# Is there anything inconsistent with the idea of "creative evolution" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [November 17, 2009, 2:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916 "2009-11-17T14:46:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 3:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/41 "2009-11-19T03:57:25Z")
> [@Der\_Trihs](#): > > That’s just gibberish. Are you claiming that some other random piece of literature couldn’t have been used? Assuming it really is used the way you claim. And of course science needed reading; not that religion has generally been very pro-literacy. I’m arguing that this particular piece of literature is what was used in reality world, not in fantasy **Der Trihs** counterfactual world. > [@](#): > > And yes, I know that many of the earliest forms of writing were religious. They were also not taught to the general public and badly made. Most things were not taught to the general public, then as now, intellectual pursuits were the province of the leisure class. It’s just that we have a VERY LARGE leisure class, and yet most of them wouldn’t be able to begin to understand the conversation we’re having. They live in Philadelphia where it’s always Sunny. > [@](#): > > I never said it was static. But neither did it advance, save as forced to by society outside of religion. Religion by its nature is intellectually sterile. Being opposed to both facts and rationality it cannot advance on its own. Either it was static or it advanced. When you get like this there is just no point, your anti-intellectualism is like NORAD. > [@](#): > > Of course; it cooled down as it expanded. Ok > [@](#): > > No; they were uneducated, not stupid. However; even some guy in the Stone Age should know that asserting something doesn’t make it so. And yet they didn’t. Why do you think people are superstitious? Because they couldn’t tell the difference between the imaginary world inside their head and the real world outside it. As I said you cannot comprehend a state in which the critical thinking skills you take for granted simply didn’t exist. The Foundation for intellect as you understand it had to be laid. Science didn’t suddenly spring up as if from a vacuum, there was a tradition of learning dating back thousands of years that it built upon. Arguing that it happened ‘in spite of’ religion, is _not even wrong_. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 4:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/42 "2009-11-19T04:08:16Z")
You know, in a rather tongue-in-cheek kind of way, I can kind of get behind **mswas** ’ Theory of Religious Progress. Early humans saw gods and spirits pretty much literally behind every rock. Then you got somewhat more abstract polytheistic pantheons of gods and goddesses, up on a distant mountaintop if not actually in the sky rather than hiding behind every tree. Beginning perhaps with Akhenaten of ancient Egypt, people started to simplify things down to a single God–but everyone\* still believed in at least the single monotheistic deity. The Enlightenment saw the Deity’s day-to-day responsibilities greatly reduced, and also in some quarters the beginnings of true atheism\*. Finally, here at the Pinnacle of Civilization and Progress, there are those of us who have done away with gods and the supernatural altogether! 🙂 So, see, there _has_ been Progress in Religion. \*_There were actually atheistic schools of thought in ancient India thousands of years ago. Also, the “spirits behind every rock” belief probably persisted alongside the “pantheon of gods and goddesses on the mountaintop/in Heaven” or “single God in Heaven” ideas for a long, long time._ ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 5:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/43 "2009-11-19T05:08:23Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Greater literacy. A more numerate populace? A more stable populace that can advance architecture and geometry? Greater understanding of civic design. Improved jurisprudence. All of the items of culture. Aren’t those pretty much incidental to organized religion, rather then springing from it? I don’t know that Christianity (which I’ll assume you intend to credit with most of these advances, at least in Europe) is particularly encouraging of a more education population. Anyway, it’s the religion providing a place where contemplation of the natural world can occur that science gets made, not through revelations through the prayers and rituals of the religion itself. I’m willing to give the Catholic church some credit for hosting the early European scientists (when it wasn’t hassling them), but that was quite some time ago and that role has been better filled by secular universities. > [@](#): > > The fact that civilization has trended toward becoming more advanced is obvious if you look at architecture. The Greeks were more advanced than the Sumerians, the Romans more than the Greeks, Medeival Europe and Arabia more than the Romans and so on from basic stonework to doric columns, to aquducts, to flying buttresses to Nimitz class aircraft carriers, Space Stations and half-mile tall skyscrapers. The meteoric rise of the last ~200 years is certainly not due to religion. I suppose if modern religion is to be considered more advanced than ancient religions, it’s because they stopped endorsing slavery, among other practices. > [@](#): > > You have to look at it through the lens of the stupid theory of history. For most of our history the vast majority of man was really really really really stupid. Almost exclusively history remembers the smart people. The prodigies, the geniuses, such as Homer or Achilles (if he was real) or Moses, or Cicero and Caesar. Nobody remembers Yob the tanner. Yob the tanner was really stupid, so you discouraged him from thinking for himself and just told him what to think. Besides, most people were so directly involved with basic survival that they didn’t really contemplate the origins of the universe very much, that was for the educated classes, the priests and nobility to think about. I can’t quite agree with your overly grim assessment. Nonfamous individuals were indeed capable of cleverness, but we don’t have the written records that celebrate them. The modern Joe Schmoe will indeed be remembered because there are permanent records of his life written in scattered computer databases, not because he’s smarter than Achmed the camel-driver of AD 980. I’d guess that smart people are pretty as smart as the smart people of centuries past, and religious people are about as religious as the religious people of the past. The difference now is with improved literacy and access to education, we lose fewer potentially smart people to lives of stunted opportunity, and it is not religion per se that does this, but something akin to the G.I. Bill. