As I have always attempted where possible to be an honest and responsible person who owns up to his mistakes I would like to take this opportunity to clear the air about a few things, to accept the blame for the things that are my fault and to deny responsibility for things I am not responsible for. Ahem…

The atoms of radioactive elements break down over time at a predictable rate called a “half life”. These elements are found in rocks on our planet and because of the presence of these elements in the rocks the age of the rocks can be determined. This, I would like to point out, is not my fault. I neither created the rocks nor put the elements in them nor discovered the principle of radiation nor caused the atomic breakdown to occur nor established the fundamental laws of the universe that lead to this “clock”. I do take responsibility, however, for believing the thousands of competent scientists and researchers and professionals of various faiths, backgrounds and walks of life who have measured these elements and determined the age of this planet to be approximately 4.55 billion years old. Mea culpa. I believe the rocks are telling the truth when they tell their age seeing as how rocks have little reason to lie.

Sometime in the first billion years of time on this little planet here something started reproducing and adapting. It may have come from space, it may have been created by God, it may have formed through the basic rules of chemistry, but eventually it became big enough to leave little marks, little traces of itself in the oldest of old rocks. This, additionally, is not my fault. I neither put the traces of life in the rocks, nor determined the ages of said rocks nor in any way contributed to the presence of these little reproducing things in the rocks. I deny all responsibility. I do, however, take responsibility for looking at pictures of their traces, reading about how those traces are analyzed and learning about the earliest records of life on this planet. Considering that those records exist I guess I thought it was OK to learn about them. Again. My bad.

Funny thing about reproducing adapting little critters is that they use RNA and DNA to make copies of themselves and the methods that RNA and DNA use to function are prone to errors and change is a constant. So random change is inevitable. It’s why antibiotics don’t work for long. It’s why dachshunds don’t look like wolves. In short, it’s a fact of chemistry and can’t be prevented. I would like to firmly deny any responsibility for how chemistry works, how the shapes of molecules result in various non-random results, how DNA is a flawed mechanism that inevitably leads to change. These things are not my fault. It is furthermore not my fault that changes in DNA can lead to apparently identical but reproductively isolated groups of animals who then experience changes of their own and develop into apparently different animals over time. I swear, I had nothing to do with it, neither 3.5 billion years ago when it started happening or yesterday when it happened again. I was, however, responsible for learning how it works, being fascinated by it and realizing that although it’s complicated, it’s rich and incredible and once started it functions without any supervision or direction.

Another thing I would like to deny responsibility for is that sometimes when things die they leave behind fossils, or in the case of people, they leave behind tools, houses, artwork or writing. Over the billions of years since the earliest wriggling things, every subsequent era has left it’s record in rocks. This is not my fault. I didn’t put them there or tell them to fossilize. The changes that have taken place in genes over the years have also been passed on as yet another confirmation of when and how they happened. Again, I deny any responsibility for this. It is not my fault that 98% of human DNA is identical to chimpanzees. I deny responsibility for the fact that the fossil record and DNA record provide confirmation of each other. I emphatically reject any accusation that I was part of setting up the genetic, archaeological and paleontological evidence that all agrees to paint a rich and interesting portrait of the history of life on earth and our relationship to the rest of the plants and animals. It’s not my fault. I didn’t do it. I did, however, take the time to learn about it and to marvel at it, stand in awe of it and to see the inherent logic in it. I take responsibility for that.

Eventually the many forms of life on this earth managed to branch off in such a way that something very much like humans was around and after a few million years, as recently as 120,000 years ago, a few species very much like us were around. We call one branch Neanderthals these days and they were genetically incompatible with us (their DNA has been analyzed). Civilization didn’t exist, neither did writing or farming. These people left behind tools and lots of ‘em. They left behind their dead bodies, their bones and the remnants of structures they built. I would like to deny all responsibility for the existence of these bones, tools and structures. I would like to deny all responsibility for the amounts of radioactive isotopes in the rocks above and below these items that help determine their ages. I didn’t make the people, or the bones, or the rocks or the walls or the fires. I had nothing to do with it. I was not going to be born for about 120,000 years. It’s a good alibi, I think. I will, however, take responsibility for learning about these people, the evidence they left, the tools they made, the bones they carried in their skin and again, for trusting the rocks when they say “I’m 100,000 years old”.

