Anecdotes: The "E" Word
06/09/2023
Today while visiting a familiar part of Norway near Oslo where I had lived in my early childhood, I had an interesting interaction with a family friend, the wife in a couple who attended the same church as my parents did when I lived here over 17 years ago (when I was six).
They had known that my area of study was in biology, and she came up to me quite suddenly asking questions about my degree and how much it had to do with "the theory of evolution and the big bang theory". When I don't feel like justifying myself I sometimes introduce myself as a "biologist" or my degree as in "biology" rather than using the full title of the major, which is Ecology & Evolutionary Biology. It was clear pretty quickly that she was trying to find an inroad into generating the "how can evolution and the big bang replace God" conversation. So I kindly started explaining that first of all, evolution and the big bang are very separate things that have less to do with eachother than many realize; that is, they are not intertwined and mutually inclusive. I suppose they are lumped as sort of the same category because they are both unfortunately viewed as contradictory to religion by some evangelical christians, as if the sole purpose of these concepts were to purge christianity.
Her premise was the pretty typical "if organisms are so complicated and ecosystems are balanced so perfectly, how can it all come from random chance and not an intelligent design?" In the politest way I knew how and in my rusty Bokmål (modern Norwegian) from having lived in the US for so many years, I tried to explain a little bit of how natural selection works, that ecosystems and organisms survive so well because so many organisms without exactly the right traits are purged in the process. I tried explaining that the concept of evolution isn't this anti-religion thing but rather a process which we can observe that happens in all living things over time; we can even observe generations of bacteria becoming entirely distinct populations (species), in a matter of days or weeks.
Rather than wanting to learn how this process works or what evolution in fact means from an evolutionary biologist, she took on a very defensive role pointing to the root of all organisms and the beginning of time; how on earth could they have become so complex? Whereas I was simply trying to explain what the concept of evolution referred to, she was tackling the conversation as a binary debate: either evolution is real or God is real. As if my acknowledgement of evolution as a concept meant that I was vehemently anti-God.
Perhaps through the purpose of evangelism, eventually this little interaction ended in her giving me a book she suggested I read, which she explained was written by a christian educated in medicine whose explanations were very scientific. The book was titled Livet – Skapelse Eller Tilfeldighet? translated as "Life – Creation or Randomness?" For the first few moments I thought to myself "great, another time-wasting book I'll need to weasel myself out of". Having grown up in a religious family it had been a while since I'd encountered the concerned, evangelical push of my mother and environment of creation vs evolution; topics I figured I'd spent enough of my life exploring and had come past. But on second thought, I realized this was a good way to expand my clearly-struggling vocabulary in the realm of scientific and philosophical terminology in Bokmål, and perhaps an opportunity to understand the minds of those so fearful of the term "evolution."
Anecdote Takeaways:
I think if nothing else, there are three main takeaways from this story and interaction.
One is that, resistant religious and evangelical sects are found all over the world, even in countries generally known for secular and progressive politics such as Norway. Another is, religion is beneficial to well-being if treated as a personal spiritual connection and not an encyclopedia of how the physical universe works. Separating the realms of physical observation-based knowledge (science) from a spiritual values-based conceptualization (religion) is necessary. In other words, if a religion says that ice is actually the solid form of fire, or that the sun cools the earth, or that gravity doesn't exist, would you believe that? No, these are things we can observe. Science only seeks to explain things we can observe.
Broader Problem/Discussion:
I think that in general, there's a broad misconception as to what evolution really refers to, among both deniers and even those who openly embrace the concept. When the term "theory of evolution" is used, it implies that this concept has only been speculated and tested before, and not actually observed. Well, the theoretical aspect is only part of what evolution encompasses; we can easily observe evolution take place in front of our eyes; it just refers to the changes that take place in organisms from one generation to the next, whether at an individual level or population level. No one can deny that when you have a child, that child looks a little bit different than the adult. In prokaryotes and bacteria that reproduce very rapidly, you can observe multiple generations build up differences over time such that the ending generation is unrecognizeable and diagnosable under our definitions as a separate species than the starting generation, all in a matter of days or weeks.
Thus, evolution just refers to change, in general, that happens in nature. You could divide this further in micro and macro evolution, but the definitions of the limits between the two are blurry and subjective, and the application of them hinders recognition that evolution is a spectrum--it happens constantly, over short and long terms. We know it happens because we can observe things change.
