Thinking About It: Concluding Nonfiction Writings

By Steven H. Propp

Steve Propp most often writes novels, with serious intellectual themes. But this nonfiction book contains writings and essays dealing with a wide variety of topics in the areas of science, religion, philosophy, and politics.

The first section includes expansions of topics that were briefly covered in his earlier nonfiction book, Inquiries: Philosophical (2002). Subjects include: Science and the Multiverse; Time Travel; Extraterrestrial Life; Artificial Intelligence; Life after Death, and more.

The second section consists of twelve “Lay Sermons,” such as could be addressed to a religious congregation, on topics such as: the Image of God; the Problem of Suffering; Social Justice; Forgiveness; hurtful “divisions” based on gender, sexual orientation, etc.; “Negative” images in the mass media, and others.

The third section contains thirty brief topical essays, such as: Family; Education; Loneliness; Freedom; Authority; Justice; Progress; Individuality; Civility; Technology; Emotions; and even Holidays.

The final section has several previously unpublished writings.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Jan 31, 2021
• ISBN: 9781663215710

Steven H. Propp

Steve Propp and his wife live and work in northern California. He has written many other novels, as well as two nonfiction books (‘Thinking About It,’ and ‘Inquiries: Philosophical.’)

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Copyright © 2021 Steven H. Propp.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Scripture quotations marked KJV are from the Holy Bible, King James Version (Authorized Version). First published in 1611. Quoted from the KJV Classic Reference Bible, Copyright © 1983 by The Zondervan Corporation.

Scripture quotations marked NRSV are taken from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible, Copyright © 1989, by the Division of Christian Education of the National Council of the Churches of Christ in the United States of America. Used by permission. All rights reserved. Website

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ISBN: 978-1-6632-1572-7 (sc)

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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021900496

iUniverse rev. date: 01/21/2021

CONTENTS

Dedication

Acknowledgements

PART A: FURTHER INQUIRIES

1. Is Science Getting ‘Weird’?

2. Evolution

3. Time Travel

4. Extraterrestrial Life

5. Artificial Intelligence, and Consciousness

6. God, Spirituality, and Religion

7. Life After Death?

8. Does Life Have Meaning?

PART B: TWELVE LAY SERMONS

1. In the Image of God

2. What are the Heavens Telling Us?

3. Revenge, and the Rivers of Babylon

4. Curse God and Die: The Problem of Suffering

5. Is a Living Dog Better than a Dead Lion?

6. The Bible, Morality, and Social Justice

7. Do Not Be Like the Hypocrites

8. The Great Commandment

9. Repentance, and Forgiveness

10. All are One in Christ Jesus

11. Negatives, and Positives

12. Joy to the World?

PART C: THINKING ABOUT IT

1. Distractions

2. Context

3. Responsibility, Blame, and Pride

4. Civilization/Society

5. Home, and Environment

6. Citizenship

7. Patriotism and Nationalism

8. Family

9. Education

10. Employment

11. Loneliness

12. Friendship

13. Romantic Love

14. Freedom

15. Authority

16. Law & Order

17. Justice and Fairness

18. Progress?

19. Values

20. Conformity, and Individuality

21. Individual Taste

22. Entertainment

23. Civility

24. Discussions, Versus Arguments

25. The Sense of History

26. Technology

27. Nature/Ecology

28. Aesthetic Experience

29. The Emotions

30. Seasons, Holidays

PART D: MISCELLANEOUS WRITINGS

1. Beyond the Wars of Christmas (2012)

2. The Intellectual Love of God (2009)

3. Y2K Essay (1999)

4. Why New Age Music Is Not Yuppie Muzak (1995)

5. Autobiographical Reflections (2020)

Bibliography

DEDICATION

To all of us who, although not ‘professors,’ ‘scientists,’ ‘theologians,’ or ‘philosophers,’ just love to think about things…

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book is written with deep love for the help, encouragement, and support of:

