Creeping Creation

In business, there are two main methods via which a company can obtain growth. The first is to expand organically by reinvesting retained profits internally into the development of more products and/or moving into new markets. The second is to reinvest those accumulated profits externally into the acquisition of other businesses, thus forming a group of companies under common control. Best results are often observed in the latter if the prospective group member is a main competitor as this ensures the market dominance of the purchasing company.

However, in the UK there is a Monopolies Commission which regulates, according to the best interest of the general public, which businesses can and can’t take over other businesses. As a result, most very large companies gain market dominance through more surreptitious means, i.e. they create an environment in which it becomes increasingly difficult for the competitor to trade. This is often done through the purchase of the main supplier to the competitor and the subsequent imposition of stinging price rises (indeed, many large companies like to have a stake in their principle suppliers in order to fend off such an arrangement). Another technique – although as rare as an intelligent Frenchman – is for one company to find itself in control of the market due to government legislation restricting the operations of its competitors.

It’s a brutal, ruthless environment permeated by cutthroats looking for more earnings per share at every turn. But! At least this environment is based on the application of sensible – if at times unscrupulous – ideas and methods of business management to the act of generating money. The hard fact is that either they go to the wall and drown in a puddle of putrefying piss or you do, and it is precisely this fear of bankruptcy allied with unmitigated greed that drives companies to act in this cold-blooded manner.

Fear and greed: Also two of the Church’s specialties over the last couple of millennia. The latter is for another time; however the former is pertinent in this case. The Christian faith – and religion at large – is largely built on allaying the fear of the unknown. What happens when we pop our clogs and depart this mortal coil? How did we come into being? How come Friends is so popular? For a millennium and a half, the Church proffered unchallenged that we go to a lovely place in the sky called Heaven, where, upon passing the entrance examination with a mark of no less than 55%, you live on for the rest of eternity in a contented, ethereal existence similar to that currently being enjoyed by Keith Richards. On our origins; well, it’s easy – God created us out of dirt. Yes, the same dirt that one wipes off one’s shoe before one enters the house. So you see, the Church has an answer for everything. [Except for why Friends is so popular.]

Now, in addition to putting our fears at rest, religion is quite big on instilling fear into its followers: “If you don’t worship God you will die and go to Hell!” is just one example of the regular oral excretions of the excruciatingly evangelical. And who wants to go to Hell? I certainly wouldn’t – I’ve heard it’s not all it’s cracked up to be. And so for centuries, fear kept the masses in check. However, rumblings against the Church’s explanations began to gain credence with the publishing of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium in 1543. His life’s work, it expanded upon the seven basic axioms of his earlier work, Little Commentary:

1. There is no one centre in the universe.
2. The Earth's centre is not the centre of the universe.
3. The centre of the universe is near the sun.
4. The distance from the Earth to the sun is imperceptible compared with the distance to the stars.
5. The rotation of the Earth accounts for the apparent daily rotation of the stars.
6. The apparent annual cycle of movements of the sun is caused by the Earth revolving round it.
7. The apparent retrograde motion of the planets is caused by the motion of the Earth from which one observes.

Foolish heresy! Everybody knows that the Earth is the centre of the universe! That may have been true at the time, but only because nobody was told otherwise due to there simply being no alternative. It was subsequently left to the brave, solitary voices of men such as Kepler and Galileo to extend upon the groundwork laid down by Copernicus, with Galileo feeling the wrath of the Church when placed under house arrest for his scientific beliefs. Indeed, Galileo’s inspiration appeared to be his very own father, who wrote in Dialogue on Ancient and Modern Music:

“It appears to me that they who in proof of any assertion rely simply on the weight of any authority, without adducing any argument in support of it, act very absurdly. I, on the other hand, wish to be allowed to freely question and to freely answer without any sort of adulation, as well becomes those who are sincerely in search of truth.”

It is this very thinking that the Church fears as it cannot prove its explanations of Creation, et al. Thankfully, the Church’s reaction to this line of thinking has changed over time – Darwin was merely ridiculed via his depiction as an ape man – yet the fear emanating from the Church remains and to no other area is this fear more focused than how we came into existence, or evolution through natural selection as it’s more commonly known. The Church, of course, vehemently opposes Darwin’s Theory of Evolution, maintaining that man was created from dirt and woman from one of his ribs. I wish I could do that.

But what is the story of Creation? Well, it’s an impressively productive period – even for a deity – of seven days within which everything was created by that nice chap God. On the first day He created light and separated it from darkness. Not content with sitting on his laurels and basking in his glorious opening day’s work, He then created the sky on the second day. Next up on day three was the creation of earth, vegetation and the sea while on the following day the Sun, moon and stars were created. Day five was an absolute corker: God created non-land animals and commanded that they be fruitful and multiply (presumably they could understand Hebrew). Now for the coup de grace and possibly most famous of days in the creation story: Day six, on which God created the land animals and man, again commanding that they be fruitful and multiply. On the seventh day God put His feet up and surveyed His creations. The lazy git.

How do Creationists prove that these events actually took place? Well, it says so in the Old Testament so it must be true. Maybe if God had taken a photograph of Himself standing in front of His new creations wearing a “I created everything and all I got was this lousy t-shirt” tee and passed the negatives on to Adam for safe keeping then Creationists would have something with which to back up their argument. Alas, it was not to be and we just have to take their word for it.

However, the Church has a new product that, in its own eyes, supports the story of Creation by means of sound scientific reasoning and is presently launching it into a new market. In this case, the product being Intelligent Design; the market being high school science classes. It looks like Creationism is attempting to grow organically on this evidence, but the main worry is that it is also growing through acquisition and that this is becoming the primary growth plan. In some states of America, it could become commonplace in high schools for children to never encounter Evolutionary Theory and instead be fed a staple diet of cretinous Creationism. In other words, Creationism is eliminating the competition in order to gain dominance and is doing so through the implementation of state political policy.

This, for me, says more about supporters of Creationism and its subsidiary, Intelligent Design, than it does about Evolution and again the reasons lie within a web of fear and apprehension. Not of Darwin’s theories, but a base fear that Intelligent Design simply would not stand up to scrutiny if it were taught alongside rational science such as Natural Selection, a celebrated theory supported by empirical evidence. And they’re right to be afraid as Intelligent Design is to science what I am to a Frenchman – as far removed as possible.