A plague of frogs

I came across an interesting article in the newspaper this weekend. It was in the comics section, actually, as one of the local papers carries a section in the middle of the comics that's like a miniature newspaper for kids; you've probably seen them before.

Apparently, various species of frogs are going extinct at an alarming (to whom?) rate. According to the article, "Experts believe half of all frog species are now facing extinction." The culprits? Well, there are actually a number of factors, but apparently most of them tie in to global warming in some manner. The conclusion of the piece was essentially that it is our job as caretakers of the earth to do what we can to stop this massive frog genocide.

This reminded me of a question I've often pondered in one form or another. Let me give a disclaimer that I'm all for doing what we can to avoid damaging the environment. Frogs, along with so many other animals, are really great, and I think it's good to have them around for various reasons. But the question...well, it's really two questions, and the issue of how they interrelate.

#1 - Is there something inherently wrong with driving a species of animal to extinction?
#2 - Is it our responsibility to keep such a thing from happening?

See, while the disclaimers I give above hold, it seems to me that the answer to neither of these questions is self-evident. I examine here the specific case of frogs, since it was what drove me to question these assumptions again.

Suppose frogs simply disappeared from the face of the earth. There's nothing inherently great about frogs per se. One of the most vital items that is actually pointed out in the article is that frogs eat insects. Get rid of the frogs, and the insect population gets out of control. Now, aside from the fact that frogs obviously are eating insects that share their ecosystem, and if they died due to loss of a viable ecosystem, the insects probably are not to far behind, there are various problems with this still. Similar to the assumption that losing frogs is inherently bad is the assumption that gaining insects is inherently bad. How can we really place a value on one species over another?

Of course, the net effect goes beyond that. The bigger picture is that when a piece is taken out of the puzzle, well, it's sort of like the ecosystem is akin to a game like Jenga: if you pull out a piece, it may lead to a total collapse of the system. Insects grow out of control, and those animals that subsisted mainly on a diet of frogs will start to dwindle. The impact of the loss of the frogs has a ripple effect on everything around. But is this wrong? Nature has a tendency to restore that balance eventually. While in the short-term, chaos may reign, eventually either something else will eat the insects or the food supply of the insects will run short. Probably both.

Look, the dinosaurs died out, right? Science tells us that 65 million years ago, the dominant life form on the face of the earth went away. This was after existing as an order of life for 160 million years. During those millions of years, I don't know the numbers, but it is my understanding that wave after wave of species of dinosaur came to be extinct, only to be replaced by later generations of dinosaurs. Of course, once the last of the dinosaurs were gone (either completely wiped from existence or evolving into birds as some suspect), the world kept on going fine without them. Sure, I'd miss frogs because I have lived with them, but I somehow don't miss dinosaurs, mammoths, or dodos. Dinosaurs were definitely not wiped out by humans; dodos definitely were. Mammoths? Humans hunted them, but the final cause of their extinction is unknown. Does the manner of extinction make for more or less of a tragedy, and why?

Anyway, what I'm driving at is that whether or not a species may be dying out due to our own actions or due to natural changes beyond our control, in the end, species simply die. We can't say with complete accuracy when, but it seems to me that it's fair to say from an evolutionary standpoint that eventually every species existing today will cease to exist. For many, it will take millions of years, but for some others, I imagine they will die out within the next month or so, many due to no action on the part of humans. That's just nature.

Maybe you might want to argue that if we know or at least highly suspect that the imminent extinction of a species is due to our own poor choices, we might have a responsibility to clean up our own mess. I'd buy that from an emotional standpoint, but really, it's not much more than an emotional argument, is it?

