Thinking about Evolution 8 comments
There is at least one sense in which Nigeria and the US are very similar: having a remarkably high proportion of religious people – or as the present fad expression goes, people that “have a personal relationship with God” – and of course also having a high proportion of creationists, which follows, so it seems, quite easily.
This was the first thought that occurred to me last year when during the heated US presidential campaign I saw John McCain and Barack Obama on the TV, apparently appealing to the American religious conservative right, both of them at the Saddleback Church, engaged in what could hardly pass for a mild debate moderated by the pastor, Rick Warren. I remember thinking to myself: the only other place where this could possibly happen is right here in Nigeria.
It is in my experience quite safe to assume that by being a Nigerian, you are simply religious by default, until confessed otherwise, and that you believe yourself to be a creationist even without having as much as a half-hearted look at the evidence for evolution by natural selection. With this premise, I have discovered what has become for me a most favoured pastime, which is to bring up the theory of evolution and Darwinism and related scientific concepts easily associated with atheism, agnosticism and all sorts of ungodly tendencies to spark up discussion amongst colleagues in Nigeria.
I hope we could have one such exchange here in the blogosphere on NigertansTalk. Painfully, competing and admittedly often more pressing issues generally trump whatever space we might have for science in our politics and national life in Nigeria.
In the discussions that have resulted, I have found that roughly half of the people I’ve encountered fall within the category I refer to, for the purpose of this post, as “the fundamentalist,” and the lowest watermark of such argument will be: “I would cease to believe in the existence of other planets and solar systems and galaxies if I find a remark in Bible (or the Qur’an) that so much as suggests that the earth is all there is in the universe.”
The other half are about equally divided into three groups: “the open minded” (”Well, it seems there is some good evidence that I’ll have to spend some time to consider more carefully.), the “I don’t give a damn” (“Whatever it is, I don’t think it matters.”), and “the malleable,” those that get convinced after a lot of discussion, only find that they have reverted to creationism at the next encounter (”What you said the other day, I really don’t think it can be true.”).
There is an American student from Texas here, with whom I’ve had two long and interesting discussions on evolution and creationism. She is an avowed creationist and a Christian, and like most of my Nigerian friends, she possibly couldn’t accept that being a Christian and an evolutionist at the same time are not fundamentally conflicting positions. For her, they are simply mutually exclusive: the exact same argument that my Nigerian friends would make.
It actually got me wondering how similar Nigerians must indeed be to Americans in this regard and why would that be? It is for me, as for most scientists a persistent puzzle as to why Americans are so religious and how creationism is so widespread and evolution is taken with so much negative seriousness in the US. I could easily explain the situation in Nigeria. I was never taught the theory of evolution in primary or secondary school, although of course more because there were no teachers to teach it than because there was a legislation against teaching it.
Looking back however, I think not having been taught evolution in secondary school was indeed a blessing because then I was left to study it all be myself and so had the opportunity to weight the evidence against my knowledge of the Biblical account of creation which I was raised in, and was, as I still am, also very well versed in. I am almost certain that even if there were teachers, it is unlikely that any will teach it well enough to present the evidence and allow the pupils make up their mind.
My comparative anatomy lecturer in medical school after discussing all the interesting and beautiful evidence for evolution, ended the lecture by saying it was all crap, and that we should take none of it any seriously beyond the point of recanting (sic) them during exams. Might that be the reason: the lack of unbiased exposure to the basic tenets of evolutionary theory? Might this be what some Americans are protecting against when they say they don’t want evolution taught in their schools?
What do you think? Are you an evolutionist? Why, if yes, and why not if not? Were you introduced to the theory of evolution by natural selection in secondary school? What do you think the effect of that might be if you were or might have been if you were not? Do you think an evolutionist could at the same time “have a personal relationship with God?” You are more than welcome to comment here or on NigeriansTalk.
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8 Responses to 'Thinking about Evolution'
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Thanks Harry for dropping a note. At what point do you think the “originator” (I presume you mean Charles Darwin) got it “twisted”?
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First, Darwin had a Christian background and all… I think the point he lost it was when he began to philosophize a lot…he began to draw up very irrelevant conclusions…
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SA, nice one. I don’t know the group i belong to in your analysis but i’v never really given evolution a serious thought. I like the prospect of the concept but nothing more. Maybe i need to take more interst(or maybe not!). The point is , i’v always had the belief that it contradicts creationism. And then, God is ALWAYS right, isn’t He?
Akinwale Ayeni
5 Nov 09 at 7:30 pm
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@Harry:…and which of his conclusions do you consider irrelevant?
@Akinwale: Thanks. It doesn’t necessarily have to contradict God or creationism as it were. What if God set the ball in motion to bring about life through evolution by natural selection…There are principles behind the organisation of the universe, planetary motion, the moons et cetera. Why can’t there be such a principle in biology, and why can’t that principle be natural selection? -
I am not an “evolutionist” (a term that makes about sense as calling anyone who believes gravity exists to be a “gravitationalist”). I am however a person who accept the clear, unequivocal, and absolutely overwhelming evidence in favor of evolutionary theory.
