Bangladesh and Evolution!

In Bangladesh, people use evolution’s benefits but deny its truth

What evolution is becomes clear just by looking at the past two years. The amount of mutation shown by the coronavirus should make everyone understand what evolution really means. With each new variant, millions of dollars worth of vaccines had to be discarded and new ones designed. The European variant is different from Asia’s; Brazil, Indonesia, USA, and South Africa all have distinct genome sequences. Are they the same? Evolution in higher organisms takes time to become visible. Maybe the coronavirus hasn’t become a completely different virus in two years – but evolution is happening. And if evolution hadn’t occurred in humans, we too would have witnessed the same death tolls as Europe and America. A single variant would have been equally deadly for everyone.

When examples of genetic mutation in viruses and bacteria are given, educated religious individuals – those who try to balance both faith and science – now say (having no other option), “Microevolution happens, but macroevolution through natural selection does not.” I believe this statement will change in a few decades – they’ll then say evolution happens and it’s even mentioned in religious texts. Scientists derived this theory by reading scriptures! There might even be TV programs titled “Natural Selection in Light of Religion.” Perhaps a professor from Dhaka University or Dhaka Medical College will be a guest on such a show!

Although matter is changeable, there has been a long-standing effort since ancient times to keep human-made realities static. At no point in history have we (people of the Bengal region) operated using our own intellect – not even for a moment have we had that privilege.

The majority of our intellectual history is translated. And that translated knowledge is often impractical. Rote learning has always triumphed in this region. Because we’ve never needed creative knowledge. Do we need political science to run our state? We’ve built satellites and launched them on foreign soil; yet, despite owning satellites, our mothers and aunts know nothing about them. The irony is this: we all have smartphones, but on those phones we’re consuming seeds of hatred and ignorance. We’re not using smartphones smartly. Because although we can convert our currency to dollars and buy the phone, we cannot purchase the social awareness or intellectual depth of its inventors.

Our talent, once it goes to America or Europe, rarely returns; same with our capital. Just as we remain static in intellect, we do so in capital. How many elected representatives have we had since independence? Compare that to a European country over the same period. We’re quite static here too. These thousands of artificial static conditions collectively reinforce religious static positions. As a result, the movement within religion goes unnoticed. We don’t realize the vast difference between fatwas issued five to seven hundred years ago and those issued today; yet religion itself remains unchanged. Not a single letter has changed – only interpretations have. Once, loudspeakers were deemed forbidden; later, the interpretation changed to accommodate their necessity. There are hundreds of examples like this – medicines, vaccines, infectious diseases, photos, videos, and more.

We’ve lived through a historical condition where change usually signaled decline; we’ve seen change as downfall through the lens of fear; we’ve been forced to seek joy in static lives. As a people, we are afraid of change. This fear has been embedded in our minds. Europe too experienced such fear in the Middle Ages, imposed by the Church. But the sound of Newtonian mechanics – the engine – dispelled their fear. Our ancestors, hearing that same engine sound, stepped aside from the road thinking it was some divine being like Indra, traveling in a supernatural vehicle that vanished in the blink of an eye.

Science has frightened us, religion has frightened us; we’ve become fearful, clinging to something – anything. We’ve become part of history’s countercurrent, where survival is primary and progress is secondary.

That’s why most of us accept the Big Bang but reject evolution. We’ll take all the benefits discovered through evolutionary theory but won’t accept the theory itself! According to the Big Bang theory, at the beginning of the universe, there were no planets, satellites, or stars – only a massive amount of energy compacted into a point-like location. From this, through the process of baryogenesis, fundamental particles were formed, which later gave rise to atoms and molecules. And from those, much later (billions and billions of years later)

planets, satellites, and stars were formed. So the summary is –
Energy soup → Fundamental particles → Atoms and molecules → Planets, satellites, stars
The entire process is based on evolution. The sun is constantly losing fuel, changing over time, moving toward its death.

Everything is evolving with time.
Change or evolution is a fundamental characteristic of this universe – a fundamental law of nature. Without this trait, the universe wouldn’t have reached this stage, and humans wouldn’t have emerged through billions of years of evolution.

In a static or unchanging universe, the concept of time itself becomes unimaginable and unnecessary.
Now here’s a fun point: those who believe humans were once 90 feet tall won’t accept that if we are their descendants, how did our height reduce to today’s average of 5.5 feet? In fact, humans were shorter in the past. From a scientific perspective, a 90-foot human is impossible – even reaching 7 or 8 feet makes life extremely difficult. I’ve written extensively on this before.

So when we see a group that accepts the hot Big Bang but rejects evolution, it’s honestly laughable. They can’t present any theory stronger or more proven than evolution. At the root of everything for them are those religious interpretations. If the complex process of creating planets and stars from an energy soup via the Big Bang is possible, then the emergence of humans through evolution is comparatively simple. Just wait 20 more years – you’ll see them start saying evolution was already there, or it came from there, just as they now claim about many discoveries.