The doom of dragons and the rise of man: an Easter story (alternate title)
Evolution, dragons, and Homo sapiens/Philosophy, the Bible and Evolution (alternate title)
C.S. Lewis in “The Problem of Pain,” described man in his fundamental form being imbued with “humanity” as we witness it today (Fall of Man chapter; paragraph begins: For long centuries…).
In Genesis Chapter 3, the serpent spoke to Eve and convinced her to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. Was this the moment when Homo neanderthalensis or Cro-Magnon became Homo sapiens?
This change may have perhaps included a change in cranial size to accommodate the increased brain power.
Notice the curses following:
Woman would have pain in childbirth and the serpent would crawl on its belly. I have always thought that maybe this involved some change in female anatomy but as I consider this cranial size change to accommodate a smarter human, it has made me think that the change was not with the woman but with the larger head size in her offspring. A larger cranial size means a more precarious passage through the birth canal and thus more pain. See Herron’s chapter on human evolution (Chapter 20) for charts and comparisons of brain sizes in Homo fossils.
Regarding the serpent: Perhaps it was tetrapod in some form and after losing its legs became the modern snake we see today. At the same time, changes to the serpent including its loss of speech.
The increased brain capacity of the “new generation” of human would forever mean that the serpent would never again have charismatic dominance over the human but that the human would outsmart/crush the head of the serpent with his/her heel. The serpent would have the ability to bruise the heel but that would be the limit to its future influence over the human race as compared to the deceiving serpent described in Genesis: almost implies a transfer of brain power from serpent to human in the exchange.
The man was cursed with tilling an unyielding land: one with thorns. Perhaps congruent with the changes in ease of tilling the land was a geological and/or weather shift on the planet epigenetically giving favor to aggravating plant species activated via DNA “switches.”
The serpent got its way with Eve and Eve got her wish, but both existences would forever be changed: the garden moment was perhaps the doom of the dragon and the “rise” of mankind. This analogy could be loosely compared to Jesus’ dominance over Satan in the Garden of Gethsemane and his rise from the tomb.
Reflection:
This is a fantastical synthesis, but my dad taught me to look to the Bible for clues.
In the drawing I made, I am not happy with the pterodactyl Rhamphorhynchus as my dragon model, but I tried to depict evidence in the fossil record.
Bibliography:
Freeman, Scott, and Jon C. Herron. Evolutionary Analysis. Pearson, 2015.
Holy Bible: New International Version. Zondervan, 2022.
Website, http://www.samizdat.qc.ca/cosmos/philo/PDFs/ProblemofPain_CSL.pdf
Acknowledgement: My thanks to literature Professor Mark Vinson for reviewing and proofing.
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