Post by safaiax on Dec 6, 2008 8:45:51 GMT -5
(Isaac)
It was during the third week of August that I had to do it. Jared and Aaron would be going home in a few days, so I knew I couldn’t put it off any longer. I needed to talk to Aaron about something before he left. It had to be alone, though. On Wednesday, I finally got the chance. Jared and Ralph were at the shop, and Aaron and I were down in the basement. I had to bring it up.
**
“Hey Aaron,” I began, being careful to chose my words wisely.
“Yeah?”
“Umm…have you and Jared had any interesting conversations lately?”
“Uh…not that I can think of. Why?”
“Oh, just curious. I’m not going to be there for him all the time, and he’s really gonna’ be needing someone to talk to I think.”
“About…his Dad?”
“Yeah. And just about life in general. Ya’ know?”
“Okay. I can do that.”
“Thanks. Just be careful about it. Be careful what you say. And be really observant and know when to speak up and when to be quiet.”
“Okay.”
“Oh and also remember that sometimes it just helps to listen.”
“I know.” He chuckled slightly.
“Yeah, I know…just want to make sure…”
“Yeah. We’ll be fine though. I got his back. Don’t worry, okay?”
“I’m not worrying,” I half smiled. “Just concerned, that’s all.”
“Well don’t be. We’ll be alright.”
“Yeah…I know.”
We sat in silence for a little bit, both focusing on our lumps of clay in front of us. We had been taking a break from the wheel for awhile, but what we were doing now involved a lot more creativity; Aaron had it…but I didn’t--at least not as much. It was rather frustrating.
“Oh yeah, hey Isaac. I’m just wondering, but are you ever gonna’ get your drivers license?”
“I dunno really. Mom and Dad don’t want me to, and I guess I don’t really see a need to. I mean I’m gonna’ have you guys, plus Ralph. So unless something happens, I don’t think I’ll need to worry about it.”
“What if something does happen? You never know…”
Ugh…why’d he have to say that? Now I’m probably gonna’ be paranoid that something bad will happen to one of them… “I don’t know. I have a feeling that me and Jared will be stuck together for a long time. Just a hunch…but anyways, when are you gonna’ get yours?”
“Soon, I hope! I can’t wait. Gotta’ drive as much as possible when we get home. Also gotta’ get a job. My Mom might help me pay for a car, but I gotta’ pay most of it.”
I grinned. “Cool. Don’t forget to tell me when ya’ get it.”
“I know.”
(Aaron)
**
The whole summer was awesome. We got some excellent experience—and of course the money helped a lot, too. It was so different without Matt though. There were some times when I hardly believed he was gone. It was so strange…and sad. But besides that, I’m really glad we went down there. Unfortunately, on the third Saturday of August, Jared and I had to leave. School would be starting in about a week and we had to get ready, and of course find ourselves a job soon.
Straight after we got home, I went to my room to unpack. I was thinking a lot about what me and Isaac had talked about on Wednesday. Jared does need someone to talk to and I have to be that person. All those years of him being there for me finally caught up; now I have to be there for him. I have to let him know somehow that I’m open to talking about the hard stuff, and open to listening. But how? It’s not like I can just walk up to him and say ‘hi, just letting you know, if you want to talk about your Dad, or life, I’ll listen.’ No, that would be so dumb. I have to do as Isaac suggested: be observant. Even though I’m not exactly the most observant guy, I’ll at least have to try. Except, the problem was school. School snuck up on us, and soon we both got jobs; we were busy! I worked at the video store, and he worked at Wendy’s a couple blocks down. Also, I started soccer again. I tried to get Jared to play too, but he didn’t want to for some reason.
There was one other thing that happened. Monica called us on the first day of school to tell us two things. First, she had enrolled at a college a couple hours away and was now living on campus; it turned out, she decided to go to veterinary school. Second, she had gotten engaged! We were so excited. Of course it was with Derrick, but I don’t know, I sort of let my guard down a little with him, because I figured if they lasted that long together, maybe he was the perfect guy for her. It made sense to me anyways. She said the wedding was supposed to be the following spring; Jared and I could hardly wait. Shortly after we found out, we called Isaac to tell him the news, and he seemed just as happy for her.
(Monica)
Dear journal,
I’m sooo in love with Derrick!! I can’t imagine life without him. He’s the most amazing, most wondrous guy in the entire universe!!! He proposed to me last night, and I was not expecting that at all! It happened so quickly! I had no choice but to say yes. I wanted to marry him and all, but to be honest, I wanted to wait a little longer, like until after college. But, now was the chance, so I had to say yes. But, I’m sure everything will be okay. Derrick always makes everything okay. After all, he’s been like my dream husband! I didn’t think my dream would ever come true though, especially so soon. But, it did! This is unbelievable! I can hardly wait for our wedding!
