A young lion, with its belly full of forty pounds of wildebeest meat, was dozing off under a shade tree when a male hyena approached. The Crocuta, Crocuta, a species also known as the laughing hyena, was the first to speak.
"Whoa, take it easy", as the lion made a soft warning growl. The hyena, who was relaxed in his voice and demeanor so as not to alarm the lion, said, "Look, I know your belly is full and so is mine. I'm no threat to you and clearly you're not threatened by me and I'm not your preferred meal. By the way, thanks for the leftovers. There's plenty more left of the poor wildebeest. Listen, there's just you and me here for miles around, why don't we chat for just a bit.
"Not now. I need to nap", the lion responded. Nap the lion was not able to do, as evidenced by the full transcript of the recording from a hidden camera left by a naturalist the day before, who knew that the shade of the big Acacia tree is a frequent site for wild animals to take refuge from the oppressive noon day sun of the Serengeti, the northern part of Tanzania.
From the transcript:
Hyena: Oh, come on. There's just you and me here. All the other creatures are doing the same thing we are doing. Staying in the shade. Even the vultures are not around. The thermals are keeping them way up high and I am almost certain they have not picked up the scent of the carcass, at least not yet. If we're lucky it will still be there tomorrow with plenty more meat for you and me. So, a little conversation, is that too much to ask?
Lion: Indigestion is what I'll get, talking to you.
Hyena: Let's quit the talking to part. Why don't we talk with each other, instead, okay?
Lion: My pride will be here soon. You are dead meat if you hang around here. Leave, if you know what's good for you.
Hyena: Yeah, right. I know as a young male, you've been banished by your pride. Your mom and aunts drove you away, didn't they? You're now at least a hundred miles away from them, aren't you? By the way, why is that the custom of your species? You're a young muscular male, shouldn't the pride benefit from your protection? You know, that's the first question I'd ask Charles Darwin. If he were alive today although I don't think he knew as much as what the world gave him credit for.
Lion: You're such an ignorant dog. I had to leave the pride to prevent inbreeding. That is why we are such a strong species, unlike perhaps your kind, isn't that right? Ask Charles Darwin, ha!
Hyena: For your information, we are not dogs. Furthermore, we are more like your kind. Do you know we are separate from everyone else, but we are more cat-like than dog-like, but in a more special way, if your condescending mind can understand that.
Lion: I used dog as a pejorative in the same way I view those pesky African wild dogs, you know that. My question to you is, why are you here by yourself and eating my leftovers? You can't hunt all by yourself, can you? So don't give me that cat-like thing.
Hyena: Listen, we have so much to cover, okay. Why don't we just talk while we're resting, okay?
Lion: It's a waste of my time.
Hyena: For someone who claims to be king of the jungle, top of the food chain, you're not much for conversation, are you?
Lion: Look, I'm trying to be patient with you. If my aunts and sisters were here, you're already dead. But you know what, they won't even eat you. Just the thought of having you for a meal is revolting.
Hyena: Look, I'm being nice here. Is that the best a king will do? Insults? Show me some respect, one predator to another, carnivore to carnivore. Is that too much to ask? Aren't you known for wisdom and strength? I can't beat you one on one, but let's be civil to each other for once. I could have gone the other way, avoided a confrontation, let alone share the same shade with you, but I chose to have a chat with you.
Lion: Okay, what do you want to ask Charles Darwin?
Hyena: Where do I start? What's with the vultures? Why don't they hunt and kill like you and me? Why can't they be respectable predators like us? How did they lose so much self respect? They have strong beaks, menacing claws, wide wing span. And an ugly head. They should hunt, instead of waiting for some other hapless creature to die.
Lion: First of all, predator you are not. You are a scavenger. Didn't you just eat my leftovers? Given a chance, you'd steal what the hapless cheetah spends all its energy to chase and kill, which also makes you a thief too. You're no better than a vulture. Darwin, again if he were alive today, will say, what kind of a question is that?
Hyena: Insults I can ignore, okay? What I want to know is what prompted a winged creature with the ability to hover for long hours at a time, evolved to a diminished stature by resorting to scavenging? And lose self respect, let alone the respect of other creatures?
Lion: You keep referring to creatures. In that case, do you then agree that there is a Creator?
Hyena: You turn this into a philosophical discussion? That is why you're so smart. Is that it?
Lion: Philosophical discussion, you say? Do you even know what that means?
Hyena: You are condescending again. Listen, I don't think there is a creator. Darwin didn't seem to think so either. Everything just seems to have come to be.
Lion: Come to be? Interesting concept. Everything around you just came to be.
Hyena: No, no! I mean we all came from simple animals a very long time ago, right? Then we all took separate path to, one, to survive, then two, to adapt. Adapt to changing environments, availability of food, and so on and on.
Lion: And pushing everything further back in time to the very beginning, we all came from simple organisms, like single cell bacteria, blah, blah, is that it?
Hyena: Exactly. You got it. Then the simple life forms became a little bit more complex.
Lion: If that is what you believe, pushing even farther back in time, is it possible life could have come from non-living stuff, like, perhaps just water, dirt, some energy from whatever source that was available from the very beginning. Maybe even some kind of chemical reactions? In other words, life could possibly have come from nothing?
Hyena: If you keep pushing back in time, sure. Wait, wait. Let's not go that far.
Lion: No, no, we need to go as far back as we can. You see, what scares you is this - not finding an answer to what was there before there was no dirt, no water, no heat, no chemical components to cause chemical reactions, and so on and on. What was there before there was anything? Can you think of something?
Hyena: All I wanted was a conversation. Instead you just want to end it. Must you pour cold water on everything?
Lion: I, ending it? Continuing it is up to you. All I asked was for you to come up with, "what was there before there was anything?"
