Three Muses - Challenge

 

When I was 16, I went to a talk in the Wantage Civic Centre.  It was on ‘Challenges to the Theory of Evolution’.  Now this sounds very American.  There are video channels and much ‘scientific’ evidence supplied to contradict the current mainstream theories.  But just as with Galileo in the past, challenging orthodoxy is a risky business.  Galileo was proved to be correct.  Time is the judge.

One argument I remember from this talk was the discussion on how humans began to walk upright.  The argument goes that the hip sockets of the human pelvis put the joints right at the front.  For Gorillas and Chimpanzees the joint is located at the back.  When moving quickly these animals choose to run on all fours, even though their ‘hands’ look like ours, and are certainly not paws.  How is it possible to transition from fours to twos? It doesn’t sound plausible to charge around at 45 degrees.  There are wonderful pictures of Chimpanzees wading through rivers, erect and looking very much like our kindred.  In my mind this is not a watertight argument.  In our time's discussion of Homo Erectus did not address the issue of how humanity rose to it's feet.

War and death are inevitable.  Look across history.  Again Harari suggest that war has had it’s day.  There is nothing to be gained by modern day destruction.  But he forgets that war is evil, and evil knows no bounds.