evolution. By asking me to defend that assumption, Gerry made my whole argument crumble.
That conversation with Gerry was like flicking a switch in my brain. If a bear bites me with the teeth that were built by evolution, the pain I feel is real. By the same token, if I love my son with emotions that evolved, that love is real too.
When I had that botfly in my head, there was a thrill the whole time. I was participating in the bloodbath of nature. I was really experiencing what it meant to be a creature on this planet. I was doing battle with a parasite, and even though it kind of sucked, it was fun. I felt like I was part of nature. And yet when I took part in the oldest tradition that life forms have, the tradition of reproducing, I somehow talked myself into believing I wasn’t part of nature anymore. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Having Sam has given me a new way of connecting to the natural world.
There are seven deadly sins, and so far I’ve done my best to convince you that nature does a better job committing them than humans do. But I’ve only made it through six of the seven, and when it comes to pride, I think humans might actually take the trophy.
Pride is the idea that you’re different from everyone else and that the normal rules shouldn’t apply to you. This is where humans really shine. We once believed (and some people still believe) that Earth is at the center of the universe, that a God created us separately from the animals, and that humans have souls but animals do not. Each time scientists have uncovered evidence that has chipped away at one of those theories, society has taken decades or even centuries to accept the facts. We now know that we live on a rock that floats vulnerably in space, that we’re built of molecules, and that our thoughts result from electrical impulses. If you want to feel important, those are tough pills to swallow, and humans haven’t had a very easy time letting go of their pride to accept those ideas.
But even among those revelations, the theory of evolution seems to have been especially hard for humans to accept. With more than 150 years of scientific progress since Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species , the theory of evolution by means of natural selection still ruffles feathers. Natural selection is the only plausible explanation scientists have come up with to make sense of their observations of the natural world. In the century and a half since it was proposed, that theory has been tested over and over and over again, but no one has succeeded in proving it wrong. That’s why scientists treat it as a fact. II But despite that overwhelming avalanche of evidence, there are still millions of otherwise well-educated people who refuse to accept that evolutionhappens. We might be fine with the idea that the Earth goes around the sun, but society still hasn’t completed its transition to acceptance of evolution.
Perhaps one reason that people tend to use the word natural in such a positive way is that it’s a way of helping us through that transition. Saying that nature is wonderful lets us accept that we evolved from nature without letting go of the idea that we’re special. Instead of saying we’re just lowly animals, we’ve elevated the other living things to a spiritual plane on par with godliness. It’s not such a blow to your ego to acknowledge that you evolved from nature if you tell yourself that nature is perfect.
The truth of the matter, though, is that the creatures of Earth are playing dirty with one another, fighting over the energy necessary to make DNA copies of themselves. They’re not holy, benign creatures working together in harmony. It looks like that from a distance, just as New York looks clean from its skyline, but down at Earth’s street level the creatures are locked in a high-stakes battle. It’s a bloodbath, and we evolved in the midst of it. But however ruthless the nature we evolved in might be, I think human pride is
That conversation with Gerry was like flicking a switch in my brain. If a bear bites me with the teeth that were built by evolution, the pain I feel is real. By the same token, if I love my son with emotions that evolved, that love is real too.
When I had that botfly in my head, there was a thrill the whole time. I was participating in the bloodbath of nature. I was really experiencing what it meant to be a creature on this planet. I was doing battle with a parasite, and even though it kind of sucked, it was fun. I felt like I was part of nature. And yet when I took part in the oldest tradition that life forms have, the tradition of reproducing, I somehow talked myself into believing I wasn’t part of nature anymore. I couldn’t have been more wrong. Having Sam has given me a new way of connecting to the natural world.
There are seven deadly sins, and so far I’ve done my best to convince you that nature does a better job committing them than humans do. But I’ve only made it through six of the seven, and when it comes to pride, I think humans might actually take the trophy.
Pride is the idea that you’re different from everyone else and that the normal rules shouldn’t apply to you. This is where humans really shine. We once believed (and some people still believe) that Earth is at the center of the universe, that a God created us separately from the animals, and that humans have souls but animals do not. Each time scientists have uncovered evidence that has chipped away at one of those theories, society has taken decades or even centuries to accept the facts. We now know that we live on a rock that floats vulnerably in space, that we’re built of molecules, and that our thoughts result from electrical impulses. If you want to feel important, those are tough pills to swallow, and humans haven’t had a very easy time letting go of their pride to accept those ideas.
But even among those revelations, the theory of evolution seems to have been especially hard for humans to accept. With more than 150 years of scientific progress since Darwin wrote On the Origin of Species , the theory of evolution by means of natural selection still ruffles feathers. Natural selection is the only plausible explanation scientists have come up with to make sense of their observations of the natural world. In the century and a half since it was proposed, that theory has been tested over and over and over again, but no one has succeeded in proving it wrong. That’s why scientists treat it as a fact. II But despite that overwhelming avalanche of evidence, there are still millions of otherwise well-educated people who refuse to accept that evolutionhappens. We might be fine with the idea that the Earth goes around the sun, but society still hasn’t completed its transition to acceptance of evolution.
Perhaps one reason that people tend to use the word natural in such a positive way is that it’s a way of helping us through that transition. Saying that nature is wonderful lets us accept that we evolved from nature without letting go of the idea that we’re special. Instead of saying we’re just lowly animals, we’ve elevated the other living things to a spiritual plane on par with godliness. It’s not such a blow to your ego to acknowledge that you evolved from nature if you tell yourself that nature is perfect.
The truth of the matter, though, is that the creatures of Earth are playing dirty with one another, fighting over the energy necessary to make DNA copies of themselves. They’re not holy, benign creatures working together in harmony. It looks like that from a distance, just as New York looks clean from its skyline, but down at Earth’s street level the creatures are locked in a high-stakes battle. It’s a bloodbath, and we evolved in the midst of it. But however ruthless the nature we evolved in might be, I think human pride is
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