The Age of the Earth

Summer term started this week. My two classes are just for GE requirements--History 201, World Civilization to 1500, and Anthropology 110, Introduction to Archaeology. I always like it when my classes overlap, especially when they're not related. For example, last term I had an English class and an E Lang class (I'm so glad I'm an E Lang major instead of English), and both classes talked about Emily Dickinson. This term, at the moment there is considerable overlapping. Thus far in my history class we have talked about prehistory, which is basically all figured out because of archaeology.

The fact of science and religion not being inherently opposed to each other seems so obvious to me that sometimes I forget that people believe otherwise. (If you never read my article on evolution, you should.) For my history class we are reading a book called Guns, Germs and Steel that talks about how civilizations evolved and adapted, etc. It talks about early humans in terms of tens and hundreds of thousands of years. Before class one day our professor asked us if we liked the book. One guy said he didn't like it because it's in opposition to the Gospel. That day in class, someone brought up an idea that the Earth is made from recycled pieces, thus explaining why we find dinosaur bones, etc. It sounded like she really believed the Earth is only six-thousand years old! And while it is true that the Earth was formed from unorganized matter, and this matter was recycled in a sense, it did not contain rocks with fossils. Another question that jolted me arose more out of ignorance than religion. Someone asked if the continents were still all joined together at the time of early humans. !!?!! The continents were all split up even in the Cretaceous (although with some slightly different continental shapes)--and the Cretaceous ended 65 million years ago! I guess that's just the geologist in me--more on that later.

I think why the religion/evolution question surprised me so much is that, despite being so stereotypically conservative, BYU has fairly liberal views when it comes to science. I would expect the anti-evolution view to come more from people who did not go to BYU, at least in recent years. LDS artist Jon McNaughton painted an ultra-conservative picture of Jesus holding the Constitution with legions of wicked and righteous people around. Among the wicked people was someone holding a copy of Darwin's Origin of Species. For this and other reasons, the BYU Bookstore decided not to sell that painting. I'm not sure what to think of this--not because I care for the painting, but because the Bookstore sells plenty of things that are not exactly in line with BYU ideals (I once bought a shockingly and disappointingly dirty grammar book). But I think Brother McNaughton ultimately did a childish thing in pulling all of his paintings from the Bookstore.

This week I also did two things that I've never done before that didn't affect me at the moment, but will in the future.

The more immediate thing I did was sign up for Provo's Freedom Run on the Fourth of July (I signed up for the 5k--I don't know if I could do a 10k!). I think I might have gotten a cheaper price if I'd signed up with my ward, but I thought it was too late. Apparently it wasn't. Oh, well. I've never participated in an organized run. I exceed the distance of a 5k whenever I run (several night a week), so I'm not concerned about distance. I just don't know about running in a crowd. I figure I might as well live it up for the Fourth of July this year.

The other thing I did was more significant, but won't have an affect for some time. I declared a second minor in geology. I mentioned considering doing this in a blog post a few weeks ago, but this week I made it official. I find that ever since my Dinosaurs! class last year, my ears perk up whenever I hear of geology, and I find it fascinating to look at an enormous mountain and think, "Millions of years ago, that wasn't even there." Besides a general interest, I have practical reasons for doing this double minor. Because the English Language major and Editing minor are so closely related, I worried about having a narrow education, especially since the Editing minor is a very common one. I figured having some variety will not only enrich me but will set me apart from all the rest. Thus, in many ways, it's not so much about geology, it's just having a second minor in general, and it just so happens that geology appeared to be the easiest of all the minors that would interest me. Having taken one geology class last summer, I only have to take four classes to fulfill the requirements. Two of those are 4-credit hour classes, which are more intense, but I survived Math 112 (Calculus) and French 201, so I should survive geology, and if I don't, it won't be a big deal to just drop the minor. (Did you notice that split infinitive? I used to try to avoid using those. Then I found out just how stupid that rule is, and now I make no effort to not split them. ;) ) But I don't know when I'll first be able to take the necessary classes, especially since I don't know yet if I will be taking classes in the fall.