Happy Columbus Day, Part 2

Despite all of the things I wrote about in the previous entry, conservatives insist that we honor Christopher Columbus.

I started to go to the Conservapedia website to learn their view about Columbus, but Web of Trust (WOT) displayed a red circle and announced that this website was untrustworthy and dangerous for child safety. I had to specifically give my browser permission to continue going there. I felt a tingling of danger, as if I was sneaking a peek at pornography.

I can see why Conservapedia (the right-wing twisted-logic imitation of Wikipedia) would be considered untrustworthy. But why would Conservapedia be considered a dangerous website for children?

One of the things that conservatives hate the most is what they call revisionist history. They hate it when modern scholars tell us to rethink our assumptions about Christopher Columbus being a great hero of Christianity; or the same assumption about the Pilgrims; or to reject our cherished myth about How the West Was Won by heroic whites shooting dirty Native Americans.

Conservatives want to cling to the 1950’s-western-movie version of history, and to the assumption that God established the United States of America as his holy white land. It is easy to understand that it is dangerous to raise kids to think these things. If cowboys who shot Indians were heroes, then maybe, the kids might think, it is just fine to do the same thing today. For why else do their conservative parents keep caches of arms and ammo? Perhaps, then, Conservapedia, which enables (even though it does not expressly promote) a white supremacist version of history, is dangerous to kids for the same reason that jihadist sites are. I don’t know; jihadist sites appear to be blocked on my browser, so I don’t know whether they would show up with red circles or not. I can find only news sites and anti-jihad (including moderate Muslim anti-jihad) sites.

And now, continuing with Columbus. I was googling to find out what conservatives actually say about Columbus. I expected all of them to praise Columbus as the man who brought the light of Christianity to heathen Natives who deserved to be enslaved. And some conservative writers come pretty close to this (see below). However, most of the conservative sites I found openly admit the evil things that Columbus did. This included the Conservapedia entry, which provided a harrowing list of the evil things that Columbus did. As a matter of fact, this entry mentioned some things that the progressive historians sometimes do not, such as how Columbus’ men would skewer the Natives on pikes. The author conveniently omitted the part about cutting off hands, but was otherwise quite honest about Columbus’ brutality. I am glad that I checked up on what conservatives actually say rather than just lashing out at what I thought they said. I wish they would be so careful in criticizing progressives.

However, by means of mental contortion, conservatives have figured out a way to ignore the evil things that Columbus did, right after admitting them. Here is how Conservapedia and another conservative website (The American Conservative) did it.

• First, Conservapedia claims that the main person to accuse Columbus of crimes against humanity was Ward Churchill, a professor who lost his job because of “academic dishonesty.” By claiming that Churchill was a bad man, they imply, though they do not say, that all accusations against Columbus are unreliable. We progressives do not base our opposition to Columbus upon Ward Churchill.
• Second, right after they admit that the 500 Taino captives that Columbus sent back to the slave markets of Seville were the first instance of an American slave trade, Conservapedia hastens to point out that more Natives died of European diseases than died of slavery. I guess that, since slavery was not the number one cause of death, then it can be safely ignored. Imagine applying this argument to current events today. “Diabetes kills more people than ISIS, therefore ISIS isn’t so bad” is a 21^st-century equivalent to “diseases killed more Natives than did slavery, therefore slavery wasn’t so bad.” I must note that Conservapedia did not say that slavery wasn’t so bad, but they clearly used disease as a way of minimizing the horror of slavery.
• Third, Conservapedia claimed that since the critics of Columbus had not adequately defined genocide, then this word cannot be used to describe the actions of Columbus. However, this contradicts what is written earlier in the entry, which says that within a space of 60 years a Native population of over a million on Hispaniola was totally wiped out. (I don’t know where they got these figures, but notice that they are even worse than the table of numbers I reported previously.) Only a rabid conservative would question whether or not this constituted genocide.
• Fourth, a writer for The American Conservative noted that all groups of people have had a brutal history. He proceeded to mention other acts of brutality in human history. Of course, this does not mean that we should admire Columbus. If conservatives revered a day to celebrate the Wounded Knee massacre, I would oppose it just as I do Columbus Day. I don’t think Cambodians should celebrate Pol Pot Day, if there is one. And so on. This conservative argument is only a diversion.

It is by such mental contortions that many conservatives deflect attention away from the evil things Columbus did, evils they will admit, and get their readers and admirers to turn against scholars and teachers who want to teach the truth about Columbus. I can only wonder how many home school conservatives teach their kids that Columbus was God’s humble servant.

