Pure Genius and Selfish Genes

Was reading my first anti-theist book and thought this essay would make an interesting topic for Absolutists to explain their Intelligent Design. Excepting the image, it is pure copy and paste.

Now here is a tale that seems so unbelievable, it is actually believable. Hell, I still find it hard to believe myself. And I lived through it.

When my daughters were born, I was nowhere near. I was still in the US Navy. We were on a mission so “top secret classified” that no one was allowed ANY contact outside our immediate command structure. A mission that lasted so long, I never knew we had even gotten pregnant. My wife and I had our honeymoon. I returned to my ship and ten days later we left port. By the time we returned home, I found I was the new father of 5 month old twin daughters. Identical twins. Five months later, there was an accident. An accident that forced me to accept an Honorable (Medical) Discharge. I was returned home.

Both a good and a bad thing. Bad because I was going to spend a lifetime in the Navy. Good because my daughters would no longer be without their daddy. Overall, I think the good won over the bad.

Anyway, my daughters grew up. One thing my wife and I loved was that our daughters were identical twins, so identical, that both had the same exact complete heterochromia. They both had a brown right eye and a blue left eye. My wife and I both had brown eyes. However, we both had the genes for blue eyes. My mother had brown eyes, my father had blue eyes. Get this. My wife’s mother had brown eyes, her father had blue eyes. Funny how the natural selection of genetics can work… What was it Richard Dawkins said about The Selfish Gene?

Our daughters grew up and went off to public school starting with the “K” grade (which we never had when I was a child). It was not until they were in third grade, eight years old, that I accidentally found out that our daughters were dyslexic. I was playing on the computer with programming code that flipped text around to mirror image. I had made functions that would flip the whole page, flip just words, or just each letter. While I was playing around, one of my daughters walked by, saw the screen, and said, “Ooooh… that looks backwards.” It was quite some time before her comment did the “wake-up-call” on the back of my mind. I got my daughter back to the computer and asked her to show me how she saw the letters on screen by writing them on a piece of paper. It was then that I realized that although the letters were backward for me, she was actually seeing them as if they were correct. I then returned the letters to normal and asked again for her to write them exactly as she sees them. She then wrote each letter horizontally flipped, but the sequence of letters still flowed correctly in each word. The form of text that was most difficult for them was italics text. The attached image below depict this phenomenon.

Numbers looked perfectly normal to them (14, 5, 79, 2386, etc.), however. It was just the letters that flipped on them. Go figure. I have since discovered that dyslexia is quite funny in how it can affect people differently. I even read a journal paper which discussed how for one person the letters that flipped around for them were only the uppercase letters. All lowercase letters appeared normal. Then there are persons where the letters and numbers flip around so badly, some would actually flip both ways being mirror image and upside down, that they have no way of learning how to read. That is sad…

When I first discovered this, I was so angry there were no words. I was beyond livid that the school system had had my daughters for over three years and NEVER knew my daughters were dyslexic. Fortunately, this was on a Saturday, and I had almost two days to chill before going and confronting my daughters’ teacher and principal. The next day (Sunday), I then had the wild tangent smack me on the back of my head, “How come neither my wife nor I even knew our daughters were dyslexic? And I am wanting to blame the school system?”

This question truly haunted me. I could not figure out how neither my wife nor I knew our daughters were dyslexic. They spoke like normal children their age. They read books like normal children their age. They even wrote like normal children their age. How in hell…?

It was then that it dawned on me that our daughters were such geniuses that they were able to compensate for their dyslexia so well, that no one even suspected they were dyslexic. Even myself and my wife.

How in hell…?

That Monday, my wife, their teacher, the school principal, and I discussed this issue. The teacher and principal were as completely shocked as I had been. From that day forward, my daughters had their dyslexia entered into their records. They even listed the dyslexia as “Self-Compensated.” This led to several aptitude batteries being given to my daughters to prove they had “self-compensated” their dyslexia.

And I have been told by others that I was intelligent. Not after this… I was just another retard compared to the genius of my daughters. Shame they were killed. With that kind of genius focused into two identical brilliant persons, they could have literally changed the world…

And, Absolutists, what does this say about your Intelligent Design?

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