(Jared)
The last few weeks had been so busy; it was killing me. It was probably one of the most stressful times of my life. Everyday was the same, yet unique in its own way. I would get up, go to school, go home for about a half hour, go to work, and get home usually around 9-10p.m. Then I’d either do homework, play video games, or do research on my new ‘semi-obsession’--which I’ll explain soon. I’d then go to bed, wake up, and start all over again. I had little time for myself or family. On the weekends I’d always work, drive to get my hours in, and hang out with Aaron—never any different. Sundays were the only days I could sleep in, because on Saturdays I’d have to do chores…and work…but on Sundays, Aunt Susie and Uncle Mike would always go to church, so I could actually get some rest—before work that is.
Anyways, on to my semi-obsession; it really wasn’t an obsession per se, but it felt like it at the time, because I would think about it a lot and spend a good amount of spare time working on it. See, after Isaac had challenged me to ‘do my research’ on the Bible, I started thinking. I thought about the fact that the whole Bible rests on the assumption that the universe was created and, obviously, by a god--which the Bible claims to be the only god. I couldn’t understand how that could be true, because I had always been taught, and considered it a fact of life, that the universe and everything in it formed through the process of evolution. It had always seemed obvious to me. I didn’t understand how anyone could believe differently, because I mean, it’s all part of science! But, I had gone on to question that; to question what I really believed and why I believed it--and eventually, I came to the point where I thought, If evolution is truly a scientific fact, then it will be a no brainer to prove the Bible is wrong. Because since the whole book rests upon the idea of a creator, if I can prove that Evolution is science and a fact of life, that will automatically prove the Bible’s account of the origin of life to be unscientific--wrong--and therefore prove the entire book to be wrong, because it would all end up crumbing onto it’s broken foundation. Easy, right? Besides, that would be a lot less time consuming than going through and looking at every single significant part of Bible to see if it’s right or wrong.
I began my research a few days before school started. I thought about a lot throughout the next month or so, and went off on a bunch of rabbit trails, but this is sort of how my basic train of thought went: If you look around at all of the creatures on this earth, it seems obvious that they’re all genetically related to each other. I pondered that subject for awhile, and it eventually led me to thinking about DNA. I thought that if evolution were to happen, DNA would have to be the base of it, because it’s pretty much the foundation for life—that is, DNA decides everything about how a creature will turn out. So, if DNA is the foundation of life and of Evolution, how would it work? DNA would have to change, and that’s obviously what it does. But, how much can it change? If Evolution is true, DNA would have to be able to change so much that a fish could evolve into a mammal, if you give it enough time. So, would that be reasonable? Also, how would it change? Mutation and natural selection are obviously two ways. But, can those two processes really make creatures change from a simple organism to a complex one? I knew Creationists like to put a limit on the changes, but I didn’t think that was right. I figured it’s perfectly logical to believe there isn’t a limit, especially if they have millions of years. Who knows what could happen during that long of a time-span.
So, this was a good start, but it wasn’t enough to prove Evolution to be a fact of life--I needed more. I began thinking about it one Saturday night after a long day of work. As I laid in my bed, I pondered about the idea of finding physical proof of evolution. I figured it had to be out there; why else would so many scientists claim that it’s true? There had to be some physical proof; there had to be something we could observe, something that would blow those Bible believing Creationists away. I had to remember to do some research on this the next day, after work.
**
…Fourteen hours of sleep is way too much, I told myself the following afternoon as I stood at the cash register at Wendy’s, waiting for the next customer. My boss had just put me here this last week…it would have been okay, but lately I’ve been so tired. I’d either get too much sleep, or too little. Usually I’d get too little sleep during the school week, and then try to catch up on Sunday, but end up sleeping too long and be exhausted the next day. It was frustrating.
Today was really boring. It was fairly slow since it was Sunday. I couldn’t focus, and I wanted to go home. But, I had to keep up the work. Didn’t have much of a choice. Occasionally some people from school would come in, and I’d say ‘hey’ (unless of course they ignored me, which some did because…well…they’re just like that), but that was about the most exciting thing that happened. Actually, no, I take it back. When I had about five minutes left, Aaron came walking in. He’d do that sometimes, when he got off before me. We decided we’d have dinner together, just because we were hungry and it was convenient. After eating, we walked the twenty minute walk home, savoring the cool, autumn breeze.
When we got home, we didn’t really do very much. We played video games for a little bit, but then Aaron went home to finish homework, and I went up to my room to do research. I remembered that I had to start doing research on physical, observable proof for evolution. I started out with what I knew about from school, and went from there. I didn’t sign up for a science class this year, but remembered from last year when I read in my textbook about things like the fossil record, vestigial structures, and homologous structures prove evolution to be true. Do they? That’s where I began my research.