Our wonderful grandkids: Devonte and Adrianna, Joseph, Dominic, Mariah, Kayla, and Brea;

The parents and role models: Keri, Joe, Danielle, and Michael;

My brother-in-law Darrel Buzynski, and my wonderful big sister Susan;

My niece Jennifer and her husband Brade, and their delightful daughters, Madison and Leila;

My favorite nephew Jason;

My wonderful sister-in-law Phyllis, Rasheed, and all the rest of our diverse, changing, and always loving family;

My readers and other friends everywhere;

But most of all: to my beautiful, wonderful wife Nancy: whose unconditional love helps ALL of us make it through any and all of the many challenges that life presents.

And especially: a loving welcome to our first great-grandchild: Devonte and Adrianna’s baby daughter, JASENYA!

PART A

FURTHER INQUIRIES

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(My nonfiction book Inquiries: Philosophical was published in 2002; it had existed only in typescript since 1980. Since 2002, I have realized that there were a number of topics covered only briefly in that book, or not at all, that I now think merit greater attention—with the benefit of another ‘twenty-plus’ years of consideration and research.)

1. Is Science Getting ‘Weird’?

I’ve read, listened to, and watched dozens of debates between traditional scientists and biblical creationists, or between traditional scientists and others who are not part of the scientific ‘mainstream.’ Frequently, the traditional scientists will urge the audience to reject the views of their debate opponents, on the grounds that, "What they’re proposing is not science. ‘True’ science is characterized by (1) Its being empirically tested, and thus subject to verification and/or falsification, and (2) Such research is originally published in peer-reviewed scientific journals, and not in ‘dedicated’ book houses." Fair enough; that sounds reasonable to me.

But certainly, it is also true that when new hypotheses and theories are being suggested and explored, ‘empirical testing and validation’ may not yet be possible. For example, when Einstein first presented his General Theory of Relativity in 1915, there apparently wasn’t yet overwhelming empirical evidence supporting it. But during the total eclipse of the Sun in 1919, it was possible to test Einstein’s predictions of ‘warped’ space-time, by comparing the positions of the background stars during the eclipse with their ‘normal’ positions; and of course, Einstein’s predictions were confirmed. And since then, there have been various other kinds of empirical tests that provide confirmation of Relativity; so our proposed ‘model’ of science—as being ‘empirically testable,’ etc.—remains intact, with the theory of Relativity.

But more recently, things seem to have been changing, in certain subject areas in the world of science. A key instigator of this has been the discovery of so many new subatomic particles, which fall into two major categories/types of ‘fundamental’ particles: [1] Fermions (which have ‘matter’ or ‘mass,’ and consist of leptons such as electrons and neutrinos; and quarks, which gluons help bind together to form protons and neutrons) and [2] Bosons (‘force carriers,’ such as photons and gluons, as well as mesons, which include pions and kaons). An overlapping category between the two major particle types are the ‘non-fundamental’/composite Hadrons (made up of quarks), of the two types: baryons (e.g., protons and neutrons), which are Fermions; and mesons, which are Bosons. So many new particles were being discovered so rapidly that the resulting situation was sometimes described as being like a ‘Particle Zoo’! It became difficult even for physicists working in this area to keep them all straight, when attending conferences, to discuss the new discoveries.

But while this was (and is) extremely complex and confusing, it’s still ‘experimentally-based,’ right? CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research (which coordinates the research efforts of twelve European countries), is home for several particle accelerators, including the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), in which particles are accelerated and then ‘smashed,’ resulting in the discovery of still smaller particles (including the Higgs Boson, misleadingly dubbed the ‘God Particle’ by the media). Once again, this is still ‘experimental science,’ and the research is being conducted in sophisticated laboratories, and the results being presented in the professional journals.

