Evolution Runs Through it

​The nearest McDonald's has reopened after a mercifully brief renovation period, so I can continue slowly committing suicide by eating there once a week. It looks gorgeous inside and out. But now the several small tables in the middle have been replaced by one big table with ten chairs around it, so you can pretend you're having family dinner with strangers, which of course is what I've always wanted. I sat across from an old man and hoped we could mutually agree to ignore each other as we read our newspapers. We did for several minutes, until suddenly his trembling clenched fist came hovering over my tray. What the? I thought. Is he trying to steal my fries or what? Then he opened his fist and deposited a Clementine. I looked up and took off one side of my headphones, figuring I was obligated to talk to him now. He smiled and said in his quiet, frail voice, "Take that with you, will ya?"

"Thank you," I said, and just kind of smiled dumbly because this was so random, but in a good way. I feel extra awkward talking to old people because I have trouble hearing them and they have even more trouble than everyone else hearing me, so I was relieved when he went back to his newspaper. But don't take that the wrong way. I was very grateful for the Clementine.

The world needs more uplifting stories like that, doesn't it? So here's another. A person previously from my ward who is a big fan of this blog pulled over and gave me a ride the last few blocks home last night. She said she recognized me in the dark because of my distinctive walk. She said I walk with purpose and not many people do. I don't know why not. I know where I came from and where I'm going, so I have a purpose. Doesn't everybody?

Sometimes a group gets to talking about our most embarrassing moments, and I can't think of one. Being embarrassed generally requires other people to notice that you exist, so it hasn't happened to me very much. But I do get embarrassed on behalf of people who should be but aren't. Like Utah's Board of Education. They embarrassed me to the point of writing a letter to the editor of the Salt Lake Tribune for the first time, but that was two weeks ago and it appears that they're not going to publish it, so I will. The limit was 200 words so I used 200 words.

I am embarrassed by the Utah Board of Education's efforts to put pseudoscience in high school curricula.  Anyone who doesn't even know what “theory” means in scientific parlance, as they clearly don't, is entirely unqualified to decide what our children should be taught as science.  Gravity is "just a theory" yet no one argues that we should teach a bogus alternative.  We know that evolution happens; the only debate is the particulars of how.

I assume board members' opposition to evolution stems from Mormon beliefs.  I'm also a Mormon and, like the biology professors at BYU and thousands of other Mormons, I have no problem accepting evolution as the obvious explanation for the diversity of life on this planet.  So-called intelligent design is not scientifically valid and has no place being taught as such.  Many high school students will figure this out on their own and rightly come to distrust their teachers, and then theism altogether.  Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, "The Religion that is afraid of science dishonours God and commits suicide."

There really is no excuse for this level of willful ignorance about something that has been so well-established since before anyone reading this was born.

- Christopher Randall Nicholson

I mean, I think they should have published that because it's an important topic and far more coherent than some of the crap I've read in their letters to the editor, but whatever. I have no idea how many Mormons accept evolution, quite possibly hundreds of thousands or millions, but I'm sure at least thousands, especially among young adults and everywhere that's not the United States. Here's the rest of the Emerson quote that didn't fit in the letter: "It [the fearful Religion] acknowledges that it is not equal to the whole of truth, that it legislates, tyrannizes over a village of God's empires but is not the immutable universal law. Every influx of atheism, of skepticism is thus made useful as a mercury pill assaulting and removing a diseased religion and making way for truth." Ouch. Strong words. But he wasn't wrong. By the way, I habitually pronounce it "TRIB-une" instead of "Trib-UNE" because it's one of those words that I learned from reading and didn't hear out loud until years later.

You have to pick your battles, though. I agreed to disagree with my institute teacher's assertion that all evolution is fair game except for humans. He said there may have been "human-like" things evolving on the Earth before Adam and Eve, but he sketched them out on a paper and he drew a line between them and he said there's a line between them. And I just let it go because it's an emotionally loaded topic and any argument would be fruitless. But I'll say it here because this is my blog and I'll say what I want: such a line demonstrably does not exist in any physical sense. There is no such line in genetics, there is no such line in physiology, there is no such line in the fossil record, there is no such line in the archaeological record. The line is spiritual and theological only - unless one wishes to assert with a straight face that, to name one of scores of examples, God had some great unknowable purpose for giving the same defective Vitamin C gene to humans and other primates and literally no other animals anywhere. (Guinea pigs and fruit bats are the only other animals that can't produce Vitamin C, and that's due to entirely different defects.)

Now, I like and respect this teacher so I'm not bashing him, but I just have waited long enough to get that off my chest. I do not like or respect Utah's Board of Education. Every member of it who's pushing for intelligent design in schools should be forced to resign in disgrace. It would be difficult to overstate how ridiculous it is that they're still having this discussion.

Or Utah, evidently.