Some conservatives, however, go much further in trying to sanitize and sanctify Columbus. Kenyn Cureton, vice president of the Family Research Council, says of Columbus, “He did do some things that weren’t right but his motives overall were, number one, to get gold to free Jerusalem but secondly to share the Gospel.” Think about that for a moment. That makes Columbus, overall, a force for good in history, right? Columbus didn’t want the gold for himself but to finance another crusade. And, Cureton continues, Columbus “was very much motivated by his Christian faith, and I think that is what is behind this effort to wipe his name out from history.” So you see, everybody, the only reason I would ever criticize Columbus, according to this particular conservative group, is because I hate Jesus. If I really really really loved Jesus, I would rejoice in what Columbus did. Please oh please somebody confirm that you don’t have to love Columbus in order to be a Christian.

The conclusion I reach is that nobody, anywhere, should celebrate Columbus Day. It should not, of course, be forgotten. October 12, 1492 should not be forgotten any more than September 1, 1939, the beginning of the Nazi blitzkrieg.

I posted this essay on my evolution blog.

Happy Columbus Day, Part 1

In this set of two essays I explain why we should hate Christopher Columbus rather than revere him, and why the celebration of Columbus Day is an insult to all human decency.

First, about Columbus. I have used William Least Heat-Moon’s book Columbus in the Americas as the immediate source of this information, but have confirmed much of it elsewhere. Christopher Columbus made the first European contact with Native Americans on October 12, 1492. It was, from the very start, genocide. Here are the reasons.

Columbus’ deep motives. Christopher Columbus seemed fascinated by his first encounter with what he insisted all his life was India. It seemed like a Garden of Eden to him, and he wrote glowingly about the sweetness of the flowers, which is something that single-minded conquistadors do not generally do. He also admired the Tainos, the Natives who lived in the vicinity of his first landfall. He marveled at their friendliness and their willingness to give him gifts, which further enhanced the image of a Garden of Eden. This does not sound like the writings of a man whose immediate thought was to kill them. He also admired some of their technology, most notably hammocks and canoes (the latter word coming from the Taino language). Perhaps most significantly, the Tainos showed great empathy and energy when they helped Columbus and his men gather up the wreckage of the Santa Maria to use for constructing the first European city in the New World, La Navidad.

But, right from the start, Columbus did have the subjugation of the Tainos in mind. From his very first encounter with them, he wrote that they would make good servants for the Spaniards, and he speculated that fifty armed Spaniards could easily conquer them. Therefore he immediately began thinking of them as resources, not persons. And it was not merely the gold and servitude that they could provide to the Spaniards that fascinated Columbus. He noted glowingly that most of the women were entirely naked. Historians concede that, were it not for Tainos sharing their food, all the Spaniards would have starved. Columbus noted, “They love their neighbors as themselves,” but rather than reflecting on how much more Christian the Taino behavior was than the behavior of the Spaniards, he seems to have considered this evidence that they were ripe for easy enslavement.

And while Columbus himself apparently did not go around raping and pillaging, he was certainly complicit in these actions. One of his men was a childhood friend, Michele de Cuneo, whom Columbus allowed to capture a Native woman. Apparently she was Carib, rather than a compliant Taino, and she screamed and scratched when de Cuneo tried to rape her in his room. De Cuneo beat her with ropes until she complied. Once she complied, she might have thought that she could get more resources from de Cuneo by pleasing him, and, in de Cuneo’s words from a letter he wrote home, “She seemed to have been brought up in a school of harlots.”

Was Columbus’ motivation to establish a colony for Spain? No, it could not have been. Even with his fourth and final voyage, there was no pre-planning for agriculture. A few colonists came, but the people were overwhelmingly men who wanted gold and slaves. The cities that Columbus and his men established were called “trading posts” precisely because of this objective. The entire motivation was rapine and plunder. Colonization came later, after the Natives were slaughtered and, for some tribes, sent into extinction.

Columbus’ actions. While Columbus seems to have made sincere efforts on his first voyage to create goodwill and cooperation with the Natives, his motivation seems to have entirely disappeared by his second voyage. He used war dogs to kill resistant Tainos, and captured as many Tainos as he could. He sent 500 Tainos to the Seville slave market under cramped fetid conditions that most people associate only with the African slave trade. He gave another 500 Tainos to his men for whatever use they desired to make of them. And he allowed about 500 to flee into the mountains.