So, what about the fossil record? I thought about that a little bit, and realized that if evolution does happen, we would expect to find many intermediate fossils. We would also expect that many fossils would have some of the same structures as each other. I went on the internet and began looking for intermediate—or transitional—fossils; that’s what interested me the most right now. What I found was, in fact, many examples. I found ‘Archaeopteryx’, an intermediate species between reptiles and birds; it has both features of birds, and of dinosaurs. I also found out scientists have a whole sequence of horse fossils, starting from the primitive ‘Eohippus’ on up to the modern horse. I thought that was pretty interesting. How can people deny that? Later, I found that scientists use fossilized seashells to trace the evolution of mollusks. They’ve really discovered that many seashells? I thought. Wow. If evolution is true, that’s exactly what we’d expect; to discover so many fossils that we can literally trace back through the history of life. Oh, and on top of this, apparently they’ve even discovered a number of intermediates between apes and humans, including ‘Homo erectus’, ‘Homo habilis’, the ‘Neanderthals’, and a pile of others. Over all, I found lists of transitional fossils on the internet. What kind of Creationist could deny all of those? Were they ignorant? Or were they really that closed minded? It made no sense.
**
I soon got tired and had to go to bed, but throughout the next few weeks, I had done research in a number of areas. First, I wanted to see if vestigial structures prove evolution. I began with researching the one that I had heard about the most in school: the appendix. I’d heard of cases where people would get a sickness called ‘appendicitis’, and have to get their appendix removed. I’d heard that the appendix has no good use in the human body. So why did we have it? It seemed obvious to me. Many other animals have an appendix, and the function it possesses is digesting cellulose, which is a carbohydrate present in most plants. I figured that our appendix has lost this function some time ago, but we never actually lost the appendix itself. I came across an argument that stated the appendix isn’t vestigial, because it still has some kind of use, but, I didn’t think that mattered, because it probably just adapted in a way that, even though it doesn’t play its original role anymore, it still plays some kind of minor role. That made perfect sense to me. Anyways, I went on to see if there were any more vestigial structures in not only humans, but other creatures as well, that might indicate evolution has happened.
As a few examples, I found that apparently whales have these vestigial pelvis bones that scientists say used to be used for walking on land. That seemed pretty weird to me, but then again, they’re the experts, so they must know what they’re talking about. Right? Next, I found that some flightless birds, such as ostriches, have vestigial wings. I didn’t know why I never thought of that before; it should have been so obvious. Plus, I found that humans have a vestigial tailbone, and human embryos have these vestigial organs that are supposed to be gill slits, but eventually develop into bones in the ear and throat, glands, and nerves and muscles in the face and neck. Humans also have body hair that apparently serves no purpose. The hair on other animals serves as either an insulator or camouflage. It seemed logical that since our hair isn’t thick enough and has no other purpose, it must be evidence that we evolved from animals that had more hair. Oh, and along with the hair thing, other animals get goose bumps as a response to either fear or cold; their hair will then raise in response to fear, to make themselves look bigger, or form a barrier--a thicker one--between the skin and cold air to keep them warm. Humans get goose bumps for no reason though. It seemed obvious that humans must have evolved from other animals that had a purpose for all of these things. Why else would we have them? I thought after researching this. Some people might say god made us that way, but why would god give us something we don’t need? It made a lot more sense to me that every creature had evolved from something lower, and took some genetic information with them that proved to be useless. I even thought that vestigial structures prove that there probably is no creator (or if there is, it must not be very smart!).
By this time in my research, I didn’t know where to go. I thought about researching a little bit about homologous structures--that is, body parts with similar arrangements but different functions—but I decided otherwise. I didn’t doubt that homologous structures prove evolution; I mean, they certainly don’t go against it. But, I guess this whole research thing had turned into something to not only fulfill my intellectual ponderings, but also equip myself in case I’d ever run into a Christian who wanted to debate about this stuff. And, I just didn’t think the homology argument would cut it in the sight of the Christians, because they could come back and say ‘well maybe that’s how god made them’, or ‘that proves a common designer, too’. I wanted something better.
So, I decided, instead, to go back to DNA. If evolution is true, I thought, Shouldn’t it be evident in DNA? It had to be. I did my research, and found some interesting facts that went along nicely with evolution: Apparently the DNA of chimps and humans is about ninety-six to ninety-nine percent similar. I had heard this before, but never really thought anything of it. When I did more research, I discovered that scientists may have proved that at one time, the human and chimp ancestors had mated in the past, and they’ve used DNA to prove it. They’ve also found evidence of this in the fossil record. This idea seemed all too weird to me, but I couldn’t argue with them. If humans and chimps have mated some million years ago, then that would mean we’re the result. And DNA is evidence of this, since human and chimp DNA are so similar. All of this brought up the question that I couldn’t resist asking: are we humans just a bunch of advanced apes?