MISSING LINKS

Now that the Pope has completed his trip to the Holy Land, with still no sign of the apocalypse, I think it's safe to say that we've officially survived the new millennium. Though I do have one friend that still wants to argue the point: "Yeah - there was no apocalypse. You know why? Because the new millennium . . . is next year." He's got the details down, about how the Gregorian calendar, on which ours is based, began with the year one, which means the year 2000 is actually 1999. But he remains oblivious to the one fact that matters: events like the millennium are whenever the advertisers tell us they are. History and math aside, he's clearly lost this one in the marketplace.

This same friend is equally adamant every Christmas about insisting that Jesus was actually born in April. By his account, early Christians only chose to celebrate His birth in late December because it was the same time as pagan festivals marking the winter solstice, which made them less likely to be discovered and persecuted.

But why April? "Because that's when the shepherds start tending their flocks by night. They don't do that at the end of December, because it's too damn cold."

For all I know, he could be 100% right on the facts. But once again, the marketplace has spoken. We love our Christmas in December, and even the most radical of fundamentalist scholars wouldn't be foolish enough to re-open that decision.

A less sanguine example of how the facts can be trumped by the marketplace is provided by these same fundamentalists' alarmingly successful assault against the teaching of evolution. In their most visible victory to date, last year they abducted the Kansas State School Board and passed an outright ban on Darwin's theories in the science classroom. The quiet war of attrition they've been waging against evolution's continued preeminence in standard science textbooks is less visible, but more sinister. As increasing numbers of local school boards face the threat of protracted litigation from groups attempting to transform the first amendment into a blunt instrument of economic blackmail, publishers have responded by competing to develop the least objectionable texts. They've done so by gutting their discourses on evolution, one of biology's central tenets. How ironic that Darwin's monumental achievement should find itself threatened by the survival-of-the-fittest mechanisms of the marketplace!

But unlike disputes over the "real" millennium and the "real" birthdate of Jesus, this is in no way a trivial matter. As harmful as the bad science is, the attempt to disabuse our children of any notion that man arose from his biological environment has far worse implications and consequences. The attitudes and actions that flow from an understanding of humanity's origins in the natural world are far different from those that place us both outside and above it. With the earth's population exploding past six billion, what some view as a philosophical dispute will not exist in the luxury of abstraction much longer. Distorted beliefs can and will produce real increases in human misery and suffering.

Fortunately, the anti-evolution crusaders have staked out a position that will not likely withstand the next deluge of scientific data. Already, genetic researchers have confirmed that 22 out of 23 chromosomes, and over 99% of the DNA of the chimpanzee is identical to humans. Ask yourself: "How many of my friends are 99% human?", and you see the power in those numbers.

Add to that linguistic research verifying the chimps' ability to construct complex phrases, and even questions, in sign language. Indeed, some individual chimps have demonstrated vocabularies of up to 3000 words (approaching that of the average pro wrestling fan).

Even more telling are behavioral studies in the wild which document that chimps are also accomplished at that most human of characteristics: lying. I am not talking about the unconscious trickery of adaptation and instinct, such as the wing pattern of a poisonous butterfly being copied over time by a non-poisonous cousin, or the lioness decoying an attacker away from her cubs. Chimpanzees practice conscious deception within their own social order, employing complicated sets of misleading actions and distractions, most often involving mating.

There is no evidence so far that they are capable of the levels of self-deception central to so many human belief systems. Perhaps that's the secret treasure hidden within our 23rd chromosome.

Personally, I've never understood the vehemence of religious attacks on evolution. A god great enough to create the mysteries of DNA and wise enough to set loose the forces of natural selection is sufficiently impressive to me. But then, I've always felt more reassured than alienated by the idea that all of life arose from a single unifying slop.

Even more to the point, it's never seemed to me a wise policy to hold fast to articles of faith when they can't withstand the tests of even casual observation. Evolution passed those tests for me when I was 18. I'd dropped out of college to bum around Europe with my best friend, Steve. We arrived in Copenhagen on a summer night, camping out at a large public park that the authorities had ceded to the season's youthful pilgrims. Awakening at dawn, we made ourselves presentable and headed off on foot for the Carlsberg Brewery, arriving just in time for the first tour of the day.

After an hour-long inspection of the facility, we reached our goal: the tasting room, where a generous sampling of the brewery's freshest beers was available for the asking. Having intentionally skipped breakfast, we achieved maximum buzz somewhere around the fourth sample, whereupon we put the flight controls on auto-pilot and cruised over to the Copenhagen Zoological Gardens.

It was only the third or fourth time I'd been that high in my young life, and the first ever at the zoo. Moving from the reptiles to the big cats, and on through the giraffes, hippos, elephants and rhinos, was as eerie as any Speilburg movie about aliens or dinosaurs. But when we arrived at the primates, it got downright disturbing.

From the ringtail monkeys to the great apes, the connection was inescapable. What struck me the most was the collective expression of futility and boredom. They were about as excited to see me as I was to see my algebra teacher.

One of the older chimpanzees was particularly disinterested that day. The harder I tried to make eye contact with him, the more he ignored me, until finally he made a disgusted squawk and completely turned his back. I responded with mocking chimp and Tarzan calls, to no avail. Then just as I was about to give up and move on, he spun his head around and stared directly at me. Before I could fully savor the proof of my superiority, he turned the rest of his body around. Without breaking eye contact, he casually spit into his right hand and started masturbating.

I've never doubted Darwin since.

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