From Dinosaurs to Birds (Part I in a Series on Evolution)

Last week, after writing with dismay about Sherri Shepherd and her seeming belief that knowledge and piety are incompatible, I rushed out to get some reading material about opposition to teaching religion in the public schools. While thankfully no one is still debating whether the roundness of the earth should be taught in schools, Americans are divided on whether or not evolution should be taught in public schools. And religious Americans are found on both sides of the issue.

Monkey Girl: Evolution, Education, Religion and the Battle for America’s Soul, by Edward Humes, is a non-fiction page-turner about the major issues in the struggle to preserve the teaching of evolution. He focuses on the events in Dover, Pennsylvania, where the school board mandated the reading of a short statement in science classes that portrayed evolution as a deeply flawed theory.

What most wowed me about the book was Humes’s description of the science of evolution. The natural world is incredible, and I was reminded anew of this as I read.

For example, I learned that birds are modern-day dinosaurs! How is this possible? Humes writes:

Darwin explained that some features could develop to serve a different purpose initially, then be adapted for a new purpose later. A small, feathery flap, for instance, too small for flight, could be used to keep a creature warm in cold weather…what if this was the original purpose of the structure that eventually became a wing? Natural selection could favor these natural capes and select for larger and more thermally efficient variations. If the creature happened to live in trees, eventually this newly shaped limb could prove useful for jumping and gliding, at which point natural selection would begin to emphasize variations that aided flight….

Recently discovered fossil evidence suggests that some flightless dinosaurs-the ancestors of modern birds-had this same head-tucking behavior. (See Monkey Girl, pg. 126)

That is so cool! Learning about science in all its complexity, helps me to better appreciate the amazingness of animals’ bodies, including our own human bodies.

Humes suggests that many Americans simply don’t have a clear understanding of what evolution is, and how it works. At first, it is quite a mind-stretch to consider how human beings in all our complexity evolved over millions of years. And yet! And yet that’s exactly what happened. So rather than treating it as impossible, let’s call it what it is - awesome!

In Part II of this post, I’ll talk more about the theological implications of evolution.

For now, I want to share a few resources about evolution, and about the movement against teaching evolution, which is led by proponents of creationism and “intelligent design.”

The “Frequently Asked Questions” Appendix of Science and Creationism: A View from the National Academy of Sciences is useful. Science and Creationism is a free online book published by the National Academy of Sciences. The FAQ section answers questions such as “Isn’t evolution just an inference?” , “Don’t many famous scientists reject evolution?” and “If humans evolved from apes, why are there still apes?”

The American Civil Liberties Union has a terrific page, “Frequently Asked Questions about ‘Intelligent Design’”, that addresses the legal and scientific aspects of the debate over teaching evolution.

Devolution, by H. Allen Orr, in The New Yorker, analyzes at length the arguments of “intelligent design” proponents.

In my Part II post on evolution, I will discuss more about the theological issues raised by evolution, including the concerns of creationists and the perspectives of religious people who support teaching evolution.