What do you do when your Theory is too good?

For so long now, we've been patiently explaining how evolution works, to all those who want to listen. It does not produce Hopeful Monsters, with an X-Men-like change in one generation. None of us are going to get Healing Factors or the ability to shoot lasers out of our eyes. It's a slow process, taking generations, and hundreds of thousands of years. This is why the argument by Literal Creationists that no dog has ever produced a cat is so silly. It is nothing but a straw man, for no biologist has ever argued anything remotely like that. Given the right environmental factors, over many, many generations, and a hundred thousand years, the remote descendants of dogs might appear to look more like cats than they do today- but that's a big if. And granted, fast reproducing species like bacteria and viruses do show evolution in our lifetime, with a high rate of Darwins (the units of evolutionary speed), so that we can easily trace how the HIV virus evolved in different environments into different "species", or types. (The environment in that case would be various populations of us, depending on our sexual activities.) But bacterial and viral selection has never been as sexy, if you'll pardon the pun.

Now, in the span of a few generations- twenty-six to be exact- and in eight years, guppies show selection towards various fecundity (birth) levels, depending on their environments. When put into two streams where there were no guppies, the stream that had predators produced guppies that had many offspring (since some of them would be eaten), and the stream without predators produced fewer offspring. (For those that say that no new species if formed, all that is required there is for isolation change producing a slight tweak in reproductive structures, or time of breeding, or proteins on the egg, etc.)

This study dramatically shows how it is environment which drives evolutionary change, and the formation of new populations and species. A stable environment is unlikely to produce major changes or many species; a quickly changing environment, like that the dynamic equilibrium of the coral reefs, produces the greatest diversity of any ecosystem. But who knew that evolution could actually happen so quickly.

The question isn't why organisms evolve so slowly. It is more, how is it that they evolve so quickly, with so little encouragement? And granted, this does nothing to help the macrofauna in the 6th Mass Extinction Event we are causing. But does it provide some hope for the more quickly breeding microfauna?

My Mom's a Monkey

Okay, not really, of course. She's an ape, a primate, but lacking a tail, she's no monkey, and her ancestors never were either. They were primates, like her, going back to the days of lemur-like creatures. And rather famously all over the news of late, we have discovered Ida, a precursor transition fossil, showing the links between monkeys and apes.

A note about terminology. The press loves to use the word "missing link", crowing about discoveries, as do the Literal Creationists, decrying the truth of those same discoveries. In truth, scientists don't talk about ideas like "missing links". It implies that there is something missing out there, in particular, linking two organisms or two species, and that it can be found. This makes for a convenient idea with Literal Creationists, as they can always suggest that the Missing Link has yet to be found. But there can never be such a thing.

As Zeno pointed out long ago, you can never reach the halfway point; as Heraclitus said, everything is in flux, so you can never jump into the same river twice. (His disciple pointed out you can never jump into the same river once.) Species are not concrete entities- they are constantly changing entities, in every generation. There is not a time when you can point to this and say it is Homo rhodesiensis, and to another, and say that is Homo sapiens. There is not an individual or fossil individual that would be exactly halfway in between, to be "the moment" when the transition occurred. It's not logically possible.

But evolutionary science dictates that you also can't find that transitional moment, even if it was there. Fossils are simply too rare, so that the vast majority of the 99% of species that have gone extinct will never be found. Certainly, it's possible that we have occasionally come across such an individual, who is roughly halfway between two other known species- but the odds are simply too much against it. And if we do find a halfway point, we would then have a new Missing Link to discover, between that species and the first, ad infinitum.

This is why scientists, as opposed to Literal Creationists and the media, discuss "transitional fossils". These are fossils that represent a half-way point, like the wondrous Tiktaalik, but we recognize that this species is not actually in our evolutionary history, but was probably a branching point, much as Homo erectus is a cousin, and not an ancestor. Evolution is not a tree with most branches reaching the top, but a Christmas tree, with the vast majority of species going extinct. We find only clues in different organisms that would give a sample indication of what would be a halfway point- a transitional fossil.

And Darwinius masillae, Ida, is just such a transitional fossil. And of course, as soon as she was discovered, there was the litany from Literal Creationists and Intelligent Designers that she wasn't a "missing link", and we still needed to find the real missing link etc. But there was another line of attack, suggested directly or indirectly by various people- that there is no way our ancestor could be a "monkey". Again, evolution doesn't suggest this, and Ida is no monkey. But more intriguing is why there would be such a visceral reaction to the idea of one's ancestors being monkeys.

One repeatedly runs into the idea that this in some way diminishes humanity, if our ancestors are monkeys. And though there is some resistance from the same groups to the idea of ancestors being fish, or bacteria, or amphibians, it is the monkey and "gorilla" idea that most offends. And this seems a bit odd. Why would this be the case?

There may perhaps be a relic from the egregious ties of African-Americans to monkeys, a legacy we thought was past, but is still used to this day in reference to even the First Lady. It may be that some few individuals still think this way, and don't want their (white) selves tied to the same insult they perceive of African Americans. But this can't be true for the majority who strenuously object to any ties between us and monkeys. Again, they reject Evolutionary Theory, but they have a more visceral reaction to this particular connection, claiming that it somehow diminishes humans to be tied in his manner. Continuously, in the objections to our tie to monkeys, comes the idea that it diminishes humans- and this is found in the earliest objections to Darwin's theory.

This is a mystery. For the majority of these people are Christians. And they follow a text that says humanity was made from dust, that God considers us as so still. We are but worms- even maggots! Is not a worm, and even a maggot, a far worse comparison that that of a monkey? The Bible makes it clear that we are nothing on our own, in our own status.

In the emotional objections of the Literal Creationists (as opposed to the reasoned objections), one continuously gets the idea that humanity must be elevated, as if they believed that what Hamlet says in jest should be so in truth- What a piece of work is man?!

And yet, in those same passages, it is clear that because of our nothingness, God cares for us. It is precisely when God calls us worms that he says he will help us. It is when he calls us dust that he rises in pity. God cares about the outcast and the downtrodden first. He desires to be the servant king. He asks only that we ask for his help, that we affirm that we are nothing without him.

Which leads inexorably to one conclusion. The writings of Literal Creationist and IDists indicate that they reject the tie to monkeys because it lowers our status. Our lowliness of status is affirmed continuously in the Bible. Indeed, the Bible ties directly our lowliness of status to the compassion of God, and, to the extent that we affirm our lowliness and need of him, he comes to assist us. And so, when any of us reject our lowly status, or any status because we perceive it as lowly, we reject the offer of help from God, and reject the idea of God as God.

