The Evolution Of The "Evolution Narrative"

Here's the/a/one, common, conventional schema:


Here's another, less common, far more accurate, version:

As HL Mencken remarked: For every problem there is a single, simple answer, and it is wrong. The point, of course, is that evolution is not one singular, simple narrative, and that humans are not the epicenter of it anyway. Evolution is a remarkably complex system, and humanity --"Man"-- is not necessarily (or even likely) its ultimate expression.

Which is the thing that pisses off the Xianist/Biblicalist/Theocrats more than anything else, I think. In the main, I think, they so vehemently reject environmentalism because they see it as retributive payback to the secular world for rejecting their "god."

My thanks, again, for the Nth time, to arch-atheist and science-blogger PZ Myers at Pharyngula, who links to the possibility that, we had to name a genre for the story of life, it would be a "soap opera." Myers writes

Both have lots of characters and story lines, every one full of anguish and drama, some ending happily (for a while), others ending miserably; individuals come and go, they get their brief period in the spotlight, then poof, everything moves on to the next big new event. There is no one grand goal for the ensemble, just a series of overlapping dramas, some ridiculous, some mundane, and the vehicle to tie them all together is usually something commonplace — a town or a hospital, for instance — and stories can abandon that unifying premise freely. And it never ends

Viva "General Hospital!"