Evolution vs. Creationsim

I realise this topic has been done to death, but after yet another debate on Facebook today, I'm going to chime in anyway.

We, as humans, are curious about where we came from and why we're here. That's a perfectly natural curiosity, and I would argue that a lot of religion stems from trying to answer these questions. A few thousand years ago, an omnipotent man in the sky really wasn't a bad guess, given what we knew about the universe (i.e. not much). However, a few millenia has thankfully been rather enlightening, and we now have some alternate "how we got here" explanations.

Just like you learn the technology adoption curve in business class, there seems to be a similar curve for adoption of new ideas into society, however rational they may seem to be. Not all of society is yet on board with the concept of evolution, and a subset of the "laggards" are really upset that it is being taught in science class. They've tried to force creationism, or "intelligent design" into the classroom, arguing that it is an equally legitimate explanation of how we got here.

Intelligent Design (ID) is a legitimate explanation for the origin of life (legitimate in the sense that it answers the question), but the problem with teaching it in science class is that it is not a scientifically legitimate theory. When I say scientifically legitimate, I mean that it can be proved or disproved. A scientific theory isn't just a way of explaining a phenomenon, it's a very specific way of explaining it that details how it can be tested. The problem with creationism as a scientific theory is that I have yet to hear of a creationist talk about how it can be tested, and specifically how it could be disproved (which is the most important part of a scientific theory - the provision for what evidence would constitute a disproval). As far as I know, creationism has no way to be disproven, meaning that it is not scientific, and I would argue that this disqualifies it from the science curriculum along with homeopathy and astrology.

This does not mean that creationism cannot be taught in schools, just that it cannot legitimately be taught in a science class. There are lots of schools that have religious studies classes, and creationism, as a religious idea, is more than suited to the curriculum. This is similar to the way that the philosophical idea that we are all just minds with bodies floating in some abyss of mutual consciousness is better suited to philosophy class than to science class. It is also an explanation of how we exist, but cannot be proven or disproven, similar to creationism.

There is the tangential debate about how teaching evolution as a mandatory topic will interfere with political and religious freedom. I argue that this is preposterous. In my (mandatory) class on US Government, I learned about Roe v. Wade and how it essentially legalised abortion nation-wide. Never was I told whether or not abortion was ethical or moral, or whether or not it should be legal, because that would be a debate for an ethics or philosophy class. I was, however, required to know the facts of the case and the outcome. The purpose of the class on US Government was to teach me the state of the US Government, just like the purpose of science class is to teach students about scientific thinking and the state of science. Scientists, and the field of science in general, almost universally accept evolution as the explanation for life on Earth, which is why it belongs in science class (and students are never required to believe in evolution, only to be able to recite and process the scientific facts). Should there be some radical discovery that disproved evolution (and remember, since evolution is a scientific theory, it can always be disproved), it would stop belonging in science class and start belonging in science history class. But since evolution is the current thinking in the field of science, it should continue being taught in the same way that major supreme court decisions should continue being taught despite the major political battles raging surrounding them.

If people want creationism taught in schools, start campaigning to have religious studies classes offered at more schools, but for the love of Evolution, leave our science classes alone.

The Mystery of Women...

I was recently reading this brilliant article on women. In particular, the author (Jean Hannah Edelstein for the Guardian) responds to Stephen Hawking's recent assertion that women are a totally enigmatic to him with a few tips on unravelling the mystery.

Edelstein's last point is the one that hit home for me the most. I've taken the liberty of pasting the text here:

'Much like scientists think creationists are lazy-minded, women aren't keen on men who make sweeping generalisations about our "mysteriousness". It's one thing to say that you have trouble understanding particular women you interact with, or to admit that you find romantic relationships challenging. But to say that we are all a mystery could be taken as someone positioning himself to dismiss and marginalise us; to imply that our opinions and ideas don't matter because we're intrinsically inexplicable. And that would be a disgrace. In future, if you are going to make a sweeping generalisation about women, try phrasing the sentence with the word "people" in place of "women". Does it make you sound daft? Maybe a little bigoted? It's OK. Few experiments work the first time.'

When paired with another point that Edelstein makes - that men and women both enjoy sex, but they enjoy it in different ways and experience it differently - I think this hits at the core of a common problem with the communication between men and women. It's not just about sex, either, although that seems to be a common problem. Men and women experience and think about situations differently.

On this topic, I too would like to avoid sweeping generalisations about men and women, but this is a hard point to make without generalising a little bit. Whether or not gender-specific attitudes towards sex are innate or socialised (probably a little of both), there are certainly stereotypical attitudes and feelings that can be touched upon.

I would first like to point out that men do not find women mysterious in all circumstances. They seem to find them most mysterious in the context of sex and relationships. In academic, professional, or social circumstances, men do not seem to find women all that confusing as evidenced by their general ability to interact with them fairly functionally. Go to any pub or restaurant and you will see groups of men and women interacting on a friendly basis, obeying the same social norms and conversation conventions, the men seemingly forgetting or ignoring their utter bafflement with half their social group.

