For the sake of a argument, let’s assume there is definitely a god who created the universe with everything in it. Let’s play smart and presume that evolution is the definition of creation as the Vatican claims; therefore, God created us through evolution. This is the strongest modern ideology of creationism which can satisfy some scientists who, due to reasons of their own, would like to believe in the divine.
Now, let’s take a look at the human family tree. It only requires a little bit knowledge of palaeoanthropology to see how God created us. The act of human creation in terms of evolution started sometime around 6 million years ago when the human and ape lines diverged from a common ancestor. Since then, it was a great challenge for God to come up with a species in his own image; the so-called Homo sapiens, the wise man.
Why? Because when one looks at the human family tree, one discovers that there have been many off-track hominids who did not fulfill God’s purpose and became extinct. In fact, human family tree is a tree with many branches of hominids and we, Homo sapiens, are only one out of many branches on the tree. Each year, we discover another fossil of missing link and a new species of hominids which does not fit directly in the evolutionary line of the modern man. For instance, there are already two different species in the genus of Australopethecus known as “Paranthropus” who do not fit in the direct route of the evolutionary ladder of the Homo sapiens. These Austalopithecine are known as A. Boisei, and A. robustus.
These species can be considered off-track hominids only if we, Homo sapiens, were meant to emerge from the evolutionary process of creation. In other words, these species can be considered as a side-shoot of the evolutionary line leading to modern man. If God created Homo sapiens through an evolutionary process, then one can conclude that God really did not know the exact outcome of each step in the human evolution or he, God, wanted to play around with screwing some useless side-shoot hominids who were not in his image. Sure enough that God did waste a lot of time (6 million years) and energy by creating hominids which did not line up directly with the evolution of the wise man. A better and more recent example is the creation of Neanderthals. As you may know, there was a common ancestor for both Homo sapiens and Neanderthals, the Homo antecessor or possibly the older designation of Homo heidelbergensis, there is still much detail to be cleared up. It was the Neanderthals who probably diverged first. Soon after their emergence, God realized that Neanderthals whose brains were bigger than ours, couldn’t fulfill his image (another bad design). Thus, God threw the dice again, but this time, after 6 million years of throwing dice, he finally came up with Homo sapiens in his image, an image where his creatures could be intelligent but at the same time, destructive, devastating, detestable, atrocious, tyrant, ruthless, pitiless, and you name it He has it.
“God plays dice.” somebody should have reminded Albert Einstein of it, and that’s why there is a tree of the human family with main and accessory branches. If God did not play dice, then it would rather be a bamboo of the human family. Why a bamboo? Because in a human family bamboo, each section of it would be a direct complementary step of evolution towards Homo sapiens (God’s image-like creatures), without wasting time and energy by creating off-track hominids; a bamboo because then it would make sense that God who is omnipotent and omniscient, knew the exact outcome of each step of human evolution. However, in fact, it is a human family tree with a wonderful diversity of different human species. It would seem, therefore, that we may not need quantum mechanics to figure out whether or not God plays dice. All we need is to take a course in palaeoanthropology, that's what Einstein forgot to take.
by Farzad Roohi
happy st. pats day