And Columbus was extremely brutal in his punishments. A Native caught pilfering could have his ears cut off or be beheaded. But the most horrifying example of Columbus’ cruelty is the story I am about to relate. If you have a sensitive stomach, stop reading now. As a matter of fact, if you have a sensitive stomach, you have no business learning anything at all about the realities of history. You should just spend your time fantasizing about what a blessing the whites have been to the rest of the world.

Columbus required each Taino male over 13 years of age to bring in a hawk’s-bell volume of gold each three months. Those who failed to do so had one of their hands cut off.

Think about that. Columbus must have intended this as torture and terrorism. Cutting a man’s hand off will not make him better able to gather gold. You would have to be fucking stupid to believe that. Columbus was not stupid. He knew what he was doing. I can only conclude that Columbus, perhaps slightly less so than his men, got a sensual thrill out of torturing Natives.

The net result of Columbus’ direct and indirect actions was, according to his son Ferdinand, that a Spaniard could go anywhere on Hispaniola that he desired and take all the food and women he wanted, without fear of danger. And the effect on the population of Natives was predictable, not only because Spaniards killed them but because the natives killed themselves out of despair. The basic food of these Natives was cassava, which has to be processed to remove bitter poison. Many Natives drank the poison rather than to become slaves. Also, in one case on a later voyage, when Natives were locked into a slave hold on a ship, they found ropes and hung themselves, even though there was not enough headroom to do this: they had to hold up their knees while the ropes suffocated them. Here are the population figures for Natives on Hispaniola:

                        1492                300,000

                        1496                200,000

                        1508                60,000

                        1548                500

                        Before 1600    Extinct

Columbus’ binary classification. Columbus classified everyone into two categories: the Europeans, whom God was blessing, and the “Indians,” whom God was delivering into the hands of Europeans. He noted, but gave no importance to, the differences among tribes.

The main distinction Columbus saw right away was between Tainos and Caribs. The Caribs were cannibals who preyed upon the Tainos. The Caribs would capture Taino women and children. They would caponize the boys (cutting off their genitals) so that they would grow up tender. But they would impregnate the women in order to produce the ultimate Carib delicacy: roast baby. In at least one instance, Columbus rescued Tainos from Carib captivity. Once his men captured a naked Taino woman, but Columbus ordered her sent back (clothed) to her tribe as an act of goodwill. (The fact that the Caribs were evil people does not make their enslavement and eradication justified.) Native Americans had as much diversity as Europeans. But in the end Columbus, despite his initial admiration of the Tainos, treated all natives the same; it was Taino captives whom he sent to the Seville slave market.

Spain’s motives. Even though Columbus appeared to have a streak of decency, Spain did not. Ferdinand and Isabella barely gave Columbus enough resources to launch his first voyage, because they were skeptical of his prospects. But they richly endowed his second voyage with lots of ships and resources. The reason was that Columbus had proven to them that “India” was a promising source of gold and slaves. There appears to have been very few resources dedicated to starting up an agricultural economy and a self-sustaining Spanish colony. The Spanish cities, of which only Santo Domingo continues to exist, were meant as places for gathering slaves and gold. Had it been otherwise, the ships of the second voyage would have been provisioned differently. The main nonhuman animals on the ships were war dogs, which the Spaniards could unleash on Natives to kill them. Incidentally, the money to fund the second voyage came from resources taken from the recently-expelled Jews.

It didn’t take long for the Natives to resist. Before returning to Spain on his first voyage, Columbus established La Navidad. When he returned he found it had been destroyed. He discovered the reason for it: the Spaniards had raided Taino villages and stolen women as sexual slaves; each Spaniard had four or five sex slaves.

Another aspect of the Columbus story that is interesting to scientists is that Columbus used a method often called “cherry-picking” to prove that he had, indeed, reached Asia. He ignored all contrary evidence. And he grabbed at any shred of evidence that could be construed to prove he was in Asia. He assumed that one Taino place name was a variant of Mangi, a province in China. And when he heard of a tribe whose leader wore a white tunic, he assumed this man was a descendant of Prester John. But Columbus went beyond this. He forced all his men to sign a deposition stating that they were, in fact, in Asia; and the punishment for a man saying that they were not in Asia was that his tongue would be cut out. This was Columbus’ scientific method of determining truth.

This essay also appeared on my evolution blog. Next entry: how conservatives sanitize and sanctify Columbus.

The Tribulation!

