JANUARY 4, TUESDAY

EVOLUTION

I am not a scientist. I don‘t know any more about science than the common knowledge that everyone gets in high school or from reading National Geographic. Yet I am stuck with trying to figure out what this common knowledge means for myself.

What I am trying to deal with is difference between the measureable, actual universe that science currently describes and the world of imagination, mine and others, within which I live.

I didn‘t discover the Big Bang theory until I was in my 40’s,k half way through my life. I discovered it in the National Geographic. It absolutely knocked me out.

I had read a lot of creation stories in the Bible, in Indian mythology, in Greek mythology, in Native American mythology. They all seemed a little far fetched. But this story in National Geographic was absolutely bonkers.

The universe was the size of a pin head, it exploded and rapidly expanded and then matter wiped out anti matter and the little bit of matter that was left over from this pin head sized explosion became the endless universe as we know it. There was no light to begin with and then after millions of years light and matter turned into the billions and billions of massive stars exploding out in everybody direction after the Big Bang into endless space and time. It doesn‘t matter whether I‘ve got the facts right or not, it is unbelievable no matter how you look at it. And now this huge James Webb telescope is about to look back to the beginning of time, 13 billion years into the past, just after the Big Bang. I don‘t believe a word of it. It is too cuckoo, wilder than any conspiracy theory. If someone tries to convince you otherwise just tell them that they are nuts.

Except, apparently it is true. Something like that happened and is still happening.

One reason for not believing it is that, whether it is true or not, it is too depressing. Christian fundamentalists are right to cover their ears and reject it outright as a whopping lie. It turns their world upside down as it does mine. A couple of days ago I reacted to the briefness of our lives in time. But this creation story makes it clear that earth is just a speck of dust in a humongous universe and that time not only is endless but space and time are even relative to each other in some kookie way.

This story is also the story of evolution, evolution before there was light and after, before there was matter and after, certainly before there was life of any kind animal or plant as we know it. There was a slow evolution of the chemical and physical stuff of the universe that finally led to the slow, slow evolution of what we call life, birth and death life which made me so jittery a couple of days ago. There was no pattern, just accidental mutation. There are billions of covid viruses and they reproduce and die at a fantastic rate. When a mutation happens by accident the mutation that survives better by spreading more rapidly takes over. That is what Darwin discovered. That happens for viruses in a short period of our time, not virus time which is split second time, where it takes generations for mutations to happen. This is how we came to be through mutation that started in a warm stew of amoebas floating around in the sea and led both to plant life and animal life, slowly, slowly over millions of years with some species here for millions of years and then gone until humans finally evolved, no different from other animals with four legs and a heart and a brain just another animal branching off in a different directions.

Evolution 101 was one of the most exciting courses I took in college, probably to meet a science requirement. It seemed absolutely amazing, but now it makes my blood run cold. Evolution is all chance, slow chance mutation with almost all mutations dead ends but finally leading to us, human animals, unable to get along with each other and in danger of wiping ourselves out. So many extinctions have happened that this one will just be another one, same old, same old story. But the thought that I am here by this chance excruciatingly slow evolution without any satisfying meaningful explanation dumbfounds me. From an objective, scientific explanation there is no absolute meaning, just chance, with no idea what came before the Big Bang. Nuts.

But I live in human bubble of endless meaning. How can this be? Any clues? I’ve got myself into a box and will need a little help getting out of it, which I will attempt one of these days. It may just be a life saving illusion, but I will take anything I can get as long as it makes me feel better. Until then.