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 10:16am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/44 "2009-11-19T10:16:26Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > The fact that civilization has trended toward becoming more advanced is obvious if you look at architecture. The Greeks were more advanced than the Sumerians, the Romans more than the Greeks, Medieval Europe and Arabia more than the Romans and so on from basic stonework to Doric columns, to aqueducts, to flying buttresses to Nimitz class aircraft carriers, Space Stations and half-mile tall skyscrapers. But from a religious perspective the Sumerians, Greeks and Romans were all pan-theists with some small movement towards a transcendent prime mover. So way any progress there? Then there’s the problem of Judaism’s monotheistic approach (much like the Persians) which failed to achieve much of anything on your list, while Confucian /Taoists of China had technological wonders before monotheistic Europe. So your Religion/Science mach of progress is really more of a random walk. Unless you’re going for the spiral minaret for the money to fund a decent spaceship win. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 12:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/45 "2009-11-19T12:31:45Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > I’m arguing that this particular piece of literature is what was used in reality world, not in fantasy **Der Trihs** counterfactual world. Well, so what? > [@mswas](#): > > Most things were not taught to the general public, then as now, intellectual pursuits were the province of the leisure class. It’s just that we have a VERY LARGE leisure class, and yet most of them wouldn’t be able to begin to understand the conversation we’re having. They live in Philadelphia where it’s always Sunny. Oh, please; there’s nothing all that profound about this conversation. And the priestly early written languages weren’t kept from the public because the priests were a “leisure class”; they were restricted because they were a tool of control. They weren’t useful for much beyond allocating resources anyway, and it’s not like a bunch of priests would or did work to advance them much. > [@mswas](#): > > Either it was static or it advanced. When you get like this there is just no point, your anti-intellectualism is like NORAD. Someone defending religion is in no position to accuse anyone of anti-intellectualism. And you present a false choice; there is also what actually happened, change without progress. Random drift. > [@mswas](#): > > And yet they didn’t. Why do you think people are superstitious? Because they couldn’t tell the difference between the imaginary world inside their head and the real world outside it. No; they didn’t want to. Clearly they could tell the difference between fantasy and reality if they chose to, or they would all have been dead and we wouldn’t exist. > [@mswas](#): > > The Foundation for intellect as you understand it had to be laid. Which among other things meant throwing away or learning to ignore religion. Religion is, among other things the denial of rationality and of knowledge; it undercuts and cripples the intellect. > [@MEBuckner](#): > > You know, in a rather tongue-in-cheek kind of way, I can kind of get behind **mswas** ’ Theory of Religious Progress. > > Early humans saw gods and spirits pretty much literally behind every rock. Then you got somewhat more abstract polytheistic pantheons of gods and goddesses, up on a distant mountaintop if not actually in the sky rather than hiding behind every tree. Beginning perhaps with Akhenaten of ancient Egypt, people started to simplify things down to a single God–but everyone\* still believed in at least the single monotheistic deity. The Enlightenment saw the Deity’s day-to-day responsibilities greatly reduced, and also in some quarters the beginnings of true atheism\*. Finally, here at the Pinnacle of Civilization and Progress, there are those of us who have done away with gods and the supernatural altogether! 🙂 > > So, see, there _has_ been Progress in Religion. Now, as I see it that’s not progress at all. That’s retreat. The more human knowledge advances, the more the gods and spirits retreat because they don’t actually exist. So, these days we don’t have gods on top of mountains anymore because we can reach them. The more we learn about the world, the farther away the gods get and the less they actually do. I’m sure if we were to learn how to probe beyond the universe the people who claim God is outside of it would claim that he’s in a different, farther away “beyond”. Nor do I think that going from polytheism to monotheism was intellectual progress. The monotheists were just more prone to conversion by the sword, and of slaughtering those they didn’t convert. It was progress from the viewpoint of an infectious disease; monotheism certainly spread better. But not from an intellectual standpoint. If anything it was a step back; the Problem of Evil and the incoherence of the world in general are more of a problem with just one god. