The chimp that does calculus

Alright, that was a bit of a tongue-in-cheek, teaser headline to reel you in, but it wasn’t totally pointless. I wanted to make an analogy that will probably help you understand why it’s okay to not have all of the answers around the evolution of the universe and still not be religious. Most people that I know who are, by their own admission, "apathetic about religion, but still believe in god", do so mainly because they haven’t found the holy grail (pun intended :) ) of the evolution theory. While science has undeniable facts around the history of the universe and has very cohesive, albeit complex theories about how a universe can be formed and destroyed, it hasn’t tied every single loose end, like recreating the big bang (though, as we speak, the LHC (Large Hadron Collider) in Switzerland is trying to do just that) or dark matter, etc. And that gives these religious fanatics enough of an excuse to debunk the rest of the theories by saying that since we cannot conclusively prove or recreate this process, it must not be true.

That’s where our analogy comes in. Let’s say we have a chimp, which is the closest relative to man that we know of (clue #1 for evolution, but that’s a different topic). Let’s say this chimp is smart… smarter than his other chimp brothers. Let’s say he can do cool tricks and arrange colors and numbers and even do simple math. And then let’s say we try to teach this chimp calculus. Not just basic calculus, but the whole nine yards. We teach it every possible derivate, integral, limit, etc. Does anyone expect it to learn any of it? No… not possible. Not by the chimp as we know it today. The reason is that a chimp, even a smart one, is limited by it’s genetic makeup. It is incapable of understanding complex concepts like calculus.

But that does not mean that calculus is not real or cannot be understood by a higher intelligence (read man… well, some people at least!)

That’s the same reasoning I use for humans understanding and explaining all of cosmology and astronomy. Just because we cannot piece together every last piece of the puzzle doesn’t mean it’s not true. Maybe we are limited by our powers of understanding and we are incapable of conceiving of something as complicated as the creation of a universe! Maybe the secret lies in a new dimension that we are yet to discover or might never do since our 6 senses do not allow for this new dimension to be recognized or measured! Maybe we are the chimp trying to figure out the calculus of the universe and we are genetically incapable of doing so.

But it still does not mean that the theories of evolution that have been proved so far and the facts of the universe (and multiverse) are false or optional. The only thing limiting us from accepting these facts and using it to propel us forward is this dangerous, abysmal, controlling stories of religion and the consequences of not following "the rules". The sooner we recognize the dangers of believing in these types of backward ideologies, the better off we will be as a species.