But beginning in the 1940s, and progressing much more rapidly since the 1970s and 1980s, ‘String Theory’ was proposed—according to which most subatomic particles aren’t ‘pointlike,’ as electrons were thought to be, but were in fact loops of vibrating, one-dimensional strings, whose different vibrational states create the various types of particles that scientists observe and test. String Theory was said to be able to explain and describe all ‘elementary’ particles, and their interactions. These strings were, naturally, much smaller than anything that could be observed or probed with even our most precise instruments. But of course, whether something so small is a ‘point’ or a ‘string’ isn’t exactly something that has any real practical effects on our daily lives; so most of us are content to leave this discussion to the scientists.

But there is one thing that should potentially raise some concerns about String Theory: it has never really been experimentally ‘tested’; it hasn’t made any predictions that have been experimentally ‘proven,’ nor does it even seem theoretically ‘falsifiable.’ In fact, since there are so many different versions of String Theory, it’s difficult to even know which version of it a scientist would want to try and ‘test.’ Still, this theory doesn’t seem to have any ‘practical effects’ on our daily lives, so why should anyone in the general public particularly care?

Well, you might care if you’ve read Stephen Hawking’s popular book, The Grand Design, in which he boldly stated that we now have a candidate for the ultimate theory of everything, if indeed one exists, called M-theory. M-theory is the only model that has all the properties we think the final theory ought to have… According to M-theory, ours is not the only universe. Instead, M-theory predicts that a great many universes were created out of nothing. Their creation does not require the intervention of some supernatural being or god. Rather, these multiple universes arise naturally from physical law…

What is M-Theory? It is a theory that unifies all the ‘consistent’ versions of ‘Superstring Theory.’ Superstring Theory, in turn, is a version of String Theory that proposes ‘supersymmetry’: that is, that all subatomic particles which carry a force are ‘matched’ by subatomic particles that have mass. These ideas are hoped to be the building blocks of a ‘Theory of Everything’ [TOE]: that is, one which finally reconciles Einstein’s General Theory of Relativity with Quantum Mechanics.

Unfortunately, M-Theory has, to date, apparently not been able to make any ‘predictions’ that can be experimentally tested; and ‘Supersymmetry’ thus far seems to be failing some potential tests of confirmation in the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Now, it’s fine to produce some very complicated mathematics which purport to explain how these theories might operate; but wouldn’t a rational, empirically-minded scientist (which is supposedly what ‘scientists’ are) at some point need to attempt to confirm/falsify/verify these theories? And if this can’t be done, is this still ‘traditional’ science?

But it seems that no one is actually claiming that we currently have a ‘Theory of Everything’; M-Theory is just being proposed by scientists like Hawking as the current ‘best candidate.’ I think it’s interesting that in 1979, when Hawking was elected as the ‘Lucasian Professor of Mathematics’ at the University of Cambridge, he gave an inaugural lecture titled, ‘Is the End in Sight for Theoretical Physics?’ He was optimistic that this ‘end’ might be achieved by the year 2000. (It wasn’t, of course.) Hawking, sadly, died in 2018, with no ‘Theory of Everything’ having yet been found.

But once again, this doesn’t really seem to affect any of our non-scientist lives. If, ultimately, scientists are unable to devise a Theory of Everything, and they simply have to continue using Relativity for the ‘macro’ world, and Quantum Theory for the ‘micro’ world, that’s not going to make much difference to any of us. Except that there is, however, one aspect of String Theory that tends to make many (most?) of us raise our eyebrows a bit.

It was eventually realized that, in order for the very complex mathematics of String Theory to work, there had to be more than the standard four dimensions (three physical/spatial dimensions, and one dimension of time) in the world, to allow the strings sufficient ‘room’ to vibrate ‘hyperdimensionally,’ and produce all of the different atomic and subatomic particles. String Theory requires a total of ten dimensions (nine physical/spatial ones, and one of time); while M-Theory requires eleven dimensions.