Okay, let's talk penguins one more time. In the movie Happy Feet, (no major spoilers here, but maybe minor ones) the main character is a penguin who eventually realizes that part of the reason he and his fellow penguins can't find enough food is that there are these strange alien creatures (humans) that are eating all of the fish. He eventually decides that the best thing to do is try to communicate with the aliens, and convince them that the best thing to do is share the fish with everyone. The idea is sweet and all, but there's a built-in assumption that I don't buy: that penguins (and perhaps by extension other animals) are somehow morally superior to humans. While certainly any penguin being aware of the fact that they are contending against humankind for the fish supply would not like the idea of giving up all the fish to the humans, does anyone really think that out of the options of sharing the fish with humans or eating all the fish themselves, any penguin would choose the former? We're not morally inferior, we're technologically superior. Whether or not the power of our technology requires a moral temper to it is a matter of opinion. If you don't think so, then explain why humans hunt whales? Obviously someone feels that we owe no moral debt to our harpoonally-challenged sea dwelling cousins.

This is the hard part of relative morality, but to be honest, absolute morality has problems here too, in that it's fair to assume there will always be moral dilemmas that are not clearly covered by a given moral code. There are few religions or philosophical world-views that will tell you what to do about the frogs. Even Buddhists--who no doubt would advocate avoiding any actions that would harm frogs, penguins, whales, or elephants--do not to my knowledge address the issue of what to do for a frog that dies of natural causes. Really, not even the newspaper has a definitive answer. If only we could ask the frogs, what do you suppose they would say?

Does a hairless ape have the Buddha nature?

I spend a lot of time thinking about things that atheists say about the world and how so often it doesn't seem to make sense to me. Case in point, something that I love to bring up is the question of how evolutionary theory (that is, of the sort that claims humans evolved from "lower life forms", that's the interesting stuff, right?) is often claimed to have solid basis in scientific fact, and yet, I've never heard of any specific evidence. Those who truly understand science realize that science never "proves" anything anyway, and that's an apparent weakness and yet in many ways truly the strength of science that at its core, science is eternally skeptical.

Not so theists, obviously. A common claim made by theists is the concept that the existence of God is simply self-evident. The mere fact that atheists exist would seem to be a compelling counter-argument, but my fellow theists insist. Usually, the claim is the if one simply looks at the world around us, sees how amazing it is, one cannot reasonably reject the concept of an all-powerful creator. Okay, if you really think so.

Something always seems wrong with it to me, but it's hard to put a finger on specifics. Then I remembered a fascinating little observation I've heard a few theistic anti-evolutionists make: Ever seen a dog say grace before digging into a bowlful of chow? Of course not, dogs don't have religion, nor do any other animals, and clearly, that's what sets us apart and makes us superior.

I find that to be a much more interesting and perhaps far more astute observation, although it may not be so clear what conclusions we can draw from the fact. I realize that I have repeatedly talked on this blog about how we really are not well served in comparing humans to animals, yet I think it is a wellspring of philosophical, sociological and biological insight to note anything that does actually clearly delineate us from the rest of the living creatures in the world. We're not the only animals to use tools, build structures, or even use language, so while those things fail to fully set us apart, the fact that we are somehow fundamentally religious is striking. Even atheists are likely to occasionally ponder the possibility that God exists, even if they easily reject it out of hand. Does this really make us somehow superior, however?

While an atheist might say no out of sense of surety that theology is a waste of brain power, it occurs to me that theists themselves are implicitly putting forth a very good argument that something is wrong somewhere. Maybe you personally disagree, but I have never doubted that many animals are thinking, feeling beings. Our favorite pets, dogs and cats, seem to be very able to observe the world around them and evaluate what is going on. Their thought processes may be somewhat more simplistic, but I don't believe they are completely unable to abstract from sense data. When I was growing up, I had a dog. Surely that dog could have looked up into the night sky and seen the stars twinkling away across the galaxy. Surely that dog could have looked at the natural world about him and seen the beauty of nature. Yet all of these things that are supposed to inspire us as humans to realize that there is something greater than us in the world simply fail to elicit such a response in animals. Why is that?

Think about it: If the existence of God is supposed to be self-evident by simply looking at the world around us, so much so that in order to deny God's existence one would supposedly have to fool oneself into denying it, then why do we not see any evidence of Godly reverence among other species? Is it lack of intelligence? I don't think so. It's an oddity that one has to be intelligent before one can be fooled. Ever try to play a practical joke on a dog? It doesn't work. Either you fail completely, or you're successful in a mere mechanical way while the dog has no idea what's going on. Who fooled the animals of the world into ignoring God?

