MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT: This might be the final installment of the Church of the Infinite Chasm. If you have read previous Sunday installments, you know the church’s mission; I won’t belabor it here. Since last Sunday I’ve had something of an epiphany. I have never been one who is reluctant to admit my mistakes, and this is going to be one of those times.
No one had ever taken the time to clearly explain to me the nuts and bolts of evolutionary theory. That has now taken place. I can’t believe what I am about to write: when it comes to evolution, my eyes have been opened. I now see the light. I’d like to try to briefly explain my newfound faith:
Once upon a time – billions of centuries ago – the universe didn’t exist. And then, a nanosecond later, there it was, all over the place, courtesy of The Big Bang. Or something like it. There is not universal agreement on the matter, but let’s not get bogged down in minor details before our story has even begun. Bottom line: trillions upon trillions of trillions of square miles of matter suddenly appeared out of nowhere and was strewn across an incomprehensibly huge area. Fast forward a few billion years and our earth was still just a steaming ember bathed in toxic gases. There was bubbling, percolating slime and mud everywhere. Primitive fish had developed – I forgot to mention that earlier – who eventually started thinking, “enough of this,” and after trying generation after generation to slither out of the slime and onto dry land for, like thousands of centuries, one day a fish with extra strong fins bent them down and used them as legs and wiggled up on dry land. He immediately died because his gills didn’t work in air and, anyway, the air was toxic. But it was a start.
Millions of fish died the same way until one of them, a male fish with (fortunately) defective gills managed to live. After waiting around for centuries for a girl fish to show up, the two of them mated and produced a severely deformed baby, a freak. Today we call these freaks “salamanders.” Life on land was now a fact.
Life on land took off like a rocket. Scales on fish and snakes eventually became feathers and the next thing you know, snakes and lizards that looked like birds were flying, something lowly humans didn’t figure out until about a hundred years ago. Mammals also evolved. How? Not important, but next thing you know, blind monkeys were crawling all over the place, climbing trees (I forgot to mention trees had also evolved) and occasionally flinging poop. They ruled for billions of years until something shocking occurred: one-eyed monkeys appeared. Yes, somehow vision developed. Major news? You have no idea. Blind monkeys devolved into oblivion within seconds, geologically speaking.
It looked like one-eyed monkeys and everything they eventually evolved into – apes, chimpanzees, orangutans, snow monkeys, spider monkeys, gorillas – were perched at the top of the food chain and were all set for a long run at the top. But then, plot twist: two-eyed monkeys came along.
Over time, one branch of two-eyed monkeys inexplicably became super-super-advanced, while the rest of them, all these billions of years later, are still walking around in the nude, scratching themselves with sticks, flinging poop, etc. And the rest is history – at least until something with three eyes shows up.
Footnote: I realize this explanation is somewhat simplified, but I finally understand that simple answers have the ring of truth. I hope you agree.
To this day there is evidence of rivalry and jealousy from our ancestors.