The Evolution of March Madness: How Come Talent is “God Given” When there is no God?
March 23, 2011, 9:20 am » Christian Buckley
How Come Talent is “God Given” When there is no God?
I don’t profess to be an expert on evolution or the defense of creation. I can’t explain the mutative process and how only some mutations are passed down and some are not. I can’t explain how natural selection, in combination with randomness and time, has produced human beings. At the end of the day, I really can’t explain why, “Evolution means that we’re all distant cousins: humans and oak trees, hummingbirds and whales.”
What I can tell you is that most of the world that has a platform to talk about it, at least in the media, seems to reject any possibility for a creator. Not hard to see that.
But what I find really interesting is that same “media” – the one that finds the idea of God as creator synonymous with garden gnomes as mischievous creatures that ruin my strawberries -- uses the phrase “God given talent” quite a bit. As I was watching the NCAA Tournament over the weekend, and the Oscars before that, and the Super Bowl before that my ears just continued to be pricked by commentators constantly referring to a standout actor, musician or athlete as having “God given talent.”
It’s the go to phrase when there just seems to be an astounding difference between say Lebron James and the next best athlete. Like when the Jamaican runner Usain Bolt smashed the world record in the 100 meter dash a few years back and there was no way to explain it really other than aparently God given talent. When an actor, say a really young one, just has an unparalleled ability to present that art or when a phenom artist or musician just pops up – God given talent.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=By1JQFxfLMM
Not once have I ever heard a media personality say, “What amazing evolutionary talent that player has” or “just look at the power of mutation, natural selection, and time at work.”
So how come when most of the enlightened part of the world thinks I have more in common with the UCLA or Florida mascots (bruins and gators) than a creative force do we still fall back on God as the final explanation for uncanny unexplainable human ability?
Maybe we just haven’t evolved beyond that silliness. Or maybe we just can’t get away from the fact that when we witness something truly amazing like a Jimmer Fredette jump shot – we intrinsically know that whatever is good and beautiful and astounding might not have trickled down from goo.
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