Hyena: Aha! Now I got you. How could there have been anything before there was anything? Nothing! There was nothing, then some things came to be.
Lion: So, something just came spontaneously out of nowhere, right? Stuff just came to be. Something out of nothing. That's your position.
Hyena: I just wanted to know why vultures behave the way they do, okay. That's how we started this conversation. I don't even want to know what they were before they became vultures. Like, did they use to hunt, then one day they decided it was easier to just wait for others to die so they could eat? I mean that doesn't make any sense. Something pushed them, in order to survive, to become what they are. In other words, why change into being a vulture unless they were driven to it in order to survive.
Lion: I'll have you know that vultures are perfect for what they do. Do you know why for most species their necks and heads do not have feathers? They are bald, in other words. So when they dig into the crevices, like the inside of stomachs of the carrion's carcass, there are no feathers for blood and tissue to cling to, where they could create safe harbor for bacteria, thus preventing infection. Their gut's digestive juices can eat through the toughest meat and bones even. Their eyesight is better than an eagle's and their sense of smell can detect dead animals for miles; from the air. So, they are perfect for cleaning up the environment of dead animals and decaying meat that is home to all kinds of germs that can harm other creatures that include you and me. They may not earn your respect but they have a job to do. What do you do, aside from mooching a meal which took me a lot of effort to take down?
Hyena: That's not where I wanted this conversation to go. Like I said that was the question, one of many actually, that I wanted to ask Darwin. If you were trying to do it in his stead, you're not doing a good job.
Lion: Forget Darwin. He died a long time ago.
Hyena: I know that and you know it was just a hypothetical expression on my part. But I'm open to where you want this conversation to go. Or, you can get me to a place where all my questions can be answered with one explanation. Then I'll let you take your nap undisturbed. Fair?
Lion: All right. You asked about vultures. You can ask the same way about me. Or, even about you, as a species, and what your role is. Here it is. Whether you believe or not in the Creator, you must believe in this. Each living thing around you, including those you hunt, if you insist you're a predator, not a scavenger, has a role in the environment.
Hyena: Please. You know, I, together with my family of hyenas hunt. But when opportunities arise, yes, we will scavenge. Okay?
Lion: Let's then say, you are an opportunist. Good?
Hyena: Just go on, please.
Lion: No interruptions, okay? Where was I? When you were conceived in your mother's womb, you started just slightly larger than a pinhead. Then you became an embryo. By the time of your birth you looked not a tad uglier than you are now but a hyena nevertheless and not any other creature. In other words all the information that made you you was all inside that pinhead. Have you ever wondered how that is. Unless something, like a blueprint, was already in place to make you. Imagine, that information, for example, determines whether you will be a male or female, what spots you will have, how heavy you will become, and so on and on. Unfortunately, it was not in the blueprint that you could possibly look more pleasing. To other creatures, I mean. I'm sure your mom thought you were the apple of her eye. There were probably four or five of you, so she had a bushel of apples.
Hyena: Your insults were pretty funny, I thought. As a laughing hyena, I will re-tell that to my clan, or I guess we are called a cackle, as a family of us. That's good material if I were a standup comic. So, listen, your point is that someone or something is responsible for creating what you call the blueprint. Is it possible your creator, like an artist, could have been making changes to the drawing every now and then over thousands or millions of years?
Lion: Except that artists who tend to improve their drawings or paintings over time must make changes toward beauty or pleasant looks, right? But, in your case, what happened?
Hyena: There you go with the insults. Good comedy material though, but I will have you know, I am hurt. But I am a laughing hyena, so I'll take it. No more questions from me. Go ahead, take your nap.
Lion: I was just teasing you, ok? Besides, there's just you and me here. Truce?
Hyena: Yeah. I will take your creator thing and discuss that with my cackle.
P.S.
It was my intention for the readers to fill in "between the lines" according to each one's philosophical or religious background. There are readers among you from countries from Argentina and Brazil to Tunisia and Vietnam and twenty or so others in between so I leave it to each of you to interpret them from your perspective or persuasion.
I went to a university back in the Philippines that was founded by an American Presbyterian missionary, Horace B. Silliman.
It started in 1901 as a small Christian elementary school, then became an institute and later accredited a full university status decades later, where the college of engineering became one of several departments. Although I enrolled in engineering, English 101 and 102, and Spanish 101 and 102 were required for graduation. I had to take them during the first two years along with math and physics, including Philosophy 101 (Christian Ethics) and Philosophy 102 (Logic). We had to walk to the Liberal Arts Dept. to take those classes. We did not become truly engineering students until the third year (of a 5-year course) when all our classes were in the college of engineering entirely.
I had to go through all that detail because in English 102, our professor required us late in the semester to write an essay about any subject that came to mind except math and physics. By the way, instructions and tests were in English and papers we submitted were in English as well.
My essay was on the theory of evolution. I had to do research on it independently. A secular subject that it was and the Christian university and Biblical environment settings notwithstanding, I got an A- for it. However, since that essay, I had changed my attitudes and persuasion towards the theory of evolution about four times over the years.
That is what I meant about "between the lines" in this musing and from the context of how the reader may understand the theory of evolution as time went on from the famous Scopes trial in Dayton, Tennessee, July 10-21, 1925, that to this day is still being debated. This year, to the week, is the 100th anniversary of that trial. It was also labeled the "Monkey Trial" when "high-school teacher, John T. Scopes, was charged with violating state law by teaching Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution".
It was dramatized in several TV drama and movie versions since then, which made famous the names of attorneys William Jennings Bryan for the prosecution and Clarence Darrow for the defense.
P.PS.
(Below, present day photo of the main entrance of the university and its seal that says, Via, Veritas, Vita. The Acacia trees in the background were not that tall during my time there in the 60s)
No comments:
Post a Comment