A few years ago, I was driving back exhausted from a rock climbing trip in the mountains. My buddy Bryan Fong, was bored and feeling a little punchy. When he gets like this, he tends to bring up politically sensitive topics and starts looking for buttons to press.
In this case, he honed in on the evolution “debate” in the US. He’s a geologist by training and has no problems with evolution. But like I said, he was feeling punchy. He pointed out whether we believe/understand/agree with evolution has very little effect on the real world. In fact, the only ones who care are self-righteous know-it-alls like me (I am paraphrasing – the exact words were lost in my blinding rage).
“Are you stupid?” I remember saying and then sputtering a lot of vague crap about “young impressionable minds,” “competitiveness in the world,” and maybe even “higher truth.”
Essentially the same stuff that Bill Nye said in his debate with Ken Hamm, which has now been discussed far more than it was actually watched. But here’s the thing – and I can’t believe I’m saying this – on one key point, Hamm is kinda right. For most of us, it really doesn’t matter what we think. Do you need to understand evolutionary biology to be a computer programmer? Must you grasp natural selection to sell car insurance? For that matter, do you really need to believe the world is round or that the sun is the center of the solar system to be a good florist or a trader on the stock market?
Oh, but I was proud of myself yesterday. The rain was coming, 