Evolving While Having Lunch

THE GENTLEMAN at the senior center with whom I have lunch about once a week is a staucnh Trumper, and says that he would or will vote for him again. We don't talk politics, wisely. Therefore, we get along great, proving that it can be done. These days I stifle any urge I might have to suggest to Trump supporters that they choose a good, solid conservative political candiate who is also a decent human being, assuming they exist. I forget the conversational context, maybe we were discussing what we do or do not believe in, but my friend said: "What about evolution"? I said: "What about livestock breeding? What about hybrid corn? What about breeding wolves into miniature poodles? My point is that these are all examples of evolution in action, evolution by human selection rather than "natural selection". I waited for him to claim that human-made evolution doesn't, somewhow, count, but he never said it. It counts. Humans are part of nature, natural. My next comment was that we are swimming in evolution, verily inundated in it, evolution is all around us, if only we pay attention. My friend and I have developed such great restraint in our associatin that he never stated his view on evolution, but I strongly suspect that he considers it some kind of hoax, like Trump's election defeat, or climate change. He is, after all, a conservative. He gave me a sort of reprieve. He didn't say something like: "If people had evolved from monkeys, there were be no monkeys." Thus, I didn't have to inform him that evolutionary science in fact does not say that humans evolved from monkeys. Nor did I have to say that there is more proof of the reality of evolution than there is for either the holocaust, nuclear physics, or the eelction being stolen from Trump. My tenth grade English teacher made an interesting comment fifty three years ago. She said that to her thinking creationism and evolution harmonize and compliment each other beautifully, and I can recall my sixteen year old self finding that a dubious assertion, if a pleasant one. It still seems dubious, at best. I went on to sing the praises of science to my friend, and further asserted that science is the best method humans have for comprehending the universe, and that religion is the worst. Science improves upon itself, religion refuses to, and so forth. He said something about the Bible. I responded that the Bible, on no fewer than twenty five occasions, says that it is a sin to be left handed, among numerous highly questionable assertions. the same people who believe that the election was stolen from Trump, that climate hange is a liberal hoax designed to give more power over our lives to the government, tend to refuse to believe in the obvious reality of evolution. I recall suggesting that anyone who doubts the reality of human evolution by natural selection should consider taking a high school biology course. I also made the point that evoution among home sapien sapiens is ongoing, that there is no evidence that evolution has stopped dead in its trasks, that we are a transitional animal, evolving into another type of animal right before our very eyes. That, I think was a bit much for him, and for most folks to swallow. But lunch, as usual, was quite enjoyable.