Legends aren't always accurate

 Several years ago, I became interested in genealogy. It didn't take long to find out how quickly stories can become muddled and changed over just a few generations.

My great grandmother's father, who died when she was 1 year old, was said to have been trampled by a horse that was spooked by teenagers. I later find out through several newspaper sources that instead he had been driving a delivery for work when his wagon went off the side of a bluff, and he fell under the wagon, and it crushed him to death. This was my grandmother's grandfather, yet by the generation of my grandmother the story had already changed significantly.

My grandfather's grand aunt, his grandfather's sister, had died in childbirth, and the child died shortly after and was placed in her coffin with her afterward, or so I had been told through the family. When I saw her obituary, I found out she had actually been sick for some time before passing away; her death was not a sudden unexpected event. Again, this was only three generations later, with my grandfather knowing his grandfather very well, and my grandfather had already gotten the story wrong.

My grandfather's grandfather had accidentally shot and killed a friend of his, according to my grandfather they were climbing over a fence while hunting and his gun accidentally went off. His friend remained alive for a few days to tell the police it was an accident. Turns out, a very detailed newspaper article states my grandfather's grandfather and several other friends of his were in a hunting cabin together. My grandfather's grandfather was cleaning his gun; the gun went off and shot his friend in the face and killed him instantly. Still only three generations later but the story again changed significantly.

If it hadn't been for the Internet age I most likely would have never seen these actual obituaries and newspaper articles that reveal the accurate events. There were seeds of historical truths in these claims; my great grandmother's father was crushed to death when she was very young; my great grandfather's sister did have a baby who died a few weeks after her and the casket was opened, and the baby was buried with her; my grandfather's grandfather did shoot and kill a friend on accident and it involved hunting. Still, at least two of these stories had not only changed but changed significantly, only three generations later, and it would have always been assumed the family oral traditions were the accurate version of events.

If stories can be changed significantly after only three generations, and the accurate versions are only caught because of the modern internet age where we have access to television, pages like ancestry, newspapers.com, for historical records, etc., are we really supposed to believe that stories around 2000 years ago which weren't even starting to be written until roughly 30 years after the events they describe have to be accurate, because there were living witnesses to these events who would have "corrected" these errors? My grandparents knew individuals who were contemporaries to the stories told and they still got them wrong. These stories were also spreading far and wide, surely out of reach of the "eye witnesses" fairly quickly.

Never mind the fact the fact that these events involve something as emotionally strong as religion, these aren't just historical family facts. There is much more reason for embellishment for these stories. My grandfather and grandmother personally knew individuals who personally knew their grandparents, which would be their own parents, and they still got the stories wrong.

The moral of the story is, don't believe a story has to be 100% correct because of eyewitnesses, whether it's in favor of your religion or not. Don't assume any stories are 100% correct just because you want them to be. Give skepticism a chance.

The Miracle of Existence

 The miracle of existence.

Existence itself is a given. The fact that YOU exist is a miracle.

The ancestral species of humans, both before and after Homo Sapiens as we know them today, fought tooth and nail to survive in a brutal world. The ancestors that led to our species could have so easily died from predators, starvation, changing climates, at birth, etc. They survived all 5 mass extinctions. They escaped predators hunting them. They survived against the odds.

After surviving against these odds, they began to evolve into the species that we are today. The right climate, the right selection pressures caused them to change and become smarter and more reliant on their wittiness than brute strength or speed. Instead of having to be a strong as a guerilla, they learned if they create weapons instead, they can kill much larger and much stronger animals from a distance and lessen their chances of injury and death. Instead of relying solely on fur to stay warm and survive brutally cold climates, they can actually kill animals with fur and cover themselves with fur that keeps them much warmer and more than doubles their chances of surviving a brutally cold winter. If the right species had never been isolated in the right area that had these selection pressures, it's very likely these adaptations would never have happened and our ancestors, YOUR ancestors, would never have existed.

Even as our species became homo sapiens, death was much more easily accessible all the way up into the 1800s and 1900s than it is today. The infant mortality rate was sky high. Diseases and sicknesses that don't even exist today would be a common death sentence for individuals. Sicknesses and diseases that are STILL common today but merely annoying could be a death sentence as well. Children could hurt themselves and easily die of something that would easily be treated today at an urgent care or ER. To survive infancy itself was not a given as it nearly is today. The scores of infant headstones and headstones of young children across old cemeteries all over the nation bore witness to this fact.

After surviving these odds, your ancestors had to meet the right individuals in order for you to have a chance to exist. Think of all the choices and events that had to happen for all of your ancestors to meet each other to lead to your existence. One small, different, arbitrary choice could have led to any one of your ancestors not existing. An ancestor deciding to move somewhere, deciding to attend a certain church where they met your other ancestor, breaking a bone and meeting their spouse in a hospital like my grandparents, etc. A previous spouse dying and your ancestor remarrying to your other ancestor, like my great grandfather remarrying to my great grandmother after his first wife died. Think of how many individuals would have existed that will never get a chance to exist now because one individual died.

Once your ancestors hit the odds of meeting each other to lead to your conception, the odds are still against your existence specifically. One the male side, there are billions of sperm cells. Any one of these sperm cells with your mother's egg could conceive a completely unique individual. Your sperm won the genetic lottery out of billions of other sperm, and billions or trillions of other individuals who could have existed instead of you will now never have the chance of experiencing existence.

Now that your ancestors have hit the odds of meeting each other and conceiving you specifically, you STILL have to beat the odds to be born and live long enough to experience life. Many children are stillborn, or born with deficiencies that cause them to die shortly after birth, etc. Again, the odds of dying in childbirth or infancy up until maybe the mid 1900s was very great. Death in infancy was not seen as the exception that it is now.

So, you beat the odds and survived birth, but you still have to survive long enough to begin substantially experiencing life. Children die from illnesses, accidents, etc., which was much more common several generations ago but can still happen today. My great grandmother's brother died from cholera or scarlet fever when he was only a year old, for example. He beat all the odds we've discussed but still didn't survive long enough after birth to substantially experience life. Others live to adulthood and die just before adulthood, missing that experience of existence, or others die in their mid-adulthood and just miss out on other life experiences. My mother died just six months before my nephew was born and barely missed the experience of being a grandmother. If you are able to substantially experience any aspect of human existence, be grateful you have that opportunity.

If you exist and are able to read this and appreciate what I've written, make no mistake that your existence is a miracle. Is it a supernatural miracle? At the end of the day that is up to each individual to decide. For myself, the odds of my existence or existing long enough to experience life is itself what makes it miraculous, and it makes me want to appreciate the opportunity that I have to experience it. If a supernatural being has planned everything out including our lives, there is some "grand plan," for everyone that exists, there are no odds for or against us existing. It was meant to happen all along. That, in my opinion, is the opposite of miraculous.