Survival of the Dimmest

I grew up Catholic. I went to church every week, nearly all of my friends were Christians, and I eventually went to a Catholic High School. Never, in all that time, did I have a problem reconciling that existence with things like science, evolution, or secular politics. I was even under the impression, one shared by Pope John Paul II, that religion had accepted the validity of scientific discovery over biblical literalism. I felt completely at liberty to recognize the existence of dinosaurs millions of years ago and the gradual evolution of man and still be able to believe that God created all of that and guided that process. Only in the last 10 years have I come to realize that people who avoid the broader world, who shelter themselves in homeschool echo chambers, have no such belief and are only becoming more entrenched.

The scariest part is that as they've moved farther to the fringe, and feel more at odds with the rest of society, the angrier and more aggressive they've become. No longer at peace to have their own beliefs, they've started disinformation campaigns to spread their beliefs under the guise of science and reason, and force it into schools. If their arguments come off sounding ridiculous, though, it's because you can't make an effective counter-argument without understanding the initial argument, and since they avoid science and information, that becomes impossible. I have no such problem since I am secure that my beliefs can stand up to scrutiny and contemplation, so I've often exposed myself to their ideas so that I could understand them, and then effectively counter them. In doing so, I've seen a lot of scary things, like the Creation Museum where animatronic humans ride domesticated Triceratops, or power point presentations where evolution is boiled down to the idea that your grandfather was a monkey.

But the arguments are all flawed for one reason: Creationists don't know what evolution is. Without a science class or a library card to support them, they've only ever gotten the cliff notes version of Darwin, and so think it is laughably ridiculous. That argument about a monkey being your grandfather is laughable, but that is not evolution, it's distortion. No one believes such a thing, and it's a straw-man argument to imply that we do. When you explain that evolutionists believe that millions of years ago we had a common ancestral species where over each generation, some diversified genetically to become humanoid species and eventual homo sapiens while others eventually became chimps and others ape, it makes much more sense and seems more plausible. It's also more complicated, which is why biblical literalists reject it outright.

The other adage that they often latch onto is the concept "survival of the fittest." This isn't a universal property like gravity or the speed of light, nor is it a promotion of an ideology, but merely an accepted concept. It doesn't say that the fittest WILL survive and all else will die, but that the fittest are MOST LIKELY to survive while others may not. Again, ambiguity is not as pleasing to certainty, so that ignore this. A favorite attack of Creationists, often under the auspices of their Intelligent Design monicker, is that a belief in evolution leads to an acceptance of eugenics; i.e. that if you believe the fittest DO survive, that only the fittest SHOULD survive. As the lowest common denominator of all discourse, they compare us to Nazis.

But again, in avoiding knowledge they avoid understanding, and so they don't understand what actually happened during the Holocaust. The Nazis were trying to create what they perceived as a master race, however that does not mean that what they were aiming to create actually WAS a master race. In a way, what they were creating were show dogs: beings that were attractive and fit a certain mold of superiority without regard to actual quality. Dogs that are pure bred win trophies, but they often have shortened life spans, suffer from genetic disease, and are unable to survive in the wild away from constant human intervention. They may be the prettiest, but they are not the fittest, which is precisely what the Aryan race would have been - pretty but dumb. The fallacy is that survival of the fittest led to the holocaust, while really survival of the fittest was the principle that allowed the Jewish people to survive the Holocaust because, in reality, the Jewish were better fit for survival than the Germans.

The Nazis had all the perceived advantages; they had all the political power, the weapons, the money, and far greater numbers. Jewish people were surrounded and at the mercy of the Nazis, who had nothing but hatred for them and a desire to marginalize them and wipe them off the face of the Earth. Yet, despite the odds stacked against them, many Jews survived incredible hardships and went on to prosper, while the Germans lost the war. The Jewish people faced harsh weather, grueling labor, disease, starvation, beatings, distress, and misery. And while millions died, millions survived all of that. When you learn about what occurred during the Holocaust, it is seemingly miraculous that any of them survived, that no human possibly should or could, and yet they did. They were particularly suited to survive, and so they did. The Germans, with all of the advantages they had, were defeated from without as well as within, and were unable to suffer the relatively minor hardships of war compared to the adversity faced by their victims. And now while Germans have carved out a stable place in the world, Jewish people have prosperity and influence disproportionate to their actual numbers. They make up less than 2 percent of the U.S. population, and yet think of how many Jewish politicians, authors, actors, comedians, musicians, business people, lawyers, and journalists you've heard of. Think of how the entire political reality of the Middle East and global foreign relations is affected by Israel. If the Holocaust proved anything it as not that you can or should create a master race fit to survive, but that the Jewish people were uniquely fit for survival, and so they have.

Evolution extends beyond biology and also to ideas, and the fittest ideas survive while others falter. Evolution is a relatively new concept in the history of mankind, yet in that time it has gained critical mass of support. It has faced legal, moral, and philosophical challenges and survived all of them, and only gained in acceptance over time. The concept of evolution is uniquely fit to survive because it has verifiable fact on it's side, and can therefore withstand storms of controversy and disputation. Creationism has had thousands of years to gain power and influence, and yet cannot withstand those same forces. It is an unfit idea with no rational basis or argument to support it, and like the Dinosaurs or the Troglodyte is doomed to fail, eventually.