Really, in my mind there are only two possibilities. Either claims that the existence of God is self-evident are fundamentally flawed, or the fact that animals are non-religious shows us that we as humans are inferior. If you can look at the stars in the sky and "see God", not in a supernatural way, but in a mundane sense of it being simply self-evident, then you're deluded. Our ability as highly intellectually evolved creatures to imagine infinite possibilities from the limited information we gather with our senses has caused a glitch: the imagining of God.

That's not to say that God does not exist. Don't mistake me, I'm still a theist. The problem here is a short-circuiting of reason, but that doesn't automatically imply that the conclusion is wrong, just logically flawed. If I believe that every time I wash my car, it will rain within 24 hours, it may in fact be true, but that doesn't imply causality, only that I have poor timing in washing my car. I think God exists, but not because the world is so beautiful.

It may be that there is something supernatural to it, like God opening the eyes of a person in the Bible and letting them see the realm of the spirit for a moment. Even then, however, one cannot say it's self-evident, as divine intervention is needed. Is a special kind of sight that which has set us apart from the animals? If so, it may not be given to all, and we cannot say that an atheist is fooling themselves for not seeing what we see; for better or worse, they simply aren't experiencing that same glitch.

Thumbing my nose at Stephen Jay Gould

(Note: This blog entry has prerequisite reading, a short essay to be found here.)

My grandmother used to have a peculiar habit of collecting rocks. Collecting rocks in itself is not weird, most people have done it at one time or another, but most people do it because the rocks they collect have either a certain physical beauty or perhaps they came from a place that has sentimental value to them. My grandmother collected rocks because she wanted to be an archaeologist.

The place where I grew up was considered by many archaeologists to be a veritable treasure trove of artifacts, having been populated for centuries by numerous cultures. An interesting history there, actually; the Pomo tribe was in many ways like the financial center of the ancient California economy. They had a technology that as far as I know is still a secret to this day that enabled them to make stone drill bits they used in the manufacture of beads from seashells. These beads were used as a local currency because there was a limited supply of them made under strict secrecy and control of the Pomo. When Europeans finally made it to the West Coast, they brought with them the technology to make drill bits out of metal, and the economic system collapsed virtually overnight as everyone freely made counterfeit beads.

My grandmother's interest as an amateur archaeologist was, unfortunately, lacking in any sort of scientific rigor. Her back porch was often littered with various stones she had collected on her walks along a nearby creek, and when asked why she had chosen the stones she had, there were two stock answers.

1. "I think these are man-made because I see so many rocks just like them all over the place."
2. "I think this rock was man-made because I've never seen another rock like it anywhere."

I think anyone could see the problem with this logic. Aside from the obvious contradiction, the fact is that real artifacts will probably fall somewhere in between on the commonality spectrum, but in the end, the real issue is that relative rarity of an object is not something that's truly a factor in how likely it is to be man-made. (Those stone drill bits I mentioned are undoubtedly man-made, but are extremely rare, while old rusty nails, which are also undoubtedly man-made, are very easy to find when digging around in the dirt in that area.)

For those of you that read the essay I linked to, you might be wondering what all of this has to do with evolution, or maybe you see it as a transparent attempt to switch the topic to Intelligent Design. Well, ID is definitely going to come up in some form in this post, but I have a message for people on both sides of the evolutionary debate. In his essay, Stephen Jay Gould mentions

"I had always learned that a dexterous, opposable thumb stood among the hallmarks of human success."

I myself had never been taught this, but perhaps I was biased growing up with a cat that had opposable thumbs. I think what Gould is hinting at here is that anti-evolutionists are looking at the thumb of humans and saying essentially, "The thumb as we know it in humans is extremely rare in other animals, therefore surely we must have been designed." Uniqueness is indeed often touted as a basis for assuming intelligent design, usually, of course, as a list of things that are unique to humans in particular. Something that I have been noticing lately after reading a great deal about the platypus is that uniqueness is a surprisingly common thing. Every animal has something that sets it apart from other animals, or it would be the same animal, wouldn't it? And while the platypus is indeed very odd, odd animals exist everywhere. (I think on this continent, our "odd animal" is the hummingbird, but I'm sure there are other freaks of nature.) Anyway, the oddly unique qualities that are possessed by homo sapiens are really a non-issue to evolutionary biologists, and from a purely scientific standpoint, they shouldn't be, really.