One spatial dimension is like a single straight line; two spatial dimensions is like a flat sheet of paper, which has length and width, but no depth. Three dimensions is, of course, the physical world with which we’re all familiar, that adds the third physical dimension of depth. Upon learning of the ‘extra dimensions’ requirements of String Theory and M-Theory, most of us react by asking, "If these ‘extra dimensions’ really exist, how come no one’s ever noticed them? The response from String Theorists is usually something like, These extra dimensions are very, very small—they are ‘compactified,’ and ‘curled up,’ so that we cannot perceive them, and we don’t have any ‘access’ to them."

Now, it’s one thing to propose a scientific theory that seems counterintuitive; many aspects of Relativity Theory seemed quite ‘bizarre’ as well, when it was first proposed; but one of Relativity’s seemingly ‘oddest’ predictions—that of time dilation (i.e., the slowing down of a clock, as perceived by an observer who is in different relative motion with respect to that clock)—has actually been experimentally confirmed, in various ways. But for String Theorists to propose a theory that is not only counterintuitive, but extremely counterintuitive, seems… well, somewhat doubtful—particularly when this theory apparently has a complete lack of empirical verification.

Personally, I’m basically content to leave this matter to the scientists who are working in this realm. But I would observe that prominent physicists like Roger Penrose and Richard Feynman have been openly critical of String Theory; physicist Lee Smolin wrote an entire book (The Trouble With Physics) against String Theory, and astrophysicist Lawrence Krauss is quite dismissive of String Theory, and has openly mocked it in lectures before the Skeptic’s Society (to applause and laughter from the audience). And, more importantly, firm acceptance of String Theory by a scientist would seem to me to undercut such a scientist’s rejection of God, Life after Death, Creation, etc.—if this rejection is primarily based on the grounds that such concepts are not empirically testable/verifiable/falsifiable.

But String Theory and its offshoots are not the only scientific theories being currently proposed that might conceivably raise one’s skeptical eyebrows. Take the Multiverse (short for ‘multiple universes’) proposed by physicists such as Alan Guth, Andrei Linde, Stephen Hawking, Sean M. Carroll, etc. This is the idea that our universe (which was formerly and traditionally considered to be ‘everything there is’) may only be a single ‘bubble universe’ among a much larger number (potentially an infinite number) of other bubble universes.

It is suggested that these ‘other’ universes may have completely different sets of natural laws than our own universe does: for example, the strength of gravitation might be greater or less than ours, in such universes; the attractive power of the strong nuclear force might be different; the spin of an atom (which is ‘up’ in our universe) may be ‘down’ in other universes, etc. Therefore, the particular physical ‘constants’ that our universe just happens to have are simply a matter of the laws of probability and quantum ‘superpositions,’ and nothing more.

Of course, this immediately raises the question, "How could we ever detect, contact, or find evidence of such other universes?" Proponents of the Multiverse usually suggest that such universes (given the ‘Cosmic Inflation’ after the Big Bang that is proposed by Alan Guth) are moving away from us at greater than the speed of light—which means that we would never be able to detect radio waves or photons from them, much less see them. Therefore, we would never be able to measure their ‘constants,’ to see if they were, in fact, different from ours. So, it’s frankly pretty hard for me to see how such a concept would ever be ‘empirically testable/verifiable/falsifiable’; and if it isn’t, does it truly qualify as a ‘scientific theory’?

Perhaps one of the biggest attractions of the Multiverse concept (for some of its advocates, at least) is that it makes the argument (sometimes called the ‘Strong Anthropic Principle’) that our own universe might appear to be ‘specially designed for life’ unnecessary: In a Multiverse, out of an infinite number of other universes, some of them will ‘just happen’ to make life possible—but there will be far more (perhaps infinitely more) universes out there in which life is not possible, and thus were obviously not ‘designed for life.’ So, again, it’s nothing but a matter of statistics and probability.