God with us, in our Death

John Haught writes one of the finest works in the emerging genre of evolutionary theology. In it he describes how Christianity is really only fully fulfilled in the light of evolution; and evolution only makes sense fully within the Christian myth. His central point in this is the kenosis, Christ's emptying of himself by becoming man, suffering as a human, and dying on the cross, all for love. Haught extends this out to the central Christian principle of panentheism to answer the troubling question of theodicy. God is not everything, but rather everywhere, and in everything. He then contemplates, how does this then answer the problem of suffering? Evolution did not invent theodicy, but it certainly accentuates it, as there are constant billions of creatures who suffer and die, even if one excludes those lacking in brains and therefore the capacity of suffering. And these countless creatures are doing this long before "sin" entered the world through humanity, and death through sin.

It is answered in part, that God cares for all his creatures- and even those items that he did not breath life into. He cares not only for the moving animals, but the growing trees, and the sitting-and-doing-nothing rocks, waiting to erode. He may care for some creatures more than others, but each and everyone is his creation, and he loves them dearly. And he is present with all of them, at each moment of their lives, no matter how long or short the lives are. And for those capable of suffering, long before the cross, Christ took up their suffering upon himself, suffering with them in every moment, mourning with them, feeling the splagxnizomai compassion of identification and empathy.

The journal Ac­ta Pa­lae­on­to­log­ica Po­lon­ica denotes an extraordinary find in Inner Mongolia in China. An entire herd of young Sin­or­nith­o­mi­mus dongi has been found entrapped in mud. It's rare to find a herd of fossils of one species; rarer still to find some with their last meal in their stomachs, and such details as eye bones preserved, and how they died.

From World Science's summary:

These an­i­mals died a slow death in a mud trap, their
flail­ing only serv­ing to at­tract a near­by
scav­en­ger or preda­tor.

The skele­tons showed si­m­i­lar ex­quis­ite pre­serva­t­ion and were mostly fac­ing the same di­rec­tion, the re­search­ers said, sug­gest­ing that they died to­geth­er and rath­er quick­ly.

Two skele­tons fell one right over the oth­er. Al­though most of their skele­tons lay on a flat hor­i­zon­tal plane, their hind legs were stuck deeply in the mud be­low. Only their hip bones were mis­sing, the likely hand­i­work of a scav­en­ger work­ing over the meat­i­est part of the body bod­ies shortly af­ter the an­i­mals died.

Plung­ing marks in mud sur­round­ing the skele­tons recorded their failed at­tempts to es­cape.

What do we do with such details, of suffering and death? It happened so long ago, 90 million years ago. Like a tragedy on the other side of the world, or watching one unfold in a fictional drama on TV, there is nothing we can do about it. But we can remember,

That God was with them.
He was with them in their suffering, and their
dying.
He knew them, and remembered them.
He was with them in their
coming in,
and their going out.

And he wept with them too.

And we can pray the prayer we always pray, knowing that God's will will be and is and has been done, but we pray to align ourselves with the Spirit of God, that we might follow him in this kenosis:

Lord, be with them, even the least of these your creatures.
As you have been, as you will be, as you shall be, in the enternal now.
And teach me your compassion.

Tony Campolo's Great Mistake

I don't know that I've ever been more disappointed to read something online. I respect Tony Campolo so much. I have been lead to the Truth by his words so often. I had the pleasure of meeting him at the Pasadena Tab, when I was with the Salvation Army and he lead a conference there. This is a man who has consistently upheld the liberal end of evangelicalism, who calls for us to honor the social justice cries of the Gospel. He has truly helped me come closer to Christ. And now, he publishes this.

If you haven't heard, or haven't read, in the latest issue of Christianity Today, Campolo comes out strongly against the teaching of evolution, or "Darwinism", as he calls it. (Darwinism is a dismissive insult purposely used by Literal Creationists, to try to turn evolution into a religion.) Campolo doesn't come out and say that evolution is wrong, but rather argues that it should not be taught, for the philosophical, social, and religious implications and beliefs of Darwin are monstrous.

I was shocked to read this. Campolo is a level-headed guy, with great reasoning and logic, who speaks for a non-literalist interpretation of the Bible. Yet down the line he quoted the standard Literalist arguments used against evolution. I would have wished that someone else had emailed this article in under his name, and that he was the victim of identity theft, rather than believing that he actually wrote this.

Evolution should or should not be taught in schools because it is the truth, or it is not. What the results are of the theory, or how people use it, are rather irrelevant. The truth shall set you free, regardless of what kind of truth that is. And it just so happens that there is probably no other scientific theory out there that has more evidence for it than the Theory of Evolution. In this article Campolo proved that he might be a great theologian and pastor, but that he knows very little about science.

Campolo claimed that Darwin directly advocated eugenics and the wiping out of inferior races. In truth, Darwin is rather famous for being an abolitionist, and speaking against what would be later known as eugenics. Certainly, the Intelligent Design crowd and the Discovery Institute often quote him out of context to try to say the opposite, ignoring the very next line of the quote where he says (to paraphrase anachronistically), "If eugenics were actually practiced, it would be horrible." And I have no doubt that his beliefs on race aren't up to our standards today- but the same could be said for Lincoln, and more easily said.

Campolo points out another common Literal Creationist argument, that the long title of "Origin of a Species" refers to the preservation of the races. This is true, but the long title of Origin isn't used as much in referencing the work because the word "races" in the 19th century means more than just humans. Indeed, today, the same is still true in biology. My professors would speak of races of seastars, meaning different colors of the same species of Patiria miniata. Since Darwin doesn't really ever get to the evolution of our species in Origin, when he used the term "races", he was quite clearly referring to animals in general.

Campolo brings up the rather tired argument tying the Nazis to evolution, the same one that was brought up in the awful Expelled movie by Ben Stein. These arguments are completely inaccurate every time they are blindly repeated. In Campolo's condemnation of the ethical implications of evolution, he ignored, or more probably had not read, the numerous statements by Darwin that his biological theory should not be used as an ethical paradigm. Yes, the Nazis used evolutionary theory incorrectly to support their beliefs. (Indeed, their distortion of evolution was so great as to advocate the opposite of what evolutionary theory advocates.) They also used a distortion of Christianity to do the same. Campolo knows that Satan loves to distort the truth, and to use lies to advance his agenda. That doesn't mean we should throw out the Christian faith.

Campolo then refers to some others who were tied to the Nazis and evolutionary theory. He refers to Ernst Haekel as German, and therefore to be lumped with the Nazis. This smacks too much of the same stereotyping of peoples that Campolo accuses Darwin of. Haekel made mistakes, but he also contributed a great deal to biology. His drawings of plankton were immaculate and advanced our understanding of them a great deal. Though he fudged his drawings of ontology recapitulating phylogeny, his basic premise was sound and is still followed today. Indeed, it is a foundational principle of EvoDevo Synthesis that has supplanted the NeoDarwinian Synthesis of Evolutionary Theory.