The thing that I really find fascinating about this essay is that Gould (a man who, if Darwinism were a religion as some of my fellow fundamentalists seem to think, would have been one of its archbishops if not the Pope) seems to agree with some of the views that creationists and ID proponents espouse today. While most skeptics insist that the idea of a creator who designed life is preposterous and need not even be addressed as a possibility, Gould gives a nod to the concept:

"[I]deal design is a lousy argument for evolution, for it mimics the postulated action of an omnipotent creator."

Certainly Gould never admits the idea of a creator as a likely possibility, and in fact the whole point of the essay is to argue fiercely against the concept, but he does address the concept in order to make a reasoned argument against it, something few evolutionists even bother to do, it seems to me.

For those anti-evolutionists who may be reading this, I would say to you that if you actually read Gould's essay and it didn't give you pause, I think you're either being intellectually dishonest or you didn't understand his point. I think a big part of what makes his argument so strong is that he does take time to consider the possibilities presented by the hypothesized existence of an intelligent creator of the panda. In seeing both sides, at least in some limited degree, he's creating a case that is much more well-rounded than most I've heard. Creationists could and should take a tip from Gould. While I've been railing a bit in my last paragraph about evolutionists failing to address the opposition, I don't want to give the impression that I think creationists are any better on average in that respect. No ground is going to be gained for the cause of promoting creationism or ID by ignoring the other side. Evolution has a lot of evidence and many solid arguments behind it, and while, yes, it does seem highly unlikely that somehow billions of years of random chance caused inert matter to somehow coalesce and eventually morph into modern humans, simply saying that it's dubious is hardly an argument in itself.

Gould's argument is pretty straightforward, but needs an essay several pages long to explain the backdrop of the real meat of the argument; delving into the general morphology of the order carnivora, comparing pandas to bears and other relatives, explaining the mechanism of the human thumb vs. the panda thumb all lead up to a basis for putting it all together into a simple premise.

"The radial thumb is...a contraption, not a lovely contrivance."

Gould is assuming that an omnipotent creator would either give the panda the same thumb he gave other animals (especially since all the parts are there to do so), or he would build an entirely new type of thumb from entirely new body parts that simply do not exist in other species. There's logic in this, no doubt. The panda's thumb is essentially a thumb that is designed the hard way, so to speak, when at least one more elegant solution to the construction problem exists, and one might suppose other elegant solutions could be made. (If you were a mechanical engineer, you probably could think of one or two easily, I imagine.)

One of the things about this argument that I find interesting is that, aside from acknowledging the possibility of a creator, it also runs counter to what I've heard from other atheists. Often those who promote the idea of evolution over creationism will point to the similarities between creatures and say that those similarities indicate common ancestry. Gould seems to be implicitly confirming what many creationists will say in response to such an argument: that common design implies a common designer. After all, why should God re-create the thumb for humans when a perfectly good thumb already exists in other primates? It's that very argument that creationists love to use (and the average evolutionist pooh-poohs) that is the very basis for Gould's argument here. Why shouldn't God use a pre-existing design, or, if there was a good reason not to, why wouldn't God make something new rather than cobble together a thumb from second-hand parts, so to speak.

When I was a kid, I got some Legos in a McDonald's Happy Meal. The small collection of Legos was designed to make something specific, like a little racecar. Now, I could make that racecar, sure, but the real fun was in making something new and unexpected out of those parts. Could I position the wheels closer together so that they functioned like gears? Could I make a car that bore little or no resemblance to the intended car design? If I really wanted to get creative, I could have asked my parents to buy me more Legos, but tinkering was fun and stimulating. Is it a sure thing that God would not also think so? As I could think of my attempts to combine the same set of Legos in different ways a way of showing my creativity, could not God also wish to show His creative side by combining the same set of bones, muscles and tendons in varying and surprising ways? Is nature's variety God's way of showing us that there's more than one way to skin a cat?

