I’ve had an interesting thought about evolution in the past week. I wasn’t able to write it down sooner because the job I do to make money has been very busy lately. That is why there has been sparse postings lately.
Anyway, I was thinking about all the accomplishments of humanity as a whole. How we have found a way to farm, to build, and to create amazing and complex machines. More so than that, we are able to comprehend complex concepts that no other species on the planet seems even remotely capable of.
Granted, there are so many things that humanity has done that are horrible, pointless, and otherwise horrendous acts of evil. We have destroyed the very things we’ve created, both abstractly and literally. Billions of lives have been snuffed out for the sake of evil.
But on the whole, we’ve been moving forward. Yes, our current civilization is on the decline, but I see more and more people each day taking up the call to restore what we have lost. Eventually those voices will be too loud and numerous to not hear.
Now compare what we have done over the thousands of years of our existence to the accomplishments of animals during that same time span. Even the most intelligent of animals, like chimpanzees or dolphins, don’t seem to create anything more complex than a stick used to pull bugs out of a mud pile.
Yes, animals do build things. Most of the time it is out of instinct and the shelters tend to be temporary. They don’t have plumbing, electricity, or any furniture.
Here’s my main point: in the millions of years in which we have supposedly evolved, there has been no species besides man that has managed to build even the simplest of devices. There has been no monkey who created a small cart to carry his bananas. There has been no dolphin who has created a floatation device to allow their crippled and young to keep to the surface.
Instead we see animals who operate primarily on instinct. They build not because they are inspired or because they see the long term, but purely out of instinct. To top that off, their days are not filled with stories or complex entertainment but simply foraging and surviving.
Human beings strive for greater things. We seek to do better than just getting by. Sure, we do that from time to time and there are always tribes of people who do not strive for more. But of all the creatures on this planet, man is the only one who not created simple machines, but complex ones as well.
We are philosophers, engineers, priests, and leaders. We form tribes based on common ideas rather than common sub-species. And we have tamed animals to live among us without trouble (most of the time).
The progress of man is what makes me a skeptic of evolution. This is because the basic premise of evolution is that human beings are animals, just of a slightly higher order. This premise is flawed in the face of how much of a higher order humanity is when compared to animals, even the chimpanzees we supposedly evolved from.
There is something special about us that sets us apart from nature. We require this planet to live and yet we seem to be not altogether part of it. We bend and break the rules that other animals follow on a daily basis. It is as if we have our own rules to live by.
I find it odd that most evolutionary priests like to present humanity as some complex animal while at the same these same people tend to condemn us for destroying nature. Yet in our hearts, we know ourselves to be different, to not operate by instinct alone, and that seems to indicate that there is more than just nature, just animals, and just natural selection.