Fortunately, my husband is a science buff, and as he perused the limited offerings, he got very excited about The Gene. After all, it's just been released as a Ken Burns documentary. All the usual suspects are raving about it. Just two problems: it was waitlisted at the library (yes, e-books have waitlists; licensing issues, don't ask), AND it's a jillion pages long.
Both problems were easily solved by a certain mega-retailer's policy of providing samples of e-books free of charge. In this case, the entire first section, focused on history, was available. I think that was a solid 150 e-book pages and got me all the way from Aristotle to the Virginia State Colony for Epileptics and the Feeble-Minded. That was plenty to be going on with.
My husband's other suggestion was that I read a book by Richard Dawkins. "Why in the world would I want to do that?" I asked, mindful of Dawkins' reputation as a militant evangelist for atheism. My husband answered that the book in question had been given to him by a medical doctor we went to church with, following a conversation about creation and evolution. "Oh, if Dr. Palmer recommended it, that's all right," I thought, observing also the book's blessed brevity, and took the plunge.
Muherjee and Dawkins make surprisingly good companions. Both have highly readable styles and clear agendas. Muherjee wants you to understand what DNA is, how genes were discovered, and no doubt many other fascinating facts about the mechanics of heredity... featured in the five sections that I was too cheap to pay for and too impatient to read (I'm still in the 500's, people, and I'm not getting any younger!).
Dawkins, who I'm going to focus on from here on out, just wants to prove one thing: that God is unnecessary. Why does he use a Bible word in the title of his book and pepper the whole thing with references to Eve and perfection and "God's utility function"? Maybe to get the attention of people like Dr. Palmer and then me... or maybe because the world just intuitively appears to be... designed. Just saying.
He writes, "Evolution is very possibly not, in actual fact, always gradual. But it must be gradual when it is being used to explain the coming into existence of complicated, apparently designed objects, like eyes. For if it is not gradual in these cases, it ceases to have any explanatory power at all. Without gradualness in these cases, we are back to miracle, which is simply a synonym for the total absence of explanation." This quote makes it very clear what Dawkins wants to do: not prove that gradual evolution was and is, in fact, the only mechanism of speciation, but to prove that it is a sufficient explanation for all the complexity of the life we see around us.
However. I didn't read the book to argue with it. I don't have the background. I read it because I had to read something, and it seemed like a book of general knowledge that general people ought to have. Looked at as an introduction to the concept of the origin of species via evolution, I would say it was pretty helpful. It cleared up some misunderstandings for me, even as it raised other questions.
One thing it didn't do was challenge my faith. In fact, I enjoyed knowing more details about how evolution could produce such detailed organisms as the eye. I loved the analogy of DNA as digital information that works like a computer program, because it enabled me to see God not only as a great artist and a great engineer, but also as a great information technologist.
I even appreciated learning about the difference between analog and digital information. Turns out analog is like waves or spectrum colors or anything else that seems clear until it's not. So we all know what blue is and what green is. But what happens in between? Shades of grey indeed! Well, even though life is analog, it seems the DNA that programs cells is digital! I guess it's just like this photo, which uses binary code to depict an analog gradient. Maybe I'm just easily amused, but I think that's cool!As I'm writing this, I sit in my yard listening to birds and watching bees visit flowers. Thinking of evolution as an ongoing process, I consider whether the wildflowers that I allow to grow in my lawn may evolve in response to the pressure not only of pollinator and animal activity, but also to my actions with the lawnmower. Will only the showiest flowers, the ones in sheltered places, or those that grow lower than the mower blade survive to reproduce? If the same lawn is tended in the same way for generations, will the violets be shorter and the buttercups even taller and brighter?
I also consider the evolution of viruses and of insects that are making headlines today-- "superbugs" in two senses. I remember the mass extinction events I read about when I was in the Dinosaurium-- sort of the opposite side of the same coin. And I wonder: what makes us think that we are living at the end point of the processes God put in place "in the beginning"? Both the direct actions of humans and the pressures that all species put on each other... couldn't they result in further changes in species that we think of as having "arrived" at their final form?
I have a few questions that remain unanswered. I particularly don't understand the course of human evolution so far. Presumably other books address this question: if evolution is driven by survival of the fittest, why are humans so ill-fitted for survival in the wild? Why wasn't astigmatism eliminated from our gene pool millenia ago? What in the world made the absence of fur a survival trait for our ancestors? Why are we so poorly armed, with nails instead of claws and weak teeth instead of nice pointy fangs? What's so great about being bipedal? I'm not saying a theory of special creation particularly answers this question, I'm just saying it's a question!
Dawkins does not address this question, but he does speak to the issue of how the handicaps of aging have survived the pressures of survival. "Everybody is descended from an unbroken line of ancestors all of whom were at some time in their lives young but many of whom were never old. So we inherit whatever it takes to be young, but not necessarily whatever it takes to be old." I have sometimes thought that survival of the fittest was not all it is cracked up to be, leaving intact arthritis, heart disease, and all kinds of other useless and maladaptive conditions. But now I understand that since these things don't typically impact survival until AFTER we have passed on our DNA, they wouldn't be selected against even in the most hostile environments. That still doesn't explain why four-year-olds need glasses, though!
Taken together, both these books taught me more about the mechanics of the origins of species without turning me into a mechanist. They really exemplify the whole reason I undertook this project in the first place: I wanted to learn a little bit about a lot of things, things I might not expect to be interested in. After all, it's the Bible that tells us that "It is the glory of God to conceal a matter, But the glory of kings is to search out a matter." (Proverbs 25:2, NASB)
No comments:
Post a Comment