While I do think that Gould's argument is very strong (and has resulted in my wanting to read some of Darwin's books, particularly the one on orchids, which must be a blast), what's really missing in the story here to truly address the concerns of a theist is more info on the theological side. While Gould takes time to unpack all the baggage of ursine bone structure, when it comes to dealing with the question of creationism, he simply assumes the proper action of an omnipotent creator.

"If God had designed a beautiful machine to reflect his wisdom and power, surely he would not have used a collection of parts generally fashioned for other purposes."

So many arguments against the existence of God boil down to this sentence with different phrases inserted in the underlined spaces. "If God was really good, surely he would have spared my mother Alzheimer's." "If God didn't want me to have sex with whomever I want whenever I want, surely he would not make it feel so darn good." "If God wanted me to believe in him, surely he would give me a million dollars." In short, assume you know what God would do or how he would think, and base your beliefs around that assumption.

The fact is, maybe Gould is right. I mean, it sounds reasonable. However, there are a lot of things that sound reasonable, but aren't necessarily so. "Humans are designed in a manner so high above the other animals in dexterity, intelligence and other factors that surely we are the apex of creation." That's something that sounds quite reasonable to most people, but evolutionary biology shows that this is not the case at all, or at least it doesn't follow in direct logical progression.

You know what I think? I think there are (at least) two things in the universe that are simply beyond our ability to fully comprehend. One of them is the full story of the origin of life as we currently know it, and the other is the mind of God. Maybe instead of fighting over who has come closer to arriving at unattainable knowledge, we could just enjoy the journey? Probably not likely, but that's my personal plan.

A death in the family

It's an odd sensation to pick up the newspaper or, in my case, a magazine, and find out for the first time about the death of a family member. Not that it was a close family member, nor that I was unaware of the fact that they were dead. Actually, the real news was the former: the fact that they were not as close a relation as I had been led to believe.

Of course, as I'm sure you realized the instant you began reading this that the relative I was talking about was homo erectus, who apparently died, oh, tens of thousands of years ago, I guess, I don't know the specifics. I was reading a fascinating article in Newsweek on a number of interesting developments in the study of human evolution, and I marveled, not at the information, but at the manner of presentation of the information, and the implications it might have for both those who put their trust in fundamentalist Christian dogma about the origins of man and those who put their faith in Darwin, or whatever, I think you know what I mean, although I am here and no doubt throughout this writing going to be far less than scientifically precise. Here I present another meandering musing on evolutionary theory that may be almost as random and aimless as the supposed forces of natural selection themselves.

So anyway, it turns out that the paternity test came back, and erectus is not the baby's father. The article itself is vague on exactly when the test was performed, but really, when erectus has been gone for thousands of years, it's not clear exactly how much it matters; suffice it to say that the suspected connection was never there, at least not in the way many scientists suspected. Rather than being our father, the family tree of the hominids that is now considered more accurate shows erectus as a sort of "first cousin twice removed" or grand-uncle, something of the sort. I don't know whether this came as a surprise to evolutionary scientists, but it sure does seem to have come as a surprise to the author of the article. Homo erectus was a species that, according to what is known about it, managed to thrive for around two million years and spread across various parts of three continents. They didn't make tools, or at least not more than very crude ones, but they walked upright, looked a lot like modern humans and are believed to have had a pretty good cognitive ability, based on what appears to be the structures of the brain. Still, they died out, and--along with homo neanderthalensis--seem to have not been our ancestors, nor the ancestors of any living species.