An additional thing I deny responsibility for, while we’re at it, is the fact that the continents drift. The continents are on giant moving plates called tectonic plates that float on hot liquid rock inside the planet which we sometimes see when there are volcanos. Sometimes they shift a little too fast and giant tsunamis kill 160,000 people. They move very slowly most of the time, obviously, or every living thing on earth would be wiped out but move they do. Coincidentally, fossils and DNA are affected by these movements as animals are separated from each other when the landmasses are separated. This is all traceable and has left evidence all over the world that agrees. This is called biogeography and it explains how animals are related and why they live in the ranges they do. It helps determine how long ago species branched from each other. It’s remarkably consistent on a global level. I emphatically, categorically deny any and all responsibility for the agreement of genetic, geographical and fossil evidence in this case. I didn’t make the continents move or store the records of the splits and movements in genes and fossil beds. I did, however, find it fascinating when I read all the various case studies that prove it to be the case.

For most of human history, people wandered and lived in caves and ate and hunted and made more people and developed language and stuff. For sixty times longer than the amount of time that has passed since Jesus day they did these things and they did them all over the world. They left evidence of themselves everywhere and eventually they also left evidence of something else, the earliest civilizations, in China, India and Mesopotamia. I was not responsible for the 55,000 year old evidence of people in Australia or the 13,000 year old evidence of people in North America. I deny responsibility for the development of cuneiform, for the early civilizations in China, for the building of the pyramids or any of the other things that happened before 4,000 years ago. It wasn’t my fault. I swear, I wasn’t there. I didn’t do it. I didn’t build all those cities, make all those clay tablets, build all those buildings that still stand to this day that ought not to be there because of a giant flood that was supposed to have happened in 2370. I do, however, admit they exist and I similarly accept how old they are.

A few thousands years into the story of civilization a nomadic people in the middle east who carried with them the traditions of their great-great-great-grandparents in Sumeria and memories of having been in Egypt at one point (where they were forcibly expelled by the Egyptians and were known as the Hyskos, a group of foreigners who took over the country) started recording their stories. They wrote what they remembered and thought, to themselves, for themselves. They left evidence of what they wrote and how they wrote it in their texts, they left evidence of the type of culture and civilization they had in their cities and camps and they are among the most studied of peoples in Western Civilization. They’re called the Jews or Israelites and the history they wrote of themselves changed and grew and was rewritten and adjusted up until about 2400 years ago when it was canonized into a holy book. The book made many claims that were not correct because the authors did not have the ability to understand rocks or genes or even the larger world they lived in, had no idea where they actually came from and knew not where the stories handed down to them had come from but this was all beside the point. The book was good because it provided an identity and a law and I had nothing to do with it. I was not responsible for the archaeological evidence of who the Israelites actually were and how they developed their culture and book. It is not my fault. I am not responsible for the mythical accounts in the book about a global flood in 2370 BCE or the incorrect explanation for the origins of languages. I am not responsible for the fact that the chronology they guessed at for the beginning of the world and mankind was not even old enough to take in Egyptian or Indian history or the earliest written records in China. It is not my fault that biogeography, genetics, plate tectonics, archaeology, paleontology, paleoanthropology and every other field of scientific endeavor (whether dealing with cells or rocks) agree that the earth is 4.55 billion years old, that every living thing on it has a common ancestor and that we’ve been here much much longer than 6,000 years. I didn’t do it. I neither put in the mistakes nor provided the evidence that highlights them as being such. I am only responsible for recognizing the contradiction and choosing to accept the word of tens of thousands of pieces of physical evidence and thousands of intelligent people against the words of somebody who wrote in ignorance, making his best guesses back in an ancient time.

Civilization grew, time elapsed, other holy books were written by others. Wars were fought, empires grew and fell, people were born and died and the holy words became more than just words. They became a message from GOD. The wars intensified as everybody thought THEY were in the right. The book changed and grew as well. Eventually somebody was born who said something different. Or perhaps he didn’t. Nobody seems to have written about him while he was alive or noted his existence so he may or may not have been there at all. This lead to a new holy book tacked on to the last one. A couple of centuries after this person may or may not have lived this book was canonized and finalized, the writings were combed through and edited, other writings about this person were suppressed, destroyed or hidden. Christianity came into being. Again, I deny all responsibility for this. I didn’t created the political climate in Palestine that lead to it. I didn’t develop the pagan stories that were eventually woven into the Gospel stories about this person, Jesus. I deny all responsibility for the confused and contradictory state of the scriptures that were put together centuries after he may or may not have lived. I had nothing to do with it. I do take responsibility, however, for analyzing the texts, learning about what was in the Dead Sea scrolls, learning about papyrology and first century Palestine. I take full responsibility for getting as complete a picture of the times, politics and events of that day as I can and trying to learn as much as is known to Biblical scholars about the development of those books. I did that. My bad.

