The Great Fable slowly devolving

BIG BANG: Pope Francis - pictured delivering a speech to members of Catholic medical associations earlier this month - has endorsed the theory of evolution. PHOTO/AP

At times it's hard to believe humankind is a single species. In the space of a fortnight, two news-items drawn from the absolute extremes of human behaviour occurred. On the positive side, Australian archaeologists' new technology enabled them to trace mankind's evolvement from apes, via a Neanderthal interlude, to 40,000 and not 30,000 years ago as hitherto thought.

This discovery arose from cave paintings on Indonesia's Sulawesi Island, which bore similarities to the previously known oldest ones in France and Spain. Science delivers a continuing feast of such extraordinary new revelations.

Then, reflecting the negative side of human behaviour but pertinent to the ape-to-man evolution finding, the Pope put the cat among the pigeons, as evidenced by indignant Wellington Catholic newspaper correspondents' responses. So much for Papal infallibility. Specifically, he endorsed the Big Bang theory and evolution. In fact, unable to deny the clear evidence, two of his predecessors had already done so. Pope Paul accepted Darwinism in 2005 and Benedict, two years later, denounced the American intelligent design creationists as absurd and flying in the face of the evidence. Once, they'd have been burned at the stake for these heresies, although it's never too late for lots of reasons, not least this outfit's veneration of tradition. That pleasant prospect aside, the Popes acknowledged that previously believed fables (walking on water, miracles, Adam and Eve et al) were fiction, as if we didn't already know that. Nevertheless, the ethereal god chap (copying Mark Twain, the small cap is deliberate) kicked off the Big Bang, therefore baying at the sky was still a goer. And how do they know this? Well, they don't, and as with all superstitions, simply made it up, otherwise described as faith. So much for Benedict's impertinent criticism of the American design creationists when he's up to his eyeballs in it himself.

Every society over our 40,000 years has invented deities, with over 2500 recorded.

The Popes' deity originator, Jesus, issued worthy human relations platitudes which, as with Islam and Judaism, were largely nicked from the Zoroastrians 600 years earlier, and with roots to even earlier sources. Nothing unusual there. As long as man has existed we've had Messiahs and no end of silly buggers eager to ascribe them mystical powers. With my life-long appetite to taste everything, I'd have had a crack at the Messiah lark myself, providing the standard promise of eternal existence, was it not such a crowded field.

There's enough currently at it to form a Messiahs union. And that's not counting the second-coming claimants, who certainly keep coming. Competition aside, the prerequisites of wearing a beard, ballgown and sandals simply wouldn't work with smoking a pipe.

My family lawyer, David Butler, once represented a prominent citizen who, with others, had been subpoenaed by a nutter. The plaintiff duly opened his case. "I am the Messiah" he proclaimed loudly, glaring at the judge. "That may be so," the judge replied, "but what is your case?"

"I am the Messiah," he repeated in a booming voice. The judge then declared he would dismiss the case whereupon David, now thoroughly enjoying proceedings, piped up urging caution. "I suggest your Honour, we box carefully, after all, he may be right." This proposal was declined, yet another example of killjoy judicial decisions, depriving the public of entertainment.

Still, despite their amusement value, it's a tragedy that all of history's numerous Messiahs weren't similarly rejected, particularly the superstition purveyors and the unballgowned Karl Marx. Then again, in fairness, were they to have known the enormous harm subsequently to be done in their name they might have knocked Messiahing on the head from the outset.

Take Jesus. Two thousand years of highly dubious priestly buggers skulking about in nighties, frequently up to no good, and hundreds of thousands of lives stagnating in monasteries and nunneries, all in his name.

What certainly would have caused a mind change though, was being slowly and painfully murdered on a cross, then figuratively rubbing salt into his wounds, by telling him that his subsequent followers would venerate the instrument of his death. On the positive side, this particular voodooism has given us glorious cathedrals, Easter eggs, hot cross buns, some splendid music (offset by the dirgy stuff) and Christmas presents, so it hasn't been entirely bad; although then again, the eggs, buns and temples, as with all Christian rituals, emanated from earlier superstitions. Despite those attractions, I'll stick with science rather than fairy tales.