A variation of the Multiverse theory is the so-called ‘Many Worlds Interpretation’ of Quantum Mechanics that was originally proposed by Hugh Everett III, and was given its name (and then publicized) by Bryce Seligman DeWitt. This interpretation suggests that, in Quantum Mechanics (where we are usually dealing with probabilities of specific events happening), there is very often a ‘branching’ or ‘splitting’ of a universe (i.e., the ‘wave function collapses’) that results in there being another universe—one that differs at this specific point, and continues its separate existence on into its future. (A quantum ‘wave function’ can be thought of as a list of every possible configuration of, say, a hydrogen atom; it ‘collapses’ when one specific configuration actually occurs—probably after it is observed, by a scientist.)

The aspect of this theory that particularly makes people like me skeptical is that, in Everett’s interpretation, there are thus supposed to be entire ‘parallel worlds’ and ‘universes’ out there somewhere, that have only relatively minor differences from each other. For example, theoretical physicist Sean M. Carroll suggests in his 2019 book Something Deeply Hidden: Quantum Worlds and the Emergence of Spacetime, that the universe split into about one quadrillion versions, each containing a different randomly generated number that is printed on page 135 of his book. (Yes, he appears to be dead serious about this.) He adds, "If Everett is right, there is a 100 percent probability that each possibility is realized in some particular world."

Reporter and science writer Peter Byrne wrote a book (The Many Worlds of Hugh Everett III) about Everett and his work, in which he explains, "A consequence of the ‘many worlds’ logic is that there are universes in which dinosaurs survived and humans remained shrew-like; universes in which you win the state lottery every week; universes in which Wall Street does not exist and global resources are equally shared."

This seems to be a particular attraction of this idea for many people: Under this theory, there isn’t just one ‘me’ that exists: there is a huge number of them, with certain specific differences: such as a world in which I didn’t go to college; or one in which I stayed (unhappily) single; or one in which I married (and perhaps divorced) a different, very incompatible person; or one where I had a different employer, drove a different car, lived on a different street, retired at a different age, and so on.

Supporters of this theory seem somehow comforted by the notion that, even if ‘I’ die in this particular world we inhabit, there are nevertheless lots of other me’s out there, who are still living. (But, presumably, there are also very many worlds in which I died at a young age; or in which I never even existed.) And of course, this also means that there would be innumerable copies of Hitler out there somewhere, who have implemented innumerable other Holocausts—a possibility which I find very far from being ‘reassuring.’

I fail to see anything comforting about the possibility of there existing somewhere other versions of ‘me.’ My consciousness is obviously not identical with some other ‘me’ out there, since I can’t share their viewpoint—I can only see things from my perspective. And if I were dying, I would have to face up to the possibility of the permanent extinction of my own consciousness, since my unique and specific consciousness, and memories here, would not be ‘transferred’ into some other ‘me’ out there; I wouldn’t ‘wake up’ after my death to find myself in a different world in a different universe, for example, while still remembering that I had previously been in this world.

I find it interesting that Sean M. Carroll debated the well-known Christian philosopher William Lane Craig in 2016 (which produced a book, God & Cosmology: William Lane Craig and Sean Carroll in Dialogue), in which Carroll argued that theism is not a serious cosmological model… because … a real cosmological model wants to make predictions… Theism does not even try to do this, because ultimately, theism is not well-defined. But are the ‘predictions’ of the various cosmological models that Carroll mentions in this book actually testable? And, given his endorsement of the ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation, is there any way we could ever find out whether there really is another ‘me,’ or a thousand different versions of his book, in a different world? If not, then how is this even ‘science’?

The ‘Many Worlds’ interpretation strikes many of us (in my observation, at least) as, shall we say, rather extravagant when it comes to universes. Now, it’s true that current estimates are that there are about two trillion galaxies in the universe—each of which may have hundreds of billions of stars in them, of which (perhaps) 4% of them may be ‘sunlike.’ We are also discovering more and more thousands of exoplanets, orbiting such stars; in November 2020, the findings from NASA’s Kepler spacecraft—launched in 2009—led astronomers to estimate that there may be as many as 300 million ‘habitable’ planets in our galaxy alone. So, there is certainly enough space and material ‘out there’ for there to be ‘other worlds.’ But would the conditions on another planet—in another solar system, in another galaxy, in another universe—be so near-exactly like our own so as to produce another ‘me’ and ‘you’? Or to produce thousands or maybe billions of them?