I attended a panel discussion on campus called "Facticity" that touched on truth and fake news and stuff like confirmation bias. Basically, because of evolution, our brains have a ton of quirks that were useful for survival but now mostly just make rational thinking impossible. Really, it's so unreliable that maybe we'd just as well not have any opinions at all, but until that becomes possible we just have to struggle with it as best we can. Confirmation bias is probably the worst. I don't think it's more obvious anywhere than in politics. Conservatives read conservative books and articles, liberals read liberal books and articles, and they both come away with renewed confidence in what they already believed. I remember being afraid, almost, when I saw a book called How Can You Possibly Be a Mormon and a Democrat?, and knowing that I didn't want to read it because seeing thoughtful and intelligent arguments against my conviction that all Mormons and all people in the world should be conservative would make me uncomfortable. I'm embarrassed about that now, but I think virtually everyone in the world has thought that way at one time or another.

I used to think, when I read a book by Glenn Beck, that it was so well-documented and argued that no one could possibly refute it and anyone who read it would become conservative. Now I know better. People choose the facts they like and ignore the others. Sometimes innocently, sometimes not so much. Sometimes they extrapolate and twist the facts and hope no one notices. Often no one does. For example, BYU study discovers that religious individuals who view pornography are more likely to describe themselves as "addicted" even if they don't show any symptoms of addiction. Porn apologists jump on this and report, incorrectly, that the study discovered that porn addiction doesn't exist and is just an illusion created by the guilt of religion. An honest article that describes what the study actually says is dismissed as "spin". This happened a few months ago. And by the way, contrary to what everyone seems to think, nothing is ever proven by one study. It has to be repeated over and over and over again by multiple scientists before it can be considered legit. Which no one has ever been able to do with the alleged vaccine-autism link... how strange...

I wrote about confirmation bias a few years ago for a class, in an essay on the Dinosaur Renaissance. Basically, the scientific orthodoxy believed that dinosaurs were all cold-blooded, slow and stupid, and they held on to these archaic notions despite overwhelming evidence against them. There was still a bit of evidence for their position, of course, as there is even now, but they disproportionately focused on it and ignored everything else. That's confirmation bias. Dr. Robert T. Bakker fought an uphill battle to overturn them and now most of his own hypotheses, once controversial, are the conventional wisdom. How we see dinosaurs today is mostly thanks to him, in large part through his influence on a moderately successful book and film franchise you may have heard of, called "Jurassic Park". So we see through this experience and others that scientists aren't immune to the same brain quirks that mislead everyone else, but thanks to the nature of science the truth will come forth eventually both because and in spite of their efforts.

Now I try to proactively overcome confirmation bias. Whether in politics, religion, or the pineapple on pizza debate, I read things that I disagree with and either come up with reasons why they're wrong, alter my own views, or both. I'm far more eclectic and nuanced these days. And while I'm surely still wrong about a lot of things, I know I'm a lot more right than the dogmatic jackass I used to be. But less right-wing, ba-dum-tss. And I have to apply this even to the things I feel most strongly about. Like evolution. In order for me not to be a hypocrite, there have to be some conceivable circumstances under which I would stop believing in evolution. So what are they? Simple. There would have to be a superior alternative theory that better explained the (sometimes literal) mountains of evidence. People keep making the mistake of thinking that if they disprove evolution, creationism is proven by default. But creationism spectacularly fails to stand up on its own merits. Any legitimate alternative would have to be much better, and there's about a 0% chance that one is forthcoming. But hypothetically, that's what it would take.

Also, if you aren't already, please make an effort not to believe or share fake news. That would really help too.

Rammstein - Spieluhr [Music Box]

Since we've recently had Halloween and Day of the Dead, and Dead Sunday is coming up for German Protestants, that's as good as excuse as I need to share another gem from the most epic Neue Deutsche Härte band ever. This one guest stars Khira Li Lindemann, lead guitarist Richard Kruspe's daughter, who I can only presume is an alien or a robot. I have posted the English lyrics (taken from here) below the video by way of explanation of why this song is appropriate for Halloween and Day of the Dead and Dead Sunday.

A small human only pretends to die
It wanted to be completely alone
The small heart stood still for hours
So they decided it was dead
It is being buried in wet sand
With a music box in its hand

The first snow covers the grave
It woke the child very softly
In a cold winter night
The small heart is awakened

As the frost flew into the child
It wound up the music box
A melody in the wind
And the child sings from the ground

Up and down, rider
And no angel climbs down
My heart does not beat anymore
Only the rain cries on the grave
Up and down, rider
A melody in the wind
My heart does not beat anymore
And the child sings from the ground

The cold moon, in full magnificence
It hears the cries in the night
And no angel climbs down
Only the rain cries on the grave

Between hard oak boards
It will play with the music box
A melody in the wind
And the child sings from the ground

Up and down, rider
And no angel climbs down
My heart does not beat anymore
Only the rain cries on the grave
Up and down, rider
A melody in the wind
My heart does not beat anymore
And the child sings from the ground

On Dead Sunday they heard
This melody from God's field [the graveyard]
Then they unearthed it
They saved the small heart in the child

Up and down, rider
A melody in the wind
My heart does not beat anymore
And the child sings on the ground
Up and down, rider
And no angel climbs down
My heart does not beat anymore
​Only the rain cries on the grave