Remember, if evolution is true, and the evidence indicates it is, than it is also a work of God. And for my money, a more powerful God creates in this manner than in the Q snap-your-fingers style of the IDists or Literal Creationists. There are many authors and theologians now who are discussing not only how Christianity and evolution are compatible (see Kenneth Miller), but how the theology and the science of the two are interwoven and dependent on each other (see John Haught, Darrel Falk, and Denis Edwards). Yes, we affirm with Campolo that humans are in God's image, and unique in that way. But if evolution is true, then by attacking evolution, one is attacking the very work of God.

I Love the Taste of Love in the Morning

More holistic societies are aware of the connection between morality and the body; of how our emotions and our logic are intertwined. Job speaks of tasting "bitterness of the soul", the Psalmist calls us to "taste and see that the Lord is good". In our society with it's Greek dualistic inheritance, we seek always to divide the sayings, and thus the physical can never have an impact on the spiritual. The best it can get is a symbolic representation, such as baptism and communion in most Protestantism. And this is not even symbolism in it's original sense, participating in the referent, but rather simply an icon- in the sense of those computer images on our screens.

Thus it is encouraging to come across a study indicating that the physical reaction to immorality is very similar to the physical reaction to bad taste. It is what one would expect, if there isn't a neat division between the spiritual and the physical. Our awareness of morality should develop from both our endocrine and our nervous systems. If there is an inherent morality out there, and it isn't merely arbitrary, then it should pervade all of creation, and not only our thought patterns.

But the authors of the study seem to have gone down some odd rabbit trails, in their attempt to argue that morality is not absolute but only defined by the individual or society. Their words use phrases like "the origins of morality", rather than merely the origins of our awareness of morality. Quite obviously, it can not be proved that morality is absolute- or at least, not in the space of a single blog post. But equally, it can not be proved that morality is not. And if so, the assumptions on morality and ethics should be clearly stated by the authors of a study of morality and ethics. This is especially true when such bias is so evident. For there is nothing inherent within the discovery - that our facial reaction to bad taste is eerily similar to our facial reaction to something morally disgusting - to suggest that it was our morality that was evolving, with those that were selected against unable to be aware of the negative consequences of poison, disease, and behavior that we today describe as immoral but previously was simply dangerous. It is equally likely that it was our response to morality that was evolving, as those who were selected against were those who did not realize the negative consequences of immoral behavior.

Indeed, the study authors, in their conclusions, are comparing apples and oranges. For them, poison and disease are all too real, and we develop a response to them. For them, morality is simply something that evolved, without an appeal to Plato's Perfect Forms, and our development was coming up with this marvelously marvel notion of morality.

But if anything, our notion of morality is precisely what did not evolve. Certainly our awareness of it did, but not the morality itself. For we have to only look around our world and quickly discover that it is those who are most unjust who advance. The race in this world is to the strong, the fast, and the lier. He who cheats wins, and seldom gets caught. Various notions of the evolutionary development of altruism are quite true, but they run against the stronger cord that not playing by the rules will more often lead to success. Were morality successful in evolutionary terms, we would not so often forget it, and yet still hold it as a goal. Were it merely an arbitrary idea and not inherent in the very reality of being, we would not so often forget it and yet still believe it should be followed. A couple of years ago we found that our close cousins, the chimpanzee, have gone on hunting parties with fashioned weapons, even killing other primates with them. Their actions are immoral when they attack their own species, if they were human, and had the awareness of good and evil. As it was, their actions were completely amoral (and not immoral)- but also horrifically successful.

To succeed, go out, and sin boldly. But recognize that that nagging feeling in the back of your mind comes from centuries of evolutionary development- the awareness that there is another reality, a moral reality. And when you breach it, it tastes a bit like MSG.

War Dance, It's a Sin

According to World Science, playing video games makes for good surgeons (which we already knew from watching Scrubs); archaeologists are rethinking how important the Clovis people were in Native American history; birds plan what they're going to eat (or at least scrubs do); and there's a new genetic link to autism (again). Oh, and we found some wild chimps who came up with the idea on their own of making and using spears to hunt other animals.

That's kind of big, actually. It used to be we were the only ones who made plans as a species (those scrub jays proved us wrong there). It used to be we were the only ones who built homes (bowerbirds). We were the only ones who used language- except for animals too numerous to mention. But at least, please God, we are the only ones who develop our own weapons of warfare? Please, at least we are unique in this respect?

No, looks like others can do this too. Pan troglodytes has been found doing the nasty, finding new and inventive ways to kill others. They appear to have figured this out without any human help (although room must be given for the possibility of them observing humans). This particular tribe of chimps cuts off branches, sharpens them with their teeth, and then goes on hunting parties, which are at least occasionally successful, having killed a bushbaby, a relative of the chimp. They don't just go after rats or pigs, they even attack their own relatives. Just like us. Next thing you'll know they'll be writing their own blogs.

The article discusses how this has far-reaching implication for how we understand our own evolution. Tool use has been thought to be limited to the genus Homo, based on archeological evidence. But if Pongidae can use tools, then perhaps tool use was far earlier, with Australopithecus. After all, all fossil evidence is very limited, and tells an incomplete story. Additionally this particular chimp tribe was composed primarily of adolescent and young adult spear-hunters, whereas most chimp hunters are older adults, bolstering the idea that innovative ideas are learned quicker by the younger generations. And the spear-hunters are mixed gender, unlike most chimp hunters who are exclusively male, indicating that perhaps the first tool inventors were of both genders, as other evidence also indicates.

But besides this being a blow to our ego in uniqueness, this discovery also might have something to say about the nature of evil and warfare. In the Genesis myth the humans are cast out of the garden for eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil. It had a long name, and justifiably so. But we usually truncate that name, wanting to call it the Tree of Evil. I think there is a valuable point in the long name. It was when we humans were able to distinguish good and evil, as God makes a point of later in the story, that we also were capable of sin. And the ability to distinguish good and evil requires a certain higher reasoning, a certain cognitive development. To know that this or that action is absolutely wrong, or absolutely right, means I have to have a certain level of thought. Before that point, the action is morally neutral.

It might be argued that a dog knows if it's done something wrong. But the dog knows it's master believes something is wrong, or right, and learns to internalize that. Don't eat the master's children. That's bad. Doesn't matter that my wolf ancestors might have done that, if I do it, I don't get food, I sleep outside, or I get killed. It learns new rules. But the dog is simply incapable of understanding the more abstract notion of an absolute right or wrong.

