Understanding The Theory of Evolution

The theory of evolution has taken far more than its fair share of abuse over the past century and a half. It has been harshly misrepresented and ridiculed by its detractors in an effort to discredit it. Its very status as a theory has been used to attempt to minimize its validity and believability. This behavior is known as propaganda has been used by those with aspirations of power for as long as humans have been capable of speaking or writing. It is important to remember and remind others that this kind of misleading information is based more on an attempt to inspire a specific impression or perception on a subject than any real facts. I am of the opinion that if everyone knew what evolution and natural selection were really based on, everyone would find the concepts easily understandable and even highly likely as I have.

The humble canine is a great place to start when trying to explain the basis of evolution. All the various breeds of dogs that many of us consider "mans best friend" came from what was once a deadly predator of man. The savage wolf. Dogs and wolves occasionally interbreed and produce volatile offspring but this demonstrates that even after changing so much from their original form, they are still similar enough to be considered the same species. So how did we get from such a dangerous animal to the incredibly rich and generally docile range of dogs? Selective breeding. From Doberman Pinchers and Mastiffs to Poodles and Chihuahuas, humans were able to select and breed for certain traits over time. This was possible because animals inherit the traits of their parents. I have my mothers ears and nose and my fathers large forehead and cheekbones. Indeed I often find it a little scary when I speak to my father and find how similar our thoughts are. What do you see of your parents when you look in the mirror? How similar is your thinking to that of your parents? It is this simple concept of inheritance that forms the basis of evolution and accepting this doesn't seem that large of a leap. Each and every one of us is made up by a 50/50 mixture of our mother and father. More specifically their genes.

So, how were dogs able to give rise to so many varying breeds? Mutation! I know it sounds like a terrifying word but it isnt really all that bad. We are all in a sense mutants in some form or another. Barring an injury or medical complication, each an every one of us is carrying countless halved sets of our own genes ready to combine with someone else's to form children. Interestingly, our own body allows our genes to be randomly switched off and on to a small degree when it produces the cells known as gametes. DNA is complicated and the human body, as we all know, is far from perfect and doesn't always get its copies exactly right. When it makes a mistake when copying one of the many millions of base pairs, the result is known as a mutation. Sometimes these mutations aren't even apparent and sometimes they cause terrible disorders such as Color blindness, Cystic fibrosis, and many others. All is not lost though as sometimes mutations can have good effects! Maybe you have the potential to grow a little taller than your parents or have more attractive eyes, hair, or body. I stated before that you are 50% your mother and 50% your father but this isn't entirely true. There is less than .1% of you that is completely unlike either of your parents. Its small and not easily noticeable but its there. We know this because of the humble canine and its seemingly endless potential for modification through breeding.

Once you have a working knowledge of all this, the only thing that makes evolution difficult to readily understand is scale. We have a very narrow range of understanding when it comes to size and time because the world around us never required us to care about anything larger than a mountain or smaller than a flea or longer than our own lifespan. Who can really say they can grasp how big our planet is without having seen it from orbit? Who can honestly say they can fathom what a hundred years really feels like other than the few of us that make it to that age? What about utterly massive things such as our sun or solar system? How about the galaxy? What does a thousand years feel like? We can only imagine but it is important to at least try to grasp these difficult ideas.

I once was told that the Scientific model of the origin of life was as unlikely as dropping the parts of a pocket watch to the floor and having them land as a fully assembled watch. Indeed, the chances of this happening aren't even worth considering. What is missing from this analogy is the scale on which this happened. You really have to change gears when you think about thousands, millions, or even billions of years. You can think in such small terms when your talking about trillions of molecules floating around in our primordial seas. When you factor in the time and scale, the question quickly becomes "if you and millions of other people were to drop these watch parts over and over for 2,000,000,000 years, would it be possible to see a watch be made?". Is it likely in the short term? Of course not! Common sense tells you it isn't! Is it likely in the time scale on which our planet exists? Its almost a certainty!

to be continued!