The Grass Hypothesis

Last weekend while visiting Toronto, I realized something. The basic reason for Toronto's existence is the fact that human beings are unable to digest grass. This goes for any other city as well. The underlying reason for all the buildings, roads, planes, lights, malls and, cars is that human beings have a digestive system that cannot digest grass like sheep or deer.

Let me explain. Grass is the ideal food simply because of it's abundance. Animals that eat grass are in little danger of starvation unless there is a severe and widespread drought or unless they are unable to migrate in winter. I am not referring to members of the grass family of plants like wheat or rice but to ordinary green grass.

Animals like sheep and deer have digestive systems that can process grass but humans do not. This opens questions about evolution. The evolutionary development ideas that claim humans arose from "natural selection" rather than being created by God run into a problem with this. It would have greatly improved the chances of humans for survival long enough to reproduce and pass on the genes if we were able to supplement our diets with ordinary grass.

This would be a simple evolutionary adaptation with enormous benefits. Remember that in evolutionary theory, creatures of a given species that happen to be better suited to the environment are more likely to survive long enough to reproduce and pass along their genes. Thus, the entire species will improve over time. Yet, it did not occur.

The reason for the beginnings of human civilization is to ensure a steady supply of food. When people discovered that they could remove seeds from food plants and put them in the ground so that they would grow, they began to settle down instead of wandering as nomads in search of food. If humans had been able to digest grass, food supply would not be a major issue. It would have been much easier to wander to a greener pasture than to settle down, plant seeds and, wait for the seeds to grow. Civilization would have been unnecessary and would never have gotten started.

It seems clear to me that God wanted human beings to develop civilization. Without it, it would have been nearly impossible to spread his word across the world. Without civilization, there would have been no writing for the Bible and no prophets. To accomplish this, God created humans with not only a high-capacity brain and opposable thumbs, but also with an inability to digest grass.

Digestion of grass would have been such a beneficial evolutionary development for humans that it must have been purposeful design that it did not occur. So many animals can feed on grass that the only sensible conclusion is that God designed us without this ability to be sure that civilization would develop.