The Mayfly and the Pyramid: Seeking Perspective in the Rockies

Long's Peak. Rocky Mountain National Park. Photo by Author

People visiting the Rockies or the Alps often remark that the mountains make them feel small. That's not how they affect me. Their enormity is staggering, of course, but I don't really compare myself to them that way, so they don't make me feel small. I do, however, compare myself to them in terms of age. And that does make me feel small--not small in stature, but small in years. "Ephemeral" is the word that always comes to mind. Standing on the side of a snow-capped mountain makes me feel like a mayfly on the Great Pyramid.

Bristlecone pine in Colorado. Photo from US Forest Service

We humans like to scoff at the mayfly's day-long life, but we're pretty short-lived creatures ourselves by some standards. Even trees can make our lives seem brief. I'm 43 years old, and there are bristlecone pines where I live in Colorado that are over 50 times as old as I am. The oldest one known sprouted in 442 BC, the year Sophocles wrote Antigone. It's older than the Roman Colosseum, but only half as old as some of its cousins in California.

Bristlecone pines are ancient things, but they, in turn, are ephemeral on longer scales. For example, the most recent glaciers that chiseled the cirques and rounded the valleys in the high mountains of Colorado were at their greatest extent about 18,000 years ago. They lasted for 20,000 years--ten times as long as Colorado's ancient pines. Some of them were almost thirty miles long, and heavy enough to bore mountain valleys into U-shaped troughs (these valley glaciers would have looked similar to the one below, in Switzerland) They were monsters that dwarfed us in size as well as longevity.

Photo by Dirk Beyer Click for photo credit and information

And today, they're just ghosts--recognizable only by their handiwork. But they'll be back one day. The glaciers of 18,000 years ago were just the latest in a long series of glacial cycles going back 2.5 million years. We're living in a brief warm period in a long ice age--one that's a thousand times older than the oldest bristlecone pines in Colorado, or the plays of Sophocles.

But even the ice age has been brief compared to the mountains themselves. The Rockies were here long before the first glaciers began to carve them. The Colorado Rockies began to rise about 70 million years ago, which means they were young when the dinosaurs went extinct, and have presided over the 65-million-year rise of mammals. I said above that my age compared to the Rockies is like a mayfly's compared to the Great Pyramid. That's not an exaggeration. If a mayfly lives a day, the Great Pyramid--built around 2600 BC--is about 1.6 million times as old as the mayfly. That's almost exactly how much older the Colorado Rockies are than me (the size comparison isn't far off, either).

And yet, even the mountains come and go. The Rockies aren't nearly as old as the rocks they are made of. The metamorphic rocks that compose much of Colorado's Front Range were formed about 1.7 billion years ago, when even older sedimentary rocks were compressed and heated in the formation of a long-vanished mountain range. That makes them 24 times as old as the Rockies. They're old enough to been part of a succession of mountain ranges. As James Michener said in the novel Centennial (set in Colorado), "Only the rocks live forever".

Of course, even rocks don't live forever, but compared to us, they might as well. The universe itself is only a few times as old as these rocks are, and they could still survive for billions of years to come. Compared to that, we're far more ephemeral than mayflies.

Some people may find that depressing. In fact, millions of people refuse to accept it at all, preferring to believe the whole Earth is only slightly older than a bristlecone pine. It isn't, thank goodness. It's so much older, bigger, and grander than that. That's why I don't think it's depressing to compare myself to the rocks, or the mountains, or the glaciers, or the ancient trees. When I go into the mountains, I do feel my own mortality--my own fleetingness--but in a good way. Yes, I'm small and ephemeral, but only because the world is so grand and ancient, and I become larger by going out and losing myself in it.