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 4:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/46 "2009-11-19T16:50:08Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > But from a religious perspective the Sumerians, Greeks and Romans were all pan-theists with some small movement towards a transcendent prime mover. So way any progress there? Then there’s the problem of Judaism’s monotheistic approach (much like the Persians) which failed to achieve much of anything on your list, while Confucian /Taoists of China had technological wonders before monotheistic Europe. Are you sincerely arguing that Jews and Persians contributed little to the intellectual development of the human race? > [@](#): > > So your Religion/Science mach of progress is really more of a random walk. Sure, I can accept it as a random walk, and I can also say that there were moments of regress here and there. But I am saying essentially that mythologies contained within them archetypal lessons that were essential to basic cognitive skills. The development of the imagination is an essential step in intellectual development, the development of the imagination requires intellectual development because it starts with similitudes and moves on to figuring out how things are dissimilar. Imagination is an additive process where as intellect is substractive. Induction vs Deduction. > [@](#): > > Unless you’re going for the spiral minaret for the money to fund a decent spaceship win. Heh, when I build my space-ship it’s going to look like a fantasy castle inside of a snow globe. 😉 There will be lots of flying buttresses, just because they’re fucking cool. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 4:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/47 "2009-11-19T16:55:36Z")
**MEBuckner** Sure, I can get behind that view. I disagree that atheism is anything special in cognitive terms, but we can argue about state’s of understanding in the present without creating our own personal mythology of contempt for those who lived in the past. I guess it’s really a personal thing though, optimistic or pessimistic. Do you view the ancestors as all a bunch of idiot rubes who have inconvenienced your life with their ignorance? Or do you view the ancestors as plucky pioneers travelling the pathways of consciousness who ate bugs, poisonous plants, and stared at the sky in awe and wonder leaving behind a legacy upon which we built our own modern achievement? It’s sort of like those people who say that astrology has nothing to do with astronomy. This is possibly one of the dumbest things otherwise educated people say. Astrologists made maps of the stars, helped develop navigation, developed geometry to plot points in the sky, etc… Whatever you believe about the ends they were trying to achieve, why does that mean that you have to show vulgar contempt for the actual accomplishments they made that contributed to our understanding today? If there weren’t astrologists staring at the sky, there would be no navigation, and no astronomy, no telescopic optics, no calendars, none of it. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 5:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/48 "2009-11-19T17:36:16Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Are you sincerely arguing that Jews and Persians contributed little to the intellectual development of the human race? No, I’m saying that for the time period and in comparison to the co-existing pan theistic civilizations around them they didn’t do anything terribly special despite being more monotheistic. [/QUOTE] ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 6:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/49 "2009-11-19T18:20:34Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > No, I’m saying that for the time period and in comparison to the co-existing pan theistic civilizations around them they didn’t do anything terribly special despite being more monotheistic. [/QUOTE] What time period are you limiting it to and why are you defining such limitations based on that time period? ---
**Author:** ![Bryan\_Ekers](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/bryan_ekers/32/183_2.png) [@Bryan\_Ekers](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bryan_Ekers)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 6:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/50 "2009-11-19T18:25:26Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > If there weren’t astrologists staring at the sky, there would be no navigation, and no astronomy, no telescopic optics, no calendars, none of it. I’m willing to symbolically give ancient astrologers a pat on the back. Modern astrologers, though… no. ---
**Author:** ![Grey](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/b782af/32.png) [@Grey](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grey)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 7:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/51 "2009-11-19T19:09:04Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > What time period are you limiting it to and why are you defining such limitations based on that time period? I working off the premise that you’re linking cultural advancement to a progressive advancement in religion to a monotheistic model. Which seems to be the path you earlier laid out with respect to ever improving architecture etc.. In other words the closer a culture is to monotheism, the move likely it is to be 'advancing". If that isn’t your contention then feel free to disregard my post. ---
**Author:** ![Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/8edcca/32.png) [@Superfluous\_Parentheses](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superfluous_Parentheses)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 7:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/52 "2009-11-19T19:17:46Z")
To the OP: check out what the official Catholic dogma is\* and work from there. They have no official problem with either the Big Bang or (mostly) natural evolution. - it’s pretty much what **begbert2** described. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/53 "2009-11-19T20:48:14Z")
