Bowling Shoes

reason can box us in but can also set us free

Today we will work our way through creation/evolution, "kinds" and bowling shoes. I hope it is a fun read. Tonight's post is long but I graciously submit that "the juice is worth the squeeze". I like this post and hope that you will also. The only reason today's topic became part of my consciousness is the process of writing.

I enjoy the creation story that is told in the Bible. Knowing that the beginnings of the Bible were written around 1200 BC shortly after the emergence of language and alphabets is helpful. The prior 250000 years had set the stage for us to start talking AND writing for something like the last 5000 years of our existence. I wonder if once language emerged, Moms at the dinner table admonished their children for their table manners and too much grunting?

Today, I will start with the Book of Genesis, Chapter 1, verses 11-13. This is an excerpt from a reading that is retold, at least in my Church as part of the celebration of Christmas. The creation story is NOT filled with details but is a broad story trying to bring some structure to how this place we live came to be. These verses are the 3rd day of creation. "Let the earth put forth vegetation, plants yielding seed, and fruit trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, each according to its kind, upon the earth." And it was so. The earth brought forth vegetation, plants yielding seed according to their own kinds, and trees bearing fruit in which is their seed, according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And there was evening and there was morning, the third day."

Americans, especially in the last couple of decades have become polarized in increasing ways and have evolved a great distrust of the news. Sometimes we hear a poll and the results sound impossible. One of the few tools in such cases is when the SAME QUESTION WORDING has been asked for a period of time. This allows us to eliminate some of the bias we fear and only look at the evolution (no pun intended) of people’s thinking. This is one of my favorite examples of American adult opinion over the last forty years. With the completion of the human genome project in the early 2000s and the subsequent work to sequence all life in the coming 15 years, I would have expected more movement in these numbers simply because people watch the news. The relative consistency in the numbers tells me personal truths are remarkably durable and quite independent of other factors. I will provide no further editorial comment. This is presented over 40 years in the Gallup poll below:

I promised no editorial bias so there

In my prior post “Truth”, I have a primary point of how important it is to allow individuals to float objective, personal, and political truths in their minds simultaneously. If I were to boil down that post it would be our priority is (1) to instill and teach the objective truth universally through education, (2) respect and never attack or ridicule the personal truth, and (3) work collectively to minimize the manipulative nature of political truths. I consider this the path to serenity and collective progress. The difference in perception of largely the SAME QUESTION is interesting and shows how our minds must have competing narratives in a state of flux. The cool part for me is they are THREE IDENTICAL QUESTIONS, merely presented in a different order. Wow, we are interesting us humans!

The part that intrigues me is these are the SAME QUESTIONS, presented in a different sequence and very different results. THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN 31% AND 18% IS AMAZING TO ME SINCE THE QUESTIONS ARE THE SAME! Perhaps I am too logical. It is hard for me to imagine that I would answer the question differently just based on the presentation. 27% vs 48% for the same answer means 1 of 5 people do this!

If you read or hear the creation story, there is a wonderful cadence to it. Each day of creation is structured similarly, (1) admonition, (2) acknowledgment, (3) declaration, (4) daily wrapup. If this were an English assignment and the dictate was to write a creation of the Earth story and a required word count, I think the teacher would be troubled by the repetition in order to boost the word count. It is easy to follow, short on details, and likely easy to remember and hence reinforces a message.

It is hard to argue with the prose since we arrive, less than 3500 years later with approximately 2.3 billion people who were at least born into a Christian tradition or have formally converted. Even those who are “excommunicated” are invited to come back so the number above is a theoretical maximum. With about 8 billion people on the planet, 28% percent is impressive.

Today, my post is about how narrow a point of view can become if they start with an unerring premise. That is, one fact or statement becomes the pivot point for all subsequent guidance. Because I have been posting about all sorts of fun and unusual topics, I get a fair amount of unusual content in my Newsfeed. It has become a bit difficult to avoid content about “kinds” which, I must confess, I never even knew was a thing before starting this writing adventure.

If you look back to the highlighted text from Genesis, the word kind/kinds appear three times. I chalked that up to the repetitive style. What I know now is that a significant number of people have constructed their whole understanding of how things came to be, the story of Noah’s flood, the inaccuracy of fossils, the falsity of tree rings and radioactive dating, and a hard and fast embrace of 6000-year-old earth around the word kind. The lengths pursued to make the data “fit” led to the emergence of a word in 1990 called Baraminology. This word emerges to tie together the narrative of creation in Genesis along with a great flood. Baramins, at some level, allows Noah to manage to get all of the animals of the world by the creation of a classification system called “kinds” in lieu of species which alas emerges thousands of years later. The estimate is there are 8 million species so Noah would have required a larger boat. I have some future posts about CRISPR technology which is no longer science fiction or conjecture. The premise of baramins seems unlikely to me in light of a bit of recent light gene editing making a pig heart compatible with a human. This makes me discount the idea of “discontinuity that cannot be crossed” between species to have been set aside by reality in this case.

This sort of material would never have ended up in my realm except for my posting as it strikes me as heavily constructed. The idea that we might consider this set of premises as a scientific hypothesis for something AND consider teaching it in school is beyond the realm for me. I am in full agreement that personal truths and beliefs deserve deference. As I posted in “Truth”, the key consideration is personal truth must remain personal. My point would be while many who share my birthday might consult the day ahead a Capricorn might face, I cannot reasonably expect Scientific American to commit EQUAL RESOURCES to a discussion of astrology in order to be equitable in a discussion of astronomy.