Besides, there's a whole lot more to life than size and longevity. Humans have something the rocks, mountains, and glaciers don't: a conscious mind. We can go up into the mountains and marvel at them, and at the epic sweep of the processes that made them. We're lucky enough to be among the parts of nature capable of appreciating itself. Not only that, but we live in a time when science is showing us just how immense and ancient nature really is. It's an enormous privilege, if you think about it. So, no, it's not at all depressing to me that our lives are so fleeting compared to the rocks and mountains. The mountains are blind--they can't appreciate their own grandeur. But we can, and it's glorious. We may not be here long, but we have an incredible world to explore while we're here.

The Best Defense: Thoughts on Arguing with Creationists

Rising in Noah's Ark, Aurelio Luini, 1556. 

Arguing with creationists? Don't do it! That way lies madness!

OK, that's just my first impulse. Honestly, I think there are times when it's worthwhile to argue with creationists. Not because you'll convince them of anything, mind you--you almost certainly won't. Most of them are entirely unpersuadable. In fact, changing anybody's mind about anything is extremely rare, so if your goal is to change minds, you're mostly going to be disappointed. (I've never fully learned this lesson.)

But there are still a couple of reasons having the argument could be worthwhile anyway. One is that most creationists can at least be shaken out of their smugness a little, and that's a good thing. It's possible to give them pause, and make them think--just for a second--that their claims might not be as solid as they think, and that established scientific theory might not be as shaky and fraudulent as they think. It's also common that they will say something that shows they don't understand what the theory of evolution actually says; e.g. "If we came from monkeys, why are there still monkeys?" Many creationists don't actually understand basic science. They've read just enough creationist literature to think they know how to refute it.

Which brings us to the second, and far more important reason, it can be worthwhile to have the argument: other people are usually watching, and they may still be sitting on the fence. The person you're arguing with probably won't change their mind, but some of the people overhearing it might.

But this is risky, because if you don't know your stuff, it may be the creationist who sounds more convincing. A creationist who's spent a lot of time learning how to deny science can easily win an argument over someone who doesn't know how to defend it. Let's face it--most people who believe in science don't know enough to defend it well, and even someone who knows a lot about science can be stumped temporarily by some of the claims creationists throw out. That's because it's much, much easier to cast doubt on a complex theory than it is to defend it. This is especially true if the person casting the doubt is willing to be dishonest (or just repeating dishonest or delusional claims, which is more common), or if the people listening don't know science very well. As Alberto Brandolini put it, "The amount of energy necessary to refute bullshit is an order of magnitude bigger than to produce it."

It gets worse. Even if you DO know the science well, creationists will always be able to ask questions you can't immediately answer. If they throw out a wild claim about some purported finding that contradicts evolution, it takes a lot of work to track it down and figure out what's wrong with it. Nobody, not even professional scientists, knows enough to instantly refute every claim someone might make. There are dozens of such claims that have been answered here, but there will always be more of them. It's always easier to knock a theory down than to prove it, even if the theory is true.

The point is, the person attacking a complex idea usually has an advantage over the person defending it.* So what can you do? My suggestion is that at a certain point, you have to stop playing defense and go on the offensive. I don't mean you should be offensive--that's usually counterproductive, and in fact, it's probably best to be extra polite, since people get offended over religion three times as fast as any other topic. I'm just saying we need to turn the tables. If creationists want to talk evidence, then great, let's talk evidence--including their evidence.

When you start doing that, most creationists get pretty quiet, and for good reason. True Biblical literalists believe some pretty wild things. They believe there was once a snake who talked. They believe Adam was made from dust, and Eve was made from one of his ribs. They believe that every animal on Earth--including kangaroos from Australia, raccoons from North America, and penguins from Antarctica--somehow made it to the Middle East, and then squeezed together, by the millions, onto a wooden boat (and what about plants, fungi, bacteria, protists, and viruses? Surely they were passengers too?) Creationists believe Noah lived over 900 years, that floodwaters once topped Everest, and that people speak different languages because they tried to build a tower into the sky and God didn't like it.

