Darwin Day in the Hood

March 3, 2014 | Revolution Newspaper | revcom.us On February 11, a group of us met in a library room in the hood to both celebrate Darwin Day and discuss the importance of the science of evolution. We used a computer presentation of the images in the centerfold pages of The Science of Evolution and the Myth of Creationism: Knowing What’s Real and Why It Matters (by Ardea Skybreak) as a guideline to discussion; and what a lively discussion it was. We expected to hear some disagreement over religion, since several of the participants believe in different forms of religion, including Islam and spiritualism. The controversy jumped out right from the start, when the presenter showed pictures portraying the different creation myths in human societies throughout the world, myths which developed when people did not have the basis to have a scientific understanding of the world, and made up stories to try to explain how the world and people came to be. Right at that point, the argument was made: “OK, but there had to have been a PLAN.” When the presenter said, “no, what the science of evolution shows is that there was NOT a plan,” the question was posed, “But where did the whole universe come from? There had to have been a plan.” The presenter said, “well, let’s set that question of a grand plan for the whole universe aside for now and let’s get into what it is that the science of evolution shows about how life actually developed on this planet.” So we got into it, going through the concentrated short course in evolution—with amazing pictures—that is the centerfold of Ardea Skybreak’s book. And everyone took it seriously and was really engaging with what the science of evolution is all about—repeatedly comparing and contrasting this to the arguments that there had to be a PLAN. The pictures alone in the centerfold paint a powerful picture—a photo of a fossil of early one-celled life that is 3.5 billion years old. The question was posed: how do you know, how do you know that these things are as old as you say? Drawing from an earlier part of the book, the presenter explained how there really is firm scientific grounding for dating how old things are, including going back 3.5 or 4.5 billion years. (“Dating Techniques”, on p. 17 of the book, explains clearly how it is that things that are old can be scientifically and accurately dated. This is in a chapter called “An Overview” which is a very good thing for a presenter who has already carefully studied the book as a whole to review before doing a presentation like this.) As we got into discussing that the earliest origin of life was in the oceans of the early Earth, an interesting and important question came up which had to do with “what is life?” Isn’t every part of the material world life? Aren’t atoms life? The presenter, again drawing from the section of the book titled “An overview,” explained that in order for there to be life, the object had to be able to take energy in from the environment, had to be able to reproduce/replicate, and it had to have some sort of membrane to separate itself from other matter. Someone brought up the example that trees take in energy through photosynthesis. We were talking about how we all came from a common ancestor ALL THE WAY BACK—all the forms of life evolved from a common one-celled ancestor 3.5 billion years ago. This led us to reflect on the depth of time involved in this—an amazing number of generations, an amazing amount of time for all the species to develop from a single original cell. Someone observed that it was kind of amazing that the Earth was just right in the right place in the solar system; but still it took catastrophic changes for even this to happen (e.g. the moon being ripped out of the Earth). I am not going to trace through all that the presenter discussed as he went through the centerfold, step by step, with its vivid pictures—but how can you resist whale skeletons from 40 million years ago, with legs? Animal life left the sea—and there is a picture of one of the earliest fish-like creatures starting to get legs and walk on land—and then animals went back into the sea, and there is the whale with legs to prove it. One key point in the presentation was going into descent with modification—how every population of creatures (or plants) is made up of individuals that are not the same, each has variation, and they reproduce and carry forward to the next generation what they have in common (e.g. birds cannot give birth to crocodiles, they produce birds) but also there is variation within that and some of the new generation are better adapted to the conditions they face and better able to live and to reproduce the following generation. This simple but powerful explanation developed by Darwin explains a great deal about how life evolved and does not in any way require a plan but instead shows how all of this was a natural process—all the great diversity of life can and has developed without any plan. So we went over this from different angles—the centerfold was very helpful in actually showing pictures of how animals adapt (or not) to their environment as it changes; and the important role of accident in this process as well. For example, how squirrels in the Grand Canyon started out as one species, but over time because of the enormous distance across the canyon, populations on each side are diverging into two separate species. We talked about extinctions—how most of the species that have lived on the planet no longer exist—and mass extinctions. A heavy point was made by one of the participants—that we could destroy ourselves. The presenter mentioned that the five previous extinctions were