Relativity Lite

To c or Not to c  | 11 from muon exposure would be only 2 µsv. (For perspective, if I were to ask you to give me $2, the chances are pretty good you might do so. But if I asked you to give—not lend— me $400, the chances you might do so would be pretty slim.) Relativistic effects are not a minor factor in our lives at all! Just so that you do not get the idea that the real-world consequences of relativity are all negative, consider that evolution works by taking advantage of mutations. Theistic philos- ophers struggle with the question of why there are disease and evil in the world. In his last book, And God Laughed When the Birds Came Forth from the Dinosaurs , my father asked the question this way: [W]hy does God allow such mutation, which, from the higher standpoint of the personal value that it destroys, must be classified as an “evil”? The answer that seems reasonable is to affirm that such mutation . . . is the risk God must run in creating or bringing forth a finite world of freely developing process. The over-all rationality of such possibility seems borne out by the thoughtful conclusions of genetical science itself. The geneticists Dunn and Dobzhansky write: Harmful mutations and hereditary diseases are thus the price which the species pays for the plasticity which makes continued evolution possible. * [T]he above quotation contains the idea of the neutrality of mutations as a necessary principle of . . . physical process. The mutation of the genes makes the survival of life possible in the long run in any environment, or amid environmental changes, within, of course, upper and lower limits of temperature and other absolute environmental boundaries for life. In theistic faith, and from the standpoint of values, this “neutrality” of mutation would itself seem purposive , since its effect is that life does survive . To theistic faith, the immanent rationale of mutation is that life shall survive . † He also writes, [A] modern teleological ‡ view of evolution would cite mutation itself—the capacity of life at the very deepest level of process to adjust or adapt itself—as significant evidence of an ulti- mate spiritual meaning, design, or purpose within our world’s evolutionary development. The spiritual meaning inheres in this “free capacity,” which makes possible the manifold growth * L. C. Dunn and Th. Dobzhansky, Heredity, Race, and Society , A Mentor Book (New American Library, New York, 1946/1952), p. 81. † G. Douglas Straton, And God Laughed When the Birds Came Forth from the Dinosaurs: Essays on the Idea and Knowledge of God (1995 ms.), Chap. 6, p. 163. ‡ Teleology is the study of cosmic design.