So let's ask them this about all those things. Let's ask them things like: What's your evidence that a snake really talked? How do you know that women were created from a rib? Is there some genetic signature of these things? Do snakes have some sort of vestigial speech organs you can see in a dissection? Do women show genetic signs of being physiologically based on bone tissue? And how did Noah make sure every strand of bacteria and virus got on the ark? How did those raccoons get across the Atlantic? What's the evidence that people once lived for hundreds of years? Or that all languages can be traced to the Middle East?

Whatever holes creationists think they can poke in science, the holes in their theories are much, much bigger. And besides, turnabout is fair play. If creationists want to ask us about our evidence...great! We've got it, and lots of it. Museums, journals, rocks and DNA are full of evidence that backs us up. All of nature backs us up. Now let's ask them about their evidence. Let's hear what they've got on that talking snake and the 900-year-old man. I'm all ears.

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* That's why, if a creationist asks me for the evidence for evolution or the age of the earth, I'm going to give it to them, but I know they will find fault with it. I can't help that, and there aren't enough hours in the day to explain why their objections are wrong--especially since they won't believe it anyway. It's enough for me to know that the only people who deny things like the accuracy of radiometric dating, stratigraphic methods, the constancy of the speed of light, and the authenticity of most fossils are people with a strong religious motivation to do so. The standard view of all these things is good enough for the US Geologic Survey, NASA, the National Science Foundation, the Royal Society, and dozens of other scientific bodies listed here. It's also good enough for oil companies who just want to find oil and make money. If you read what petroleum geologists write, you'll see references to million-year time spans, geologic ages, and the ancient environments that today's rocks came from. You won't see anything about Noah's flood.

Saving Millions of Lives with this One Weird Trick

Inside of a Jail from the Spanish Inquisition.

I know what you're thinking. "Millions of lives? What is this guy talking about?! What trick could possibly do that?" I know, I was skeptical too, but don't click away just yet!

OK, enough ad talk. It just feels dirty. I couldn't resist the title, but my point is actually a pretty modest one, and I'll explain why below. Consider, if you will, the following questions:

• George Washington died because his doctors thought bloodletting was good for you. What if there had been a way to prevent that?

• Thousands of people suspected of being witches or even werewolves were once hanged and burned at the stake. What if that could have been avoided?

• Consider the Aztecs. They used to to cut people's hearts out to keep the gods happy and the sun from falling out of the sky. Was that really necessary?

• And then think about people right here in the United States. They once enslaved millions of Africans, and justified it (in part) by saying that Africans were the descendants of Ham; cursed by Noah to a life of servitude. What might have prevented that attitude?

Could there really be a simple "trick" to keep this kind of thing from happening? What if didn't just prevent religious violence, superstitious savagery, and bad medical practices, but other kinds of needless suffering too? What if it could have prevented horrors fueled by overconfident and violent secular ideologies like Jacobinism, Nazism, and Stalinism?

Surely no "weird trick" could do that, right? Actually, I honestly think it could. Consider what would happen if people lived according to this simple rule:

If you don't have overwhelming, undeniable evidence that your beliefs are true, never hurt anyone because of them.*

In other words, when your beliefs tell you to do something that could hurt or kill people, ask yourself: "Do I really know this is true? What's my evidence? Can I actually prove it, the way you can prove the Pythagorean Theorem, or that the moon is made of rocks?" If not, then don't do it! When in doubt--and there's almost always doubt--don't hurt anybody or impose upon their happiness. If the implementation of someone's belief puts lives or happiness at stake, then the burden of proof is on the believer, and it's a pretty enormous burden.

That's especially true considering that it's extremely easy to be wrong. That's why this proposal is actually modest: it's based on deep intellectual humility; on knowing you might be wrong. After all, being wrong is the rule in history, not the exception. That's why evidence is crucial. People have been tragically wrong about all kinds of things, from prehistoric human sacrifices to weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Better safe than sorry.