The author of the article seems to be very surprised to find that such seemingly advanced species of hominids could have lived and yet not been our ancestors. "More than once in human prehistory, evolution created a modern trait such as a face without jutting, apelike brows and jaws, only to let it go extinct, before trying again a few million years later." The author's view of evolution is interesting to me, both because many of the things they seem to find surprising seem obvious to me, and because it's the sort of surprise that I think for some people may be based on commonly-accepted ideas of evolutionary theory. If evolution is indeed an unguided force of nature (more or less, "force" may be a poor choice of words) then why not create something randomly that turns out not to be useful at the time it's created? Heck, species die out all the time, so why should it be so unusual that hominid species have also done so, even if they were similar to other ones that did survive?

For that matter, does the author really think of evolution as an unguided force? Would one say of an impersonal force, "evolution created", or "let it go", or "trying again"? It sounds more like the description of a cosmic tinkerer or scientist, trying little experiments to see what happens. Of course, that's hardly the view of any world religions I know, either, which is why this evidence, while it "upended traditional ideas" about evolutionary theory hardly gives weight to creationism. Certainly the God of the Bible isn't the sort of being that would have created numerous nearly-human species just to let them die out, right?

Both the author's view of an age-old understanding of evolution and the implications of a theory of theistic evolution favor the idea that human descent is a matter of a straightforward, linear progression of "{Sahelanthropus tchadensis} begat Australopithecus who begat Homo habilis who begat Homo erectus who begat Homo sapiens." Of course now it would seem that few if any of these ancient hominids are direct descendants of our modern species. There are two mistaken assumptions here, firstly that evolution is linear, and second that the whole point of evolution is to yield an end product of homo sapiens. Both of these concepts are worth exploring, though.

The author says about these dead-end branches that "It's like discovering that your great-great-grandfather was not an only child as you'd thought, but had a number of siblings who, for unknown reasons, left no descendants." I say, is that so momentous? My grandfather was into genealogy, and it's interesting to me to note that while scientific studies of genealogy like to focus on the Y-chromosome as a pointer to study lineage, my grandfather has left behind no descendants with his Y-chromosome. On that side of my family, I have only one male cousin, and he, like me, was born of one of our grandfather's daughters, while my grandfather's only son has only daughters himself. Now that Y-chromosome may exist in a distant relative somewhere--and probably does, actually--but if by odd chance there was a genetic mutation in my grandfather's Y-chromosome that might have been significant in some way, the world will never know. If it happens on a small scale with my own maternal family (and possibly paternal family, as I have no sons or brothers), then why not on a larger scale? That being said, while those branches seem obviously likely to exist to me, it's not completely wrong to look at evolution as a linear process in one sense, because my own Y-chromosome came from a direct line of male descendants before me, obviously, and if you wanted to track its origin, my lack of genetically significant male cousins doesn't matter at all. Homo erectus may be interesting biologically, but only tells us things about who we are indirectly.

As for the concept of evolution being directed at the creation of modern humans, oddly this is a sort of yes and no, and it's only yes due to random chance, one might suppose. It seems sometimes like humans are the pinnacle of life on this planet, but that's only out of an anthropocentrist sort of view. Evolution seems to focus on humanity because the study of evolution largely focuses on human evolution. Biological science will no doubt study all life, but put its primary focus on our own life because, despite occasional claims to the contrary, we as a society do try to use science to answer the same questions we struggle with in religion. We want to know how we got here, and what possible purpose we may have in being here. Sometimes it may make us forget that science does try to be dispassionate and unbiased as much as it can be. It makes sense to want to study ourselves, but in doing so, we inflate our own abstract sense of self-worth sometimes, and pure science doesn't give us that. To the undirected force of evolution, while today we may be the dominant species, thousands of years from now we may be another homo heidelbergensis: a stepping stone to a new, more advanced species, or tomorrow's homo erectus: just another evolutionary dead-end. That being said, while in a grander scale our place in the order of things may be temporary, at the moment we may indeed stand at the apex of the animal kingdom.

