In his article “Adaption through Regression”, Klaus-Jürgen Grün (KJG) reported on the creationist’s battle against the Darwinian evolutionary model, and gave the year 2009 the title “Year of “Darwin”. And indeed there is a surprising increase of reports on Darwin on the radio, on TV, and in the newspapers.
Reading the article by Klaus made me quite dizzy. The human race has been living on this planet for thousands of years. More than 2,000 years ago, the ancient philosophers came up with great ideas. However, the epoch of enlightenment only started a few centuries ago. And Darwin was born a mere 200 years ago – I am quite glad to be living in the here and now.
I cannot understand the controversy between creationists and evolutionists. Let me explain this with a short story by Werner Heisenberg, (you will notice that I published it earlier in the if-blog under der Teil und das Ganze” – “parts and entities”).
Heisenberg: God does no gambling. For Einstein, that was a principle that could not be shattered, a principle he was not prepared to discuss. All Bohr could reply was: But it cannot be our task to tell God how to rule the world. (*)
In analogy, one could say:
But it cannot be our task to tell God how he should have created the world (and thereby us).
That is why I cannot see such a huge problem for a deeply religious person trying to tolerate a very reasonable concept like the Darwinian evolutionary theory. Isn’t creating and starting an evolution (as defined by creationists) also a creative and divine act? But we humans seem to have a tendency towards wanting to be the owners of absolute truth – and then make this truth both our personal and a collective certainty. Maybe we even need this in order to not break down under the pressure of being human.
In 2008, archaeologists made a sensational discovery. It (like often before) will change history. Here is the report as published on Sunday, Jan, 18, 2009 scinexx, the scientific magazine by Springer:
The Forgotten Roman Conquest – Roman battlefield discovered in the borderlands of the Harz mountains
I can really highly recommend the article. Here is the last paragraph (from scinexx):
According to archaeologists, this new discovery is spectacular in that it will put question marks before the accepted historical beliefs and provide plenty of material for future archaeological dispute, because through it, archaeology can identify a historical never mentioned at all in any of the allegedly reliable historical sources.
Shortly before Christmas, I listened to an interview with one of the concerned historians on exactly this discovery. He said he was truly glad, because “now the history of ancient Rome must be completely re-written “.
🙂 When I heard this, I (holding a degree in mathematics) thought I would be feeling rather stupid if relevant parts of mathematics would have to be completely re-written. It seems that a mathematician’s way of thinking differs from that of a historian.
Back on a serious note: We humans often forget that, in fact, we do not know anything. History and our great books such as the Bible certainly contain a lot of accumulated wisdom, but they are all full of stories that were first handed on by word of mouth and than written down. In the process, they were certainly often altered and we today interpret them in our context. All we can do is guess what the sources of these stories could have been – or believe.
Neither can we see the future, or know what is really going on. We are just humans, so all we can do is believe. And believing compels you to be tolerant. An intolerant belief will soon become hell.
RMD
P.S.
I would like to find out how the “non-christian” religions see Darwin! Can anybody provide literature?
* Source: Der Teil und das Ganze: Gespräche im Umkreis der Atomphysik (Taschenbuch) von Werner Heisenberg.
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