Think of how many ‘variables’ there are in your own life, during an average day: the weather; what you had for breakfast; what time you drove to work; whether a co-worker called in sick; where you go for lunch; how much coffee or tea you drank; how much traffic there is on the drive home; what was playing on the radio as you drove; what you have for dinner; what social media postings you glance at during dinner; how you occupy yourself in the evening; what time you go to bed, etc. Can we seriously imagine that there is an entire world somewhere ‘out there,’ that is exactly like our world—except that, in that world, I watched a cheesy ‘reality show’ on television at 8:00 one night, instead of starting to read the latest book by Sean Carroll? And that there are also entire worlds for each other possible ‘variation’ in what each of us do every single day?

And even if there are ‘many worlds,’ how do we know that they would be so different from each other? Suppose that, instead of having every ‘possibility’ actualized, the same possibility just kept happening over and over again? In other words, suppose that rather than there being thousands of worlds in which the ‘wave function collapsed’ differently based on what I had for breakfast, there are instead thousands of worlds that are exactly the same? (Shades of philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche’s ‘eternal recurrence of the same’ concept!)

I would suggest that the enormous number of variables that exist in our world would be more than sufficient to keep such hypothetical worlds from turning out ‘exactly the same,’ or even mostly the same. (And of course, that is only considering the number of variables in our one world—how many more variables would there be in a near-infinite number of ‘bubble universes’?)

I definitely have to ‘part company’ with the scientists who are proposing and supporting such speculative and implausible theories; I’ll continue to have more confidence in those researchers who consider science to simply be the study of the material universe, and who seek theories that are testable, verifiable, and/or falsifiable—rather than just ‘mathematically consistent,’ ‘coherent,’ or ‘plausible.’

2. Evolution

The theory of Evolution as developed by Charles Darwin and later scientists is, on the one hand, a very satisfying explanation for the origin and development of life on Earth. The movement from one-celled creatures, to multicellular ones, to the first underwater plants, to sponges and flatworms, to fish, to land plants, to amphibians and reptiles, then to mammals, later including primates, until eventually we humans came along, seems quite convincing. Darwin’s theory of ‘Natural Selection’ seemingly can provide convincing naturalistic explanations for the development of even very complex and ‘well-adapted’ structures in animals.

The geological record of fossils also provides clear support for this general view of evolutionary history. Although the geological column must necessarily be ‘pieced together’ from various locations around the Earth, and there may be situations where an ‘overthrust’ (such as the Lewis Overthrust in Canada) has occurred—which resulted in some geological layers of rocks appearing in ‘reversed’ order—it remains the overwhelming case that such ‘reversed’ layers are still distinct and identifiable as ‘layers.’ For example, geological layers may appear in the order ‘ABGFECD’ rather than ‘ABCDEFG,’ but it still is clearly the case that dinosaurs (not even the smaller ones, who were the presumed ancestors of modern birds) were not living alongside humans; nor were trilobites swimming next to modern ocean fish, or whales.

And, for the record, the notion of my not being ‘specially created’ by God, and instead being descended from an apelike ancestor, and being the product of an evolutionary sequence which began from organic chemicals, doesn’t bother me at all.

So then: what’s the problem? Well, the first problem is the origin of life. Most evolutionary researchers suggest that organic chemicals spontaneously (and naturalistically) assembled into the precursors of life, such as DNA and RNA. But, despite the attention still being given in popular books (and even some textbooks) to the 1952 Miller/Urey experiment about the origin of life, this experiment is now viewed as basically irrelevant, and not representative of the actual conditions that existed on the primitive Earth.