More time passed in the new Christian world, but not the long tens of thousands of years that had passed before history started to be written, not the millions that had passed in pre-human ancestry, just a couple of thousands years. Barely a breath. This book that had developed began to be venerated above all other things. It was put ahead of physical reality, determined to be God’s direct revelation to mankind. The people doing this veneration still did not know better. They thought the sun revolved around the earth, they thought the earth was flat or on turtles. They understood very little just as those who wrote the book in the first place did but they tried their best to learn and their thoughts and efforts are still available as evidence of their time here. Just like the early Israelites, and the Mesopotamians, and the Neanderthals and the dinosaurs and everybody else who ever did anything. They show the development of their ideas and religious beliefs. I deny responsibility for their embellishments, persecutions, wars and flights of fancy. I do, however, take responsibility for studying these things to determine where the ideas I was raised with came from.

In the early 1800′s in New York a man named William Miller developed an idea that he could figure out from this ancient book secrets about the future and about the second coming of the man who may or may not have lived. He pegged it 1844. He was apparently wrong. His followers, called Millerites, were disappointed but continued. They formed a new group called Adventists. They helped teach a young man named Charles Russell who founded a group and published a magazine called The Watchtower. This seed grew into an organization and in 1973 I was born into it. The beliefs had evolved out of with initial ideas of Russell, with modification, which had come from the ideas of the Adventists, with modification, which had come from the ideas of Miller, with modification, which had come from the ideas of Christianity and the Christian Bible, with modification, which had come from various pagan religions and the Jewish Bible, with modification, which had come from the earliest writings of the Egyptians and Sumerians, with modification, which had come from the ideas of early people, with modification, which had come about as explanations for things they did not understand like languages, fossils and the varieties of animals, with modification, which had of course come from nature which itself was formed by replication with modification going all the way back to the wiggly stuff 3.5 billion years ago. I deny all responsibility for William Miller, Charles Taze Russell, J.F. Rutherford, Nathan Knorr, Fred Franz, the Seventh Day Adventists or anybody else who contributed the ideas and concepts that made up the information I was given. After 3.5 billion years of descent with modification I happened to pop out and was told that the book had it all right and I believed it. I take responsibility for that bit. I take responsibility for believing it, but I didn’t invent it, am not responsible for the process that did and take no responsibility whatsoever for the fact that it’s not reflective of reality. I did, however, upon learning the real story, the long version, the true version, decide that I couldn’t in good conscience venerate the book with the human idea of the story in it. I did do that.

It is not my fault that the world we live in is richer, older and more fascinating than the stories we tell about it. It’s not my fault that the actual history of life on earth is preserved in rocks and genes. It’s not my fault that people didn’t know how to read those rocks and genes for most of their time here and so instead have venerated a book for the last few millenia and it’s not my fault that the book is full of ideas and guesses that have turned out to be incorrect. It’s not my fault that a religious organization that counts my family members among it’s adherents thinks that I am a bad person for understanding the real story and trusting nature more than ancient writers and it’s not my fault that all of this causes me (and them) pain and suffering. I didn’t make the story true and I didn’t make it false. I didn’t make it at all. I didn’t develop the stories about God to explain things and make perfectly understandable mistakes in the process. I didn’t leave all the evidence that tells the truth. I didn’t develop the rules about how to treat my fellow human beings who find reality more interesting and useful than peoples stories about it. I didn’t have anything to do with any of it. I am guilty of, and take full responsibility for, recognition and acceptance. That’s it. I recognize it because it’s true. I accept it because to do otherwise is wishful thinking. I am not responsible for what is true and what is false. But for my recognition and acceptance of what is real, I plead guilty. The rest isn’t my fault. Honestly. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just sad that this thing that isn’t my fault, this thing called reality, over which I have no control, is at odds with a story and those odds mean I’ve lost my family and friends. That’s not my fault, but it makes me infinitely sad.

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RyanSutter has content marketing with Arkayne Socialize.

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