No Idea: 1965

[johncomic]

My 60^th acrylic is another in my projected No Idea series.

I have posted before about my childhood love of How and Why Wonder Books. I would often regale/pester my mother with all the cool sciencey things I learned in them.

When I was eight, I received The How and Why Wonder Book of Prehistoric Mammals and devoured it at once. I can still remember Uintatherium and Smilodon and [of course] woolly mammoths... and the page where they showed the stages of development of the horse, from Eohippus through various intermediate species to today's Equus. This was my introduction to the theory of evolution, and it enthralled and excited me.

So I brought it in to show mom and tell her about how animals change into different animals. And she told me something along the lines of But honey, that isn't true — there are all the different animals because God created them.

And the thing is, I knew that.

I'd been going to church [Fundamentalist Baptist] every week since I was literally a baby. More than once, the grown-ups at church remarked at how uncommonly well I knew and grasped the Bible, for such a little guy. I knew the story of creation very well. And believed it.

So I said something along the lines of Oh yeah and slunk away with my book, to go sit and think. Finally I sorted out that I had been looking at it like: when you're talking church stuff with church people, then this is true. When you're talking science stuff with science people, then that is true.

And it clicked with me that I was so compartmentalized that I had been managing to believe two contradictory truths at the same time. A helluva realization when you're only eight. It felt like there was something wrong with my brain, and that was deeply disturbing. I felt like I made a turning point in my thinking, then, to clearly realize that, in the world of solid empirical facts, there can only be one truth.

Mom told me that the Bible was that one truth, that science was wrong. But science made sense, so how could science be wrong? And thus began my personal struggle between faith and reason, that haunted me for decades afterward. That was when I started asking, How do we know? And not long after was when I became the occasional "troublemaker" in church, asking difficult questions...

Comments

[house_wren]

Thanks for posting another painting!

[johncomic]

Thanks for noticing!