But as we stand at the summit and view those others that fell off of cliffs along the climb here, the surprise at what we see is interesting. While I strongly suspect the author is perhaps somewhat clumsily presenting information in a newsweekly that's not really "news" (I mean, aside from the fact that this is all stuff that happened hundreds of thousands to millions of years ago), there was a time not too long ago when this information was being newly processed by scientists and shaking up their own more sophisticated assumptions of hominid descent. After all, it's only been a little over 150 years since the first skull of a neanderthal was discovered, making scientists start to think more deeply about our biological place in the world, but every time a discovery is made, claims are made about what significance such and such fossil has, charts are rearranged to reflect new thinking, and human evolution is turned upside down, shaken out of its box and put back together.

Even now that we have begun to use more sophisticated methods of examining fossils, including DNA analysis (although I don't understand how one gets DNA from a fossil, but no matter) there seems to be a lot of assuming going on. In the opening of the article, we are assured that "...DNA...accumulates changes at a regular rate." Later, we are told that (my emphasis) "...DNA changes at a fairly regular rate." Technicality, right? Molecular biologists supposedly can use this rate of change like a clock, which is why we are told about it, but then about halfway through the article we are told of a specific gene:

It had changed in only two of its 118 chemical "letters" from 310 million years ago (when the lineages of chickens and chimps split) to 5 million years ago. But 18 letters changed in the (relative) blink of an eye since the human lineage split from chimps'...

How's that? We know that the change is regular, except when it's not regular? It seems that in these huge time scales of millions of years, so much is assumed. The article tells an interesting tale of how DNA of body lice tells us that they evolved about 114,000 years ago, and since they live in the habitat of human clothing, that must be when we evolved to lose most of our body hair. Oh, it's a fascinating theory, no doubt, but then, does it really make sense?

Why evolve to lose our body hair if it's just going to force us to invent clothing to keep ourselves warm? Why not invent clothing, which leads to the evolution of body lice, which between the two leads us to evolve to lose body hair, since clothing means it is no longer needed, and it's easier to delouse if you have less hair? Could we have the cause and effect backwards? Not to mention the fact that there are plenty people alive today that still have lots and lots of body hair, so it's not quite a common trait of the whole species.

And how do we really know what is a common trait of a whole species? The briefly-mentioned sahelanthropus tchadensis had a big part to play in rearranging the diagrams of hominid descent with its discovery, but then it's only a single fossil! Using the family tree metaphor again, it seems sort of like finding a single picture of a man in an old family photo album who looks sort of Italian, and dumping out all the pictures in your (non-Italian) family's album to rearrange the lot of them. Surely there must be a more rational approach, but then I'm not a photo album arranger, nor am I a biologist. Still, if a person who's never been to the U.S. saw a broadcast of a basketball game from Houston, would they be fair to assume that there exists in the U.S. a race of seven-foot-tall Chinese men?

My personal observation on all of this? There are far too many fossils of our ancient, branching family tree to deny that there is something to the theory of human evolution, but at the same time, there seem to be far too few fossils to say anything about it with definitive surety. Maybe in the end I will be proven wrong, but it seems to me that the science of evolution, in studying things that happened millions of years ago that left behind scant evidence, we operate far more on speculation than anything else.

Two...

This morning, an odd thing happened to me that reminded me to write this post that I've had sitting on the back burner of my mind for some time, even long before the last post was written. One of my coworkers showed up at work on her day off today with her dog in tow. Although I'm not the sort of person who likes to own dogs, I am the sort who enjoys a bit of friendly interaction with other people's dogs (or just about any other pet).

Anyway, I got down on my knees in front of this dog, and said to it in a sort of baby-talk voice (yeah, I'm that sort of person as well), "Aw, aren't you a friendly puppy?" To which he turned and gave me a "doggy kiss". Now, I had been expecting and even hoping for one of these, although more of a sort of friendly lick on the cheek. What I got was more like a full-on doggy frenching, and before I fully got the word "puppy" out, this canine was licking my teeth and had his lips firmly planted on my own.