If I lack a certain level of thought, I can plop my children in another live being and have them eat that other being alive as much as I want. I am not sinning. I simply don't know right from wrong. I can have sex with my sister while still inside the womb, and then die, and my children do this over and over again. It's not wrong- there's no brain, and certainly no higher thought involved.

But the moment I reach that point, that magical level of thought, be that in the Upper Neolithic, or the beginnings of Homo sapiens, or when Hominidae first arrived on the scene- whenever that happened- I knew good from evil. The moment we were this aware, we sinned. Sadly, simply on this level of reality, intelligence could not be divorced from sin. For we were aware of the difference between the two, and we always end up choosing, at some point, no matter how insignificant, sin. We choose to miss the mark and turn from God and good.

The chimpanzees invented spears. They're hunting another species, but another primate. In all the millenia of chimpanzee evolution, odds are they've done this before, if they came up with the idea now. It's not necessarily a new idea with humans. The chimpanzee might use the new invention on each other, as we once did. After all, there are attacks and infanticide and matricide and all kinds of killing among wild chimpanzees- including clan warfare. Spears would just give an edge. But there is a difference. When we do it, we know good from evil, even if we've forgotten. When we invent gigantic spears that can fly across the Atlantic and impale hundreds of thousands in a single flash, we know what the evil is, and what the good would be. The chimpanzees don't. They operate out of forethought, and a certain degree of intelligence, but they have not learned the difference between good and evil. Likely the ability to invent spears was there before we reached this cognitive development point. Likely we even invented spears and attacked other clans with them. But at the point when we first learned enough to know good and evil, we also learned it was wrong, and it became wrong.

And likely the same moment when we could reason well enough, when we reached the ability to sin, is when we also were designated in the image of God, capable of fully cognitively worshipping the Creator.

Beware Roving Packs of Rat Sperm

This week's World Science download was replete with wonders. You might have seen this on the evening news, but we found the probable village of the creators of Stonehedge. Scientists are urging robots to dig deeper for life on Mars, as it's more likely to be found where exposure to radiation hasn't damaged spores over the last billion years. Vomiting is found to be the most horrible sound (but in a horribly flawed study of online users self-evaluating what sounds they dislike the most). Gastric cancer probably killed Napoleon. And really cool- an early dinosaur probably didn't fly like a dragonfly, but rather like a biplane- with four wings!

And packs of rat sperm might work together to compete against sperm from other males. That's just a beautiful sentence. Because mice and rats reproduce so much, often more than one male's sperm can be found in the vaginal canal of the female. And because their sperm have a hook on the head they can link up together in giant balls, which allows them to swim faster and stronger. Then one individual spermatozoa in the sperm ball will reach the egg first, and his brother sperm die off, sacrificing themselves for the sake of their brother, and winning against the sperm of another male rat.

Altruism is always a sticky point for evolution. If the foundation is that you compete to carry on your genes, then why sacrifice your life for another? If there is a sacrifice, then often we try to find out why, explaining it away as trying to continue on your genes. So every ant in a colony is more closely related to it's sister ant than to the queen, and so they are more likely to fight to defend each other, as that will carry on their genes.

Is altruism really so amazing though? In most cases, in the animal kingdom and among humans, altruism occurs firstly to those within your family, and then to those further afield. It is almost always only expressed towards one's own species. In the case of humans, there is the added dimension of a mind, capable of reformatting the definition of family to include those in a community, the entire species, or even those like dogs and cats, of other species.

Lions therefore have been known to sacrifice their opportunities to reproduce for the sake of others in their pride. But again, they are at least distantly related to those in the pride (and usually as close as brother and sister), allowing for part of their genes to continue. But is it really so surprising that an evolutionary mechanism could have developed to continue on offspring that are not directly your own? Imagine for a moment where a mother produces offspring that are inherently sterile, but who assist the reproductively viable offspring. Would not the viable offspring be more likely to live, thereby continuing on the genes to produce some offspring that are viable, and some that are sterile?

For a long time biology has been focused on competition- and rightfully so. But what about the amount of cooperation that also occurs? Could not this also be guided by evolutionary mechanisms of natural selection? Joan Roughgarden asks these questions in Evolution and Christian Faith, an excellent look at the relationships between Christianity and evolution. He suggests that evolution is indeed an imperfect theory (as all scientists would agree), but that it could be drastically improved by focusing on cooperation.

Would it be heretical to say that perhaps biology has been too masculine in orientation? Of course there is no way to state how men and women are- we can only speak in generalizations. But science has long been a strongly male domain. I found in my experience the only exception to that was in marine biology. Although a generalization, it does seem many psychological studies indicate that human males like to compete. And although there are certainly exceptions, and new studies have been looking at the prevelance of female bullies, it does seem like human females tend towards cooperation. Could it be that scientists have simply ignored data because of a general predeliction towards certain values? It wouldn't be the first time. Those of us who are racist saw the data indicating that whites were superior, because we wanted it to be there, ignoring contrary data that didn't fit with our desires. Lynn Margulis was finally able to prove that mitochondira developed from endosymbiosis, a cooperation between two very different species- but she had to fight for years before she was accepted, and for a long time was laughed at in the biology world for the idea that organisms could cooperate like that.

Dr. Roughgarden points out that one of the biggest reasons Literal Creationists have a knee-jerk reaction to evolution is because of the idea of competition, in that it goes so much against the grain of Christ's teachings. And indeed it does, unless we expand and redefine genetic similarity to all those within the Church, and all humans. We certainly wouldn't want to change biological facts to fit the belief systems of a particular religion. But what if there actually is more of a fit than we normally credit? What if, in addition to competition, cooperation also rules the biological world? Our own bodies not only harbor numerous parasites, but also symbiotic bacteria. Again, the very mitochondria of our cells were once separate prokaryotes. However multicellularity arose, it involved the merging of various cells. Today the cells of our bodies cooperate with each other. When they don't, we have a word for it. We call it cancer.

These rat cells may be only a more overt demonstration of how individuals work together. It may be that the ethic of evolution involves not only "red in blood, tooth and claw", but also profound cooperation, and self-sacrifice. If so, the research has only begun.

We learn in Sesame Street the value of cooperation. We also learn that in the nature of God, who has always been eternal Love. Love requires a lover and a lovee, and we see the explanation of this in the doctrine of the Trinity, wherein God loved the other of Himself for all preternity. He taught us the value of this through community in the early Church, where all gave up what they had and shared it in common, so no one was in need- but everyone had houses, lands, brothers, and sisters 100-fold. In the same way I grew up with limited private property, sharing all in common with 80 others, and with 20 houses and cars and countless brothers and sisters. Self-sacrifice through cooperation is an enduring ethic of God. And it would seem that He placed at least some of the ethic within His creation, even down to the level of rat spermatozoa.

