Evolution, Creationism, and Wilderness

The debate between evolutionists and creationists has been going on ever since Charles Darwin published his 1859 tome, On the Origin of Species. It has been a rancorous debate, with Monkey Trials, walking fish bumper stickers, and irreconcilable differences that have been erupting for nearly 150 years.

The evolution/creationism debate is often characterized as one with scientists on one side and religious fundamentalists, or Fundies, on the other. The insulting appellation reflects the animosity in the dialog.

For my part, I side with Darwin, but that’s not what this essay is about. There is another, similar debate going on that pits scientists against Fundies. It is the debate about Wilderness.

A group of particular Fundies maintains that Wilderness is the historical and appropriate condition of Nature. This is a matter of religious faith, although the religion is an unofficial one. God, in the personage of Mother Nature, created and desires a natural world where human beings are absent or a minor, irrelevant species at most, according the precepts of the Wilderness Worshipers.

Science, on the other hand, has revealed that our terrestrial landscapes have been profoundly altered by humanity since our species first evolved in Africa approximately 150,000 years ago. Human beings created vast savannas in Africa via anthropogenic fire. Then about 50,000 year ago humanity migrated eastward through the Indian sub-continent to Southeast Asia and Australia, again altering the vegetation and animal populations along the way.

At some point during the Wisconsin glaciation, no less than 13,500 years ago and possibly before then, human beings migrated to the Americas. The first arrivals swept across the New World (and it really was new then, to people) in a matter of a few centuries. They brought tamed fire with them, and burned landscapes from the sub-Arctic to Tierra del Fuego. They hunted the easy-prey megafauna and drove a few dozen mammalian species to extinction.

Then humanity took up permanent residence. For the last 10,000 years at least, people have been residing everywhere in North and South America. And those tribes and nations, without exception, changed the plant and animal assemblages to suit human survival.

Or so we are taught by Science. The Wilderness Fundies believe that humanity had no impact of consequence on the natural world. They believe in and espouse the pristine, untrammeled, human-absent viewpoint. They celebrate great Wildernesses, like the Amazon and the North American West, which are in fact NOT wildernesses nor have they been for 10,000 years or more.

The Wilderness Fundies even got their dogma written into law. The Wilderness Act of 1964 (Public Law 88-577) decrees that wilderness is an area of land “untrammeled by man, where man himself is a visitor who does not remain… retaining its primeval character and influence… and which… generally appears to have been affected primarily by the forces of nature, with the imprint of man’s work substantially unnoticeable.”

By Government decree, the history of our landscapes has been mythologized. Those scientists who notice the imprint of man are perforce criminals, and the Fundie Wilderness Religion rules over and displaces rational empiricism.

Religious fundamentalism (of a strange and undeclared religion) has commandeered our legal system. Religious persecution of wilderness “deniers” is common. Indeed, there are few scientists with the courage and integrity to speak openly about the truthful history of our landscapes, because such heresies do not go unpunished.

But the truth is the truth, regardless of dogma, myth, and religious persecution. Our landscapes are artifacts of human stewardship, from seashore to mountain tops. The Wilderness Fundies are wrong. The US Congress is wrong. The few courageous scientists with a grasp of reality are right.

The loud evolution/creationism conflict creates a lively debate, but little of consequence results. On the other hand, the intended and unintended consequences of the (nearly silent) human influences/wilderness debate has engendered massive megafires, millions of acres of smoking wastelands, and trillions of dollars worth of resource damages, as well as loss of lives.

The blame for this huge destruction can be laid squarely at the feet of the Wilderness Fundies. Their twisted, ascientific dogma of No Touch, Let It Burn, Watch It Rot is wiping out human history as well as entire ecosystems. The Wilderness Fundies are swimming in denial, and nowadays celebrate forest holocaust as “healthful.”

The time has come (indeed the hour is late) for rational, empirical, science-minded, responsible people to throw out the dogma of the Wilderness Fundies. Their Dark Ages superstitions are destroying our landscapes and doing irredeemable harm to plants, animals, and people.

Religious fundamentalism is wrecking our country.  I speak not of fundamentalists of established religions, but of the fanatics who adhere to the false gods and idols of the Big Lie of Wilderness.

The light must come on. Rational people must stand up and be heard. Reject the destructive myths. Adhere to the scientific truths instead.

It is the Truth, after all, which sets us free.