Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
titales disappeared. This pattern did not suggest a near-simultaneous be-
ginning for all life, the perfection of a divine creation, or an intelligent
design. Rather, it showed an episodic increase in life-forms involving the
appearance and the extinction of species, and explainable by evolutionary
processes under genetic control extending over millions of years infl uenced
by environmental change. Humans appeared latest in this sequence, and
some of their relicts, such as the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Shroud of Turin,
have been dated by
14
C. This further brings the measurement of time into
the sphere of interest of both science and theology, and when the results
are not confl icting, as in the dating of the scrolls at 21 BCE and 61 CE, they
are generally accepted. When the dates are in confl ict—three dates of the
shroud are between 1260 and 1390 CE—these dates and the methodology
used to obtain them have been challenged.
Even so, some of the species and ecosystems discussed in this text had
existed since the Cretaceous or earlier until severely damaged or extermi-
nated by human activity (Kolbert 2009). Even if it is argued they are only
6000 years old, the lack of outrage universally by theologians at the rampant
abuse and destruction of creations, especially when attributed to the direct
will of God, must surely be one of the great hypocrisies of modern time.
Efforts being made by conservationists and paleontologists in the fi eld, by
evolutionary biologists in the laboratory, and with vocal support from the
pulpit would seem to be moral and ethical common ground. As noted by
Tim Flannery in reference to the extinction of the golden toad:
It's always devastating when you witness a species' extinction, for what you
are seeing is the dismantling of ecosystems and irreparable genetic loss. The
golden toad's extinction, however, was not in vain, for when the explanation
of its demise was published in
Nature
, the scientists could make their point
without equivocation. The golden toad was the fi rst documented victim
of global warming. We had killed it with our profl igate use of coal-fi red
electricity and our oversize cars just as surely as if we had fl attened its forest
with bulldozers. (2005, 118-19)
There has been ample opportunity for debating the age of the Earth, and the
history of organisms preserved in its rocks. It seems apparent that unless
the discoveries of science are evaluated from a rational and informed base,
intellectual polarization will likely continue to the detriment of all. An ac-
curate reckoning of time and an appreciation of the true nature of fossils is
central to these evaluations.