The last shall be first.

Ducks will negotiate over how much they help each other in parenting. Scientists find the area of the brain that is responsible for altruism. Rare black diamonds may come from outer space. The earliest records of Homo sapiens sapiens in Europe have been found, near Moscow, 45,000 years ago, with the earliest sculptures, in the form of small heads.

And winning the Nobel Prize adds two years to your life. They were able to determine that the money was statistically irrelevant. It's the social status that's gained that extends the lifespan- but scientists aren't sure what the mechanism is.

This brings up some intriguing questions. What is status? Does the social status need to be in the eyes of society, or in the eyes of the individual? Is the gain in life from the undeterminable perks from everyone looking up to you? Or is it from the well-being that you feel as holistic being, knowing that you are valued? Or perhaps from the well-being you feel in valuing yourself?

The determination of status will very from culture to culture, and within cultures. If this is true, the Masai with the most cows will live the longest. (But you'd have to do that study separating out the economic value of the cows.) What if status is determined by how simple your lifestyle is? An Indian Guru has high status in part because he is an asthetic. When I was growing up we valued the person who could go procuring the best (dumpster-diving).

We used to play a game when I was a child and we were standing in line. We'd all try to be in the last person in the line. We'd heard that Jesus had said "The last shall be first, and the first last." In our primitive understanding of that we'd try to be the last in line, and playfully make fun of the person who was in front, because they'd get to go to Heaven last. As kids we didn't really understand the meaning of the passage, but there is a basic point there. If you're following the ethics of Jesus, then status doesn't really matter. You shouldn't be figuring out if you'll be sitting at the right hand of Jesus, or even Alfred Nobel. You should strive to be the last, to take the worst seat, and be like Jesus, with no place to lay your head and without wealth. In doing this, you'll be offered the best seats, and be first in Heaven and the Kingdom of God. So if a society has this standard of social standing, does that mean the poor and debased would live an extra two years?

No, because part of that debasement is for the left hand not to know what the right hand is doing. To say your prayers in private to avoid the honor associated with prayers, and to give in private so your reward will be in Heaven, and not here on Earth. Were status to be gained in the doing of these deeds, they would no longer be following the Way. If status were given for being poor, the Poor would quickly cease to be so. Two years might be gained for the attempt, but it's hardly the original call.

Here's the deal. Jesus' path wasn't a call to social advancement. But it wasn't even a call to a good life. It was a call to a hard life, with a lot of suffering. He told everyone to pick up their electric diodes, apply jelly to their skin, and sit down in the chair to be electrocuted. (Modern translation.) It is a call to expect death, and indeed to welcome it for the Joy of seeing the Lord and serving Him. It is being willing to die. It is therefore completely contrary to that evolutionary call that runs through all of us to reproduce and live as long as possible to reproduce as much as possible. It is perhaps akin to those Australian Redback Spiders, wear the male says to the female, "Take, eat, this is my body," and jumps into her jaws. But he does this in order to have a better position for mating. We're called to jump into the jaws of our oppressors as our Lord did, with no hope or expectation of improved mating.

Evolutionary paradaigms are descriptive, but there is nothing in them that must be prescriptive. And I increasingly believe that the Christian moral paradaigm is to negate evolutionary drives. It is not as if God made a mistake when he set up the paradaigm of natural selection. But creatures aware of good and evil as we are have a different set of standards. The female Australian Redback Spider is not committing any sin when she feeds off her mate to feed their new children.

Different societies have different standards. Most societies seek to elevate themselves in order to gain status, power, and wealth. Is it any wonder then that the scientists chose to do their study of status and longetivity on Nobel Prize winners?

Who's Your Daddy?

Today's World Science revelations included Spider Monkeys having developed a natural perfume based on leaves (naturally used most often by the males); dark energy has been around for a long time and is causing the universe to expand at an increasingly fast rate; red wine is good; and new subatomic particles. I'll be focusing on the sequencing of Neanderthal DNA.

This is pretty cool stuff. Based on a Neanderthal thigh bone they have found a genetic similarity between us and them of 99.5%, although in many places they are more similar to chimpanzees than us. (By comparison humans and chimpanzees differ by 96%, and rats from mice by ten times that amount.) The DNA shows that the last time we had a common ancestor was 706,000 years ago, and that our DNA hasn't mixed for the last 330,000 years. (The last time chimps and us had a common ancestor was 6 million years ago.)

We, Homo sapiens, arrived in Europe between 40,000-50,000 years ago. Neanderthals disappeared completely between 33,000-24,000 years ago. And ever since then scientists have wondered why.

There's been two primary hypothesis. Firstly that we killed them off. This makes us somehow better adapted to the climate. We didn't necessarily have to kill them off through warfare- it could have been that we simply outcompeted them for space and food, though some studies indicate signs of violence on Neanderthal bones. Perhaps the change in climate at the time was one that Neanderthals were pre-conditioned to not be as adaptive to, but our Cro-Magnon ancestors were. If this is the case, then they are a separate species at the end, with no mixing between us, and should be called Homo neanderthalis.

The other option is that they disappeared through sex. Or rather, that they are still with us. We interbred with them to such an extent that their genes merged with us, and traces of Neanderthals still remain in modern humans. In which case they would be a subspecies, and properly called Homo sapiens neanderthalis. Of course, this wouldn't exclude the possibility of Homo sapiens sapiens (us) killing off large portions of them as well. And in either scenario, we once were of the same stock- the species concept is somewhat arbitrary, as it is always in a state of evolving flux. We can only say that if an animal can't, or doesn't, interbreed with another animal, it is of a different species. (Higher taxa are determined in a far more general manner, losing even this minimal definitiveness.)

This study indicates that the killing option was more likely. If the last time our genes were the same was 330,000 years ago, this was a long time after we diverged as modern humans, 130,000 years ago. Therefore we weren't around to interbreed with the Neanderthals at the time our DNA indicates similarities. However, other recent studies of the DNA of the very same bones indicate great similarites between the two lines, indicating continued sexual activity between the two groups.

The data is therefore still indeterminative at this point. However, the earlier study indicating sex between the two parties used a method that some say results in incomplete results mixed with intrusive DNA. This same analysis suggests that the difference between human and Neanderthal DNA will show to be less than that between the highly diverse African human populations. I'm personally rooting for the sex option, and I still have hope that it becomes the final conclusion. Probably a big part of this is my natural liberal bias- "Make love, not war" and all. Just a much more romantic notion to think that they disappeared that way, rather than us committing, however inadvertedly, the first and greatest mass genocide of our species. It doesn't help that the ones possibly committing this were my European ancestors.

