I Love Lucy

I’ve been meaning to post something concerning my New Year festivities for a while now. Although it is belated, here it is. On New Year’s eve I went to a single adult dance with Leanna, Ben, and Ryan. Nothing too exciting happened during that, so I’ll move on to the next event. On New Year’s day, I went with Mom, Dad, Kassie, and Garett to the Pacific Science Center to see the Lucy Legacy exhibit.

For all of you non-anthropology buffs (which includes every other sane person on this earth…anthropology people are a little eccentric), Lucy is an early hominid and her remains represent one of the most complete three-million-year-old fossils ever discovered. She is famous in the anthropology/archaeology world, so I was extremely excited when I heard that her fossil would be in Seattle during winter break.

The exhibit was great (and made me feel really smart because I knew a lot of what the exhibit was talking about), but I have to agree with Mom by saying that the two hours we dedicated to visiting the exhibit were not enough. I barely got five minutes to actually look at Lucy’s fossil (ok, that was partially my fault). So, here’s the story behind that; near the end of the exhibit, there’s a hallway with fossil replicas that represent Homo sapiens sapiens relatives and ancestors. Well, at the end of the hall there was a dark room through which you could see an illuminated ‘exit’ sign so I naturally assumed that this hallway was the last room in the exhibit. This kind of bummed me out because I hadn’t yet seen the famous fossil and had assumed that Lucy's remains were going to be there. I had been sitting on a bench discussing this frustration with Kassie when Mom came over and asked me if I had seen Lucy yet. At that point we only had a few minutes until the museum closed, so I had to rush through the last room. O well, it was still awesome. Plus, Mom bought me a human evolution poster that I promptly hung up in my BYU student dorm. It’s a great conversation piece.

That leads to another topic I would like to address. Being an anthropology major at a Christian university, I get a lot of weird looks when I tell people my major. Following the weird look is the inevitable "How does that work with you being Mormon?" question. Well, first of all, to quote a wise man, "Faith did not come to me through science and I will not permit science to destroy it." When it comes to questions such as, "how do neanderthals fit in with the Adam and Eve story," I give the only solution that I have come up with. "My knowledge and understanding of the universe is very limited. I don't know all of the answers right now, but I know that God is real and that's good enough for me." Secondly, in all of my studies of anthropology and evolution, one thing has become clear to me; evolution theories (in their purest sense) do not try to disprove the presence of a supreme creator. If anything, evolution theories such as natural selection, adaptation, mutation (which, despite popular belief, is a good thing in many cases), and so forth prove that there is an all knowing and loving being orchestrating everything because without delicate systems such as the ones previously mentioned, life would not be able to continue (if you are interested in modern day examples, click on the following link: Malaria and the Red Cells). So, here's my question; How, in studying any scientific field, can one not see God's influence?