Human’s have an uncanny ability. Drawing information in we interpret our observations. Not only do we observe but we compartmentalize. This is in a sense what makes us Human. Compartmentalization leads to comprehension and you have compounded logic. There is a chair in the room, there is a banana tied to a string on the ceiling. If I stand on the chair I can reach the banana and eat. What seems simple, is yet so unique and very amusingly us.

Nature has a similar mechanism in place. The big difference being that it’s style of cognition occurs over thousands of years. A perfect example are ants. Individual ants in a colony lack personal logic. Yet, ants wage wars, take slaves, farm, cultivate nurseries, recycle, take out the trash, and upkeep grave yards. At a brief glance this might appear to be the activities of a highly sophisticated free thinking society. It isn’t. In a sense ants do not know why they do what they do. It’s just that the ants whom didn’t take the necessary actions to survive… well they just died didn’t they? Darwin’s theory, of survival of the fittest, is a beautiful compliment to a theory called Emergence.

Emergence is the theory that complexity appears out of the repetition of relatively simple interactions. If you have ever watched a perfect line of ants make their way to food and back to the colony then you have witnessed the result of emergence. When an ant finds a source of food it leaves behind a pheromone breadcrumb trail. The first ant to the food and back does not take the most direct route. In fact, this ant usually takes the most indirect meandering route. Now say that another ant is haplessly wandering and comes across the trail. The second ant finds the food and begins traveling back to the colony. You may observe that the second ant does not follow the pheromone trail exactly. It makes slight deviations. Now imagine that this trail were followed by a thousand ants. Through countless repetitions and “errors” the jagged windiness of the original trail is smoothed out.

Humans with their pattern seeking minds misinterpret the complexity created by emergence as intelligent design. When you look up at the night sky try to imagine how a nearly infinite number of interactions could produce such baffling complexity. Is it so incomprehensible to think that instead of a magical hand directing the chorus of the universe a bottle was filled with the fundamental building blocks, shaken, and poured out?

I believe that creationism is a product of a lack of imagination.

Listening: Radio Lab episode on Emergence
Reading: Emergence by Steven Johnson