But there are other reasons to hope for this. We know that Neanderthals had tools, cared for their injured, made art, abstract thinking, and probably buried their dead. This means something pretty far advanced. And however one determines the presence of the soul, life after death seems to be a big part of that, as it indicates the presence of a belief in the afterlife, and therefore some sort of religious belief.

Even more so, Neanderthal brain cases were larger than our own. They were also larger in body, and their brains were structured differently than ours- but there is the possibility that they were actually smarter. Solid evidence indeed that a bigger brain is not necessarily a selective advantage. I'd hate to lose out on all of that brain, culture, and heritage, wasted away, without a memory or a presence. Better to hope, however indefinite the evidence is at the moment, that there is a bit of Neanderthal in me, and you. Better to take the opportunity to glory in the compliment of intelligence, the next time somebody calls you a Neanderthal.

In the Beginning

New ways to remove radiation from humans; gays are more likely to suffer from addictions; what causes SIDS; and how pollution makes people stupider. This is particularly true for those born between 1960 and 1980, because of exposure to lead in gasoline. Bummer. Evidently this population has had marked increased in retardation and autism, decrease in attention span, and half as many with an IQ over 130. That's just really depressing.

But the article I'll focus on is some intriguing experiments looking at similarity between Saturn's moon Titan and the primordial atmosphere of Earth. Chemists have reproduced Titan's methane-nitrogen atmosphere with the application of UV light to create long-chain hydrocarbons, and astronomers have noticed these same chemicals in Titan's atmosphere. Similar chemicals are created with a methane-carbon dioxide base, the posited primordial Earth atmosphere.

The origin of life is problematic, for a few reasons. One, it's important to biology, but it's not really biology. There's no genes yet, there's no reproduction- it's the beginning of all that. So it's not really the biologists who are experts in this; it's more the chemists. And of course, it's hard to get data on it, and we still don't know a lot about how it all started. In truth there is no theory yet for this part- it's only different hypothesis. Lastly, it seems to have happened only once.

One hypothesis is that God created everything like Q, with a snap of His fingers. Not a scientific hypothesis, but it's there. And it could have happened. I can't think of any alternate scientific hypothesis that can reject it at this point- we just don't have enough evidence on how it happened through natural means. But I can think of a couple good theological reasons why it didn't happen that way.

The Literal Creationist and Intelligent Design hypothesis due injustice not only to science but also to religion, specifically Christianity. For they posit a weak God. As with the title of this blog, their God is too impotent to be able to do a complex creation- the creation must be made ex nihilo in the blink of an eye. It has none of the beautiful complexity of a multi-evolving community.

But even more, it does injustice to the concept of a miracle, and therefore of God. We repeatedly see God doing miracles for a purpose. They are signs, to point the way. They are not to prove the existence of God- nothing can- but rather signs to help us understand the nature of God. So I ask. Who exactly were these early supposed miracles for? The dodo? Triceratops? Sea Scorpions? No, it was far earlier than that. Not even the Archaea, those oldest and perhaps most primitive of bacteria, are around to see the beginnings of life. All we have are the rocks as silent observers. The argument that these were signs of God's existence for humans millions (or thousands) of years later is far too weak, for the signs left for us are far too inconclusive. In the case of evolution, there is too much evidence to the contrary. But for both the origin of life, and evolution, and anything else, there is not the clear overriding evidence to support a Q-snap for a creation event- which would be required if this were a sign for things to come- namely us.

As to it being a sign to help us understand God, I'd ask what does it reveal of God to say he creates in a moment, rather than through a process? That actually leads to some excellent discussion, but for another time. But such can not be an argument for Literal Creation vs. Evolution- it is rather that, once we understand the process, we can better understand who God is.

The final reason why God would not have created life in a supernatural event is that it limits God. It is the limit of the God in the Gaps, which ultimately does more injustice to God than it does to science, although it does great injustice to the latter as well. For it limits God. It puts Him in a box, saying He can only operate at certain times. It is a miracle, when we can't figure out how it might have happened. Then God steps in, and "poof", there is an elephant. Or an eye. It says God can't create through natural means- he must resort to being The Great Magician. But God uses miracles for a reason, not just for fun. If we believe what the Bible indicates.

The Literal Creationist hypothesis therefore ultimately reduces the intimate presence of God. We learn nanini, nanini na- God is everywhere. He is not all things, but He is in all things. He is a part of it. In Him we live and move and have our being. The existence of anything, by any process, is a miracle. Yet according to Intelligent Design, God created at only certain points, when it was too complex to do otherwise, and everything else evolved. So God is somehow less present in certain moments of creation. It is less of a creative event if it happens through evolution; it is less fully God.

That's not the kind of God I'm interested in. I'm interested in a God who is intimate in every moment of creation, who is intelligent enough to design a system that boggles the mind. Miracles do not happen because God must do them, and the natural processes He designed will not suffice. They happen so we can know Him.

So, I reject the premise that the formation of first life happened through a Q-like miracle. It was certainly a miracle, but one that occurred through natural means. What those natural means are...I'm not telling. We truly don't know yet. But science is philosophically naturalistic- it must use the same system for understanding the natural world. Otherwise, whenever we don't understand something, we simply stop working, and chalk it up to an act of God. Which kind of grinds things to a halt. Killed someone recently? Use the "God-made-it-appear-like-me-but-it-was-someone-else" defense. Works every time.

The formation of first life can't have occurred through a supernatural event, primarily for theological reasons. We don't yet have all of the evidence for the natural formation, but based on the beginnings of it, I'm sure it will eventually come in.

Science does very well with the repeated event. Not so well with the event that happens only once. And the formation of first life appears to be the singular event par excellant. Or is it? Was life formed once, or multiple times? I'd say the evidence is fairly clear that it formed only once. All life portrays certain similarities. We have the same base pairs on DNA (or in a few cases like HIV, RNA), leading to the same proteins. Statistically, it didn't have to happen that way. If life had formed a few times, you would expect differences in descendants. Even more telling, all natural organic molecules portray the same chirality. Molecules can go to the right or left in their polarization of light- and there's a 50:50 chance it would be one of the other- or they can be symmetrical and not go either way. All organic molecules are left chiral. If you tried to consume something, say on another planet, that was right chiral, or had no chirality, you'd get either very sick, or maybe just die. You wouldn't be able to consume it as nourishment. So it's a good thing all organic molecules on this planet have the same chirality. But since they do, and to be working organic molecules, they could have chosen right or left, this is another powerful argument for a common origin for all life. And since there seems to be no good supernatural explanation (again, in the sence of a Q-like moment) for the formation of first life, even though the formation of first life is a singular event, I would suggest it can be naturally explained.

