Indeed, while studying horseshoe crabs, I came across photographs of a gigantic insulated foam and fiberglass model of a horseshoe crab temporarily owned by the Freedom Worship Baptist Church in Blanchester, Ohio. Erected in 2006, “Crabby”, the 28-foot wide, 68-foot long model was originally part of a nautical museum. The church subsequently sold the structure when it declared bankruptcy, and it was re-assembled as a roadside attraction. When interviewed about the relevance of the horseshoe crab to his church, Pastor Jim Rankin stated, “The fossils found of the horseshoe crab are the same as they appear in the waters today. The crab never evolved, so the creation account must be true.”7 The ancient existence of horseshoe crabs and their stasis, or morphological stability over time, are both used as evidence among creationists to testify to Genesis and to intelligent design over evolution.
The World’s Largest Horseshoe Crab in Blanchester, Ohio
I am not a denier, though. Technologically sophisticated media shifts my consciousness and invades our senses. Hollywood pushes this along with the massively produced Jurassic-ish worlds that have further corrupted my ability to truly believe anything. I find myself uttering, “That’s so fake,” as if the scientifically grounded yet theoretical descriptions of the past are some CGI-generated cinematic entertainment. Paradoxically these mediations, fantastic and scientific, produce increased skepticism about geologic time, making it imponderable for us. And why must we care about deep time and how long horseshoe crabs have lived?
My friend Pat gave me some insight. When she was teaching her daughter Ryan about geologic time, it both awed and reassured her. There is some odd existential comfort in the interpretation of deep time being profound and the revelation of our human existence as insignificant, repetitive, or mundane.8 Our lives and the collection of ordinary worries are dwarfed by deep time; we might feel some liberation in understanding that our existence really is inconsequential. Pat recalled:
I know this sounds simple, but we did one of those to-scale paper time lines. When you draw it all out, including both major extinction events, the scale of it is truly mind-blowing. And then how it has all been pieced together recently. The pure randomness and variety of what existed, and what persisted. Against all of it the unassuming horseshoe crab is a miracle that swam across a whole chunk of that time line. And yet, given the whole time line, they (and we) are a blink. And that means our blizzard is meaningless. This is what makes me happy. Not academic enough for any article or book, but the wonder of it exploded for me when I broke it down to teach a fifth grader. And I’ve been hooked on it ever since. “Geologic time, baby,” is the shorthand phrase Liz and I use all of the time in our household. The emotional equivalent for me of that “Let It Go” dopey Disney song.
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