A Little Learning

The following three paragraphs and illustration are from a brochure that I read recently.  Its title is, The Origen of Life―Five Questions Worth Asking*:

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"In fact, more than half of all the major divisions of animal life seem to have appeared in a relatively short period of time. Because many new and distinct life forms appear so suddenly in the fossil record, paleontologists refer to this period as 'the Cambrian explosion.' When was the Cambrian period?

"Let us assume that the estimates of researchers are accurate. In that case, the history of the earth could be represented by a time line that stretches the length of a soccer field (1). At that scale, you would have to walk about seven eighths of the way down the field before you would come to what paleontologists call the Cambrian period (2). During a small segment of that period, the major divisions of animal life show up in the fossil record. How suddenly do they appear? As you walk down the soccer field, all those different creatures pop up in the space of less than one step!

"The relatively sudden appearance of these diverse life forms is causing some evolutionary researchers to question the traditional version of Darwin’s theory."

The soccer field illustration from pages 22-23 of the brochure.

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Confirmation bias (the tendency of people to favor information that confirms their beliefs or hypotheses) might cause a creationist to interpret those three paragraphs to support his belief that the diversity of life that we see today all appeared during a relatively short period of time.

Someone who recognizes the fossil evidence―that species of life have appeared and disappeared for over 3 billion years (and that 99.9% of all species that have ever existed are now extinct)―might be left scratching his head.

When the brochure says that "all those different creatures" ("the major divisions of animal life") 'popped up' during a small segment of the Cambrian period, are you left with the impression that fish, insects, amphibians, reptiles, birds, or mammals appeared during the relatively-short Cambrian period?

Nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, the brochure doesn't say that at all.  (So, creationists and evolutionists alike can breathe a sigh of relief.)  The point is being made that perhaps all life did not descend from a single ancestor.  That does not question whether or not life is evolving...only whether or not all life (on earth) had one single source.

The facts presented in that section of the brochure are pretty accurate, but not intended to be complete.  So, for those who prefer the big picture, here is "the rest of the story":

In the illustration, the length of the soccer field represents the approximately 4.54 billion years that the earth has existed.  The Cambrian period is shown by the red line that runs through the right-side penalty area...starting about 4 billion years after the earth first formed, ending about 485 million years before today.  The thickness of the line represents the length of the Cambrian period...about 60 million years.

Fossil evidence shows that about 3 billion years before the Cambrian period started, prokaryotes (living organisms whose cells lack a membrane-bound nucleus) existed in the sea.  From then until the Cambrian period, cyanobacteria came into existence, then complex cells (eukaryotes), then multicellular life.

An example of a trilobite fossil

As the brochure correctly states, during the Cambrian period "the major divisions of animal life show up in the fossil record."  What it does not say is that those "major divisions of animal life" were "bacteria", "archaea", and "eucaryota"...nothing more.  By the end of the Cambrian period, the most advanced animals that existed out of "all those different creatures [that popped up] in the space of less than one step" were trilobites.

(Virtually all life was still in the sea.  For the first 3 billion years that life existed, it couldn't survive on dry land, because the ozone layer was not yet sufficiently developed to shield ultraviolet rays from the sun.)

Fish (the first vertebrates) started appearing about 45 million years after the Cambrian period.  Millipedes...over 100 million years after.  Amphibians, primitive insects, and primitive ferns―the first plant with roots―more than 200 million years after.  Then reptiles (250 million years after) and mammals (more than 300 million years after).

"All those different creatures [that] pop up in the space of less than one step" refers only to a group of extinct marine arthropods.

"A little learning is a dangerous thing."―Alexander Pope (1688 – 1744)

* © 2010 Watch Tower Bible and Tract Society of Pennsylvania

The Origins of a Human Adult

I was 14 years old when I read this.  I accepted it as coming from God.  If you had been me, would it have affected the course of your life?

"If you are a young person, you also need to face the fact that you will never grow old in this present system of things. Why not? Because all the evidence in fulfillment of Bible prophecy indicates that this corrupt system is due to end in a few years. Of the generation that observed the beginning of the "last days" in 1914, Jesus foretold: "This generation will by no means pass away until all these things occur."-Matt. 24:34.

"Therefore, as a young person, you will never fulfill any career that this system offers. If you are in highschool and thinking about a college education, it means at least four, perhaps even six or eight more years to graduate into a specialized career. But where will this system of things be by that time? It will be well on the way toward its finish, if not actually gone!"

Awake!, May 22, 1969

Unconditional Love (One Year Later)

A few months ago I heard about a book, Will I Ever Be Good Enough?  Healing the Daughters of Narcissistic Mothers, by Karyl McBride, Ph.D.  It caught my attention because of the description of emotional dysfunction that was being addressed:

• "...feelings of inadequacy, disappointment, emotional emptiness, and sadness."
• "...a fear of abandonment that leads [to] unhealthy romantic relationships, as well as a tendency to perfectionism and unrelenting self-criticism or to self-sabotage and frustration."

Although my mother is not narcissistic, my immediate family is loaded with those problems...myself included!  (We took the "fun" out of "dysfunctional".)  I see the same issues in nephews and nieces, and in my own children...although the mother of my children is not narcissistic, either.

So, I bought the book and started reading it during my trip to Mexico.

I was looking for a "common thread".  What is it about narcissistic mothers that can cause such turmoil in their daughters?  I suspected that, whatever it was, it could be found in my family...and that it could damage sons, as well as daughters.

It didn't take much reading for me to see the connection.  In fact, it was on the back cover of the book:  "Narcissistic mothers teach their daughters that love is not unconditional, that it is given only when they behave in accordance with maternal expectations and whims."

Interestingly enough, I blogged about "unconditional love" one year ago.  (Click here to read that entry.)  Among other things I wrote, "I don't know if I will ever find [unconditional love]. I hope I never settle for anything less."  And yet, since that time, I have wanted to settle for less!  For several months, in fact, I tried to please someone who told me that she will not allow herself to trust any man.

Why would I settle for that?  Maybe because I was raised as part of an organization that teaches that love is relative, conditional.  Members of that organization who do not behave in accordance with organizational "expectations and whims" are shunned.  Even family members.  Even parents are expected to shun their own unrepentant children.

Before I had finished the first chapter of Will I Ever Be Good Enough?, I clearly recognized why it is wrong to teach children that love is conditional...regardless of whether the one doing the teaching is Mom, or Dad, or any other entity.

I could take a copy of that book, replace every occurrence of "mother" with "mother organization", and have a very useful self-help book for millions of people who believe that love can never be unconditional, that it must sometimes be withheld.

Even now I continue to struggle with "emotional emptiness...a fear of abandonment...frustration".

I was thinking about that today when it suddenly occurred to me:  Why should I settle for a relationship that I have to "push" for?  Have I still not "gotten it"?  If I feel that I have to "push", shouldn't that tell me something?

Sometimes I try to "hang onto" things that were never mine to begin with.

My behavior might be the legacy of a narcissistic "mother organization".

It really needs to stop.