Column: Liberally Speaking
Tuesdays and Thursdays are usually days of the week that I wouldn’t mind skipping. With three classes beginning at 7:30 a.m. and ending at 1:20 p.m., my body doesn’t usually begin fully functioning until the sun fully rises, the caffeine reaches my brain or the canyon wind blows my eyes open. But last Thursday, something else got my blood pumping. It was class number two in the gauntlet, as I like to call it, and my biology class began discussing the topic of evolution.
This scientific theory says all living things descended from one common ancestor. We all started from one beginning and evolved through natural selection into the species that exist on the earth today. My mind wondered, as it usually does in the early hours, back to the days of my early education. The days of junior high in the city of Bountiful. The concept of evolution was introduced in my seventh grade biology class. I remember being confused about the whole situation. I have always learned that God created Adam and Eve in his own image, who then reproduced. He also created all life, but this life was completely separate from man, and now this junior high science teacher was trying to tell me my ancestor was an ape? Needless to say, I had many questions.
Well, I took these questions to the most reliable source I could find … my peers; other seventh graders who seemed to have everything figured out. When I told them what I had learned earlier, the laughter that followed was shocking. Imagine us being descendants of apes. So I shrugged it off, went to gym class and rarely questioned my origins again.
Well now that the college years have hit and my studies dive deeper, evolution becomes more and more likely – even probable. I mean, evolution is a scientific theory, a borderline law. The research that has contributed to the theory of evolution is some of the most extensive ever performed.
I find it ironic that some college-educated people have trouble wrapping their minds around evolution by natural selection and yet have no difficulty believing a man loaded two of every species of animal on a boat for 40 days. Whether it’s ignorance or sheer lack of knowledge that prevents these people from accepting evolution, I am unsure.
The bottom line is evolution happened and continues to happen at this very moment. Things are changing and will continue to change forever. The vestigial traits, the genetical and physical relatedness between species and even the sheer logic of a widely accepted scientific theory all point to one answer: all living things have a common ancestor. All the pieces are there and the puzzle is complete. The only problem is we are too stubborn to accept it.
Adam Strong is a sophomore majoring in business. Comments can be sent to adamstrong@cc.usu.edu.