There's an odd conundrum involved with being in such a position with a dog. On the one hand, and usually the most obvious, it's sort of gross. Who knows what said dog had enjoyed in its last five meals or so and was now smearing on the inside of my mouth? On the other hand, as I said, I was (sort of) expecting such a friendly greeting. What strikes me as really interesting about this, though, is that there are some social situations in which many of us wouldn't mind a particular attractive person not formally known to us coming up and planting their lips on ours (think high school crush or the like) and yet we in no way expect that this will happen. Why is this? I have a friend who would be delighted to meet Geena Davis and have her first reaction upon meeting him be to leap into his lap and snuggle up against him, but it's highly unlikely it would happen, or that it would fail to raise an eyebrow on the rare chance that it did occur. Yet upon his visiting my house, my cat did exactly that to him, to nobody's surprise or shock.

Why do we treat animals differently? How much differently should we treat them (if at all)? I find it quite interesting that most people understand that there is a divide between people and the rest of the animal kingdom even if they don't believe so for religious reasons. Of course religiously, from a Judeo-Christian viewpoint, mankind is the crowning creation of all the universe, made last, and made to rule over the rest. Some see this as instilling in us absolute power and moral superiority, allowing us to use animals for labor, food, and even sadistic entertainment of sorts with no moral repercussions. Others see us as having responsibility to treat them like a younger sibling, giving them attention and comforts as one would a small child. Many fall somewhere in between. Is there any clear moral roadmap set out for us by the Bible or any established church institution?

Those who don't believe in the Bible, but probably lean on Darwinian principles to form their opinions on animals (not that these are entirely exclusive viewpoints, nor the only two) likewise comprise a whole spectrum of attitudes. While some may also see evolutionary principles pointing to humans as the pinnacle of evolution, I think those who really understand atheistic evolutionary theory realize that we are in many senses no more than one among many animals that inhabit the planet. Does this mean that we are to be kind and generous because they are our extended family, or does it give us license to do as we wish to them as the outcome is merely the result of their being less "fit" and therefore not worthy to survive? Once again, I see no clear roadmap set for the atheist. (I'm not the sort to assume that "atheistic = amoral".) Still, the most staunch believer in the former philosophy of the brotherhood of all animals probably knows there's something wrong with molesting sheep, and would rather be kissed by (Jessica Simpson/Josh Hartnett/insert human celebrity name of choice) than a spotted owl.

Still, I can't help but think animals deserve a place of respect in our lives, especially ones that we voluntarily have live with us as pets and/or livestock. The cat mentioned above has an annoying habit of being highly territorial when it comes to non-humans. While any person visiting our home will find our cat quite friendly and welcoming, any other animals who come within sight are subject to violent attack. A few weeks ago, she attempted to assault a strange cat who had wandered into our backyard, despite the fact that there was a thick glass plate separating them. The next day, a lump on her shoulder and a marked limp made us wonder if she had dislocated her shoulder in her vain attempt to protect her domain. The vet at the pet hospital told us that it would cost a few hundred dollars just to find out what was wrong, treatment aside.

It's one of those moments when you ponder the nature of the divide between man and beast. On one hand, with my family's current financial situation (I'm working two jobs just to pay the bills) I suspect that I may be squeezing the food budget to pay the vet bill. On the other hand, our cat is like a member of the family. What to do? A little over $600 later, I found out that the lump was essentially a big bruise, and I wished for the power to communicate with my cat the way I would with my children to say, "I understand you feel protective of your personal space, but you're not doing anybody any favors by crashing full-bore into plate glass windows. Think next time!"

Do we live in the conjunction of two worlds, one of animals and one of humans? What sets us apart? Language? Some primates seem to be able to learn sign language, and dolphins appear to have some sort of communication system as well. Usage of tools? Once again, primates can certainly learn to use various tools, and there are many instances of animals in the wild using sticks and rocks in numerous fashions to obtain food. Some have suggested that religion is what sets humans apart from animals, but I suspect from an atheistic point of view, that might be a show of our own inferiority. Besides, might it not be possible that animals have a form of religion that we simply do not understand?

I hate writing a post like this without having a specific end in mind. Not that I feel a need to wrap up every post here in a neat package, but still... Maybe the answer in some ways is not so important as asking the question. In my mind, since there is doubt, I wonder if these sort of questions may be some of the most important questions of all. After all, in weighing the balance between humans and the rest of the animals, we're in a strong minority, aren't we?