Of course, we may discover life with the opposite chirality on this planet one day, but for now, we are left with evidence indicating too much commonality in all life. But this begs the question as to why life only arose once.

There's the question on how life first formed. But I have thought recently, there's an even better question on why it formed only once. And why don't we continue to see it arising now? Granted, that might be happening- but we have yet to see it, and if it were occurring, one would think that by now we would have observed it in a lab or in nature. If the conditions were just right for it to arise once, why not more than once? Why not more than once in the Archean Eon, the first biological time period, or more than once and still continuing today? It appears that the conditions of the early atmosphere that allowed the formation of life were anaerobic and involved particular gases and lightning. Such a grouping of events doesn't occur commonly today, with our poisonous oxygen atmosphere. But it does occur in certain places on the planet, or on other planets. If life was so unstoppable that it formed spontaneously before, why not in those places? It didn't even have much time to form- most recent evidence that it was as recently as 3.5 billion years ago there was life, allowing for only half a billion years for life to form after the Earth stopped being molten. This indicates that the formation of life is very likely- it is a probable event. And yet, still, it isn't here, again.

(Note that for the ID crowd, the claim is that life has been created numerous times, and therefore, should be observed now- but they have no good explanation as to why it has not been observed being formed ever in the history of humanity, past myths on spontaneous generation not withstanding.)

I haven't forgotten the main point of this essay. I've just been taking my time getting there. This newest research provides dramatic further answers as to why life hasn't formed again. The chemistry of the early Earth's atmosphere was so radically different that it hasn't been repeated. A methane-based atmosphere, exposed to UV light as it had no Ozone Layer to protect it, could have produced the building blocks of life. But such an atmosphere does not now exist, and hasn't for a long time.

Much more research of course remains to be done, to get from those building blocks to life. We have seen the development of amino acids spontaneously from organic molecules, and spontaneous formation of nucleotides (the building blocks of DNA) into self-replicating RNA. We've known for a long time that lipid bilayers automatically form the cell membrane. But there remains a lot of research to be done to get from there to a functioning cell. And left a mystery is why life didn't evolve more than once in that original atmosphere. Of course, perhaps it did, and the other forms were unable to compete with our ancestors.

Often it is claimed that there are gaps in the evolutionary lineage. I am impressed at how, again and again, evolution will predict an outcome, and the evidence will eventually be found- very similar to the process of Biblical archeology, which is also often gainsaid. Just as evolutionists for a century and a half were attacked for lacking the evidence for the fossil record of whales, and we now have a complete record, so the predictions of the origins of life are starting to fall into place, one molecule at a time.

A Gloss on the Epistemology of the Spirit

For the 2nd installment of the World Science Review, I had a hard decision. There was the use of antimatter in medicine, the benefits of red wine, and elephant self-recognition in the mirror. Even more intriguing were the possibility of evidence indicating our relation to Neanderthals, the likelihood of the oceans completely dying by 2048, and cultural tendencies to see the world as related to self verses other objects. Difficult choice. But I finally decided on studies of brain chemistry in glossolalia- speaking in tongues.

The article says that those speaking in tongues have less control over language centers of the brain, and they have less activity in the area of the brain that usually shows self-control. The authors of the study state that naturally, it must mean some other undiscovered part of the brain is in control, and that they look forward to "demystifying" glossolalia. They affirm that their results are what you would expect from the claim made by those speaking in tongues to be "out of control".

I must admit a certain knee-jerk dislike of this research. Or at least the conclusions drawn from it. And that forced me to try to figure out why.

It's not the mention of demystifying. I just think that's completely wrong. The researcher speaks of it as if that would be a good thing. A life without myth is a life not worth living. And just because something is fully understood, if it ever could be, doesn't mean it has lost its sense of wonder, its power of myth, or its taste of the numinous. That can still be there, if we are willing to search for it.

I think it relates more to the natural assumption that there must be some other part of the brain that is in control, if the frontal lobe is not. And that bothers me. I want to believe that God is control when I'm speaking in tongues, not a subsidiary lobe. I don't want science to discover something else.

But of course, this is exactly the same issue that we dwell with in the evolution/creation debates. For Literal Creationists would propose a God of the Gaps, a God who works in between the areas of knowing. Wherever we don't know, there is God. And we constantly restrict God to a narrower and narrower Modernist sphere, as we learn more and more. But the Intelligent Design projection of God into irreducible complexity ultimately means that we stop all research once we declare something to be irreducibly complex- God did it, who can understand it? But I don't think that God desires us to stop our investigation into His creation at any point. To do so is to cease to investigate Him.

And that's what I'm doing in being bothered by this research. I want them to not find where this cranial blood is flowing, ever. I want it to remain a mystery, indicating the presence of God. But I must deal with the real possibility that the locus of control is one day found.

To take a different tack: science studies the repeated, physical phenomena. It must remain in epistemologically materialistic. Therefore it cannot study the miraculous. The singular event, the insertion of spirit into matter, such as the Virgin Birth, is beyond the abilities of science to investigate, to prove, or disprove.

Are tongues miraculous? Is our definition of miracle sufficient, claiming it to be a singular event? Let's take a different sort of miracle, that of healing. Happens all the time, to varying degrees- supernatural healing. Does this then make it no longer miraculous? No! Indeed, it is perhaps the epitome of the miracle. So then by what right do we now claim a miracle to be a singular event?

Because a basic part of science is uniformitarianism, such that events repeat themselves, throughout all of life, all of science. And they repeat themselves to a very large degree. Truly, the odds are just too great against an animal like the dodo re-evolving without the assistance of future genetic recombination. But natural selection proceeds in the same manner in many different organisms. DNA is the same, transcribing into RNA- and has been the same for 4 billion years.

But supernatural healing is not. This sort of healing involves a direct interaction between God, or a spirit, and the healer, and the healed. It involves each of them as body-persons, interacting with the supernatural realm. Those who would reduce supernatural healing to a systematic procedure reduce it to mere science, and rob it of it's glory. And in the process, they allow science to be able to study it. And be sure, science will find it to be less than it is claimed. For if science can study it, then it must not have been supernatural to begin with.

So now I return to tongues. A repeated event, repeated many times, in many individuals. But more than that, a supernatural event. A unique interaction between the living God, or a spirit, every time. Even more so than healing, for it is an opportunity to directly commune with the living God, as He comes to speak in you what you can not speak yourself. This is unique supernatural interaction, and therefore can not be studied by science.

