i'm no avatar

God's Debris is a book / e-book that I suggest you read and get back to me on. Personally, I hated and loved it at the same time. The margin is all marked up. Yet there were times I wanted to throw it out the window. But it was only 132 pages so I suffered through as I eagerly ate it up. I've never felt so strongly both for and against one thing before.

Anyway, there's a part I just have to share. I have no wonderful commentary for here ... but I'd love to chat about it.

"But you have to agree that the fossil evidence of earlier species is pretty compelling. There's an obvious change over time from the earlier creatures to the new ones. How can you ignore that?"

"Imagine that an asteroid lands on Earth that brings with it an exotic bacteria that kills all organic matter on Earth and then dissolves without a trace. A million years later, intelligent aliens discover Earth and study our bones and our possessions, trying to piece together our history. They might notice that all of our cookware--the pots and pans and plates and bowls--all seemed to be related somehow. And the older ones were quite different from the newer ones. The earliest among them were crude bowls, all somewhat similar, generally made of clay or stone. Over time, the bowls evolved into plates and coffee cups and stainless-steel frying pans.

"The aliens would create compelling charts showing how the dishes evolved. The teacup family would look like its own species, related closely to the beer mug and the water glass. An obvserver who looked at the charts would clearly see a pattern that could not be a coincidence. The cause of this dishware evolution would not be clear. Some scientists would be bothered by the lack of intermediate dishware species--say, a frying pan with a beer mug handle--but they would assume it to exist somewhere undiscovered."

"That might be the worst analogy ever made," I said. "You're comparing people to dishes."

The old man laughed out loud for the first time since we began talking. He was genuinely amused.

"It's not an analogy," he said with a twinkle in his eye. "It's a point of view. Evolution is compelling not because of the quality of the evidence but because of the quantity and variety of it. The aliens would have the same dilemma. There would be so much evidence for their theory of dishware evolution that opponents would be mocked. The alien scientists would theorize that forks evolved from spoons, wich evolved from knives. Pots evolved from bowls. Dinner plates evolved from cutting boards. The sheer quantity and variety of the data would be overwhelming. Eventually they would stop calling it a theory and consider it a fact. Only a lunatic could publicly doubt the mountain of evidence."

"There's a big difference between dishes and animals," I said. "With dishes, there's no way they can evolve. Logic would tell the aliens that there was no way that a nonliving dish could produce offspring, much less mutant offspring."

"That's not exactly true," he continued. "It could be that the dishes used human beings in a symbiotic relationship, convincing us through their usefulness to make new dishes. In that way the dishes succeeded in reproducing and evolving. Every species takes advantage of other living things to ensure its survival. That is the normal way living things reproduce.

"You believe, without foundation that the alien scientists would see a distinction between the living creatures and the nonliving dishes, and classify the dishes as mere tools. But that is a human-centric view of the world. Humans believe that organic things are more important than inorganic things because we are organic. The aliens would have no such bias. To them, the dishes would look like a hardy species that found a way to evolve and reproduce and thrive despite having no organic parts."

"But the dishes have no personalities, no thoughts or emotions or desires," I said.

"Neither does a clam."