Which is fine; science is supposed to be ‘self-correcting,’ and always moving on, and advancing, as new discoveries are made. But although the Miller/Urey experiment took place nearly seventy years ago, there is not yet any consensus—much less experimental confirmation of any specific ‘leading hypothesis’—as to what conditions could have produced life spontaneously. There are literally more than a dozen proposed theories for the origin of life (including ones in which life originated on Mars, or elsewhere, and was brought here by meteors), and none of them has yet supplanted the others, and convinced a majority of other researchers—even though this is a very lively and popular area of research.

I suppose that the lack of such an ‘origins’ theory might not be considered all that important, by many people; but in this case, naturalistic scientists are proposing that life originally developed by random or ‘chance’ processes—that is, nothing was being specifically ‘set up’ in the ocean or elsewhere, in order to come up with life, or at least its precursors. So why is it that a ‘chance’ arrangement could supposedly produce life, when researchers (in some of the finest laboratories in the world) can’t yet find a way to reproduce this process? (This would seem to be analogous to ‘reverse-engineering.’)

The fact that we may not presently know precisely the original conditions on the primitive Earth is not necessarily determinative; experiments could simply be set up in a plausible approximation of such conditions, and the researchers could then presumably just sit back, and observe the organic materials assembling themselves. In fact, there might be multiple scenarios in which life could originate, and researchers would then have to choose which one (or more than one) is the most likely to have been the case on our early Earth. But although origin-of-life research is a burgeoning field these days, and various theories and proposals (e.g., ‘RNA first’) are being debated vigorously, there don’t seem to be any actual experiments that are producing the striking kinds of results that were seemingly produced in the Miller/Urey experiment (and which made it such a popular example).

A second problem with our current evolutionary theory is the widespread and systematic lack of ‘transitional forms’ in the fossil record. (Darwin himself, to his credit, frankly admitted this, in his chapter in The Origin of Species on ‘Difficulties of the Theory,’ and he attributed this lack to the extreme imperfection of the [geological] record.) This is, of course, a favorite objection of biblical creationists, and one that goes over well (and convincingly) with a ‘lay’ audience.

The late paleontologist Stephen Jay Gould and his colleague Niles Eldredge proposed their ‘Punctuated Equilibria’ theory to attempt to account for the lack of such transitional fossils in the geological record: e.g., arguing that most evolutionary developments originally occurred among small, isolated populations, that statistically were unlikely to leave many examples behind in the fossil record. That’s very possible; but the fact remains that paleontologists and evolutionary naturalists are very happy to point out any suggested ‘transitions’ whenever they can find them: semi-tetrapods like Ichthyostega; whale ancestors such as Pakicetus, Ambuloecetus, Dorudon and Balaena; doglike creatures such as Hesperocyon; and feathered dinosaurs like Sinosauropteryx. Whales and horses offer what are perhaps the best examples to be found in the animal kingdom of relatively ‘smooth’ transitions to the modern forms.

But I think that the presumed ancestral path leading to humans is by far the best ‘sequence’ that researchers have yet proposed. (Admittedly, there is a lot more grant money available to try and dig up ‘human’ ancestors, than there is for, say, canids.) However, the kind of smooth evolutionary line chart (particularly the one found in F. Clark Howell’s book Early Man, which utterly persuaded many of us when it was presented to us back in Anthropology 101), leading from Pliopithecus, to Ramapithecus, to Australopithecus, to Homo Erectus, to Neanderthal, to Cro-Magnon is no longer considered accurate. In fact, the more recent discovery of additional fossil hominids, which overlap each other in time sequence, has turned this presumed ‘line of descent’ into more of a bush, where many of the presumed ‘ancestors’ were living contemporaneously with their presumed ‘descendants.’

Still, we have persuasive evidence of apelike hominids (or ‘hominins,’ to use the current term) who were regularly walking upright, and fashioning and using tools to a degree that apes (such as chimps and gorillas)