Whenever I sit down at my desk or at the coffee table in my apartment to research and write, I always glance to the side of my computer to see if my writing companion is there. He stoically stands there, quietly judging every keystroke and click, reminding me of the reason I write this blog. He is a small plastic dinosaur of the genus Parasaurolophus, and he is probably the most important thing on this table right now.
The reason for this seemingly random addition to my desk decor is not a matter of taste. Despite loving dinosaurs just as much as any other kid, I seem to have forgotten pretty much everything I knew about them. He is also not some sort of significant memento from my past, and he doesn’t carry any kind of emotional significance in my heart. He stands for something concrete, something fundamental, and something crucially important to everything that I do. He stands for science itself.
For my entire life I thought I had things pretty much figured out. I was told in school that the earth is 4.5 billion years old, and around the 500 million year mark life started to develop. Over the course of the next 4 billion years there have been explosions of diversity followed by mass extinctions, and life adapted to the changing conditions to produce the species that exist today. I thought the evidence was pretty compelling: fossils, geological studies, strange chemical principles that I could never hope to understand, it all lined up. Or so I thought.
After nearly two decades of assuming everyone was on the same page, I was introduced to a group of people who apparently don’t believe in dinosaurs (at least not in the same way I do). It turns out that, in their book, dinosaurs aren’t millions of years old, they are equally as old as humans! God created them on the 6th day (obviously) and two baby dinosaurs of every type (probably 50-or-so species) even got on the ark! They died out in modern times due to changes of habitat. Since it is in a museum, it must be true, right?
Well, before we go too far down this creationist rabbit hole I am just going to go ahead and say that I, as most rational people have, passed this off as the spoutings of a religiously motivated group. These people failed to convert me, but they did open my eyes to the incredible amounts of ignorance that can be concentrated within a single group of people. They honestly deny scientific fact just to advance their beliefs, and even when presented with overwhelming evidence they are totally unswayed. It is the exact opposite of everything I had come to understand as I started to study science.
When I write, whether it be here on this blog or in a paper for class, I am always judging myself on the quality and quantity of evidence I provide to support my claims. I know that everything I do must pass the rigors of logical analysis if it is ever going to be considered true, and I have to eliminate all preconceptions, beliefs, and bias from my work. I can’t let religion (or anything else, for that matter) get in the way of the relentless pursuit of the truth.
The dinosaur on my desk reminds me that there are always people in this world that will disagree with me, and who will disagree with science and reason and logic. There are people in this world that simply cannot be reasoned with, and who choose to remain ignorant regardless of what I do, a fact that will probably never change. No matter how hard I work to stick to facts and eliminate bias, I can’t sway the opinions of these people with the truth alone.
On the other hand, it also reminds me that there are still people out there who believe in dinosaurs. There are people who understand that science isn’t a conspiracy, and that when you look at fossilized bones in a museum you are peering millions of years into the past. It is a beautiful thing when you open your eyes to the awe and wonder of science, and realize that 4 billion years of evolution is a far more impressive feat than 6 days of omnipotent creation.
So, until the day comes when the science of dinosaurs is proven wrong, my chinese-made injection molded dinosaur will stand resolute on my desk, watching over me as I attempt to tell you all what science is really about.