But get a man into a relationship with one of these women and they will start going on about how "confusing" women are. It seems that what men actually mean when they say they don't understand women is: "I don't understand why this woman does not want to sleep with me." That aside, to explore the source of this confusion, let's start with a story:

Joe is on his first trip to the big city. He is from a small, rural town where everyone knows each other. As such, paper currency is almost nonexistent, and the local economy functions solely on trading and trust. In the city, Joe needs to pick up some supplies, so he goes into a store, selects the items he needs, walks up to the woman running the store (let's call her Elaine), and hands her a chicken. Understandably, Elaine is confused with this gift of a chicken and refuses to accept it. "Why are you giving me a chicken?" Elaine asks, truly baffled and a little disturbed because the chicken doesn't seem totally sanitary. "I think a chicken is a fair price for this!" says Joe, incensed that Elaine will not take his chicken. On second thought, he adds "although I can throw in some cheese," in case the prices are higher in the city. Joe and Elaine go back and forth, Joe not understanding why she won't take the chicken, and Elaine frustrated that she seems to be dealing with a crazy person trying to trade a farm animal for household goods.

When Joe leaves the store, he might meet up with his friends later and say "women, huh? Who understands 'em. She wouldn't take my chicken! And she wouldn't even tell me why!"

Meanwhile, Elaine can't understand why Joe wouldn't just pay with paper money.

What we can see fairly easily in this situation is that neither Joe nor Elaine was right or wrong. Joe came from an environment that did not deal in paper currency, and therefore he did not understand paper currency or even think to use paper currency in a standard transaction. Elaine was raised to only accept paper currency (or perhaps credit cards) as valid currency, and moreover had no desire or use for a chicken.

This seems to be what happens in a lot of relationships. Both people ultimately want the same thing, but they're coming from totally different places and having trouble finding a middle ground. Joe wants to buy some supplies and Elaine wants to sell them, but they think about the transaction totally differently.

Let's take one big, ubiquitous issue: sex. The common assumption is that men want sex and women don't, or that women want sex less than men, or that men have to do buy women things or take them on extravagant dates to lure women into bed. This is not true. Both men and women like and want sex very much, but their feelings around sex often differ.

One adage I once heard really resonated with me: "Men need sex to feel good, but women need to feel good to have sex."

While this is true, it also hints at the larger problem: men seem to process things discreetly while women process them continually. For men (generally), one act leads to a general feeling of well-being, while for women a lot of good things need to accumulate.

I think this leads to a lot of tension between men and women in relationships, because men tend to think that they can trade discreet things or actions for a result (whether that result is sex or not being nagged). What they cannot understand is that a box of chocolates or flowers or a nice date cannot make up for a month of emotional neglect. The good and bad things accumulate over time, so it's the trend that matters, not the individual actions.

I understand why men might find this confusing at first. Let's say that after a few years of a relationship, Robert is frustrated because he and Joanne are not being intimate often enough, and Joanne is frustrated because Robert seems to have forgotten that she is a human being and not a live-in laundry and cleaning service. During one of their conversations, Robert voices his concern, and Joanne complains that Robert never does nice things for her anymore. The following evening, Robert brings home flowers. Joanne is touched, but she doesn't immediately get naked. Or even if she does, she does not revert to being the insatiable vixen that she was at the beginning of their relationship. Robert is confused because he is doing nice things for Joanne, but she remains relatively uninterested in doing the nasty. Robert might complain to his friends over a few beers that "women don't know what they want" or that they're "impossible to please."

What Robert might be missing here is that he gave Joanne flowers and then went and played video games for two hours instead of asking Joanne how her day was. The positive action was cancelled out by the negative action that followed, but Robert, as a man, did not see his action in the context of the surrounding action, and Joanne was not able to communicate that what she needed was an overall pattern of attentiveness, not token gestures.

Birth control aside, women are (probably) hard-wired to think about the long-term consequences of sex, so they're looking for a pattern of good behaviour (that would demonstrate, say, the likelihood that a man wouldn't bail in the worst-case scenario), not just the ability to do a handful of nice things to get them in the sack. If that's not striking a chord with you men out there, think about how offended a woman would be if you slapped a $20 bill on the table and asked her to get it on. Why do you think she is going to react any differently to a $20 box of chocolates or a $20 bouquet of flowers? Obviously some women do react differently, but don't be surprised if she doesn't suddenly pin you to a wall and yank your pants off.

The important point here, however, is that neither the man nor the woman's way of thinking about things is right or wrong; they are just coming from different places. What is not productive is for the man (or the woman) to label these differences as a "mystery". Both genders need to spend more time and effort trying to explain what they really need and stop focusing on the apparent "flaws" in the other gender. Obviously, as a woman, I have focused primarily on women here, but there is a lot of room for improvement on both sides of the fence.

Finally, to men everywhere I say this: women do not want your chicken. What women want, in fact, is not a discreet amount of currency. They want a payment plan. It is far more important to them to see a small amount of money consistently than a large sum all at once and just once. And to women: sometimes, take the chicken. Maybe it's not exactly what you wanted, but remember that your man really thought it was.