Tony Alamo Ministries in California blatantly uses religious delusion to rake in cash. Alamo, in his cowboy get-up, and his side-kick Mr. T the wrestler, distribute colorful little newsletters, some of which make it to Tulsa and end up as litter in the park near 61st Street and Yorktown, which is where I usually find it. And the newsletter I found yesterday announced that “The Tribulation Has Begun!” The implication is that you should support Tony Alamo Ministries because they are the only ones who can reveal the secret of the ages to you.

The newsletter is packed with Bible quotes and footnotes. But what is their evidence that the Tribulation is beginning now, rather than, say, twenty years from now? What is their evidence from current world events? He presents almost no evidence except a vague reference to a Satanic world government supported by a lying media. While I suspect that Alamo is referring to the United Nations or to the Obama Administration, both of which conservatives regularly depict as satanic, he does not actually say so. He just assumes that readers will think, “Heck yeah, there is a satanic world government, so the Tribulation is here, and I’d better join Tony and Mr. T to get ready for the rapture and the end of the world.”

And so I dismissed Tony Alamo ministries as a bunch of fakes. But perhaps I was premature. There was a lunar eclipse last night. And no ordinary one. I’ve seen plenty of orange-moon eclipses, where the moon has passed through the Earth’s penumbra, but this one was blood-red.

The Bible talks about the moon turning into blood. And that is exactly what it did. Of course, literalists would reject this, because it was still the moon rather than a gigantic gob of red and white blood cells. But how likely is it, by chance, that the very evening after I should pick up a Tony Alamo tract off the ground, announcing the Tribulation, that there should just happen to be the biggest eclipse of the century so far, not to be repeated until 2033? Assuming the world lasts that long. Obviously God has chosen Tony Alamo and Mr. T to be His Very Presence upon the Earth!

A whole paragraph of the tract was taken up by an explanation that if you do not tithe (donate ten percent), you are robbing God. And they mean, of course, to send your tithes to Tony. Omigosh! How wrong I’ve been! I’d better liquidate my assets right now and send a bunch of money to Tony Alamo!

Oh, wait. There’s something I have to figure out first. Ten percent of my gross income? My adjusted gross income? My net income?

Of course, a lot—I mean, a lot—of Christian evangelists have gotten in trouble for having rampant and wild sex with their followers. Garner Ted Armstrong fell into infamy when it was revealed that he slept with practically every female undergraduate at Ambassador College. And what about Tony Alamo? Seven women accused him of sexual abuse, sued him, and won $525 million last year. They won easily, since Alamo did not even respond to the lawsuit.

So one might be tempted to believe Tony Alamo to be a fake. But how, then, can you explain the lunar eclipse last night? God must be speaking to us! Or not.

This entry is different from the lunar eclipse entry on the evolution blog.

Why Genesis is Wrong, Even Figuratively, Part Two: Male and Female Created He Them

The second reason that I consider Genesis to be wrong, even when interpreted figuratively, is that Genesis 1 is all about strict and absolute categories. The most popular figurative interpretation of Genesis 1, known as the Framework Hypothesis, explains the days of Genesis as categories for classifying the universe. On the first three “days,” got sets chaos into order; on the second three “days,” he fills them up. Days 1 and 4 are about the heavenly realm: light and darkness made distinct, then filled with sun, moon, and stars. Days 2 and 5 are about the fluid realm: air and sea made distinct, then filled with fishes and birds. Days 3 and 6 are about the solid earth: land and sea made distinct, then land filled with creeping things, one of which was humankind.

This is a nice figure, but we must not take it too seriously. There is no absolute distinction between light and darkness, atmosphere and outer space, land and sea. The world also has dawn and dusk, penumbra, an exosphere that intergrades without boundary into outer space, a world of marshes and estuaries.

Genesis also says that organisms reproduce after their kind. In general, this is true. Species are not simply useful categories of organisms but are realities. Still, the boundaries among species are sometimes indistinct. As a botanist, I will use a plant example. For example, Quercus stellata (post oak) and Quercus macrocarpa (bur oak) are distinct species, but there are a few regions in which they hybridize, producing a hybrid known as Quercus x guadalupensis. The hybrids are rare and, presumably, less specialized than the parents; they probably cannot grow as well in dry as do post oaks, or soil as moist as do bur oaks. Rare though they be, they exist. There are many hybrids between different species of the same genus in plants, and, among orchids, even between different genera.

