stick.

- The thought of ever attempting to drive a car here.

- China. Particularly the large weaponry they have aimed at me right now.

Hopes:

- To return. (Hopefully with the capacity to converse in Mandarin)

Notes from Taiwan: Taipei Miscellany

Taipei wakes up slowly. My first day here started early on account of jet lag. I stalled waking until 6:45 AM, but my body refused to get the rest it needed beyond that. Alice and I spent the next few hours in aimless pursuit of coffee. There are many shops to be found, but none that cared to open before 10 o'clock. . . . and even then tardiness is the norm.

It is impossible to adequately describe the humidity here. Swedish saunas would seem parched compared to a normal day once the sun has towered over the sky-rises. Even relatively young buildings here appear old. Tiles and bricks all quickly gain the appearance of a public shower in a college dormitory. The air carries a weight that clings to everything. The sun here is not as scorching as in Texas. In Dallas when one ventures outside at mid-day they get the feeling that the sun is carrying out an angry vendetta against them. The logical conclusion is to flee for shade and wait for nightfall. Not here. Here the sun seems removed from the experience of heat. It seems to merely be the commandant of the air, which obeys its commands even in its absence, but ever-so-much-more in its presence. Either way, the simple act of walking overwhelms with the sense that the air is attacking you; coagulating around you. Its purpose being to immobilize, and drown the individual suffering its fervor.

The streets here are a hurried, partially-tamed chaos. Scooters equal or outnumber cars. The line at stop-lights leaves a large space for the mass of scooters that make their way to the front: most of them preferring to drive on the dashes as between them. Like any city of this size the motion is endless and partially disorienting.

I have walked more in the past 3.5 days than in the few years that have preceded them. I wake up sore every morning, but I've come to realize that restful vacations are wasted ones. Or so I'm telling myself, while trying to ignore the pain in my heels. Luckily parks in Taipei have short "trails" of fixed, rounded stones designed to increase blood flow to the feet of the elderly. I am loving my old age.

Notes from Taiwan: The First Email Home

Mom,

I just woke up and took my first tour of Alice's part of the city. Trust me when I say, there is absolutely and completely NO evidence that Taiwan has ever suffered a typhoon on the streets. Everything looks 'business as usual'. Again, I repeat: there is no sign that Taiwan has ever experienced a typhoon. Ever.

Ever.

There is no debris. There is no residual water. There is nothing, I repeat, NOTHING to lend weight to the news reports that some catastrophe has occurred here. I will leave it to you to surmise whether or not I have electricity.

As for earthquakes: I have experienced none. If I do, I will promptly command them to stop. Apart from such imperatives I have few means of controlling earthquakes. But, to assuage your fears: I have seen no apocalyptic collapse of the city.

I will try to take flower pictures as much as possible.

In the hour and a half I have spent galavanting around the city, I as an individual have experienced more humidity than many nations experience over entire eras. I've been too busy sweating to pay much attention to the temperature, so I can't really tell you how hot it is.

I am in full possession of all my luggage.

Alice appears to be 87% happy and 76% nostaligic.

I love you,
Joe

The Cure for Absurdity

A friend and I were discussing the ever-pervasive issue of evolution once. She was far from being a scientist herself, though that's not to suggest she wasn't respectably informed. Rather, she like many, was one who left science to people who "got it", which is why I felt quite validated when she said that she thought anti-evolutionists were basically just being offensive.

I think many scientists spend far too much time meticulously seeking to understand the natural world to then suffer the obtrusive and dogmatic opinions of a person whose sole source of information is the Bible. The truth is that scientists, like all professionals, don't like ignorant people taking shots at their profession, and tend to react emotionally, even spitefully, when they are confronted as such. It's akin to rednecks commenting on modern art, or a barely literate person critiquing fine poetry. I think of most of the discussions I've heard concerning the work of Jackson Pollock, and think they tend to parallel the evolution debate quite well.

The greater tragedies I notice in all of this are the conversations that end up not happening.

One thing I think gets ignored much to easily is the statistical ridiculousness of our world. It's an argument that has been sadly twisted to fit the ulterior motives of Christian apologists for much too long. We generally call it "the Watchmaker" argument. As it's generally presented, it says that life is possible only because our world is intricately organized to allow it. It is easily as fine-tuned as a Swiss watch. Thus, if you stumble across a watch in the wilderness, you never assume it is the product of natural processes, but rather that it is the creation of a watchmaker, and that he or someone else lost it there.

There are countless flaws in this argument, and even more flaws in the way many Christians attempt to use it. Yet, still I can't help but feel that it carries a valid point that is too rarely phrased in language that does not antagonize scientists.

Our planet is characterized by a staggering variety of fine-tuned balances. Were it a few thousand miles further or closer to the Sun life in the forms we are familiar with would have been practically impossible. Even more, were the composition of our oceans different, the percentages the elements present altered, the concentric spheres of our atmosphere changed, the pull of our moon absent . . . were anything other than it is, life would have been doubtful; if not impossible. I think we should avoid religious conclusions in regard to this, at least primarily. Yet, just in terms of pure statistics, the probability of our world existing is utterly absurd.

Now, absurdity does not in and of itself mean anything. The existentialists generally viewed absurdity as a symptom of an atheistic reality. I think it comes back to a hermeneutical question of how do we interpret the facts when we view them for themselves. We live in a world that is ornately ordered: but how? Is there some ordering factor in the universe, or are we merely the result of what amounts to the most statistically ludicrous chance happening that could ever be calculated or imagined.

I feel that both positions can be respected. I don't mean to be pejorative of those who see our universe as one ruled by blind chance. Only I cannot fathom how I happen to rest at the end of such a preposterous chain of "fortunate" accidents. I say this not because I think humanity is too dignified to be the product of chance, but rather because I think that chance has its limits. When we say that P= #, I wonder how many zeros we can tack on before we have to wonder if there is something driving it.


The leap from this "driving force" to a benevolent God is enormous. So, I don't wish to make it here. Rather I just want to say that at least to my mind, randomness, in the context of our universe, has to be self-limiting. Basically, the nature and ultimate complexity of our world prevents me from conceding that it is purely the result of random events.

My Grandpa (an agnostic) once said it this way, "Doesn't it seem more miraculous that the universe came about without God?"

Certainly. Only I don't have nearly enough faith to believe this miracle to be true. Whether this can be attributed to rationality or irrationality I think will tell each person more about their own beliefs than about my own. In the end, I believe in order . . . and I think it much too absurd to claim that it came about randomly.