> [@Grey](#): > > I working off the premise that you’re linking cultural advancement to a progressive advancement in religion to a monotheistic model. Which seems to be the path you earlier laid out with respect to ever improving architecture etc.. In other words the closer a culture is to monotheism, the move likely it is to be 'advancing". If that isn’t your contention then feel free to disregard my post. That’s not my contention. I was just using that as my example because Genesis was the example being used. My point about Cathedrals wasn’t a point about Cathedrals but about architecture or more specifically the mathematical/technical advancement that they are the result of. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 8:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/54 "2009-11-19T20:50:25Z")
> [@Bryan\_Ekers](#): > > I’m willing to symbolically give ancient astrologers a pat on the back. > > Modern astrologers, though… no. Then we are in accord. I really don’t give a shit what your view on astrology is. I give it credit in the way most people do. “What’s your sign baby?”, or my wife and I, “People are all jumping down each other’s throats and not saying what they mean to each other, Mercury must be in retrograde.”, but beyond those sorts of quips I really couldn’t give a shit one way or the other. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 9:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/55 "2009-11-19T21:19:23Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Then we are in accord. You _did_ frame it! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![gonzomax](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e8c25b/32.png) [@gonzomax](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gonzomax)\ **Post date:** [November 19, 2009, 10:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/56 "2009-11-19T22:42:11Z")
Astrologers and the religious have something in common. They are creating fantasies to describe what they do not understand. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/57 "2009-11-20T02:29:33Z")
> [@mswas](#): > > Right, because the people were stupid. I’m not sure you can fathom how stupid those people were. Like imagine the stupidest person you can imagine, and then think that likely his level of knowledge and education is a few millenia more advanced than the people who wrote those accounts. > [@mswas](#): > > You have to look at it through the lens of the stupid theory of history. For most of our history the vast majority of man was really really really really stupid. Almost exclusively history remembers the smart people. The prodigies, the geniuses, such as Homer or Achilles (if he was real) or Moses, or Cicero and Caesar. Nobody remembers Yob the tanner. Yob the tanner was really stupid, so you discouraged him from thinking for himself and just told him what to think. Besides, most people were so directly involved with basic survival that they didn’t really contemplate the origins of the universe very much, that was for the educated classes, the priests and nobility to think about. And by and large it was the priests and nobility that advanced learning and knowledge. The Jews who we associate that particular piece of literature to, rightly or not, have been pretty adept at voraciously consuming the learning of other societies and assimilating it into their own body of knowledge. To argue that the Jews were anti-learning, and anti-thinking is simply ahistorical. > [@mswas](#): > > **MEBuckner** Sure, I can get behind that view. I disagree that atheism is anything special in cognitive terms, but we can argue about state’s of understanding in the present without creating our own personal mythology of contempt for those who lived in the past. I guess it’s really a personal thing though, optimistic or pessimistic. Do you view the ancestors as all a bunch of idiot rubes who have inconvenienced your life with their ignorance? Or do you view the ancestors as plucky pioneers travelling the pathways of consciousness who ate bugs, poisonous plants, and stared at the sky in awe and wonder leaving behind a legacy upon which we built our own modern achievement? OK, which is it? Ancient people were “really really really really stupid”; or ancient people were “plucky pioneers travelling the pathways of consciousness” and to think otherwise is a “personal mythology of contempt for those who lived in the past”? ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/58 "2009-11-20T02:31:37Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > OK, which is it? Ancient people were “really really really really stupid”; or ancient people were “plucky pioneers travelling the pathways of consciousness” and to think otherwise is a “personal mythology of contempt for those who lived in the past”? Yes. ---
**Author:** ![MEBuckner](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mebuckner/32/2896_2.png) [@MEBuckner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MEBuckner)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/59 "2009-11-20T02:42:17Z")
So, you yourself adhere to a “personal mythology of contempt for those who lived in the past”? Okey-dokey. ---
**Author:** ![mswas](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/e99b99/32.png) [@mswas](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mswas)\ **Post date:** [November 20, 2009, 2:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916/60 "2009-11-20T02:46:33Z")
> [@MEBuckner](#): > > So, you yourself adhere to a “personal mythology of contempt for those who lived in the past”? > > Okey-dokey. No. But yes to both of the questions that you posed as a false dichotomy. People at the time were not educated in even basic critical thought as we think of it today. They likely didn’t think anything like how we think today, so the act of trying to impute modern motives upon them, or hold them up to modern standards is a mistake. This is not so much disrespectful of them, it just recognizes that critical thought is a technology that advanced over time. It reached a tipping point with the advent of science, but it was developing the whole time since, in the minds of everyone, thinking at all. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-there-anything-inconsistent-with-the-idea-of-creative-evolution/517916.md?page=4)