After much consideration -- based entirely on a last minute shopping trip with my wife -- I am now an ardent evolutionist. There can be no intelligent design in the origin of the human race.

Serious personal doubt about mankind's divine creation began when we pulled into the parking lot of the Draper Costco Wednesday morning. Dec. 24 is universally recognized as the stupidest day of the year, right after Election Day.

Parking was my first clue that God had nothing to do with breathing life into us. No one can comfortably believe in creationism while watching a woman make a dozen attempts to back a Ford F250 into a parking space two sizes too small for a bicycle.

In the process, she completely corked up traffic trying to exit from State Street, mashed a shopping cart, and wedged the truck so tightly into the space that she couldn't open her door. It took her another five tries to leave in a huff.

In truth, she was one of the brighter parking candidates. Many other drivers simply sat motionless, having given up any attempt at the sort of rudimentary reasoning that would have dictated driving to the furthest reaches of the lot for a space.

Others circled mindlessly, looking for what wasn't there. Only evolution could produce something this insentient. Clearly random nature intended us as a food source for a more advanced species.

Inside Costco was worse. The mob wriggled and squirmed in blind search of bits of this and that. Forward movement was frequently brought to a standstill by someone in a Christmas sweater blocking an aisle while checking a list, taking a short nap, or blathering at yet another clueless organism.

Had we really been intended as God's best and brightest creation, one with a mandate to love and respect each other, he would have given us eyes in our butts out of simple concern for our survival.

Perhaps the most recent evidence against intelligent design has been our ability to become stupider while communicating. In Costco, I was actually rammed from the side by a cart being pushed by a woman talking on her cell phone.

Leaving Costco, traffic backed into the parking lot when an SUV with a decision-making disorder couldn't pull out onto State Street. When I'd had enough and right-turned in front of her, the driver was texting. She looked up in surprise at being caught unaware by the 40 cars waiting behind her.

I'm not saying that we come descended from monkeys, people. We're not that smart. I'm saying we're a direct offshoot of the least intelligent form of mollusk.

Then again, maybe I'm more of a devolutionist. It would explain why I agreed to go shopping the day before Christmas when I certainly knew better.

Robert Kirby is a columnist. Reach him at kirby@sltrib.com.