Astronomy and astrology are simply not the same sorts of development. One is fun, light-hearted and perhaps entertaining for some. The fact that it provided the basis for beliefs such as 7th heaven when we lacked understanding of the natural world is beside the point. For a subset of people, astrology might even be important as a personal truth in their lives. I remember the controversy when Nancy Reagan was consulting an astrologist in her guidance to her husband Ronald Reagan, the President. I will never ridicule Mrs. Reagan for her consideration of astrology but I would reject any serious possibility that it should influence Oval Office policy.

Today my goal is to encourage people to be open-minded as a path to serenity. There are guideposts and principles we need in our daily lives to navigate. There are also opportunities, EVERY DAY when we can see a crossroads and we can choose to ignore a new sign or at least consider its implication. Imagine for a moment that the region where the Bible was written was full of dangerous plants and insects (I’m sure it was). One of the patterns understood was the red ones were frequently poisonous and dangerous. Suppose that the Genesis creation story always prefaced the word kind with non-red kind. I am not trying to be silly here, I am trying to make a point. The point is to imagine that the world around Canaan had a rightful fear of the color red. It would be a sad existence, at least for me, if my parents, almost 3500 years later had added an admonition like the following as part of their child-rearing.

“Regardless of anything else that happens throughout your life, if you cannot keep to the promise you will never wear red shoes, you are at risk. A red shoe will permeate through your skin and destroy you. We were taught as young children that the color red designates danger. Our families have kept to this promise for many generations. Promise me you will never wear red shoes, for if you do, all is lost.”

It would seem to be inevitable that the first time I went bowling and was offered a pair of rental shoes, I would be ignoring an inviolate principle. I went a long way for a questionable joke. When assessing the progress of the last 3500 years and all we might have learned about the color red, this would be absurd. Drawing an ARBITRARY line to a period 3500 years ago, for a species that required 250000 years to master speech and an alphabet, on a 4.6 billion-year-old planet in a 13.5 billion-year-old universe is a non-starter for me. I will continue to state and genuinely advocate that others should remain free to disagree with me. However, for sanity's sake, their personal beliefs cannot be foisted upon us in a mandatory fashion as part of a curriculum. I am glad that my faith tradition grants a wide berth to all of us to work through our personal beliefs on the matter and does not force us to ignore our personal beliefs on the matter.

I believe our minds are our greatest gift and it is our birthright to use them to the best of our ability. We are unique in our abilities of written language and speech. Such a gift is not to be squandered, ignored, or wasted as our time is precious. This is AS FAR AS I AM GOING TO GO in this line of thought. It is time for some observations and conclusions. I think we suffer from the mixing of principles in different aspects of our lives. Bear with me, as I think the point is worthwhile. All of these are a commentary on the standards of evidence.

Our legal system splits its approach between criminal and civil matters. For criminal matters, we embrace beyond a reasonable doubt. In civil matters, we embrace more likely than not. The goal is to provide justice while enforcing high-level protections for the individual. We even go as far as allowing jury nullification when the consensus is the law itself is unjust.

Our health system focuses on established practices, and only, with great safeguards, allows the use of speculative and perhaps dangerous practices in the treatment of disease. The structure is focused to “do no harm” and be conservative and reserved in just “taking a shot in the dark”. Regardless of personal belief, a medical doctor or RN simply will not use leeches in an American hospital or apply equine medications on humans regardless of what you have read on Facebook.

In pure science, we continuously refine and challenge theory with repeatable and rigorous testing. This means it travels the path to greater and greater truth over time. By definition, it is ALWAYS subject to review and refinement. This should not be mistaken for the judgmental phrase “uproven or just a theory”. The foolishness of “cold fusion”, a 1989 craze, evaded scientific scrutiny for a short period and pop culture talked about it divorced from rudimentary understanding. In the end, the process worked and the fraud was identified.

In our monotheistic religions we embrace the divine inspiration of stories, chapters and books hundreds or thousands of years older than the printing press. The insight of the books and the lessons they teach when they are treated as transcendent over time creates a lot of challenges. The need for tolerance in a world of 4000+ religions is easy to understand. An estimated 95% of us align in one of six affiliations (Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist, Folk, or Unaffiliated) makes it IMPERATIVE we embrace tolerance. Each of them include specific faithful challenges. When it is not your belief, it is easy to be flippant and think it reasonable to discount something that make YOU uncomfortable. My advice is stay in your lane and keep your personal beliefs personal. My source for these estimates is provided. Depending upon some assumptions we at or very near 8 billion people on the rock. That is a lot of personal beliefs to sort out.

My faith is personal and it has changed throughout my life. I don’t foist it upon others. Taking care and cultivating my own belief is a big job and I don’t see how convincing others is healthy or wise. Food for thought. The sun, moon, and stars come on day four in the Genesis creation; must have been tough for the plants on day three without the sunlight. We now understand that gravity between the Sun and Earth keeps us in orbit. Today’s post would have NEVER HAPPENED if I did not start posting in the first place. I am 61 years old and have found myself learning and discerning again. It took a long way to get here. In that spirit here is tonight’s song.

WHAT’S NEXT

Next time will be the beginning of a four-part story over the next two weekends. It will culminate NEXT Sunday at which time I will be taking a break from posting. I hope to return but have no plan at this point. The story ahead is the most AMAZING story I have read this year. The part I love about this story is that NONE OF IT was known before I was born and the basic discovery, the intervening science, and finally its practical application have come to be all in the course of my lifetime. The most wonderful time to be alive.

Why am I excited? I believe we will talk about the breakthrough that leads to the next step for humankind. Part One on Saturday evening is CRISPR Part 1. For those of you that value the utility of a good pair of scissors, this will be a story for you.