naturally caused by many species not being able to adapt to environmental jolts like an asteroid impact, which affected all kinds of life from plants to dinosaurs. However, many scientists are now talking about how a sixth extinction is underway... and this time, it is being caused by humans. At the same time, we are capable of, and need to become, stewards of the environment. The complexity of the eye is often brought up by creationists as an example of something that couldn’t simply evolve, supposedly because of its complexity. But in fact, the pictures show many different stages of development existing in different animals today and give you a sense of how a simple sea slug with only a small spot of light-sensitive cells would have an advantage over another sea slug that did not have any such light-sensitive cells at all—and the slug with the “eye spot” would be better able to reproduce and this points to how the eye developed through greater complexity to the eyes of humans. And we noted that humans are NOT at the top of the chart in the eye department, as some birds for example can see much better than humans. Then we got into human evolution; and what makes us human. One slide that had a lot of impact was the picture of the early human embryo with gill slits and a tail—how did the creationist theory explain this? That one picture points powerfully to evolution—that humans descended through many generations from creatures who had gills and swam in the sea. The further discussion of the emergence of humans in Africa was all very fascinating. One of the participants at one time believed that humans evolved separately in Africa and other parts of the world. An argument had been made at the beginning that “if humans’ closest relative is the chimpanzee, then how come chimpanzees are still here?” But the centerfold quickly and clearly traces how both chimpanzees and humans branched off from an earlier African ape—and then the line that ultimately ended up as humans produced many different branches and there are fossils of many of these. The picture of the chimpanzee and human skeletons side by side was very effective in illustrating how much underlying similarity there is. We traced it further—how the first big leap (perhaps in response to changing conditions, as parts of Africa were drying out and some jungle was becoming more like grasslands) was the leap to walking erect, on two legs not four. There were many varieties of these hominids in Africa, and then, after millions of more years, a further leap, as large brains developed. And pre-humans (i.e. before our own Homo sapiens) were leaving Africa hundreds of thousands of years ago and that they traveled and lived across Asia and Europe; and yet they did not survive into the present. And that all of this is firmly documented and proven, and here you can see the pictures of the fossilized skulls of these creatures. All of this was quite powerful and had a big effect. And then, there was the map of how our own species, Homo sapiens, one single species of humanity, emerged in Africa 200,000 years ago and migrated across the whole planet. All this was very, very new to some. At the end, we sort of stepped back to look at the whole picture. The idea that there had to be a PLAN, that all of this could not have just come from the world, that there had to be something to make it happen, had deep influence. The presenter came back to the point that the truth is that the material world itself has the basis and potential to bring forward everything we see—including life and human beings—the discussion had revealed how life evolved not because of a plan but because of descent with modification. Another way this was returned to and engaged was in addressing an argument that certain animals behave like ants: “Look at the ants, they all work together, they all have their jobs, they don’t rape and rob each other...and look at humans...” this led to the presenter talking briefly about how this human behavior was not “natural” or evolved, but a product of capitalism, which promotes and enforces individualism and competition—and that there have been periods in human history like socialism in China in which drug addiction, prostitution , etc., was eliminated, when people changed the system to one where people had meaningful lives and were not forced to choose between horrific choices. We got into the question of, if there is no higher power, and what about morality? The presenter pointed out that Ardea Skybreak talks about how there is no larger meaning or purpose to life, if you mean some kind of cosmic, God-given meaning or purpose. There is just us human beings on this planet—we have to forge our own purpose and meaning. But that does not mean that there is no right or wrong. What we do matters—to us. It makes a great deal of difference what we do and whether we do make revolution and get rid of this system and build a much better and radically different world. As we broke up, it was clear everyone had been challenged and excited by the discussion, was thinking about all of it, and wanted more of this in the future. Here in the hood, it was a breath of fresh air to learn some real science and not the fake stuff like ghosts and mermaids that permeate TV culture. As we went our separate ways, some participants talked about how they had not been taught evolution in school at all. One participant commented that they learned a lot in the discussion, especially in regard to race (about how we are all one species, “biologically indivisible,” as noted in the book). Someone noted that even birds have many different species, but HUMANS are only one, relatively recent and all from Africa.