How is this any different from the hypothesis of a literal creation? Why should one be a supernatural event, and the other not? Leaving aside the overwhelming evidence in favor of evolution, I'd claim they are both fully supernatural events, and therefore both can not be studied. And they are physical events, and can therefore be fully studied. It's the imposition of the supernatural that science can not study. And in the case of origins, in what way God was or was not present within the formation of the planet and it's life is simply beyond the ken of science. But to claim that the planet was created in a Q-like moment by snapping the fingers is wholly different from the claim that science can not see the spirit in tongues. It would be more the claim that, when someone is speaking in tongues, it happens in another dimension that can not be observed, and that we are imagining the person praying in tongues before us. For the evidence is there- both for an evolution and for people speaking in a strange language. And God can be fully present in both, but in a way never discernible by science.

Yes, science can determine where the blood is flowing, and that the frontal lobe is not being used, and the person does not appear to have conscious control of what they are doing. (We leave out of course those cases where the person is faking tongues, or thinks they are speaking in tongues but has honestly fooled themselves. Both definitely do occur, and I suspect far too often. It would be interesting to compare the brain scans of such individuals with those honestly speaking in tongues, if a rubric could be effectively constructed.) And honestly, science may one day discover that another lobe has all the activity. But what matters is the interpretation. Some may come and say then, "See- it was all a self-deception!" And they would be justified in their interpretation. Others may say, "See, this is how God chooses to interact with us. When He speaks to us, He does so using a different part of the brain, so that we are no longer in control." And this also would be a valid interpretation.

As for me and my house, we're going to go pray in the Spirit.

"I'm not gay!" the dog barked.

World Science has a weekly email of the latest, most intriguing scientific discoveries and experimental results. You can subscribe to them at their site and they'll send you the latest. Inspired by recent readings of natural history by the Great One, Stephen Jay Gould (peace be upon him) in The Panda's Thumb, this blog will be a weekly take on a World Science article.

This last week had some very interesting reports. How the dinosaurs actually died, the oldest known organic molecules discovered, and why vampires are simply mathematically impossible. Hard to decide on one. But I picked "A Wild, and Gay, Kingdom". Turns out, contrary to what has often been thought, being gay is not unnatural, at least as far as animals go. There's actually a very high incidence of single gender sexual interaction in different animals. I know. Why pick an uncontroversial topic for a first post?

As I mentioned on the World Science Commentary, I have a number of problems with this exhibition, or rather, how it was presented. Boekman, heading the exhibition organizers, states that homosexuality occurs in many animals, especially herd animals, and in a number of them, it is actually a more common coupling than heterosexuality. Therefore in certain species most individuals are gay. However, just because an animal engages in a homosexual act, doesn't make him or her gay, anymore than it does with humans. That's the problem the gay community often has interpreting the Kinsey Report. They claim that, based on it's results, 10% of humans are gay. However, that's not what the report says. Not only was it a study of Americans only, but it stated that 10% engaged in homosexual acts at some point in their lives; less than 2% were committed to exclusively gay relationships. This is closer to what we actually find in other studies. And likewise, just because in some other species most of the individuals engage in homosexual acts, doesn't make them gay. Indeed, the exhibition supports this finding, in that exclusively gay organisms are a far smaller percentage than those that have the occasional gay fling, or even the regular gay interaction. The latter makes them bi, not gay.

Secondly, as part of his justification for the argument of the widespread presence, Boekman even mentions invertebrates and worms, with the implication that this makes it normative for humans. But I'm sorry, invertebrates are just too different to make that leap. Especially worms! I mean, come on- they're hermaphrodites!

This brings me to the argument from nature. Yes, one argument that's been used against homosexuality is that it's "not natural", because it doesn't normally occur among humans. And it's true, this exhibition blows that argument out of the water. But just because something occurs in nature, or doesn't, doesn't make it morally normative for humans. A similar mistake was made when misguided fools tried to apply evolutionary principles to human groups to claim that whites were superior. Biology shouldn't dictate morality. When it does, we usually go the wrong direction, fatally so. Biology is great for answering the What. Not the Why.

Second, God made each animal unique. It should follow it's own rules. Not to imply that non-humans can operate under a morality. It's not like they ate of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good & Evil. But let's be honest, there's nothing wrong with a hermaphrodite sleeping with a hermaphrodite, or a protandrous fish changing gender- that's how they were designed. But there's a problem with us trying to be hermaphrodites, or changing gender- we're not designed that way.

Now, I'm not using design like that Intelligent Design hypothesis. But God's made us to be the way we are- whatever that means. We worship Him best by being what we are. You can do it spiritually, or emotionally/physically. When we try to change what we are (say, to become a hermaphrodite), we do damage to our psyche. Unless we should reproduce like the Dinophilus Annelid's sibling mating, which produces 4 offspring in each egg, 3 female and 1 male? The male then has sex with it's sisters, dies within the egg, and the three sisters hatch to recapitulate the entire cycle. If homosexuality is wrong or right, it has nothing to do with nature, or what other animals do. It has to do with what God has called us to, what will bring us the most Joy, allowing us to fully worship Him. And that's a question that can be answered in religion, or philosophy, but not biology.

Third, the argument from natural selection: Boekman discusses how common homosexuality is, suggesting that it has naturally developed a number of times in many animals. No argument there. But the mere reporting of the fact is not enough. Where's the mechanism? I want to know what the advantage to homosexuality is. Why are organisms which do this selected for, even in the minority? One could argue that it helps in establishing bonding or dominance rituals- and indeed, this has long been argued by biologists. Yet Boekman poo-poos this explanation, stating that biologists have an inherent bias against homosexuality and refuse to see it as a sexual act. If it is a sexual act, then why does it continue to evolve? What selects for it? Is it a mere spandrel? (That's quite the spandrel.) Inherently, homosexuality is selected against. Biology is all about sex. An organism can't continue it's offspring, and fulfill it's evolutionary duty, without it. Biologically, without reproduction, it has failed. An organism committed to homosexuality only can not continue it's genes, and therefore can not continue the genetic coding towards homosexuality. Therefore there must be a non-sexual selection for homosexuality, if it continues. Dominance and friendship seem to be better explanations within evolutionary theory.

Lastly, my biggest issue with the study is likewise in regard to sex. It would seem the organizers are very unaware of the meaning of sex. Perhaps because this exhibition is on the bridge of two different disciplines. I would imagine (not knowing for sure) that in anthropology, sex refers to two individuals enjoying each other in reference to their reproductive organs, often with orgasm. However, in biology sex refers to the mixture of gametes. Unless Boeckman has a rather novel proposal for how this might occur between two sperm or two eggs, gay interactions between animals are not sex, by biological definitions. There is no way they can be. Hence previous researches are quite correct to not refer to this as sex.

It's beginning to appear that the exhibition organizers have a bias and an agenda.