During secondary school education we may have briefly touched on the concept, but frankly at the time biology really didn’t interest me and I remember nothing of it if we did discuss it (I was much more of a physics person then). But years later I became interested in the subject and read up on it in considerable detail… and after becoming well acquainted with the geologic, paleontological, genetic, molecular, etc… evidence and the massive convergence between all these different lines of inquiry on a single inescapable conclusion it leaves me dumbfounded that anyone can possibly stand up with a straight face and claim to doubt it occured and continues to do so and claim to know the first thing about the subject matter while they do so.
For cripes sake, the nested hierarchical pattern of endogenous retroviral insertions in the genetic code of the various primates is enough to establish *by itself* that evolution occured beyond any sane level of doubt… even if we didn’t have the results of mountains of other phylogenetic testing, and the fossil record, and the nested hierarchy of all current existing lifeforms and on and on and on…
Denying evolutionary theory is every bit as absurd as denying that objects with mass exert an attractive force on each other. Plain and simple.
Grant
6 Nov 09 at 9:53 am
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Evolution is not just a biological concept. It occurs in all facets of life. It is neither merely a human phenomenon but is common to all life and even sometimes to non-living things as we manipulate them to suit our own evolution. I believe the aim of all evolution is to increase the chances of survival and to improve the quality of that survival.
I will not pretend to fully understand biological evolution by natural selection as it is a concept that requires some serious study to be fully apprehended. Moreover, there are many theories as to the processes involved and as to the actual members of the supposed ancestry of modern Homo sapiens or Homo sapiens sapiens and our said relationship with this ancestry. What is certain is that fossils have been found and probably many more will be. If these findings are real, as I am apt to believe they are, and not forged, then these so called human species from the early australopith to the late Homo must have existed. The facts speak for themselves. Whether what is propounded from these findings is correct is another matter entirely. Science itself evolves as more information becomes available. Many of the theories that reigned back in the day are now obsolete. The Earth was once believed to be flat and suppuration was once thought to be essential for wound healing.
Faith that is true does not deny the facts. It seeks to offer the truth about them. This is where controversy should arise if there are dissenting views and not over undeniable facts. Creation science has therefore given room in creationism for the facts presented by the fossils. This young-earth creationism and non-traditional old-earth creationism does not deny the facts but offers possible explanations while maintaining belief in creation. Their theories are Flood Geology for young-earth creationism and the Day-Age and Gap theories for old-earth. Traditional creationists, I believe, still stick with creation without entertaining the possibility of pre-historic man’s existence.
I believe that all life as we now know it was created by God at a time that the earth was without form and void or unoccupied. I believe that all of mankind as it exists today is from the first man and woman – Adam and Eve, both of whom were created by God and did not evolve from a lower life form. Adam was formed as a man and he came to life when God breathed into his nostrils. He formed Eve from the rib which he took out of Adam and thus set humanity into motion. They only needed to procreate thereafter. They both started as intelligent beings capable of social interaction. I believe Lucifer was cast down after his rebellion before this creation or re-creation if you choose. This may have led to the destruction of the world which existed then and probably had all these pre-historic creatures such as the so-called ancestors of man and dinosaurs, fossils of whom we see today. Hence, the earth became formless and vacant.
I can understand adaptations such as a weight-lifter building muscle and having his/her bones become more sturdy or the loss of such muscle mass in times of starvation. I can also understand an increase in my skin pigmentation when I’m exposed to more intense sun rays and a return to my normal complexion when I’m back to less ‘radiation’. I can even understand how long powerful arms and curved fingers, features that made australopiths agile in trees became less pronounced in Homo who did not need to be a good climber. What I’m yet to understand though is how these phenotypes translate into the genes for expression in generations in the distant future or how organisms from distant phyla or classes could have been related in the past however distant that past might be. Homo sapiens sapiens may therefore someday evolve into some species yet unknown once we can no longer interbreed and thus become reproductively isolated, right?
My limited understanding however does not repudiate the possibility of biological evolution. I in fact tend to believe that the power that makes it possible for mankind to be perpetuated by procreation such that only one man and woman needed to be created, and that fertilization produces a mass of cells which becomes an embryo, fetus etc., that such power can also cause organisms to evolve to higher life forms. I am therefore not afraid to believe biological evolution could have taken place sometime. I however believe Adam was not a product of this process. I also think it is paradoxical to believe God has power to create the world we live in and to do all we believe he has done, indeed to say he is both omnificent and omnipotent and yet deny the possibility that he could carry out something as simple as biological evolution – at least as simple as the naturalists or Darwinists have portrayed it.
I will end by conceding that just as the scientists have insufficient information to make incontrovertible conclusions from their findings, creationists may also have insufficient information to refute the theory of evolution by natural selection save to say Adam was not a part of it. This refutation in the extent to which it can go is based on the bible which I must say, we have not yet fully understood. The scientists work ceaselessly to improve their assertions. Creationists must also seek to understand the bible better.
Oluwafemi Owagbemi
19 Nov 09 at 7:31 pm
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I must add that I also do not believe that man as we know him now, being the most complex of species, will evolve into any higher life form. I believe everything the bible says about our origins and our destination!
Oluwafemi Owagbemi
19 Nov 09 at 7:35 pm
Was talking to someone today and we came to a conclusion… some parts of the theories of evolution are right… I guess somewhere along the line…the originator got it twisted