Genesis 1 also makes an absolute distinction between male and female. This distinction is useless for plants (but Genesis 1 does not apply it to plants). But even in animals, the male-female distinction is imperfect. Whole phyla of animals (for example the phyla that contain snails and earthworms) consist largely of bisexual individuals. In some fish species, individuals may grow up as females then, when they are large enough to be successful fighters, they change into males. Moreover, the natural world contains ambiguity of sexual behavior. Homosexuality is very common in many animal species, where it functions as social bonding (since it obviously has no reproductive function).

The male-female distinction is imperfect in the human species as well. Most individuals are heterosexual males or females. But many humans are gay or lesbian or bisexual. Speaking as a very, very heterosexual male, I admit I cannot understand these people’s feelings, but I acknowledge them and I accept them. I accept their testimony about themselves. They tell me nature has made them so and it is not a choice they made. In particular, there is no small number of people who are physically one gender and psychologically another. Many Native American tribes have long recognized the legitimacy of men who assume female identities: formerly called berdache, this identity is now called “two-spirit.”

There are some people who are born as little girls and then, at puberty, turn into young men. This happens because the gene that produces juvenile testosterone function is blocked, with the result that they develop as little girls. However, their adult testosterone function works fine, and they develop male characteristics at puberty. Of course, they cannot completely turn into men; they retain many feminine characteristics as adult males. The Dominican village in which this commonly occurs refers to them as a third gender: guevedoce, or eggs-at-twelve. A similar phenomenon occurs in Papua New Guinea, where these individuals are called, in pidgin, turnim-men. Nature does this to them, their chromosomes do this to them, and scientists knowexactly how.

The absolute categorizations of the universe that are implied in even a figurative reading of Genesis 1 are therefore imperfect. This does not present any great problem unless you are a creationist or a fundamentalist. Creationists insist that “after their kind” means that evolution cannot occur. This is based on taking “after their kind” too seriously. Fundamentalists insist that all humans are either male, or female, or deviants who must be restricted or punished in some way. This is based on taking the phrase “male and female created he them” too seriously. One example of this is a certain state-funded university whose academic vice president rejected the tenure application of a transgender woman on religious grounds. At this point, Genesis 1 becomes an oppressive and oppressing chapter of scripture, even if no attempt is made to force Earth history into a six-day schedule.

Why Genesis is Wrong, Even Figuratively, Part One: Human Nature

Most readers of this blog know that the creationist insistence on a literal reading of Genesis is completely wrong. One reason for this is that they are picky about which parts they take literally and which parts they consider figurative. They say the Genesis days are 24 hours but they do not believe the “firmament” is actually firm, as implied in the original Hebrew of Genesis 1, or that rain falls through the “windows of heaven” as stated in Genesis 6. Same old, same old, I won’t bore you with this.

What I consider more interesting is that Genesis is wrong even as a figurative picture of the universe, life on earth, and humankind.

One example of this involves human nature, human evolution, and the origin of society. Christian evolutionists (they do exist) have struggled to figure out which stage of human evolution was represented by Adam and Eve. They believe God made Adam from the “dust of the ground,” but that this phrase refers to matter, which includes DNA and cells. Perhaps, they speculate, that there was a point in history in which the spirit of God infused itself into an existing animal species, Homo sapiens. For centuries, even conservative Bible believers have speculated about the existence of “Pre-Adamite” humans.

However, there appears to be no abrupt point in human evolution in which an animal species became suddenly spiritual. Christians in science who try to reconcile Genesis and evolution have had a devil of a time.

And, I believe, they need not bother. The picture of human origins in Genesis is all wrong. It depicts a primordially sinless human race, which experienced “The Fall,” after which humans had a sinful nature. There has never been a time when humans or any of our evolutionary ancestors have not been fighting and killing one another. As far back as you look, you find what we would call sin. Recently, it was reported that one of the Homo heidelbergensis bodies in Sima de los Huesos in Spain was a murder victim at least 350,000 years ago.

And, furthermore, the Christian story depicts humans as falling not only from primitive sinlessness but into modern depravity, or “original sin.” That is, that modern human nature is evil, unless the person has the Spirit of God living in him or her. But this cannot be true. Human nature is not entirely evil. Human nature is characterized by (imperfect) goodness and altruism within groups—cooperation, even love. It is also characterized by genocidal evil between groups. Human nature has both.

