The Meade house is not really a dancing household, by which I mean neither my wife Andi or I can be readily seen busting out in extended dance moves (I am, of course, the creator of the revolutionary dance move known as The Lowman, but alas that was years ago. The dancing shoes have been retired for some time). Our house is full of dance in a different way, but I am pretty sure our little girl Callie Grace has never seen her parents “dance a jig.”
This morning as Callie, Andi, and I were sitting on the couch watching “Baby’s First Moves” by Baby Einstein, Callie just started ripping dance moves. This is nothing unusual, she has been dancing since she was old enough to move on her own, but today she was flat getting on it, almost falling off the couch! I whispered to Andi, “just another wonder of creation that evolution has no answer for.”
And it’s true. Our God is the Lord of the Dance. He has instilled in each of us amazing and wonderful aspects of His goodness, including music and dance. It is just natural for Callie to dance. She doesn’t know why, she hasn’t picked up on it through any social or cultural awareness, it isn’t an instinct for survival, it’s just in her. It’s in all of us. It’s the same reason why a new mom or dad just naturally falls into the role of being a mom or dad. Random chance offers no help or explanation for such realities. The Bible speaks often of singing and dancing. God is called the one who “gives songs in the night” (Job 35:10). Steven Curtis Chapman has lyrics that say, “I am the dancer, He is the Lord of the Dance.” All of creation sings, worships, and glorifies the God of the universe through the song God has given us. And we dance.
Conan Doyle was on to something when he has Sherlock Holmes say these words in The Naval Treaty: “Our highest assurance of the
goodness of Providence seems to me to rest in the
flowers. All other things, our powers our desires,
our food, are all really necessary for our existence
in the first instance. But this rose is an extra.
Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life,
not a condition of it. It is only goodness which
gives extras, and so I say again that we have much to
hope from the flowers.”
Obviously Doyle was not a theologian and the Bible speaks of God granting us even our desires, powers, food, etc. Yet, he is right about the extras. The joy of watching my little girl dance because it’s “in her” is an extra. That is just simply goodness which random chance can’t account for. I’m thankful for the dance.
Actually, evolution is a highly nonrandom process. The only parts that are near-random in evolution are the mutations that occur. Evolution is a nonrandom process, but it’s driven by random mechanisms. Selection (natural and artificial) and mutation are the two basic forces operating within evolution. Selection is not random because the selective force of the environment decides whether or not a population will survive to continue passing on its particular traits. The mutations that occur are mistakes in DNA that occurred when being copied from one generation to the next. These mutations can be caused by different factors such as radiation or viruses, so they aren’t completely random.
Most mutations have no effect on an organism’s ability to survive. For example, the color of someone’s hair has nothing to do with their ability to survive and pass that trait on to their offspring, which would make hair color a “silent mutation” since it is not being selected for or against.
Some mutations can affect an organism’s ability to survive positively or negatively. A great example of this is “…a new mom or dad just naturally falls into the role of being a mom or dad.” A child whose parents do not fall into the role of being a parent would be unable to survive and pass on the trait of not being a parent. Thus, natural selection has just selected against not taking the role of a parent. A child whose parents do take the role of being parents will be able to survive and pass on the trait of parenting. Natural selection will have favored parenting over not parenting.
For a good example of artificial selection, you can watch this clip from Carl Sagan’s “Cosmos” series about Heike crabs.
As for the human affinity for music and dance, there are many different hypotheses for as to how/why we became so attached to them covered in the study of evolutionary musicology. One such hypothesis can be found here. Other hypotheses are put forth in detail in “The Origins of Music” by Nils L. Wallin, Björn Merker, and Steven Brown.
Remember, there is no controversy among the scientific community as to whether or not evolution happened (like the Discovery Institute would have you believe), rather, how it happened.