Imagine if the Aztecs had said, "Wait, what's the actual evidence that the sun won't come up if we stop ripping people's hearts out? Have we actually tested this idea? What if we went a year without doing it, and see if the sun comes up anyway?"

Think of how many horrible deaths that would have prevented if they had questioned whether they "just knew" the sun would stop coming up.

Imagine if the doctors who accidentally killed George Washington had known how to do controlled experiments, and actually tested to see whether bloodletting was helpful or harmful, instead of relying on tradition and hearsay? What if the people hanging "witches" in Salem had thought, "Whoa whoa whoa...can we prove she's in league with the Devil? Come to think of it, have I ever actually seen the Devil?" What if slave owners had said, "Hold on. How do I actually know any of this stuff about the curse of Ham? Sure, it's written in the Bible, but anybody can write something down. What if it's a bad interpretation, or it never even happened at all?"

We're imagining what might have been, and that might seem like an idle exercise, but it isn't, because the principle doesn't just apply to the past. It applies to the present and the future, too. People are dying over dubious beliefs right now. Children are dying around the world because their parents would rather rely on faith healing than real, evidence-based medicine. People aren't vaccinating their kids, and they're basing that decision on discredited studies and vague appeals to what's natural, not on real scientific evidence. They're not just putting their kids at risk--they're putting us all at risk.

Or consider how questionable religious convictions** still shape global politics. George W. Bush seems to have believed that God was telling him to invade Iraq. In retrospect, he was surely mistaken. Otherwise surely things would have gone better, right? He shouldn't have been so sure about what God wanted. What if he had thought, "Do I really know God wants me to invade Iraq? Can I prove it? Am I sure enough to bet hundreds of thousands of other people's lives on it?"

Of course, the kind of primitive impulses that got heretics and "witches" burned at the stake are still going on today. ISIS is doing that kind of thing right now, and it's as savage as anything that ever happened during the Middle Ages. Dogma-driven barbarism isn't confined to the past, unfortunately.

So, while it may sound insanely grandiose to claim that this principle could save millions of lives, it really isn't. First, it's not my idea anyway--it's been suggested many times before. Second, it's really quite modest--it simply recognizes the fallibility of human understanding. Third, it really could save all those lives, and not just right now, but in the future. The problem, of course, is implementing it. The suggestion is simple, but getting people to actually do it isn't. People have gotten a little less willing to kill for their unproven beliefs in recent decades, but it's still a pretty strong tendency. Montaigne once said, "It is taking one's conjectures rather seriously to roast someone alive for them." Plenty of people still take their conjectures every bit that seriously.

And that's just what they are: conjectures. They aren't proven, and many of them are just flat wrong. That's the thing: it's so very easy to be wrong. People do it all the time. They're wrong more than right, and have been throughout history. That's why, when people's lives and happiness are at stake, it's best to err on the side of caution. None of us are smart enough to bet our beliefs against other people's lives.

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*Of course, a good broader rule would be: Try not to hurt anybody because of any belief, true or not. I mean, I know the Earth is round, but I'm not going to punch somebody in the nose if they insist it's flat. But I can imagine some situations where a provable belief could require that people be hurt or killed. If there were an airliner, full of innocent people, and you had undeniable evidence it was carrying an atomic bomb toward a major city, it might be justified to shoot it down. It would never be justifiable if you think God told you there's a bomb, or if your horoscope made you think there was a bomb, etc. You need hard, physical evidence. A feeling of certainty won't cut it. People are constantly feeling certain about all kinds of things they're wrong about.

** I don't mean to imply that religion only causes people to do hurtful things. If often does, but it also causes them to do great things. Think of how many hospitals and homeless shelters have been founded by religious people. It's conceivable that someone might do good things because of a false belief. I think that probably happens all the time. But so what? If it's helpful, and not harmful, there's no pressing need to insist on absolute proof before acting. If you're wrong, you've still done a good thing.