So, for example, good Jewish soldiers under Joshua could carry out genocide against Canaanites with not a second thought, because the Canaanites were outside their group. Good Christian Massachusetts pilgrims could slaughter Pequot villagers with scarcely a second thought because the Pequots were not in their group. (I say scarcely, because in his own record of the events, William Bradford was actually bothered by the screams of the Native Americans as they burned or were shot; however, in God’s name, he suppressed those inconvenient humanitarian thoughts.) In the Confederacy, until recently revered by the state of South Carolina and still worshiped by hundreds of thousands of Christian racists, Christian men and women could torture slaves because they classified slaves as “other,” in particular as property rather than persons. As Jon Stewart and associates said, it is difficult to kill a person, but easy to kill a heretic.

One reason we know the Bible is wrong about human nature is that those religious humans who supposedly have the Spirit of God living in them are no better than any other humans, on the average. Conservative Christians are no more or less likely than anyone else to commit fornication, adultery, financial crimes, etc. The constant stream of Christian televangelist scandals is no different than revelations of scandals in any other group of people, except that televangelists proclaim themselves to be morally superior. Reverend Ted Haggard’s homosexual partner was not bothered by the relationship itself, but by Haggard’s hypocrisy—that’s why he spoke out. If there is an indwelling Spirit, it has no overall effect on Christians compared to non-Christians. I know good Christians and good non-Christians and so do you.

There actually is some good news in human history. Humans have gradually (on the whole, not in every individual instance) expanded their compass to include more and more humans in their group. Who could forget the Wedgwood medallion of the early 19^th century, depicting a slave in chains, with the words, “Am I not a man and a brother?” Including slaves in our human family is the only reason they ever got freed.

Therefore, the real picture of human history has been a gradual widening of humanitarianism rather than a sudden Fall from sinlessness into depravity. Furthermore, much and perhaps most of this expansion has occurred in the last few hundred years, long after the completion of the New Covenant and the founding of the Christian Church. In Christian doctrine, New Testament principles as expounded by Jesus were the ultimate expression of goodness, and there has been no improvement since that time.

Consider, for example, Christopher Columbus, about whom I will write as we get closer to October 12. When Columbus tortured and enslaved Native Americans, he was either evil or not. If we believe that the Bible condemns such actions, then Columbus was evil, and we cannot do such things today because they are evil. But if we believe that Columbus was a hero who brought the light of Christianity to the heathens, then he was not evil, and we should be able to do such things today.  No Christian should say “It was OK for Columbus to do those things but it would be wrong for me to do them,” because that implies that during the two thousand years since the New Covenant began God somehow changed the rules.

An evolutionary view, in contrast, would say that since the time of Columbus we have widened our compass of humanitarianism. We can say the standards of good and evil are different now than in Columbus’ day. We cannot condone Columbus (he should have known that rape and murder were wrong) but we can perhaps understand him better. Unlike us, he was raised to think that anyone who was not a member of his holy Catholic Church should die.

In conclusion: Genesis is wrong about human nature and its origin. Genesis implies, even figuratively, that primitive humans were sinless, and modern humans are depraved unless God saves them. An evolutionary view indicates that human nature has always been both good and evil and that morality has evolved.

This essay also appeared on my evolution blog.

New video

See my new video, Darwin Loves Perry Mason.

What’s Different about Humans?

Lots of answers to this question but I am focusing on one particular thing. The natural world is a constant struggle of all against all, but this struggle is quite different from the worldwide violence that humans have created.  What is different about natural vs. human struggle?

The struggle for existence in nature can sometimes be very violent, and can (especially for victims of parasites) gruesome. But usually what you see in nature is a struggle that can be called “I will outgrow you” or “I will out-reproduce you” or “I can do better than you” rather than “I will kill you.” Natural selection, the engine of evolution, is not always bloody; it is competition.

Consider a forest. You look all around you, and you see green leaves. If you look closely, and at the right time, you will also see herbivores such as caterpillars. The leaves produce toxins, and the caterpillars tolerate them, resulting in a balance that ends up, by chance rather than by design, allowing both of them to survive and even flourish. This is struggle for existence but not violence. You can feel peace in a forest but not, of course, on a battlefield or the scene of an ISIS terrorist attack.

In contrast, you cannot hear a single day of news without being confronted with violence, sometimes unspeakable violence, all around the world. Humans, perhaps uniquely among all species, have gone far beyond the Darwinian struggle for existence and gone into what can only be described as evil. Humans, unlike other animal species, are not content with simply out-competing another person. In this sense, the religious people might turn out to be right, that humans, alone among species, are fallen.

This essay also appeared on my evolution blog.